Event Announcement: “Our Voices: A Portrait Series”
Our Voices: A Portrait Series Toronto, Ontario – As part of the Maleta [Suitcase] Project, the Philippine Women Centre Ontario (PWC-ON), in collaboration with the Filipino Canadian Youth Alliance/Ugnayan ng Kabataang Pilipino sa Canada (FCYA/UKPC-ON) AND SIKLAB Ontario, invites everyone to their upcoming exhibit, “Our Voices: A Portrait Series Project,” funded by the Toronto Arts Council. The art exhibit will showcase art work collectively produced by members of the Filipino Canadian community that captures the day-to-day lived experiences and struggles of Filipino Canadian youth, women, and workers in Toronto. The event will be held at Beit Zatoun, on May 31st and June 1st. Now Canada’s third largest visible minority group, the Filipino Canadian community continues to be at the social, political and economic margins of Canadian society. This is evidently seen in the community’s blatant representation in low-wage service sector work, domestic work and temporary contractual work schemes. Currently, over 100,000 Filipino women came to Canada as Live-in Caregivers and as of 2012, the Philippines has been Canada’s top source of temporary foreign workers. These exploitative labour [...]
Resist the “Divide and Rule” tactics against the working class in Canada!
Resist the “Divide and Rule” tactics against the working class in Canada Congress of Progressive Filipino Canadians National Statement April 7, 2014 The recent report in CBC’s news segment Go Public about temporary foreign workers (TFW) in Canada highlights, once again, the vulnerability of the working class in Canada against the relentless offensive of capital for profit and accumulation. The Congress of Progressive Filipino Canadians (CPFC) stands firm in its position that temporary foreign workers in Canada have become the latest fodder in this continuing clash between labour and capital in the current structural crisis of global capitalism. The pitting of one segment of the working class (TFW) against another (Canadian workers), with Minister of Employment and Social Development Jason Kenney and the Conservative government seemingly showing concern, is a classic case of ”divide and rule” and a diversion of real issues facing the working class. Supporting the demand of Canada’s capitalist class for temporary, disposable, and hard-to-unionize working class, the Federal government responded with the rapid expansion of the TFWP. An employer-driven program, the TFWP functions [...]
Struggle and Solidarity: Forward Women’s Liberation
National Alliance of Philippine Women in Canada National Statement March 18, 2014 The National Alliance of Philippine Women in Canada (NAPWC), once again, calls on the Canadian government, under the Conservative government of Prime Minister Harper, to stop its pretension, and put an end to its hypocrisy as a country that champions and upholds human rights and women’s rights, as it continues to implement its anti-woman, racist, and anti-worker federal labour programs of the live-in caregiver program (LCP) and the temporary foreign workers program (TFWP). We denounce the continuing exploitation and oppression of women under these programs, and demand an end to the systemic violence that systematically puts us in the receiving end of the violent attacks inherent within neoliberal globalization. A federal labour program facilitated by Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC), this modern-day slavery program is one of the many labour programs of Canada that preys on people from the Global South who are looking for stable jobs and better wages, recruiting mostly women to work as domestic workers for children, the elderly and people with disabilities. [...]
FCYA/UKPC Lecture Series Part 1: The Filipino Canadian Community’s Current Situation, Struggles and Resistance
January 23, 2014 For immediate release Toronto, ON – The Filipino Canadian Youth Alliance/Ugnayan ng Kabataang Pilipino sa Canada – Ontario (FCYA/UKPC-ON) is gearing up once again for another round of political education at York University and University of Toronto. The political education will be presented through a lecture series focussing on the Filipino Canadian community’s history, current situation, struggles and resistance. Despite being Canada’s third largest visible minority group numbering over 500,000, the Filipino Canadian community continues to be at the social, political and economic margins of Canadian society. The lecture series aim to expose Canada’s neoliberal agenda by concretely showing its impacts on working class and communities of colour, such as the Filipino Canadian community. ‘As the future of our community, it is crucial for us youth to educate, mobilize and organize ourselves and to fight for social change in our community and the broader Canadian polity.’ says Bastian Leones of UKPC @ UofT. The first lecture titled “The Filipino Canadian community’s Current Situation, Struggles and Resistance,” will be held on January 30th at University of Toronto [...]
Denouncing Canada’s contribution to climate change
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE National statement December 12, 2013 Toronto, ON— A month ago, the strongest tropical storm ever recorded in history, Super Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda devastated towns and areas in Central and Eastern Philippines with over a million people left homeless, and with confirmed deaths totalling over 5,000 people. The category 5 typhoon struck the Philippines on November 8th and swept through towns and cities that have not even recovered from the aftermath of an earthquake that occurred weeks before. This calamity has saddened many of us within the Filipino Canadian community and has left many more feeling outraged at the slow response and neglect in providing immediate aid and relief by the local and national Philippine governments—all this amidst the ongoing news of government corruption and irresponsible spending of the people’s money. But with the recently concluded U.N. Convention on Climate Change, that took place in Warsaw, Poland, and the recent report released by the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC), we must understand the role that imperialist countries, such as Canada, and transnational corporate interests have in contributing to [...]
Urgent appeal for support to the survivors of Super Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE November 12, 2013 Dear Friends and Allies, As we receive news and see countless images of the massive destruction brought upon by Super Typhoon Haiyan, known in the Philippines as Typhoon Yolanda, that hit Central Philippines last November 8, 2013, the Congress of Progressive Filipino Canadians (CPFC) and its member organizations, request for urgent support for all the communities that were ravaged, and are still under the state of calamity. Reported to be the largest and most powerful storm to ever make landfall in recorded human history, Typhoon Haiyan brought about an estimated 10,000 casualties, and displaced around 615,000 people including an increasing number of people sustaining numerous injuries and illnesses. Struggling from one disaster to another in close succession, the Eastern and Central Visayas region were still recovering from a magnitude 7.2 earthquake that hit on October 15, 2013 claiming 185 lives, injuring an estimated 600 people and displacing 379,495. We, at CPFC, send our sincerest condolences to those who have lost their family members, friends, and neighbours from this calamity. We are [...]
Centre for Emergency Aid and Rehabilitation “Oplan Sagip Bayan (Oplan People’s Rescue)”
thru the National Secretariat: Center for Emergency Aid and Rehabilitation, (CONCERN) Inc. NCR Center Address: 22 Libertad St. Brgy. Highway Hills, Mandaluyong City, Philippines Central Luzon: Lot 12, Blk.3, Rd. 3, Phase 1 St Jude Village, San Agustin, City of San Fernando, Pampanga tele/fax # (045) 9611721 e-mail: concern.inc@gmail.com November 8, 2013 --------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear Friends and Allies, We are switching on our Oplan Sagip Bayan operations (Oplan People's Rescue) in light of the damage by Typhoon Haiyan's rampage (local name: Yolanda) in Eastern and Central Visayas. This is in close coordination with CONCERN or Center for Emergency Aid and Rehabilitation who has more than twenty five years of consistent work in the field of disaster-risk and rehabilitation and has assisted more than one million individuals since 1988. Residents of Cebu, Bohol and nearby province of Leyte have been served with a double whammy as a 7.2 magnitude earthquake came twenty four days earlier, on October 15. The energy released by the Visayas quake is equivalent to 951.5 kilotons of TNT, 796,214 lightning flashes, 30.16 million gallons of [...]
All unite, women take back the night!
Take Back the Night, a set on Flickr. PWC-ON statement October 10, 2013 Toronto, ON—Alongside the progressive women and organizations that are here today, we at the Philippine Women Centre of Ontario (PWC-ON) are adamantly calling to end violence against women and to dismantle the system of patriarchy that attempts to routinely violate women’s bodies and women’s lives. As we take back the night, we call on all our sisters to meet the escalating forms of violence inflicted upon women in all its forms and manifestations—whether in the anti-woman policies imposed by the current neoliberal regime or in the culture of rape that is propagated as the norm—with our increasing solidarity and resistance. From this night and onwards, we refuse to be reduced to the scapegoats and victims of patriarchy as we assert our agency to control our own bodies and lives in the unfinished struggle for genuine women’s liberation. Here at York University, we have been witness to the number of violent attacks and sexual assaults in our own campus. Such events that prompt immediate action and [...]
National childcare for all now!
National statement October 9, 2013 Toronto, ON—With the issue of childcare having long reached a critical point, the National Alliance of Philippine Women in Canada (NAPWC) urgently reiterates their call for a national childcare program that will genuinely meets the needs of working-class women and their families and the scrapping of the racist and anti-woman Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP). As women are faced with a chronically underfunded and increasingly privatized childcare system, it is clear that the existing patchwork of incentive-based government benefits fails to address the fundamental need for national childcare. This is no more evident than in the continued peddling of the LCP as Canada’s de facto childcare program as an exploitative means to liberate one group of women at the expense of another. We firmly reject this current framework wherein childcare is reified into a burden that is relegated onto women from the Third World and wherein all working-class women are denied this fundamental need. Disguised under the rhetoric of “family care,” “care-giving” and “choice,” the Conservative government metes out a paltry $100 a month [...]
Making the Youth Count in Canada’s Future: The Struggle of Young Workers in the Age of Austerity and Neoliberal Globalization
Conference communiqué August 13, 2013 Toronto, ON—On Saturday August 3rd, over 50 youth, students, young workers and allies filled the United Steelworkers Hall to take back their future amidst worsening conditions here in Canada and abroad. Organized by the Ugnayan ng Kabataang Pilipino sa Canada/Filipino Canadian Youth Alliance—Ontario (UKPC/FCYA-ON), the conference titled “Making the Youth Count in Canada’s Future: The Struggle of Young Workers in the Age of Austerity and Neoliberal Globalization” brought together progressive young leaders, professionals and allies to tackle some recent developments that will shape the future for young people in Canada. Blazing a new path, UKPC/FCYA-ON brought new participants together to expose the neoliberal character of capitalist development in Canada and around the world. By looking at the overall economic situation, speakers Emmanuel Sayo, Fay Faraday and Reuben Sarumugam gave a theoretical, political, legal and experiential insight into the development of a neoliberal society and the impacts on workers and young people. Emmanuel Sayo, co-founder of the Kalayaan Resource and Training Centre, reviewed the global situation and the ongoing economic crisis, as well as [...]
Progressive youth stand up to take back their future
August 9, 2013 For immediate release Toronto, ON–Continuing to forge a new path, the Filipino Canadian Youth Alliance/Ugnayan ng Kabataang Pilipino sa Canada—Ontario (UKPC/FCYA-ON) brought together youth, students, young workers, professionals and allies to tackle the continuing assault on workers at the conference titled “Making the Youth Count in Canada’s Future: The Struggle of Young Workers in the Age of Austerity and Neoliberal Globalization,” held this past Saturday, August 3rd. During the one-day conference, youth gathered voices from the progressive left community to talk about the need to organize and to develop a progressive culture amidst the strengthening neoliberal and austerity agenda being pushed in Canada and around the world. Over 50 participants gathered to learn and discuss some of the most pressing issues facing young people today. Some of the speakers included Fay Faraday, a labour, immigration and human rights lawyer; Mike Leitold, an activist and criminal defense lawyer; Gabrielle Fayant, an activist and organizer with Canada’s Indigenous communities, and representatives from Students Against Israeli Apartheid, Karina Francisco and Aizaz Malik. Reuben Sarumugam, a panel speaker and [...]