Feminist Peace Network

Many thanks to Amee Chew for passing along this inspiring speech by Olivia Chow from Canada.  Please be sure to check out the link for some beautiful pics:

“In March 2006, more than 753,000 individuals in Canada used the food
banks because they were hungry. We know that there are many hungry
people across Canada in our neighbourhoods and our communities, and that
we all need to take action to make sure that all Canadians have their
fair share of food and no one is going hungry.

To reduce the root causes of hunger in Canada, we absolutely have to
invest in affordable housing and child care, and increase the minimum
wage to at least $10 an hour.I want to speak a bit about building
affordable housing.

Yesterday, hundreds of women  and their allies walked through the streets of Toronto and went to a building  at 4 Howard Street. It is one of the hundreds of buildings in Toronto that has been allowed to sit empty and deteriorate until they
either fall down or must be torn down.

These women are saying that we need to build affordable housing because
some women are victims of domestic abuse, and their kids are stuck in
shelters, in unsafe housing. They have to move every two or three
months, sometimes even sooner because they cannot find affordable
housing. They do not go to the same schools. Their kids cannot form any
kind of friendships because they do not have permanent housing.Some even
go back to their abusive relationships because they have no place to
live and they are desperate. Homeless women face violence every day on
the streets, whether they are in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal or
Halifax, in big cities or in small towns and communities.

These women yesterday said that we have to push the Canadian government
to establish a decent, affordable housing strategy and that there needs
to be extra money in the federal budget to build affordable housing.

We know that the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation has a budget
surplus of at least $5 billion in its reserve funds, and that while this
money is sitting in the reserve funds, there are hundreds and hundreds
of Canadians who are homeless and have no place to live, so in this
budget it is really a complete missed opportunity.”

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