Toronto, ON—The Filipino Canadian Youth Alliance/Ugnayan ng Kabataang Pilipino sa Canada–Ontario (UKPC/FCYA-ON) calls on all youth and young workers to take action and participate in the province-wide youth conference, titled “Making the Youth Count in Canada’s Future: The Struggle of Young Workers in the Age of Austerity and Neoliberal Globalization.” The conference will be held on August 3rd at the United Steelworkers Hall in Toronto.

For youth in Canada, the policies that continue to be implemented by the Conservative government as part of the neoliberal agenda of globalization indicate the relentless and worsening attacks on our present conditions and future livelihoods can no longer be denied.

As witnessed in mounting student debt and the rise of contractual/”flexible” work, along with the decline of meaningful, full-time positions and job security for all, the impacts of regressive changes to social programming, education and labour need to be addressed more than ever. Recognizing this pressing need is crucial, especially in light of the resultant intensification of the struggles universally faced by youth in Canada’s racialized and marginalized communities and the concurrent global economic crisis.

As such, “Making the Youth Count in Canada’s Future: The Struggle of Young Workers in the Age of Austerity and Neoliberal Globalization” aims to open the necessary venue in order that the working Canadian youth understand the impacts of today’s worldwide economic crisis and neoliberal globalization. As well, the conference aims to collectively bring out strategies that will be pivotal as the youth advance their struggle against neoliberal globalization. Registration is now open.

“Making the Youth Count in Canada’s Future: The Struggle of Young Workers in the Age of Austerity and Neoliberal Globalization”
Ontario-wide conference
August 3, 2013
United Steelworkers Hall
25 Cecil Street
Toronto, Ontario
Registration fee is $15 (includes meals and conference materials)

REGISTER NOW: http://bit.ly/maketheyouthcount

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For more information, contact the conference secretariat:
Charie Siddayao
(416) 519-2553
ukpc-on@magkaisacentre.org
www.magkaisacentre.org
Facebook and Twitter: Ugnayan Ontario

Toronto, ON—The Congress of Progressive Filipino Canadians (CPFC) stands firm against the Conservative government’s hypocrisy in masquerading concern for the job security of all workers in Canada through their recent reforms to the Temporary Foreign Workers Program (TFWP), despite hitting workers with their prevailing agenda to continue cheapening and contractualizing labour. Packaged as a plan to “ensure Canadians have first chance at available jobs”, the recent reforms are otherwise a form of lip service to the recent public outcry against the controversial Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) case. These changes stand as the Conservative government’s latest attempt to shed themselves of all accountability as the leading brokers and agents of the TFWP and the ongoing unemployment crisis. With the expansion of the TFWP and rising unemployment rates, the Conservative government cannot hide behind such backhanded tactics and must still be held accountable for furthering insecurity and temporariness for all workers in Canada.

We must recognize that these reforms are an attempt to legitimize the inherently exploitative and oppressive design of the TFWP. Such policies are part and parcel of the current neoliberal agenda to bring down wages, diminish workers’ rights, and expand the pool of cheap, flexible and disposable labour. The recent reforms simply prove that, as one of the main shareholders of the current economic system, the Conservative government has no interest in genuinely meeting the needs and addressing the conditions of workers in Canada.

In the words of Immigration Minister Jason Kenney and HRSDC Minister Diane Finley, the reforms to the TFWP will ensure that “Canadian workers are never displaced” and that the program will be “only used as intended—to fill acute skills shortages on a temporary basis.” Yet with the TFWP’s ongoing expansion to meet the target of admitting 200,000 temporary workers, along with a host of austerity measures and cutbacks that push the interests of the private sector forward, it is clear that such band-aid solutions are of no benefit to workers whatsoever.

The reforms include: suspending proposed changes for wage cuts for temporary workers, revoking plans to expedite employer access to the Labour Market Opinion (LMO)—a mandatory document that grants employers the license to hire workers from outside Canada. The changes also include: increasing fees for work permits, divesting from the tax base to fund LMOs, and excluding foreign languages from job requirement criteria.

One of the central goals cited in the reforms is to reduce over-reliance on temporary foreign workers. This includes providing training for employers in order to avoid outsourcing, and to transition to Canadian workers over time. Yet, in all this, we must remember the words of Minister Diane Finley herself, who has stated in the past that the work performed by temporary foreign workers are simply jobs that “no other Canadian would take.” Skills shortages in critical sectors of the labour market are only shortages insofar as Canadian workers are unlikely to fill the jobs for cheap wages and under such exploitative conditions.

While Finley and Kenney claim that the TFWP “displaces” Canadian workers from job opportunities, we must understand that what essentially exists through the TFWP is a two-tiered labour system that legitimizes abject exploitation on racial and national lines. “While the TFWP exists, employers will be all too happy to gain access to cheaper labour, while the government will show no restraint in providing it,” says Cecilia Diocson, Executive Director of the National Alliance of Philippine Women in Canada. “While they continue to benefit, the TFWP will never be a ‘last resort’ for anyone. We cannot be fooled by such divisive rhetoric while the critical issues of job security and unemployment are left unresolved,” continues Diocson.

As well, the changes include suspending measures that allow employers to pay temporary workers up to 15% less than the prevailing wage, and revoking the plan to expedite the processing of LMOs from 12-14 weeks to 10 weeks. The reforms also include measures to prevent abuse by promoting employer and government accountability. Notwithstanding such changes, however, the very existence of the TFWP is based on providing employers access to cheaper, temporary and more pliant labour. As the program exists to leverage “prevailing wage rates” to the cheaper end of the scale and to deregulate labour standards, the continued existence of the program ensures that temporary foreign workers are still paid cheaper wages than their Canadian counterpart, are made vulnerable to abuse and are denied their democratic rights as workers.

Any attempt to uphold prevailing wage rates are also rendered null and void by the proposal to increase work permit fees, which are paid out of the pockets of workers under the TFWP. As well, employers will now incur the cost of processing LMOs. While these changes are said to be aimed at reducing costs for Canadian taxpayers, we must remember that the contributions of temporary foreign workers account for a sizeable amount of Canada’s economic growth, in areas such as the consumption of goods and services, payment of hefty administrative fees, and their contributions to CPP and EI as workers in the mining, service, agricultural and information technology sectors, to name a few.

It is no accident that such wage rates and job flexibility are increasingly mirrored in labour market conditions outside of the TFWP, and that workers are forced to simply make do with less. The very existence of the TFWP as an employer-driven labour program shows but one aspect of an economic system that is inherently dependent on worsening regimes of exploitation. “As workers, we must be critical of the sugarcoating of CIC and HRSDC’s bottom line: to make labour cheaper and more temporary, and to continue amassing huge profits on the backs of all workers,” states Cora Cadiz, Chairperson of SIKLAB Canada. “We continue to be pitted against each other by policies that deny our job security and entitlements as workers,” Cadiz continues.

The CPFC stands firmly against the Conservative government’s divisive ploys that push forward their neoliberal agenda but are masqueraded as feigned interest in the needs of all workers. We will continue to forge genuine solidarity with the working-class in the struggle for our fundamental needs and concerns, and reiterate our call to hold the beneficiaries of this exploitative system accountable for furthering the instability and insecurity of all workers. We will heighten our call for genuine immigration programs and for the full participation and entitlement of the working-class.

End it, don’t mend it! Scrap the Temporary Foreign Workers Program!
Permanent settlement through genuine immigration now!
Stop the cuts! End the contractualization of labour!
Job security for all now!
Expose and oppose neoliberal globalization!

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Organizations under the CPFC:
National Alliance of Philippine Women in Canada (NAPWC)
SIKLAB Canada (Advance and Uphold the Struggle of Filipino Canadian Workers)
Ugnayan ng Kabataang Pilipino sa Canada/Filipino Canadian Youth Alliance—National
Sinag Bayan Arts Collective—National
Philippines-Canada Task Force on Human Rights (PCTFHR)

For more information, contact:
Bryan Taguba
(416) 519-2553
siklab-on@magkaisacentre.org
www.magkaisacentre.org
Facebook and Twitter: Siklab Ontario

The Congress of Progressive Filipino Canadians (CPFC) commemorates International Workers’ Day with renewed vigor and militancy as this past May 1st signified both the historic and deepening need to uphold and advance the struggles of the working class all over the globe. As a day representing the 127th anniversary of the Haymarket Square demonstration in Chicago on May 4th, 1886—which yielded the 8-hour workday standard, the abolition of child labour and safer working conditions—International Workers’ Day also serves as a reminder of the roles workers today must take on in carrying forward the legacy of resistance amidst the intensifying and ruthless assaults of the neoliberal agenda of globalization on the lives of millions of working class people.

Instigated by the clout of corporate greed and its ever-growing appetite for profit, neoliberal mechanisms make labour contractual, flexible and disposable, pushing workers’ exploitation and oppression to ever more sophisticated, drastic and much deadlier forms than ever before. It is in this regard that the CPFC calls on all workers to strengthen their resolve in continuing to build and to bolster the genuine international solidarity that is necessary in challenging the aggressions of neoliberal globalization against the global working class.

As part of a larger transnational community, Filipino Canadians share a common history with more than ten million Filipino workers toiling in 150 countries through such labour migration programs as the Philippine government’s Labour Export Policy (LEP), and Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) and its Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP). The forced migration and displacement of workers from countries such as the Philippines to advanced capitalist countries have been a longstanding phenomenon facilitated by governments and corporations to supply and to maintain the increasing demand for cheap and disposable labour. Through this global process, pressure is exerted on wages, benefits and workplace standards towards decline, thus affecting local workers and workers from abroad alike. At present, Filipino workers constitute the largest number of migrant and immigrant workers in Canada. In this global context, the CPFC stands firm in holding the struggles of workers in and from the Global South at the fore of the working class struggle, as people of colour endure the heaviest blows of neoliberalism.

Canada has recently come to hold one of the world’s most unrestricted labour markets through the implementation of neoliberal policies, such as the expansion of the TFWP, which has created a safe haven for businesses and corporations. In stark contrast, workers from poor, developing countries primarily enter Canada through labour migration pathways that are highly constrained and heavily relegated as temporary and thus without permanent status, nor full rights and open mobility. Hugely pertinent in the experiences of the Filipino Canadian community, these greatly hamper the genuine settlement and successful integration of workers who come to Canada under such terms.

Meanwhile, Canadian businesses and corporations hold unimpeded mobility in outsourcing jobs and setting up business ventures anywhere in the world. Canadian mining company Barrick Gold Corp., for example, currently has the largest and the most environmentally-devastating mining and excavation projects. These projects have caused the social and cultural erosion of entire peoples in the Philippines, the Americas, Africa and Australia. Barrick Gold Corp. continues to inflict violence, suffering and death across continents and makes mega profits doing so, fulfilling the demand for gold, mainly in the jewelry industry and for gold reserves for major banks.

Additionally, this April 24th, 2013, in a tragic and deadly turn of events, a garment factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, housing over 3000 workers, collapsed and instantly killed hundreds, injured approximately 1000, and left an estimated 900 missing and still buried underneath the rubble. Among the garment factory’s western clientele is Canadian company Loblaws’s Joe Fresh. The garment workers, mostly young women, were being paid no more than $43 CAD per month—a very “competitive” and profitable rate for the western companies being supplied with textiles. Though cracks and dangerous signs of wear were apparent in the old building, supervisors neglected the very lives of the employees by ordering them to go back to work to meet quotas.

These are but a few illustrations that cite the ongoing and worsening impacts of “free-trade agreements” that at the very root thrive on expendable transnational labour in furthering corporate interests at a disastrous cost to human lives. With the severe claw-backs of austerity in a time of economic slump, working class communities are given no viable choice for affordable, fair and sustainable alternatives that counter the grossly exploitative and oppressive production of goods under global capitalism.

We members of the Congress of Progressive Filipino Canadians express our deepest condolences and sympathies to all those who have been affected by the tragedy in Bangladesh, especially to the families and friends of those who have perished. As neoliberalism continues to degrade and threaten the lives of millions of people all over the world, the CPFC continues to stand in solidarity with workers in Canada and overseas, and denounces the misuse of government authority to sanction the exploitation and oppression of working people by complying with corporate interests and greed. In the spirit of resistance and the need for societal transformation towards a better future, the CPFC will continue to embrace, advance and uphold the working class struggle in opposing and exposing the neoliberal agenda of globalization.

Workers of the world unite!
Expose and oppose neoliberalism!
Stop the global contractualization, privatization, and flexibilization of labour!
Permanent settlement through genuine immigration!
Long live international solidarity!

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Organizations under the CPFC:
National Alliance of Philippine Women in Canada
SIKLAB Canada (Sulong Itaguyod Karapatan ng Manggagawang Pilipino sa Labas ng Bansa/Advance and Uphold the Struggles of Filipino Canadian Workers)
UKPC/FCYA—National (Ugnayan ng Kabataang Pilipino sa Canada/Filipino Canadian Youth Alliance—National)
Philippines-Canada Task Force on Human Rights

For more information, contact:
Bryan Taguba
(416) 519-2553
siklab-on@magkaisacentre.org
www.magkaisacentre.org
Twitter and Facebook: Siklab Ontario

Toronto, ON—SIKLAB Ontario (Advance and Uphold the Struggles of Filipino Canadian Workers) and the member organizations of the Magkaisa Centre commend the strength and courage of the janitorial and maintenance workers in Halifax, Nova Scotia in speaking out and standing up against the unscrupulous practices held by their employer, Mantolino Property Services, Ltd. This is an achievement that affects not only the workers immediately involved in the case, but the thousands of other workers as well who continue to be underpaid, overworked and highly vulnerable to various forms of exploitation and oppression under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP). As labour becomes more and more flexible, contractual and disposable under neoliberal globalization, this also represents an important victory for all workers in Canada

SIKLAB Ontario, together with its sister organizations, extend a message of solidarity to the workers in their triumph to stay in Canada after facing the threat of deportation while their employer remains under investigation.

Mantolino has contracts to provide janitorial and cleaning services to 13 municipal buildings, including Halifax City Hall and the Mayoral office. The company charged employees, mostly from the Philippines, thousands of dollars for the contractual positions as well as the processing fees for their immigration papers. Once in Canada, the workers were sub-contracted to Jani-King of Nova Scotia and scheduled hours were much longer than stipulated—estimated at an average of 100 hours within a two-week period. Employees, who were paid well below the minimum wage at 7 dollars per hour, were also paying into rent to live at a company-owned building.

These undeniably exploitative conditions still remain common and wide-spread, as workers, especially transnational workers, find themselves relegated into a source of cheap labour, to be disposed of with impunity. “Working people contribute to the economy and form the foundation of Canada’s social fabric. All workers, regardless of immigration status, deserve to have the right to permanence and security,” says Jean-Marc Daga, a member of SIKLAB Ontario. “And it is in this respect that we continue to uphold workers’ rights and help advance the working class struggle here in Canada.”

Scrap the Temporary Foreign Workers Program!
Permanent settlement through genuine immigration now!
End the contractualization of labour!
Expose and oppose neoliberal globalization!

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Organizations under the Magkaisa Centre:
SIKLAB Ontario (Advance and Uphold the Struggles of Filipino Canadian Workers)
Philippine Women Centre of Ontario
Ugnayan ng Kabataang Pilipino sa Canada/Filipino Canadian Youth Alliance—Ontario

For more information, contact:
Bryan Taguba
(416) 519-2553
siklab-on@magkaisacentre.org
www.magkaisacentre.org
Facebook and Twitter: Siklab Ontario

Toronto, ON—The Filipino Canadian Youth Alliance of Ontario/Ugnayan ng Kabataang Pilipino sa Canada–Ontario (UKPC/FCYA-ON) invites all youth and young workers to attend “Making the Youth Count in Canada’s Future: The Struggle of Young Workers in the Age of Austerity and Neoliberal Globalization”, an Ontario-wide conference which will be held on August 3rd at the United Steel Workers Hall in Toronto.

We continue to witness the neoliberal agenda of globalization intensify its attack in Canada through its main driver, the Conservative government. This is evident in the changes to employment and labour standards, the push towards flexible and temporary labour, the implementation of austerity policies and the push towards privatization and cutbacks of public services.

These ongoing reforms and changes undeniably denigrate the lives of all working people in Canada including, im/migrants, students, Aboriginal peoples and the newly-arrived, which indicate that no sector, occupation group or community is off-limits to the impacts of the neoliberal agenda. Currently, Canada’s future generation, the youth, are subjected to an all-time high unemployment rate of 14%, which is double the national unemployment rate.

In Ontario, youth unemployment is at 16.2% as of March 2013. As the province with the highest tuition fees in the country, ballooning student debt coupled by a labour market characterised by the general decline of secure and meaningful full-time jobs, the youth have little choice but to accept ‘flexible/contractual’ jobs, often in the low-wage sector, despite high levels of educational attainment.

As part of the Congress of Progressive Filipino Canadians (CPFC), the Filipino Canadian Youth Alliance/Ugnayan Ng Kabataang Pilipino sa Canada–Ontario (FCYA/UKPC-ON) cannot accept a future or fate that can only be left up to the fluctuations of the market economy. For FCYA/UKPC-ON, it is imperative that we expose and oppose the current neoliberal agenda and all its manifestations here in Canada to counter the attacks being imposed on us, and make the youth count in Canada’s future.

Conference objectives

1. To understand the impacts of the global economic crisis and neoliberal globalization on the youth in Canada.
2. To develop strategies to advance the struggle of the youth against neoliberal globalization.

“Making the Youth Count in Canada’s Future: The Struggle of Young Workers in the Age of Austerity and Neoliberal Globalization”
Ontario-wide conference
August 3, 2013
United Steelworkers Hall
25 Cecil Street
Toronto, Ontario
Registration fee is $15 (includes meals and conference materials)

REGISTER NOW:

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For more information, contact the conference secretariat:
Ken Santos
(416) 519-2553
ukpc-on@magkaisacentre.org
www.magkaisacentre.org
Facebook and Twitter: Ugnayan Ontario

Toronto, ON—The Congress of Progressive Filipino Canadians (CPFC) admonish the Conservative government’s hypocrisy in putting on a façade of righteousness amidst the controversial lay-offs by the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) of citizen workers and their subsequent replacement by temporary foreign workers. As the leading brokers and agents who have legislated and legitimized such flexible labour regimes, the Conservative government must be held responsible for the “restructuring” of the Canadian labour force as cheap, flexible and disposable through the expansion of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP). RBC’s firing of about 45 employees and subsequent replacement with Indian IT specialists, for the sheer benefit of acquiring cheaper labour and for cutting costs, stands as but one example of the neoliberal agenda’s ongoing attack on the livelihood and well-being of all working people in Canada. While the rights and needs of all workers continue to be disregarded and circumvented over the interests of the private and corporate sectors, the Conservative government cannot continue to operate with impunity and must be held accountable.

The insincere address of Prime Minister Harper on the issue must be recognized as a mere diversion from the primary role that the government plays in creating and implementing the very policies that deregulate, contractualize and cheapen labour in Canada. It is these policies that have given corporations free reign in recruiting workers from abroad at more “cost-effective” rates.

A spokesperson for Diane Finley, Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC), commended RBC’s CEO for “doing the right thing” by giving a prompt public apology, yet all the while carrying forward standing agreements with outsourcing firm iGATE to replace the fired employees. But Finley herself, and the rest of the Conservatives under the leadership of Harper, refuse to take full accountability over the matter.

The deceit runs deeper as Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) Jason Kenney hastily placed all the blame on businesses and corporations for abusing the system and not following the law—rules and regulations that are left malleable to promote access to cheap labour in the first place. “We refuse to be fooled by the two-faced Harper government. They are all too quick to slap corporations on the wrist over widespread public disapproval of outsourcing, yet they expand the TFWP and peddle it to employers behind closed doors,” states Cecilia Diocson, Executive Director of the National Alliance of Philippine Women in Canada (NAPWC).

Under the administration of both CIC and HRSDC as its main shareholders, the TFWP has undergone a string of reforms that have made it more market-driven and employer-friendly. With the plan to bring in 200,000 more workers through the program, and the push to shorten the number of weeks it currently takes to obtain a Labour Market Opinion—a mandatory document that grants employers the license to hire workers from outside Canada and is essentially an “all-access pass” to cheap labour—from 12-14 weeks to 10 weeks, it is doubtful that the Conservative government will stray from the path of precarious work they have long been paving.

Just last year, the government granted over 4,000 approvals to hire temporary workers to meet the cheap labour demands of service sector companies such as McDonald’s, Tim Horton’s, Subway and Denny’s, to name a few. As well, roughly 25,500 from the estimated 190,000 temporary foreign workers who arrived in 2012 were sent to Alberta to work in oil extraction projects, manufacturing and in service sector jobs, while others were stationed throughout the country’s major cities. Recently, HD Mining International, owned by Huiyong Holdings Group, a Chinese private company, and Vancouver-based Canadian Dehua International Mines Group, acquired more than 200 work permits under the TFWP for Chinese miners to work in coal mines in Tumbler Ridge, B.C, where more than 300 local miners applied for the jobs but were deemed “unqualified.”

Thus far, the federal government has made it clear that they have no intention in slowing down their drive for a cheaper and more temporary workforce and have also shown a lack of genuine will to tackle the critical issue of unemployment. Reuben Sarumugam, Chairperson of the Filipino Canadian Youth Alliance (UKPC-FCYA) stated that “the path of temporariness has to stop. It robs all workers of job security by treating them as disposable commodities. It denies all workers in Canada of their entitlements and their ability to fully contribute to the Canadian economy in the long run. This is not just about RBC employees or temporary foreign workers. This is about the future of all working people in Canada. Therefore, the call for the job security of one is a call for the job security of all.”

“While Harper and Kenney have been busy pointing fingers and putting the blame on RBC, we must look no further than to the regressive policies of the Conservative government for putting the lives of workers in a constant state of insecurity and instability and depriving us of living stable and fulfilling lives,” stated Yolyn Valenzuela, Chairperson of SIKLAB Canada. “We must put an end to their agenda of contractualization that will send our society deeper into recession and instability while private corporations amass wealth off the exploitation of working-class communities,” Valenzuela continued.

“CIC and HRSDC has made it all too convenient for users of the TFWP to suppress wages, undermine workers rights, and diminish employment standards, while dividing and preying on the desperation of working people in Canada,” added Valenzuela. “The only real divide we have to be critical about is the one between those who own the capital and benefit from this exploitative system, and the workers who toil under it,” Valenzuela concluded.

The Congress of Progressive Filipino Canadians demands responsibility and accountability from the Conservative government for their self-excusing position and for driving workers further into instability. As women, youth and workers, the CPFC stands in solidarity with all workers in their demand for job security and will continue to help advance and uphold the struggles of the working-class.

Scrap the Temporary Foreign Workers Program!
Permanent settlement through genuine immigration now!
Stop the cuts! End the contractualization of labour!
Expose and oppose neoliberal globalization!

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Organizations under the CPFC:
National Alliance of Philippine Women in Canada (NAPWC)
SIKLAB Canada (Advance and Uphold the Struggle of Filipino Canadian Workers)
Ugnayan ng Kabataang Pilipino sa Canada/Filipino Canadian Youth Alliance—National
Sinag Bayan Arts Collective—National
Philippines-Canada Task Force on Human Rights (PCTFHR)

For more information, contact:
Bryan Taguba
(416) 519-2553
siklab-on@magkaisacentre.org
www.magkaisacentre.org
Facebook and Twitter: Siklab Ontario

Join SIKLAB Ontario and the member organizations of the Magkaisa Centre in celebrating International Workers Day 2013 with a film screening of “My Folks: Building a Home in Canada” (a photovoice video project).

Guided by the advocacy work of the Magkaisa Centre, the My Folks film sets focus on portraying the Filipino Canadian community’s experiences of migration and the challenges of genuinely settling in Canada. Fitting under the theme of home building, the film follows the stories of two women who have come through the Live-in Caregiver Program in search of a better life for themselves and their families—a plight familiar to many members of the Filipino Canadian community.

Be a part of the Q&A and discussion session to find out more about the issues that affect us all as women, youth and workers in Canada, including topics regarding healthcare, education, housing needs, employment and more.

What: a film screening of the “My Folks: Building a Home in Canada” photovoice project followed by a Q&A discussion session
When: Saturday, April 27, 2013, 4pm to 6pm
Where: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), 252 Bloor Street West: Room 3311, University of Toronto St. George Campus
Cost: FREE EVENT

For more information, please contact:
Bryan Taguba
(416) 519-2553
siklab-on@magkaisacentre.org
www.magkaisacentre.org
Facebook: Siklab Ontario

Toronto, ON—The Congress of Progressive Filipino Canadians (CPFC) denounces the empty rhetoric behind the Conservative government’s economic action plan and its 2013 federal budget in purporting to advance “Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity,” as it instead tables an attempt to jeopardize the employment, development and future security and stability of all workers in Canada. The 2013 budget has again proven where the Conservative government’s priorities lie, as the interests of big business and corporate development are prioritized above all else—such as having meaningful and secure employment and accessible and affordable public services. This next phase of the economic action plan follows suit in the clawing back of already deeply-recessed public funds and services, as inflicted by massive cutbacks and austerity measures. The CPFC continues to question and challenge the outright assault of the neoliberal agenda that is tightly woven into the budget as it intently degrades and devalues the roles of working-class communities as vital contributors and builders of Canada.

We stand critical against the rhetoric of “job creation” and “job skills training” commonly delivered by the current government, as it is used to mask their attempts to “remake the Canadian labour force” by no means other than making labour more flexible, disposable and cheap. Wages are not only stagnant but are in fact being systematically pushed down. We have seen such attacks against our wages and livelihood through the following: the Employment Insurance changes that essentially push the unemployed to accept “similar” jobs but at a lower wage; the creation of the multi-tiered wage structure that allow employers to pay temporary foreign workers up to 15% less than the provincial standard; and the rise in unemployment, with the 7% national unemployment rate amounting to an estimated 1.3 million jobless Canadians. Rather than addressing this employment crisis, the 2013 federal budget’s direction will only lead to further unemployment and instability for all workers.

The lack of the government’s genuine will to address unemployment is evident in the prevalence of market-based and employer-driven subsidies in the budget. These programs stand to give workers the short end of the stick in increasing the role of the private sector and in intensifying competition amongst workers. For instance, the “Canada Job Grant” will subsidize employers up to $5,000 per worker for the training of unemployed or underemployed Canadians for in-demand trades and high-skill jobs. Yet despite youth unemployment reaching a staggering 14%, with tuition debt burgeoning at equally-staggering rates, the budget lacks anything to substantially address this crisis and is instead limited to the scope of what the private sector offers. Such short-term measures fail to tackle the lingering reality that there is only one available job for approximately every 5.7 people unemployed. While seemingly promising, the grant otherwise aims to give the private sector absolute power in deciding whether or not to invest and train Canadians to fulfill labour gaps.

The drive to make labour cheaper and more temporary is no more evident than the expansion of the Temporary Foreign Workers Program (TFWP). Despite seemingly attempting to mitigate the need for foreign workers by imposing new “screening” procedures for employers to ensure that Canadians get the first whiff of job openings, this year’s budget aims to achieve an increased target of bringing in 200,000 more workers through this stream. While there are more educated and highly-skilled labour than ever before, temporary migration is preferred for its sheer profitability. As such, it is clear that Canada has become a safe-haven for businesses and corporations with the license to further exploit workers from abroad or in-land.

We also stand critical against empty and divisive anti-immigrant rhetoric that perpetuates the myth of immigrants “stealing” jobs from “regular Canadians,” particularly as the TFWP is essentially a government program, with Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) and the Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC) as its main shareholders. Under the current government’s expansion of the TFWP, the 51% increase in the number of temporary workers to 446,847 by 2011 from 224,051 in 2005 is significant in stark comparison with the 5% decrease in permanent streams to 248,748 by 2011 from 262,242 in 2005. The rise of temporary work, the highly exploitative working conditions they entail and the presence of temporary workers from abroad who fulfill them must be understood for what it really is—a business plan devised for the restructuring of the labour market, one that is tailored to diminish labour and employment standards for all workers in Canada.

Such priorities are evident in the recent firing of 43 Royal Bank IT workers, who were consequently replaced with cheaper, outsourced workers from India. Immigration minister Jason Kenney was quick to point out the illegality of displacing citizen workers with foreign workers, but took no culpability at the role of government in providing such a system in the first place. Canada has a long-standing history of using temporary, flexible and cheap labour to prop up the global competitiveness of the Canadian economy. We must look no further than at the service sector to see such practices, where companies bring in hundreds of thousands of temporary workers under strict and highly exploitable working conditions.

As the Philippines has become the largest source of migrants and immigrants to Canada, the CPFC knows full well the repercussions of having temporary migration programs inform and dictate the life circumstances and conditions of workers. We refuse to have these programs continually “stamp and seal” the lives of the workers under them into deskilling, non-accreditation and marginalization. As such, we will continue to advance our struggle to settle, integrate, and fully participate in Canadian society.

With this year’s budget focusing on market profitability at the cost of the needs and development of working people in Canada, the Congress of Progressive Filipino Canadians resound our call to put an end to economic insecurity and volatility and demand a path that prioritizes job security and genuine development for all workers. As the grip of neoliberal policies and practices continue to tighten their hold on our needs to flourish and thrive as human beings, fighting for our entitlement as working-class communities to live fuller lives in a healthy and sustainable environment has never been more essential.

Scrap the Temporary Foreign Workers Program!
Permanent settlement through genuine immigration now!
Stop the cuts! End the contractualization of labour!
Expose and oppose neoliberal globalization!

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Organizations under the CPFC:
National Alliance of Philippine Women in Canada (NAPWC)
SIKLAB Canada (Advance and Uphold the Struggle of Filipino Canadian Workers)
Ugnayan ng Kabataang Pilipino sa Canada/Filipino Canadian Youth Alliance—National
Sinag Bayan Arts Collective—National
Philippines-Canada Task Force on Human Rights (PCTFHR)

For more information, contact:
Bryan Taguba
(416) 519-2553
siklab-on@magkaisacentre.org
www.magkaisacentre.org
Facebook and Twitter: Siklab Ontario

Toronto, ON–Members of the National Alliance of Philippine Women in Canada (NAPWC) are deeply saddened and mourn the loss of Rehtaeh Parsons, a 17 year old high school student from Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia. Rehtaeh’s young life was taken away by the grief of a crime committed against her dignity and humanity as a woman. As the news of her rape and the cyberbullying inflicted on her fill the mainstream media, we are reminded of the ongoing brutality of crimes perpetuated against women. We are also reminded that our escalating victimization and violation continue to be bolstered by the institution of patriarchy and male domination in its effort to further subordinate and subjugate women in this society.

Moreover, we are angered and appalled by the obvious neglect of the RCMP to treat Rehtaeh’s tortuous ordeal as a case of violence. By turning a blind eye on the seriousness and the gravity of the assault, the RCMP shows their complicity in condoning the actions of the perpetrators. Thus, their outright denial to do an investigation, when the case was brought to their attention, was and continues to be an outright denial of her worth and value as a woman.

Rehtaeh’s tragic death, along with the countless experiences of women who have been raped, sexually assaulted, physically beaten, and violated on the streets, in schools, and workplaces, is a testament of the increasing and continuing attacks against women’s bodies and women’s lives. We refuse to let these be neglected; last December 16, 2012, Jyoti Singh Pandey, a 23 year old university student from New Delhi, India, was gang-raped and later died from her injuries; the suicide of Amanda Todd from Surrey, British Columbia who committed suicide after pictures of her body was circulated through every school she moved to; the sexual assault and killings of Jessica Lloyd, and Corporal Marie-France Comeau by former Canadian Forces Colonel, Russel Williams; and Rheena Virk from Saanich, British Columbia in 1997, who was beaten to death by so-called close peers. These are all evidence of the increasing exploitation and the rampant assault faced by all women. Indeed, time and time again, we are faced with the bitter reality that the struggle to end violence against women is far from over.

As such, we at the NAPWC vow to continue our fight to stop violence against women, and to end patriarchy at all costs. We support the demands of Rehtaeh’s family for a full investigation on the case. We will also continue in our educating, organizing, and mobilizing to uphold and advance the women’s struggle for genuine liberation in our society.

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For more information, contact:
Joy C. Sioson
(416) 519-2553
pwc-on@magkaisacentre.org
www.magkaisacentre.org
Twitter: PWC_Ontario

Toronto, ON—Ugnayan ng Kabataang Pilipino sa Canada/Filipino Canadian Youth Alliance of Ontario (UKPC/FCYA-ON) lends its support to Youth for Nationalism and Democracy (YND) and their four-day conference titled “Struggle for Environmental Protection and Regeneration (STEPGen),” taking place between April 19^th and 22^nd in Bataan, Philippines. With great pride, UKPC/FCYA-ON salutes YND for their efforts and leadership in further developing a strong environmental perspective and stance in an era of intensifying neoliberal globalization and climate change.

As foreign entities continue to seize and extract greater amounts of natural resources from the Philippines, areas of the country provide some of the clearest examples of environmental degradation and pollution under imperialist globalization. From open pit mining projects operated by Canadian mining corporations to large-scale commercial fishing ships that scrape the seafloor bare, there is no resource in the Philippines that will be left unexploited in the trajectory of imperialist expansion, including the exploitation of Filipinos as a source of cheap and disposable labour.

Here in Canada, there is a tremendous push to extract and export oil from Alberta’s tar sands to the Asian, U.S. and European markets, despite its far-reaching environmental impacts on the livelihoods of Canadians, especially that of indigenous people. In outright condemnation of the government’s wanton collusion with Big Oil and their corporate interests over their centuries-long struggle for individual rights and land claims, the indigenous people of Canada have protested in great numbers and spawned the “Idle No More” movement. Instead of committing itself to finding alternative energy solutions, the Conservative Canadian government has opted for the expansion of fossil fuel extraction and further environmental degradation.

In both contexts, foreign corporations offer the false promises of “jobs” and the future “restoration” of the environment to indigenous people while uprooting and displacing them in order to further extract resources, such as minerals and fossil fuels, or to construct processing facilities. Such outright destruction and disregard of local communities often leaves the land in uninhabitable conditions, due to the massive amounts of toxic chemicals that exceed the extraction point and ultimately contaminate rivers, food supplies, soil and complex ecosystems. Today, we see this in the tailing ponds left by corporations in both the Philippines and Canada, signs that further display their indifference and impunity.

In addition, we face a similar challenge in trying to move toward sustainable energy sources. However, in North America many of the major forms of sustainable energy being developed such as wind, solar and biomass continue to be under attack by oil and natural gas companies and their political following and propaganda.

Now more than ever, we need to harness the creativity and passion of the youth in developing solutions for the energy and environmental problems of the 21^st century. Thus, UKPC/FCYA-ON stands in solidarity with YND, and supports your upcoming conference as we continue to struggle against imperialist globalization and its environmental impacts. On both fronts and for the sake of our common futures on this planet, we will boldly face the challenge of engaging our communities, especially our fellow youth, to take a strong stance on upholding our right to a safe, clean and healthy environment.

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For more information, contact:
Reuben Sarumugam
(416) 519-2553
ukpc-on@magkaisacentre.org
www.magkaisacentre.org
Facebook and Twitter: Ugnayan Ontario

Toronto, ON—As we commemorate the recent International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the Ugnayan ng Kabataang Pilipino sa Canada/Filipino Canadian Youth Alliance (UKPC/FCYA) calls on all youth to reaffirm their role in combatting systemic racism, especially in today’s era of neoliberal globalization. This day was not only a day to revisit and to learn about the various forms and experiences of racism from the past, but it was also a day that served to remind all racialized communities that the fight against racism is far from over. As such, we, progressive Filipino Canadian youth, declare our unrelenting commitment to continue exposing and opposing present-day systemic racism and all its manifestations.

Here in Canada, systemic racism continues to thrive in the guise of neoliberal policies that push and lock communities of colour into the very margins of society. As Canada takes pride of its “cultural diversity,” as it is the first country in the world to adopt multiculturalism as an official policy, it also ranks as one of the top countries that uses and relies on the blood and sweat of immigrant and migrant labour to maintain its global competitiveness and so-called economic prosperity. Under the pretense of “jobs, growth, sustainability, and long-term prosperity,” the Conservative government under Prime Minister Harper, has launched an all-out attack on racialized and Aboriginal communities. Thus, as we bear witness to the passing of numerous Omnibus Bills—such as Bill C-45, Bill C-38, Bill C-31and Bill C-10—austerity budgets, and the manipulation of labour standards to suppress wages, we also bear witness to the escalating violation and erosion of our fundamental human rights. Through the implementation of these inherently racist and anti-worker neoliberal policies, the labour market in this country has become a haven for corporations and employers to exploit and amass cheap, disposable labour.

With the aim of managing and maintaining racial hierarchy as a tool to divide workers against each other, we bear witness to the outright destruction, exploitation, and marginalization of racialized communities and its people. The outsourcing of jobs to cheaper labour from abroad deliberately intensifies local competition between workers in order to carry out a strategic move, under neoliberalism, to pit workers, youth, women workers, migrant workers, immigrants, refugees and Aboriginal Canadians against each other. These false divisions have incited various forms of racial discrimination, prejudice and violence. As transnationals, Filipinos remain as one of Canada’s top sources of immigrant and migrant labour. Coming through the “temporary and permanent economic streams,” such as the Live-In Caregiver Program, the Low-Skill Pilot Program, the Provincial Nominee Program, and the Federal-Skilled Worker Program, Filipinos are relegated to accept low-paying, and dead-end jobs, despite being one of the most highly-skilled and highly-educated immigrant groups. As a result, Filipinos are locked into Canada’s labour programs under extremely exploitative conditions.

Similarly, while Canada’s unemployment rate holds steady at 7%, youth unemployment rate has remained at 14% nationally. Graduating from universities and colleges across the country, youth are struggling to find stable, full-time jobs leaving them increasingly pushed into the end of the economic margins. Yet despite the hardships faced by youth during this period, following the economic crisis of 2008-9, the current government chose to increase the age of retirement, and have facilitated the erosion of job security through the expansion of temporary and dead-end work. As youth of colour who are systemically marginalized in Canadian society through the state’s racist policies, and left behind in the Conservative government’s vision of prosperity, it is all the more clear that we must continue exposing these neoliberal tactics.

In addition, the long history of systemic racism and violence perpetuated against Aboriginal people is intensified by the current government’s push to facilitate the activities and interests of fossil fuel corporations while disregarding indigenous land rights and ownership. As we strive to meet Canada’s energy needs, Canadians have been bombarded, through corporate media, of the need to support the building of pipelines and to expand oil extraction from Canada’s tar sands under the “Green Conservative” strategy. However, through these energy projects, which include the construction of the Northern Gateway Project and the larger Keystone XL Pipeline, Canada moves further away from addressing any strategies to mitigate climate change. The frequent oil spills and suspect pipeline infrastructure being built has not only resulted in massive environmental degradation, but will moreover threaten and ultimately destroy the well-being and livelihood of Aboriginal communities and its people.

We recognize that the fuelling of anti-immigrant sentiments and the continuing attacks on Aboriginal communities are welcomed efforts to quell the growing movement and solidarity amongst racialized people by those who choose profit over our communities’ entitlement to genuinely settle and integrate in this country. Therefore, we, the Filipino Canadian Youth Alliance of Ontario, stand in solidarity with the struggle of transnational workers, the plight of working Canadians, and Aboriginal people in the fight for their rights and land ownership. As progressive Filipino Canadians, we will continue to hold firm in combatting systemic racism and all its manifestations by militantly and steadfastly opposing Canada’s neoliberal agenda.

Stop the cuts! End the contractualization of labour!
Stop the expansion of the Temporary Foreign Workers Program!
Permanence through genuine immigration programs now!
Respect the First Nations’ treaty rights! Idle no more!
End systemic racism! Expose and oppose neoliberal globalization!
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For more information, contact:
Reuben Sarumugam
(416) 519-2553
ukpc-on@magkaisacentre.org
www.magkaisacentre.org
Facebook and Twitter: ugnayanontario

Solidarity statement
March 27, 2013

Toronto, ON--As progressive Filipino Canadians, we condemn Canada’s conservative government for its blatant support of the Israeli state’s occupation and attacks on the Palestinians. We, in solidarity with Students Against Israeli Apartheid, and all other organizations and individuals who are against the illegal occupation of Palestine, fervently declare that we endorse the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement.

On Thursday March 21, 2013, the York Federation of Students passed a motion to support the BDS Movement. At the board meeting, before the motion was passed, students were given the opportunity to express their opinions on the motion. Those both for and against the motion gave compelling speeches, but it is still clear, as it has always been, who is the oppressor. Yet, a common theme among the Zionist cohort was victimization. In fact, one of the Zionist representatives expressed repeatedly that she would be “uncomfortable” as a student at York University if the motion was passed. Unfortunately, she is not the only one who is “uncomfortable”.

We, Ugnayan ng Kabataang Pilipino sa Canada, The Filipino-Canadian Youth Alliance, are also uncomfortable because York University invests in BAE Systems, Northrop Grumman, Hewlett Packard and Lockheed Martin, all corporations that produce weaponry, violence, displacement, and misery. The Palestinians who have been subjected to forced migration as a result of the illegal occupation of Palestine by the State of Israel, are uncomfortable. The families of the more than 100 people who were killed by Israeli aggression against Gaza are “uncomfortable”. Within the 6-day period between November 14 and November 19, out of the 110 that were brutally massacred, included:
Rinan Arafat, 7 years old.

Fares Al-Basyouni, 11 years old.
Mohammed Sa’d Allah, 4 years old.

Eyad Abu Khusa, 18 months old.

Omar Al-Mashharawi, 11 months old

and Heba Al-Mashharawi, 19 years old, who was 6 months pregnant.

It is with deep regret that I say that Muslims in the Philippines have also been subjected to occupation. Mindanao, the southernmost region in the Philippines, since the 13th century, has been populated almost exclusively by Muslims. Beginning in the 1950s, the central government of the Philippines sponsored the mass migration of Christians from Luzon and Visayas to Mindanao. Lands that were traditionally communally owned, were violently appropriated from the indigenous Muslim population, and distributed among the new Christian settlers. Today, violence inflicted by the central government to supress any kind of resistance, has made life for Muslims in Mindanao, Philippines frightening and abject.

However, the conflict in the Philippines is not about Christians and Muslims. Our struggle is against poverty and imperialism, and this struggle is faced by Filipinos both within the Philippines and without. Canada’s live-in Caregiver Program is a cheap labour program that has subjected more than one hundred thousand university-educated Filipino women to degrading, humiliating and exploitative employment as nannies. Migrants, not just from the Philippines, but from all over the world deserve the right to genuine settlement and integration.

I stand here before you in condemnation of the illegal occupation of Palestine, the brutal capitalist occupation of Mindanao, the disgustingly exploitative Live-in-Caregiver Program. I stand here before you in condemnation of capitalist imperialism.

On behalf of UKPC, Enough is enough! The Filipinos are here, and we will not be moved. The Syrians are here, and we will not be moved. The Iraqis are here and we will not be moved. The Libyans are here, and we will not be moved. The Tamils are here, and we will not be moved. The Palestinians are here, the land of Palestine has always existed, and it has not, and never will be moved. We will fight together until our demands, without any concessions, are met. We support the demand for:

The end of the occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantlement of the Wall.
The recognition of the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and
The Respect, protection, and promotion of the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.

FREE FREE PALESTINE! OCCUPATION IS A CRIME!

[Read during the rally at York University organized by the Students Against Israeli Apartheid on March 27, 2013]

Toronto, ON—This International Women’s Day, more than 50 participants enjoyed a night of vital debate and lively celebration at the Philippine Women Centre of Ontario’s (PWC-ON) celebratory film screening, dinner and discussion on March 8^th. Many who attended this event also marched with PWC-ON the following day for Toronto’s International Women’s Day demonstration and rally. Both events served to heighten women’s unity and resolve, as the struggle of women in Canada continues to grow and to deepen in strength and militancy amidst the onslaughts of neoliberal globalization that take away women’s hard-won rights through regressive social policies.

Or­ganized by PWC-ON with the support of its sister organizations under the Magkaisa Centre, SIKLAB Ontario (Advance and Uphold the Struggles of Filipino Canadian Workers), and Ugnayan ng Kabataang Pilipino sa Canada/Filipino Canadian Youth Alliance of Ontario, the event “Celebrating IWD: A Film Screening of Karen Cho’s ‘Status Quo?: The Unfinished Business of Feminism in Canada’ “ took place at the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. It provided organizers and participants alike a venue in which to discuss the issues that women in Canada today are still facing after decades of historic struggle. “It was a real eye-opener for so many,” stated PWC-ON member Lydia Vamvouras, adding, “many of the issues raised in the movie are usually demonized and marginalized even though they affect all women, on a systemic level, through our everyday experience as Canadians. It really is on us, as women of colour—who are also working women—to reclaim the movement and carry forward the advances that so many women have fought for.”

As a look back on the history of resistance that all women in Canadian society share, and a space in which critical discussions were ignited, the events allowed participants to address the critical issues of: women’s health and reproductive rights; cutbacks on social services; and the ongoing system of patriarchy, endemic worldwide, which perpetuates violence against women, especially against women of colour. PWC-ON’s position in calling for the abolishment of the racist, anti-worker, and anti-woman Live-in Caregiver Program not only opposes the exploitation and oppression of third-world women, but is integral to the collective struggle for national childcare that will benefit all women in Canada.

Equally successful was the International Women’s Day rally and march during which PWC-ON and its allies gathered and took to the streets. Militantly voicing their calls to expose and oppose all forms of exploitation and oppression, they refused to be silent and expressed their outright refusal to be hammered down by the constant attacks of the neoliberal agenda being implemented in Canada. They proved that in the face of marginalization women of colour remain steadfast in forging solidarity, to further intensify their struggles and resistance against neoliberal globalization.

Their contributions will pave the way for leaders to emerge who, with their great potential and lived experiences, will surely enhance the women’s movement not just in Canada, but also far beyond.  As Joy Sioson, Chairperson of PWC-ON, declared, “Through our work and through this celebration, it’s abundantly clear why we need to continue our commitment in waging women’s struggles for liberation in Canada. Women must always be at the forefront of genuine change as we work towards the entitlement of our racialized communities within Canada’s working class, to their full participation in Canadian society. And so we continue to struggle collectively for our equality, development, human rights and genuine liberation, and we demand for nothing less.”

For photos of PWC-ON at the rally, visit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pwcontario/sets/72157632984896996/

See also our photos from the film screening! Go to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pwcontario/sets/72157632984530110

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For more information, contact:
Signe Clemente
(416) 519-2553
pwc-on@magkaisacentre.org
www.magkaisacentre.org

The National Alliance of Philippine Women in Canada (NAPWC) marked International Women’s Day (IWD) by saluting all women who have, and continue to, put the struggles for women’s liberation at the forefront of women’s struggles. As we acknowledged our past gains and achievements, we also recognised that the struggle for our genuine liberation is far from over. Amidst the escalating attacks of neoliberal globalisation which continue to hamper down and claw-back our human rights, full equality and genuine development, we call on all progressive women to take the revolutionary road and advance the women’s movement towards our genuine liberation and emancipation.

For the past two decades, the NAPWC has been steadfast in its stance that the liberation of all women cannot be achieved if the struggles of the most oppressed and marginalised amongst us are not at the forefront. For this year’s IWD, we, Filipino and Filipino Canadian women of the NAPWC, reassert our stance that women’s liberation is not negotiable. As part of our commitment to the global women’s movement, we stand resolute in our cause to help build a militant Canadian women’s movement that will advance the struggles against class exploitation, patriarchy, gender oppression and racial discrimination in Canada. Alongside this, we strive to strengthen genuine solidarity with women in the Global South who continue to struggle for social and national liberation.

For centuries now, women all over the world have been subjected to brutal assaults and all forms of violence—whether physical, sexual, social, political or economic. These attacks are manifested to a personal, institutional, state and to a wider systemic context. In Canada, state-sponsored violence against women comes in full-blown as the Conservative government rabidly pushes its neoliberal agenda. So far, massive cutbacks have shut down numerous social programs such as women’s shelters and rape crisis centres that women rely on. We have also seen an increase of private member bills that aim to reopen the debate on ‘abortion’ to curtail women’s reproductive rights. Worse, the refusal of the current Canadian government to institutionalise a universal childcare program concretely shows its lack of concern for the well-being of all women and children. Currently, Canada stands last among developed countries in terms of access to early learning and childcare spaces.

We, transnational Filipino and Filipino Canadian women in Canada, have long felt the impacts of state-violence from both the Philippine and Canadian states. As the neoliberal agenda intensifies its attacks, we are well aware that the intensity of these attacks are hammered down on and targeted to marginalised women of colour in Canada, particularly on us Filipino women. As Filipino women are forced to leave the Philippines due to conditions of underdevelopment and poverty, Canada since the 1980s has recruited more than 100,000 Filipino women to toil under its anti-woman, racist and anti-worker Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP), a neoliberal labour import program that Canada implemented to address its childcare and eldercare crisis. It stands today as Canada’s de facto national childcare and eldercare program for middle to upper-class Canadian families.

As women who have been prime targets of violence in this country, we condemn and do not accept all of the atrocities that are continually being waged against us. We do not accept the violence waged against thousands of live-in caregivers who are deported when they do not meet the stringent requirements of the LCP. We do not accept the violence of forcibly and systematically separating mothers from their children and families. We do not accept the economic injustice that forces countless Filipino women to go into off-street prostitution or to become Mail-Order Brides in this country. We do not accept the acts of a certain class of women, whose “equality and liberation” flourishes at the expense of our exploitation and oppression. We do not accept that although we have come here with a certain level of development, we are continually undermined as permanent sources of cheap labour and virtually relegated as modern-day slaves. As such, we will continue to resist, fight and change this path that has been reserved for us.

We, members of the NAPWC, encourage all to join the struggle for women’s liberation. Together, we can fight and pave a new path that will end violence against women and patriarchy. The past months have borne witness to the strength and resiliency of women to lead the struggle for genuine social change. We salute and stand in solidarity with the women-founded Idle-No-More movement fighting for Indigenous sovereignty, with the protests of Indian women against rape culture and with all women fighting and taking the revolutionary road to realise our rightful place and entitlement that we, women, hold half of the sky.

Scrap the anti-woman and racist LCP! Universal childcare now!
Down with patriarchy! End violence against women!
Stop the cuts! Expose and oppose neoliberal policies!
Down with imperialism! Long live international solidarity!

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Organizations under the NAPWC:
Philippine Women Centre of B.C.
Philippine Women Centre of Ontario
Philippine Women Centre of Quebec

For more information, contact:
(416) 519-2553
pwc-on@magkaisacentre.org
www.magkaisacentre.org
Twitter: pwc_ontario

A FILM SCREENING OF “STATUS QUO?: THE UNFINISHED BUSINESS OF FEMINISM IN CANADA”
An International Women’s Day Celebration

Dinner is available for $5
Celebration includes dinner, screening, open discussion, & desert

Friday, March 8th, 2013, 6:00 – 8:00 PM
Doors open at 5:30 PM

OISE Room 5280
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), 252 Bloor St. West

Featuring “Status Quo?: The Unfinished Business of Feminism in Canada” (2013)
Written and Directed by Karen Cho, Produced by Ravida Din, for the National Film Board of Canada

Trailer available at
http://www.nfb.ca/film/status_quo_the_unfinished_business_of_feminism/trailer/status_quo_the_unfinished_business_trailer

For more information, contact:
Signe Clemente
(416) 519-2553
pwc-on@magkaisacentre.org
www.magkaisacentre.org

March 6, 2013
For immediate release

Toronto, ON–To celebrate this year’s International Women’s Day, The Philippine Women Centre of Ontario (PWC-ON) is hosting a film screening, dinner and discussion on the ongoing and historical struggles of women in Canadian society. Featuring Karen Cho’s “Status Quo?: The Unfinished Business of Feminism in Canada” (2013), the event will no doubt carry on the critical dialogue on feminism in Canada that the director has sparked as she continues to take her film into Canadian universities, libraries, and various public venues. The screening takes place Friday, March 8th at the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education (OISE, 252 Bloor Street West) Room 5280 from 6 to 8 P.M. (Dinner will be served for five dollars to attendees prior to the screening, to be followed by discussion and dessert.) “Status Quo?: The Unfinished Business of Feminism” will prove an engaging cross-examination of the historical debate surrounding women’s issues, such as those outlined by the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in 1971. PWC-ON aims, in its discussion of the film, to make the connections between past struggles faced by Canadian women and current attacks on women through the various neoliberal policies of the Canadian state.

As the documentary makes clear, the issues faced by Canada’s women then–from child care to reproductive rights and violence against women–are still urgent issues today not only for women, but for all of society.

In marking one more milestone on the revolutionary road towards genuine women’s equality, development, and human rights, this year’s celebration of International Women’s Day reminds all women of the urgent need to militantly and steadfastly advance the struggles of working class women, both in Canada and beyond.

Celebrating IWD: A film screening of “Status Quo?: The Unfinished Business of Feminism in Canada”
Hosted by the Philippine Women Centre of Ontario
Friday, March 8th, 6:00-8:00 PM (Doors open at 5:30 PM)
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Room 5280
252 Bloor Street West, Toronto (Above St. George subway station)
Dinner is available for $5

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For more information, contact:
Signe Clemente
(416) 519-2553
pwc-on@magkaisacentre.org
www.magkaisacentre.org

February 14, 2013
For immediate release

Toronto, ON–In celebration of International Women’s Day , the Philippine Women Centre of Ontario invites all to a screening of Canadian director Karen Cho’s latest documentary “Status Quo: The Unfinished Business of Feminism in Canada.” The documentary screening will take place on March 8 at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (252 Bloor Street West) in room 5280, scheduled for 6 to 8 P.M. A $5 dinner is included and a discussion facilitated by Philippine Women Centre members is set to take place following the screening.

The documentary delves into the key issues that women face in Canada, drawing parallels between the necessary fight towards women’s rights in Canada’s previous decades and our current struggles today. Violence against women, reproductive rights, and childcare are among the key issues tackled in the documentary.

In marking the advancement of the women`s struggle for equality, development and human rights, the film will remind us all that the struggle for genuine women`s liberation continues today.

Join us for a screening of this integral contemporary documentary on the women’s movement in Canada!

Celebrating IWD: A film screening of “Status Quo: The Unfinished Business of Feminism in Canada”
Hosted by the Philippine Women Centre of Ontario
Friday, March 8th, 6:00-8:00 PM (Doors open at 5:30 PM)
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Room 5280
252 Bloor Street West, Toronto (Above St. George subway station)
Dinner is available for $5

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For more information, contact:
Charie Siddayao
(416) 519-2553
pwc-on@magkaisacentre.org
www.magkaisacentre.org

STATUS QUO? THE UNFINISHED BUSINESS OF FEMINISM IN CANADA
A sweeping, invigorating and disconcerting doc on the state of feminism, the history of the women’s movement & the status of women in Canada.

WHAT: Screening of STATUS QUO? THE UNFINISHED BUSINESS OF FEMINISM IN CANADA
WHEN: Tuesday, February 5, 6:45 PM
WHERE: Bloor Hot Docs Cinema, 506 Bloor Street West, Toronto
COST: Suggested donation $2-10
INFO: cinemapolitica.org
SOCIAL MEDIA: Facebook event

Karen Cho / Canada / 2012 / 87 ‘ / English.

This special screening is co-presented by the National Film Board of Canada and will feature special guest speakers including the director and main subjects from the film.

SYNOPSIS: Feminism has shaped the society we live in. But just how far has it brought us, and how relevant is it today? Status Quo? asks these questions and uncovers provocative – at times shocking – answers about the evolution of women’s equality in Canada. Interweaving a wealth of dynamic archival material with startling contemporary stories, the film situates the vibrant Canadian women’s movement in its history-making context. In 1967 the landmark Toyal Commission on the Status of Women made recommendations to address the inequalities faced by women. Now, Status Quo? zeroes in on key concerns such as violence against women, access to abortion, and universal childcare, asking how much progress we have truly made on these issues. Status Quo? is crucial viewing for every Canadian, especially those unfamiliar with the vital achievements of the feminist movement.

For more info and to watch the film’s trailer, click here.

Toronto, ON—Members of the Filipino Canadian Youth Alliance of Ontario/Ugnayan ng Kabataang Pilipino sa Canada (UKPC/FCYA-ON) are outraged by the Liberal Education Minister Laurel Broten’s recent move of imposing undemocratic and unjust contracts on Ontario teachers through the so-called ‘Putting Students First Act’ or ‘Bill 115’. We, Filipino Canadian youth and students, condemn this action and stand firm in our position that this bill does not put students first, but puts the government’s interests to the detriment of teachers and students alike. This move is nothing but part of the provincial government’s neoliberal agenda to slash public funding in education.

Despite the government’s attempts to state that Bill 115 is just a matter of teacher’s pay and salaries which the Provincial Government can no longer afford, the issue extends far beyond the imposed two-year wage freeze and slashing of sick days. This bill gives the government power to effectively eliminate collective bargaining rights for Ontario’s 180,000 elementary and secondary school teachers, as well as banning strikes and lock-outs during the two-year period of the legislation. Overall, these changes violate the fundamental rights of teachers, which reverberate on all working people, youth and students in Ontario in countless ways.

The increasing trend of young teachers that are struggling to find permanent teaching positions and are stuck for years doing ‘supply teaching’ and ‘contract-work’ is a clear indication of the increasing casualization of the teaching profession. Currently, two-thirds of recent education graduates in Ontario are under- or unemployed. This trend is bound to continue as the bill now shifts hiring practices to be based on seniority. When teachers, regardless of years of experience, are put in situations of job insecurity and instability, it is without a doubt that the quality of Ontario’s education is put in peril.

As youth, we are alarmed by the drastic changes that are continuously imposed by the government. If our government can act with impunity on teachers, then we, youth and students, by extension, are not safe from these same undemocratic acts. We call into question the current neoliberal policies that are being waged on our teachers and the rest of the working people in this province. As these same policies put our very future in Canadian society at risk, we stand in solidarity with Ontario teachers as they continue to fight for their democratic rights in order to uphold the integrity of the teaching profession and public education as a whole.

Put students first, kill bill 115!
Respect teachers’ collective bargaining rights!
Make the youth count in Canada’s future!

For more information, contact:

John Kevin Nerier
(416) 519-2553
ukpc-on@magkaisacentre.org
www.magkaisacentre.org

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 Toronto, ON – The National Alliance of Philippine Women in Canada (NAPWC) stands in solidarity with women in India as they mourn the loss of 23 year-old student Jyoti Singh from the gruesome gang rape perpetuated by  five men on a moving bus. Such heinous crime is a testament of the brutality of the violence perpetuated against women all over the world, and the vicious nature of patriarchy that lays the foundation for the continuing exploitation, oppression, and subordination of women regardless of cultural origin. While we are saddened and outraged that another woman has fallen victim to violence, we are even more determined and resolved in waging a militant struggle to end violence against women and fight towards genuine women’s liberation.

We echo the voices of women in India and other progressive women and organizations in calling for an end to violence against women and in demanding the end to the normalized rape culture that lays blame on the victims rather than the perpetrators, as well as the lack of action taken by the police, and other state agencies, to prevent and respond to the increase of rape and other forms of sexual violence that have been occurring for a very long time. We also echo their voices in affirming that this particular incident is not isolated within countries like India. Whether it is in developing nations or developed nations, violence against women is rampant in its many forms — blatant or systemic.  As members of NAPWC, we refuse to lay blame on victims of violence and call for an end to all forms of violence against women perpetuated by a patriarchal society that often denounces women’s autonomy over their own body, labour, and political actions. Rape is an act of violence that needs to be put into context along with all other acts of violence and oppression faced prominently by women under our current patriarchal and capitalist system.

As many more women in India have gone out to the streets to protest the violent acts committed against their women, they have also made vocal the realities that women, all over the globe, constantly face in their everyday lives – the day to day assault on women’s rights, women’s bodies, and the blatant and conscious attack on women’s dignity and humanity. Thus, as members of the NAPWC  and as transnational women, we do not accept the current conditions laid out by capitalism and oppose the neoliberal agenda that continues to  devalue  women’s labour and violate their  bodies in this age of globalization.  We call on all women to stand up against systemic violence and continue the unfinished struggle for just and genuine women’s liberation.

DOWN WITH PATRIARCHY!
END VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN!
ONWARD WITH THE STRUGGLE FOR GENUINE WOMEN’S LIBERATION!

For more information, contact:
(416) 519-2553
pwc-on@magkaisacentre.org
www.magkaisacentre.org

Toronto, ON–Members of the Congress of Progressive Filipino Canadians and its member organizations stand in solidarity with First Nations peoples who are taking action and making militant protest as part of the Idle No More Movement. Through mass rallies, blockades, demonstrations, and most notably, an indefinite hunger strike by Chief Theresa Spence of Attawapiskat, this movement declares to the whole of Canada and the world that the First Nations peoples will not remain idle while the Conservative government acts with impunity to violate their human rights by wreaking havoc on their lands and waters.

Initiated by four Aboriginal women and now expanding to thousands of protesters across Canada and the United States, Idle No More began from the ground up in opposition to the recently-passed Omnibus budget Bill C-45, a bill that tramples on indigenous treaty rights. This bill includes altering the Indian Act and the Navigable Waters Act – changes that could ultimately push for the privatization of reserve lands as well as eliminating federal protections on lakes and rivers in Aboriginal territories. This paves the way for natural resource extraction for maximum profit accumulation and in the end, leaves Aboriginal communities with toxic and unliveable environments. Cases of unsafe drinking water, high incidents of cancers and overall impoverished living conditions have been well-documented across Canada especially in areas taken over by oil and mining industries.

As progressive Filipino Canadians, we recognize that these changes are not devoid of a political economic context but are part of Canada’s ongoing neoliberal agenda of globalization. The passing of Bill C-45 by the Conservative government is but one of the many drastic changes being implemented by the government in order to ensure the continued growth of Canada’s capitalist economy – a continuous ‘growth’ being waged at the expense of indigenous land theft, environmental degradation, the active recruitment of cheap and temporary transnational labour, and the exploitation and oppression of all working people in Canada. To put it simply, it is corporate-driven growth for and by the ruling class’ interests and not for people’s genuine needs.

We, Canadians of Filipino descent, see a lot of similarities with the First Nations’ struggles against unjust and undemocratic policies of the Canadian state. Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s recent visit to our ancestral country, the Philippines, was a bold action by the Conservative government to ensure the continuing exploitation of Canadian mining companies to extract Philippine natural resources. It was also to guarantee a steady supply of cheap, temporary and disposable labour for Canada’s economic needs in the years to come. Currently, the Philippines stands as Canada’s top source of temporary foreign workers and live-in caregivers.

The environmental degradation caused by these exploits, perpetuated along with other local and transnational state actors, becomes one of the reasons for our forced migration. It is without a doubt that our very presence in this land is a direct product of ongoing neo-colonialism and Canadian imperialism.

As a people facing similar forms of oppression and exploitation by the Canadian state, we, progressive Filipino Canadians, stand in solidarity with the First Nations peoples in their fight against Bill C-45. We stand united to expose and oppose neoliberal policies that destroy communities and the environment. We stand in solidarity in advancing the struggles for indigenous sovereignty and self-determination.

RESPECT THE FIRST NATIONS’ TREATY RIGHTS!
DOWN WITH THE NEOLIBERAL AGENDA OF GLOBALIZATION!
IDLE NO MORE!

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For more information, contact:
Signe Clemente
(416) 519-2553
ukpc-on@magkaisacentre.org
www.magkaisacentre.org

Toronto, ON—SIKLAB Canada, a progressive Filipino Canadian workers’ organization, denounces the latest batch of changes to Employment Insurance as a clear and blatant attack against the democratic rights and overall conditions of working people across Canada. The denial of benefits to migrant workers were implemented on December 9^th and the rest of the new rules are scheduled to take effect on January 6^th. This latest announcement marks significant changes to the Employment Insurance system but have been quietly announced to the public amidst the rush of the holiday season. As workers and members of marginalized communities who refuse to let these changes pass by unnoticed, SIKLAB Canada maintains that the new EI rules comprise only part and parcel of an entire program of austerity against employment, wages and standard of living, encompassed within the government’s latest roll-out of the neoliberal agenda of globalization. Regardless of workers’ individual status, these changes set the stage to further the oppressive attacks and exploitation toward working people across Canada that we must all continue to expose and oppose.

For the past year, these reforms to the EI system have been deliberated on and strategically rolled out in successive phases, which have included legislated approval that allowed employers to pay temporary foreign workers 15% less than Canadian workers. Furthering this attack on migrant workers, the latest round of changes include the denial of the parental, maternal and compassionate benefits without a valid Social Insurance Number and work permit. As work permits are issued on an employer-specific basis and are dependent on the industry’s working season, temporary and seasonal workers, such as those under the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program, are immediately denied the benefits that they have a right to as workers paying into their own EI and into the Canadian tax system. This denial is precisely part of the racist and exclusionary agenda that allows the Canadian state to deem migrant workers solely as cheap and temporary labour in the first place.

SIKLAB-Canada remains steadfast in opposing these tactics and maintain that these are being imposed onto all workers across the country. The changes made earlier this year have included eligibility restrictions aimed at streaming out-of-work claimants into jobs that pay up to 30% less than their previous wage, depending on newly-established eligibility regulations. These changes attack workers in local and seasonal industries such as those working in the fishing industry, as well as migrant workers in the local farm industries. Diane Finley, Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development Canada, continues to emphasize that the necessary changes are meant to incentivize workers to get back into the work field rather than “take advantage” of EI benefits. Though veiled in the empty rhetoric of improvements and “incentives,” it is apparent that these EI changes, instead, claw back workers’ benefits and force many to take on flexible and contractual jobs in targeted sectors—strategies that are in line with the flexibilization of Canada’s job market and the expansion of temporary labour. In this context, Canada’s need for cheap labour is made all too clear.

The very existence of temporary labour programs, such as the Live-in Caregiver Program and the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program, fulfill the convenience of providing a pool of cheap and disposable labour necessary to churn the wheels of Canada’s capitalist economy. In the name of competitiveness, these neoliberal policies are put in place at the expense of our lives and conditions as workers.

As such, the contractualization, flexibilization and instability of employment inevitably place workers in the position of having to use their EI, which are benefits that they have paid into in the first place. It is, then, crucial that we look beyond these tactics that divide and lay the blame on workers and question the neoliberal policies that the current government continue to implement.

Alongside the increasing calls of various workers’ groups and community organizations to reject these changes, SIKLAB Canada stands in solidarity against these attacks on our basic rights and entitlements as workers and as contributors to Canadian society. Amidst regressive changes that further heighten our temporariness and instability as workers, we will heighten our call to oppose the expansion of temporary labour and migration programs and demand our genuine settlement and integration. We demand an end to short-term and profit-oriented solutions that further intensify ongoing economic instability, insecurity and unemployment and instead demand changes that will genuinely address our needs as the working-class.

Stop the cuts! End the contractualization of labour!
Expose and oppose the neoliberal agenda of globalization!
Advance the movement for genuine settlement and integration!
Advance and uphold the working class struggle!

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For more information, contact:
(416) 519-2553
siklab-on@magkaisacentre.org
www.magkaisacentre.org

Vancouver, BC—Originally set to take place at the Simon Fraser University Harbour, the Kalayaan Centre’s Workers’ Struggles Amidst Neoliberal Globalization conference took place at the GF Strong Rehabilitation Centre daycare;  a venue switch promptly made in solidarity with Simon Fraser University’s striking CUPE support workers.  The conference demonstrated the strength and commitment of the Kalayaan Centre’s organizers and members to push workers’ struggles to the forefront amidst Canada’s shifting economic strategies, and intesifying implementation of neoliberal policies that have impacted workers, women, racialized and other marginalized communities the most.  The Kalayaan Centre, and its member organizations called on allies, activists and other participants from across the province and Canada to come together for this important and necessary gathering. The conference took place on the heels of the Ontario based Magkaisa Centre’s own effective and successful Workers’ Struggles Amidst Neoliberal Globalization conference held this past August.

As a member of the Congress of Progressive Filipino Canadians, the Kalayaan Centre and its member organizations ensured that the strength of national organizational ties and the alliances built with other progressive individuals and organizations were well established. The necessity to bring out a critical analysis of labour and the economy among others, as highlighted during the conference, cannot be without a collective and united resistance necessary in countering the impacts of neoliberal policies.   As workers’ struggles must be placed at the forefront of the analysis of the current economic crisis, last weekend’s conference presented the crucial panels of the August conference in Toronto with several speakers including Simon Fraser University professor Dr. Habiba Zaman, Reuben Saramugam of the Ugnayan Ng Kabataan Pilipino Sa Canada/Filipino Canadian Youth Alliance-Ontario (UKPC/FCYA-ON), Qara Clemente from the Philippine Women Centre of Ontario, and York University PhD candidate Chris Vance coming out once again to present their research, analysis and experiences.

The four panels titled: “The Global and Canadian situation”, “Transnational communities in Canada—their struggles and resistance,” “International solidarity and the working class,” and “Moving forward towards the revolutionary road”  reiterated the role of the transnational working class within Canadian economy, local resistance and organizing within the progressive Filipino Canadian community and beyond, the need to bridge local struggles with international  struggles in different parts of the world, and the necessity to continue creating the conditions for revolutionary change in society.The addition of several speakers in each panel, included  University of British Columbia Geography professor Dr. Geraldine Pratt; Philippine Women Centre of Ontario’s chairperson Joy Sioson; SIKLAB-Canada’s national chairperson Cora Cadiz; SANSAD’s (Secular and Democratic South Asian Diaspora) Harjap Grewal; and writer/artist Charlene Sayo brought further dynamic insights, theories and experiences to the table and challenged all participants to realize the possibilities of genuine social change by actively engaging in the working class movement in Canada or wherever they may be.

The need to advance the role of the working class in creating genuine change was brought to the fore and taken up seriously by all participants who engaged critically with one another, prepared to continue building the dialogue and the imperative resistance that the conference called on everyone to take up.

For more information, contact the Conference Secretariat:
Arlene Oropel: 778-317-5265
Andrew Sayo: 604-215-9355
pwc-on@magkaisacentre.org
www.magkaisacentre.org

Vancouver, BC—This past Friday November 9th, the Kalayaan Centre and its member organizations organized a successful and intimate launching of Dr. Habiba Zaman’s latest book: Asian Immigrants in Two Canadas: Racialization, Marginalization and Deregulated Work, held at the Rhizome Cafe in Vancouver B.C. Dr. Zaman is a professor in the Gender, Sexuality and Women Studies Department at Simon Fraser University and has worked many years with the Philippine Women Centre (PWC) and the Kalayaan Centre. During the book launch, she was able to expand on the critical analysis of labour and workplace hazards in Canada as provided extensively in her book. Specifically, she places focus on the experiences of Asian Canadians, including Pakistani Canadians, Bangladeshi Canadians and Filipino Canadians. The latter experiences, Zaman acknowledges were shared by the Philippine Women Centre and the Kalayaan Centre along with the analysis and research done by PWC-B.C. with the Filipino Canadian community. The book launch was attended by many academic colleagues and community organizers from across Canada.

During her presentation, Dr. Zaman placed her focus on the working conditions of Asian Canadians who worked in the various areas of domestic work to other service sector jobs that provide little security for workers. Her emphasis on workplace hazard addresses a point that has often been overlooked when government discuss labour policy reforms. These include issues such as the privilege employers hold in many of these work environments that put workers at a disadvantage and in danger, as well as the increasing trend of deregulating workplaces that lead to the enforcement of flexible and part-time work.These trends, among with others, bring out the increasing precariousness of workplaces for workers of colour and other marginalized communities in Canada most affected by these labour implementations.

Dr. Zaman’s presentation was followed by a discussion period where she was able to highlight the integral role that the Philippine Women Centre played in the research and analysis necessary in writing the book. As Canada continues to implement neoliberal policies that hurt and divide the working class communities across the country, Zaman’s book comes in a timely moment reminding us to take our discussions of workplace hazardous environments beyond band-aid precautions and look at the structural factors of Canada’s labour programs that allow for the precarious working conditions faced by our communities.

Dr. Habiba Zaman was also one of the panel speakers for the Kalayaan Centre’s conference, Workers’ Struggles Amidst Neoliberal Globalization which took place on Saturday November 10th.

For more information, contact:
Philippine Women Centre of Ontario
(416) 519-2553
pwc-on@magkaisacentre.org
www.magkaisacentre.org

Vancouver, BC – In solidarity with the support workers at Simon Fraser University and members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees – CUPE local 3338 that are currently on strike, the Counterspin Secretariat changed the venue of ‘Workers’ Struggles amidst Neoliberal Globalization’ Vancouver-wide conference. The event was to be held at Simon Fraser University Harbour Centre.

The conference will now be held at  GF Strong Rehabilitation Centre - 4255 Laurel Street Vancouver, B.C. V5Z 2G9.

The date and time of the conference remain unchanged. November 10th 2012, 8AM – 6PM.

For more information, contact the Conference Secretariat:
Arlene Oropel: 778-317-5265
Andrew Sayo: 604-215-9355
pwc-on@magkaisacentre.org
www.magkaisacentre.org