On Day Six of Indefinite Bill C-10 Hunger Strike, Obert Madondo Addresses Canadian MPs
Honorable MP, what is happening to Canada?
At 12:01am on Wednesday, March 14, I embarked on an indefinite hunger
strike whose demand is: the Parliament of Canada immediately repeal the
new Safe Streets and Communities Act (omnibus crime Bill C-10).
Earlier, I had appealed to the Governor General, The Right Honourable
David Johnston, to use the Crown’s reserve powers to either withhold or
reserve Royal Assent to Bill C-10. But Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s
tyrannical will prevailed, just as it did when the Conservative
majorities in the House of Commons and Senate brushed aside the diverse
input of the opposition, experts and victims and passed crime Bill C-10.
The bill reportedly received royal assent Tuesday afternoon. I will now
continue the hunger strike until the Act is repealed in its entirety.
I am an activist, progressive political blogger and Permanent
Resident of Canada. Canada embraced me as a political refugee from
Zimbabwe in 2003.
Honorable MP, the inconvenient truth about Harper’s Canada is that
we’re already living our own Nixonian moment. All kinds of dirty tricks,
including Gobbels-style propaganda, McCarthyism and cold-war-style
red–baiting, are party of the political game. Additionally, the
Conservatives stand accused of tampering with the May 2011 federal
election. This is not democracy.”
The Conservatives are at war with
Canadians. Since Harper came to power in 2006, our democracy has been
hurtling toward the Intensive Care Unit. He has daily sought our
democratic institutions with heat-seeking missiles. He prorogued
Parliament twice, in 2008 and 2009. Harper is the first prime minister
to be found in contempt of parliament. The list is endless.
The Safe Streets and Communities Act is the foremost of the
Conservatives’ draconian agenda and posturing. Our unduly elected prime
minister, seeks to radically engineer Canadian society – socially and
politically – to impose an insidious, divisive, pro-punishment,
poverty-ignoring and anti-minority right-wing worldview. The Act will
expand state power, weaken the judiciary, divide society, take away
Canadians’ rights and freedoms, create resentment of the “other”, and
punish the weak and marginalized. Harper’s new Canada will obliterate
these Canadian values: compassion, multiculturalism, inclusion,
diversity, fairness, democratic governance, respect for fundamental
rights and the rule of law, and accommodation of difference.
Furthermore, the Act was birthed in an environment of tyranny where
all Canadians were treated as potential enemies of the state.
Dissenters, aboriginal groups, activists and civil society organizations
opposed to official policy or dedicated to issues are targeted,
demonized, marginalized, dehumanized and labeled “enemies of the state”.
In the House of Commons, the Official Opposition is accused of being
“anti-Canada”. Gun-control advocates are compared to Nazis. Opponents of
the long gun registry are likened to Adolf Hitler. MPs opposed to the
Conservatives’ new online surveillance bill are “with the child
pornographers”.
A few weeks ago, we learned that the Harper government supports
torture as a way to gather intelligence. Potential targets will include
Canadians. The Conservatives new anti-terrorism strategy labels
Canadians dedicated to causes such as animal rights, environmentalism
and anti-capitalism “issue-based terrorists”, implacable adversaries to
be monitored and battled.
To cap the Conservatives’ war on Canadians, now the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police (RCMP) detachment officers on Parliament Hill will start
carrying the rapid-and-accurate-fire Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine
guns as “secondary weapons” to their standard-issue semi-automatic 9mm
pistols. Fear and terror, creates an intellectual and moral void. It
disarms society of its power to question.
We do not discuss race as much as we should and the Conservatives
seem take full advantage to practice a covert racism. I hope I’m wrong.
But the Act will send to jail more racialized minorities, especially
Aboriginals, who are already over-represented in our jails. During Bill
C-10 hearings in the House of Commons and Senate, First Nations leaders
crawled before our lawmakers and begged them to understand that the Act
would “punish” First Nations communities, most of which already live
under 4th World and colonialism conditions. It would perpetuate the
legacy of residential schools, they said. But the Conservatives showed
these voices the political middle finger.
Harper is slowly handing Canada over to corporations which: ravage
our environment and First Nations communities, exploit and abuse
Canadian workers, demand more and more tax cuts, and hoard billions of
dollars in profits without creating jobs. In the search for markets for
these corporations, the Conservatives are negating our moral fabric and
hard earned values. Recently, Harper crawled before authoritarian China,
the new colonizer, without questioning the country’s appalling human
right record.
Honorable MP, on November 23, 2011, I tasted the wrath of the Canada
that the Safe Streets and Communities Act proposes. I was forcibly
removed from Confederation Park as one of the eight unarmed Occupy
Ottawa protesters peacefully resisting the politically-motivated
eviction carried out by the Ottawa Police. The 100 to 150 officers sent
in the hours following midnight applied excessive and unnecessary force.
I was subjected to cruel and unusual treatment. The police hurt my
back, legs and left arm. I ended up in hospital and still suffer
physical pain because of their actions. Senator Vernon White was in
charge of the Ottawa Police that morning, and that’s why I’m demanding
his resignation. I’ve nothing personal against the Senator as a fellow
human being, but that morning, a failure of judgment and Canadian
leadership occurred. I strongly question the Senator’s judgment in a
situation that demanded the utmost in sobriety and a quick glance at the
Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Why did the four police officers who carried me to the makeshift
detention centre drop me three times during the trip? Why was I treated
differently than my two white colleagues? One was also carried by police
officers but was not hurt. The other was driven to the centre in a
police cruiser. At the centre why did the officers drop me to the floor
and leave me lying my stomach, a position that further acerbated my
injured back and arm? Why did they ignore my plea for immediate medical
attention?
This is not what democracy looks like. It’s and an inverted
totalitarianism presided over by a tyrannical petro-prime minister. No
other Canadian citizen or resident should have to go through what I went
through on the morning of November 23, and the pain I live with now.
I arrived at the decision to protest after months of agonizing
soul-searching. My conscience and lived experience has compelled me to
resist our elected dictator, Stephen Harper. At the personal level, my
hunger strike is an act of civil disobedience. It is also a last stand
on behalf of the progressive voice that the Conservatives showed nothing
but disdain for during the making of the Act.
I’ll carry out the peaceful action in my apartment here in Ottawa,
and will undertake public actions, including regular visits to
Parliament Hill. I humbly submit the following demands:
1. The Parliament of Canada should repeal the Safe Streets and Communities Act in its entirety.
2. Former Ottawa Police chief and newly-appointed Senator, Vernon White, should immediately resign.
3. The federal government should make a commitment to invest 100 times
the cost of monitoring and dismantling Occupy encampments across Canada
last fall to institute a national inquiry into the case of 600+ missing
and murdered aboriginal women and girls.
4. The House of Commons should immediately institute measures to improve
accountability and transparency. The measures should include
limitations on the governing party’s power to a) manipulate Standing
Orders; b) evade opposition scrutiny; c) shut down debate d) silence
critics; and e) run committees behind closed doors and prevent Canadians
from participating.
5. The Conservative government must immediately stop its campaign
against Canadians and Canadian democracy. This campaign currently
manifests through a) the criminalization of dissent; b) promotion of a
divisive agenda and attitude; c) whipping up of unnecessary moral panic;
and d) using incendiary labels to stifle debate and criticism on its
actions.
On May 2, 2011, Canada experienced a thing of extraordinary beauty.
The election validated our multiculturalism both in fact and its
official commitment. Canadians extracted our politics from the octopus
grip of the privileged class, and delivered them into the progressive
arms of our youth, women and minorities. They set Canada on a path to a
politics that embraces our diversity. That day, 39,9 percent of the
Canadian electorate voted Conservative majority to continue on that path
and to serve all Canadians. But the Conservatives interpreted their
electoral mandate as an opportunity to implement a grant project of both
social engineering and political engineering to shake up our
institutions, traditions and value systems.
But even more shameful is the fact that the Act now carries the
preamble: NOW, THEREFORE, Her Majesty, by and with the advice and
consent of the Senate and House of Commons of Canada, enacts as follows.
In essence, Queen Elizabeth II’s esteemed name, and the Great Seal of
Canada, is now appended to a law that will inflict a great injustice on
Canadians.
I sincerely believe that Her Majesty would disagree with the
tyrannical and undemocratic manner which accompanied the making of the
Act. From the first reading of Bill C-10 in the House of Commons,
through to the final vote in both houses, a one-party-state tyrannical
abuse of Canadian parliamentary process and democratic practice
prevailed. The process was a triumph of spin over substance and
deliberative democracy. Rather than explaining the straight facts to
Canadians, the Harper government took a propaganda approach. It showed
neither respected nor accommodated difference as is required in a
democracy. At every turn, opposition MPs, elected by 60% of Canadians,
and expert witnesses who attempted to input into the bills’ 208 clauses
and hundreds of amendments, were shown the political middle finger.
In the Senate, senators mounted an expensive, taxpayer-funded
charade; they invited hundreds of witnesses and collected mountains of
evidence, but made only a few terrorism-related changes to Bill C-10.
Our senators chose to abandon their role as providers of the sober
second thought that this bill deserved. They simply rubberstamped it.
Minimum sentences undermine our court system; they send the wrong
message to society. They give the impression that our courts and judges
don’t know how to do their jobs. Furthermore, the Act will cost Canadian
taxpayers an estimated $15 billion. Surely, how can we agree to partake
in the daylight robbery our education, healthcare and other social
services to finance a law that will oppress us all and turn our jails
into training schools for hardcore criminals?
Both crime Bill C-10 and the Safe Streets and Communities Act are the
epitome of state abuse of power, the law and resources. We’re being
called upon to defend Canadian democracy at its greatest hour of need.
Democracy should never yield to tyranny. Indeed, it never has, never
will.
Honorable MP, now is the hour to build a society that nurtures hope
instead of extinguishing it. It’s a moment to remind ourselves that an
injustice visited on a single Canadian or community, is an injustice
visited on all of us. We must insist on a united and caring Canada that
without apology encourages all to set aside differences and prescribed
labels, and come together to create a strong national identity based on
these Canadian values: compassion, respect for fundamental rights and
the rule of law, multiculturalism, inclusion, diversity, fairness,
democratic governance and accommodation of difference.
Therein, not the Safe Streets and Communities Act, lies our collective security.
This is the Canada I experienced the day I washed up on Canada’s
shores as a political refugee from Zimbabwe in the summer of 2003. The
violence I’d experienced and witnessed in the Southern African country
had mutilated me. But Canada embraced, nursed and healed me. Canada
restored that which Zimbabwe – and the US denied me – dignity.
Canada believed in me as an equal member of the human race, and
encouraged me to unleash my passions in the service of my adopted
country. In 2004, I volunteered for the late NDP leader Jack Layton’s
successful run for Parliamentary office. Over the years, I’ve carved a
unique Canadian identity as a globally-conscious activism-oriented
progressive political blogger, with a passion for Canadian federal
politics, diversity, social issues and movements, progressive politics
and Canadian foreign policy. I contributed to Canada’s contribution to
the global HIV/AIDS pandemic through my seven years of loyal service to
the Canada Africa Partnership on AIDS (CAP AIDS), a CIDA-funded
registered Canadian charity that supports HIV/AIDS work in Africa.
But I’ve also tasted the wrath of a Canada hostile to both
accountability and the “other”. In December, 2003, I signed up to
volunteer for CAP AIDS. By April 2008, I’d become the charity’s
executive director and sole employee, working a punishing 60-80 hours a
week. In May, 2010, I attempted to pursue accountability for part of the
more than $130 000 in Canadians’ donations the charity misused. The
board of the charity harassed me and tossed me under the bus. It blocked
my access to employment insurance and torpedoed my support systems as a
new immigrant. I lost most of what I’d worked for all these years and
ended up on the streets of Toronto.
From June 15 to June 23, I walked almost 400 km from Toronto to
Ottawa in protest. I demanded that the charity account for the donations
received as required under the Income Tax Act. But I learned that when
those of us on the margins of society challenge the wrongdoings of the
privileged, it takes more than a 400km solitary walk to be heard.
In Ottawa, I ended up on the streets. From June 23 to October 14,
2011, I slept in a crevice at Laurier and Bank Street. I ate from soup
kitchens. I bathed and did my laundry on the Ottawa River. On October
15, 2011, Occupy Ottawa showed up in town and rescued me from the
streets. The movement gave me a tent, a family and a platform to
discuss, in the spirit of equality and deliberative democracy, the
issues of our time. The movement helped me to overcome my immigrant
innocence, and stand up for Canada and her unparalleled values.
Honorable MP, my indefinite hunger strike is a call on you, our
elected representative, to side with and defend Canadians against
Stephen Harper. I’m demanding only the minimum of what Canadians should
rightly be demanding of their leaders right now. Canada today faces a
situation that calls on all to reign in an authoritarian petro-prime
minister who has become a serious threat to both our parliamentary
democracy and to Canadians. Now is the hour for Canadian leadership, a
return by parliament to sanity and respect for our democratic and
legislative processes. It’s the hour for our MPs to listen to and value
the concerns of all Canadians.
I do not underestimate the odds I face. I’m a self-identified
anti-capitalism activist in a moment the distinction between terrorist
and legitimate protester is more than more than ever before blurred in
Canada. Nevertheless, I’ll fight for a Canada I believe in.
Honorable MP, I leave you with the words of Grand Chief Derek Nepinak
of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, whose voice, like many others, was
ignored during the crime Bill C-10 hearings: “Are we going to be a
compassionate Canada and look out for one another, or are we going to
criminalize one another and send each other to jail? That’s the
fundamental question that has to be answered.”
We must love and look after each other.
Respectfully,
Obert Madondo
Activist and Progressive Political Blogger
retrieved from: http://www.canadianprogressiveworld.com/2012/03/19/on-day-six-of-indefinite-bill-c10-hunger-strike-obert-madondo-addresses-canadian-mps/
Obert is currently undertaking an indefinite hunger strike in Ottawa to
demand that the Parliament of Canada immediately repeal the new Safe
Streets and Communities Act (formerly omnibus crime Bill C-10). He is a
fearless and passionate activist, progressive political blogger and
permanent resident of Canada. Obert is the founder and editor of the
Canadian Progressive World blog. He volunteers as webmaster, online
content editor, blogger and editorial team member for the official
Occupy Ottawa website.
