Prime Minister Stephen Harper has announced that he will make an official apology on behalf of the government for the horrific abuse suffered by victims of Canada’s residential school system over the past 100 years.

Harper will make the apology in the House of Commons on June 11th.

While it is good to see the government showing some sort of accountability to the extreme genocide they have inflicted on Aboriginal peoples, I have to wonder if Harper even really knows what he’s apologizing for.

Because his government has so far:

-Refused to sign the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, making Canada an international human rights laughing stock

-Cut the Status of Women which included major funding losses for the Sisters in Spirit Initiative that advocated for victims of violence at the Native Women’s Association of Canada, which was their largest contribution agreement

-Thrown out the Kelowna Accord, which, say what you will about it, was the first time the government actually asked Aboriginal people to be at the same table and collectively make decisions for our own people

-Has not done anything to help our people protect our own land and silently watched our leaders be thrown in jail, from the KI6 in Northern Ontario to Mohawk territory to the tar sands in Alberta, etc. More than 20% of inmates in Canada are Aboriginal, while we only make up roughly 3% of the population.

And the list goes on……..

90% of Aboriginal people today are affected by the residential school system on some level, the last of these schools closing in Saskatchewan in 1996.

So is an apology in order? Absolutely. Does the Conservative government really know what they are doing? I think not.

For starters, it’s going to take much more than an apology.

Fort Resolution residential school, North West Territories

You might not see it because editors are those tireless folks working behind the scenes, but every single post that happens benefits from our blog editor Thea’s vision and sharp editing skills. She’s a key member of the Shameless team and is being called on to new writing projects in Texas. Yup. Texas. I can just imagine the mash-up of Thea and Texas, and it’s real messy.

Today is her last day!

Thea, thanks for your tireless clicking, linking, fixing, learning, nudging and of course, your wacky use of punctuation ne’er seen before by the blogosphere.

The magazine and the blog have immeasurably grown with your compassion, ideas, and humour.

Will you keep blogging here now and again? I hope so.

Love from Team Shameless!

Good news from Ontario health minister George Smitherman yesterday. Looks like OHIP could be changing to cover sex reassignment surgery. This from Xtra:

Helma Seidl is a counsellor who helps people prepare for their transitions.

“There are lots of people who are very happy once they transition, who don’t want this surgery,” says Seidl. “But there are lots of people who waited because they don’t have the money — $16,000 per surgery or more. If we have it paid by they government, that will open up the opportunity to a lot of people.”

There are some details that need to be worked out before the coverage is a reality, but all and all a step in the right direction. Read the details here.

Thought I would put this up since this is even more reason why we need the emergency contraception pill available over the counter.

There are moral conscience clauses that are condoned and honoured by the Canadian Medical Association which gives physicians the right to refuse to give referrals for things that are not in accordance with their moral judgement.

And as much as I despise the National Post, they did report on these occurrences here.

My favourite part?

For Rene Leiva, a family physician in Ottawa, there is no question about where his Roman Catholic beliefs fit into his medical practice. In his office there is a sign informing potential patients that there are certain things his practice will not do: He will not prescribe birth control pills, though he will talk about natural family planning; and no patient should expect him to give a referral for an abortion because that, he said, would be akin to “co-operating with evil.”

Traditionally, women only have a couple of roles to play in action movies. If you want to be fair, I suppose men only have a couple of roles to play in action movies too, since the genre seems only so open to nuanced, complex characters. But based mostly on personal experience, the ass-kicking female characters fall into a scant few stereotypes: there’s the butch “plays with the boys” type role, the glam lipstick assassin, and finally the most enduring and perhaps most respected of the stereotypes: the protective mother. You know the type: think Sigourney Weaver in Aliens (“Newt! NEWWWWT!”) or Jodie Foster in Panic Room.

Linda Hamilton’s portrayal of Sarah Connor in the first two Terminator movies ranks as one of the most visible examples of the role. And maybe it’s just my fetish for all things to do with nuclear armageddon, but she’s always been one of my favourite characters as well. How can you not relate to a woman who’s thrown into a mental asylum because she says her son will be humanity’s last hope in a post-nuclear war against a malevolent artificial intelligence and its army of killer robots? We’ve all been there. Sort of. Connor is arguably one of the more complex characters we’ve seen in an action flick, even if her motives are fairly simple. As all good heroes are, she’s essentially plucked out of her normal life by powers beyond her control and forced into a role she never expected to have—and transforms into a determined, cynical, hard-as-nails fighter who willingly sacrifices her own humanity in order to keep the human race safe, though she will never reap the benefits personally.

Lena Headey as the new Sarah Connor.

I just finished catching up with Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, a Fox series that just wrapped up its first season and has somehow avoided cancellation on the Network That Kills Anything Remotely Good. Moving Sarah Connor to the small screen is a bit of a challenge, partially because there’s no way you can recreate the blockbuster-sized explosions and action sequences of the movies, nor can you rely on Arnold Schwarzenegger to take time off from his governor’s duties to utter his deadpan cyborg lines. Neither does Linda Hamilton does not return in the role of Sarah Connor, instead leaving those duties to a very capable Lena Headey. Thomas Dekker takes on the role of future human resistance leader John Connor, and Firefly‘s Summer Glau inherits Arnie’s task as a friendly Terminator sent from the future to protect John.

The nine-episode first season starts fairly slowly, setting up its pieces deliberately but failing to bring much in the way of writerly polish; you have to wait until about the halfway mark of the season before things pick up dramatically. But even in the first few episodes it’s clear that the producers of The Sarah Connor Chronicles intend to flesh out the mythology of the Terminator franchise. And once the show’s set up the plot properly, it’s a lot of fun to watch how it all goes down. Old-school Terminator fans may balk at the new Sarah Connor, but after a while you get used to Lena Headey’s portrayal; her Sarah Connor is still determined, still cynical, and still a reluctant hero, while in some ways seeming more personable than in the movies.

Having just finished its first run on Fox, it’ll be a while before DVD sets show up, but if you’re in the mood for some decent sci-fi drama, keep an eye out.

Exciting news from the world of contraception today: the Toronto Star reported that the morning after pill will be available on drugstore shelves in Canada, which means it will be available to any woman who needs it, and women won’t have to request it from their pharmacist, which can often mean invasive, embarrassing, or judgmental questions, or even outright refusal.

Click here for some of this blog’s most recent thoughts on emergency contraception.

Same sex couples can now legally marry in California! A domestic partnership option for gay couples was already in place, but the California Supreme Court today struck down state laws that limited marriage to a union between a man and a woman.

That brings the number of states to have legalized gay marriage to a grand total of two (California and Massachusetts), but with the current trend of constitutional amendments being brought in to “defend” the institution of marriage, it’s nice to hear some good news on the queer civil rights front across the border.

If you’re a legal geek like me, or if you’re interested in seeing how judges reach their conclusions, you can read the full text of the court’s decision here.

So it’s no secret that I really hate that Canadian Club ad and have from the start. It’s also pretty clear that I’m not alone.

Good news is, there are some fantastic bloggers on the interwebs who turned their distaste for this ad into something fantastic and subversive. Michelle Schwartz has a great critique of the campaign:

Apparently, the only people invited to the Canadian Club Club are White Males, Ages 18-30, women and people of color need not apply. It’s not that surprising to me that a company is aiming at that small demographic, but the way they’re doing it is truly offensive. Basically, they are appealing to men who miss the days (whether or not they were born yet) of grabbing the asses of their secretaries, playing a few rounds at the all-white private golf club, and then going home to their wives, the happy homemakers who would mix them drinks, cook them dinner, and wait on them hand and foot. None of this women’s lib, civil rights, limp-wristed liberal bullshit that men are expected to follow these days. No, let’s go back to the days of rampant sexual harassment, before women could expect to be seen as equals and before the gays turned all those masculine men into pansies with waxed eyebrows. Let’s return to the days when men were men. Please.

Her thoughts are accompanied by some of her own (feminist) spoof ads that kick the campaign in the ass. There’s a whole series of them that include “Your Mom Wasn’t a Stepford” and “Your Mom Played Sports.” My fave? “Your Mom Had Groupies.”

As part of the project, Stark brings us this fantastic gem:

Thanks to Michelle for alerting us to her great project!

Props to my friend Lisa for pointing out this article in the oh so awesome This Magazine.

Why we’re surprised when babies are abandoned makes the connections between family planning options and the fact that people who do not want to become parents often will find a way out of it, somehow.

I’ve had the exact same thoughts when I hear about another child left somewhere, and the fact that we must still battle to prove that the CHOICE to parent is a right every child deserves.

However I don’t know that the article fully does justice to address what the current realities are in the complete scope of family planning options across the board in Canada.

What do you think?