Edited text of my speech from C-51 can't stop us forum in Toronto. Videos of the other, far more amazing, talks from the forum will be up shortly. 

The purpose of C-51 and all of these others laws, they say, is to defend Canada.

But what is Canada? Is it the lush land that feeds us and our families? The water that quenches our thirst? The air that watches over us or the stories that keep us together? Is it the communities of people that hold on to each other, hold on tight, and continue?

For if that is Canada, than I love Canada. You love Canada. A love that forces us to ask questions, make amends. To find new places of realization and truths, to re-build new worlds, better worlds, worlds that fit all of our broken selves.

This blog doesn’t detail what’s wrong with Bill C-51, for that read this, and this. 

News of CBC anchor Amanda Lang trying to "kill" a CBC story on RBC hiring of foreign workers back in 2013 has hit the airwaves. Initially revealed on Jesse Brown's Canadaland, the story is now being covered in many mainstream media outlets.

(Blog post by the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change)

There has been massive media attention on the Temporary Foreign Workers Program (TFWP) in the last few weeks. Mainstream and social media is full of analysis and solutions. Some critics and commentators insist that the only appropriate way forward is shutting down the low-skilled temporary foreign worker program. They are wrong.

This is a bit longer than a tweet, and more personal than I intended it to be. I am writing it as an update to everyone that has supported me in a million different ways in the last seven years, and more importantly in the hopes that in asking personal questions, we can come up with collective answers. I’d appreciate not receiving a wave of congratulations, though if this strikes you as meaningful, please share with others, and join me at this rally against immigration enforcement on Friday, February 28, 2014.

Mohamed, Shyroz and Qyzra Walji are dead. The police call it a homicide-suicide. Their friends and families know different. At a vigil held for the family, Qyzra Walji’s teacher for five years, Nichole Wardyce insisted “I have no doubt that if Qyzra and her family had been granted their Canadian citizenship, they would still be here, and Qyzra would have continued being a leader and a voice for others with disabilities." 

Original article at http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/hussan/2013/11/life-and-death-waljis-migrant-strike-and-political-will

Thousands are outraged at the Parti Quebecois charter of values -- a charter that proposes to prohibit the wearing of religious symbols by public employees.

Dear Grandfather Suzuki, 

I was raised to treat my elders with respect, and to call them with their appropriate titles, so I hope you will let me call you Grandfather.

I ran into Silvio yesterday in the subway. I hadn't seen him in two years and he didn't look good. His eyes were red, his cheeks flushed, and his dirt encased hands were shaking. 

"It's just so hard with the kids you know, never knowing what will happen next" he said. 

His wife had called him at work. She had heard about the immigration raids in Vancouver, and had demanded that he leave his job and get home. She herself was going to pick up the kids from school.