Edmonton Briefs - April

Homeless Connect held next month

May 9 marks the fourth Homeless Connect event to be held at the Shaw Conference Centre.  Homeless Connect Edmonton is a broad-based community-inspired initiative, providing free appropriate services to homeless people and those at risk of becoming homeless, on one day and at one location. Services include mental health assessments, library services, foot care, haircuts, immunizations, birth control, pre-natal support, laundry, housing information, employment and training services. The mission of Homeless Connect is to provide services that help open doors out of homelessness, build lasting partnerships, raise public awareness of homelessness in the community, and provide a vehicle for community involvement in addressing the issue of homelessness. A second Homeless Connect will be held in October.

Priest active in Aboriginal community passes away

Father Michael Troy passed away on March 19 at the age of 92. He died at Royal Alexandra Hospital after a fight with cancer. Father Troy was active in the Aboriginal community and is credited with founding the first Edmonton Archdiocesan Native Ministry. Father Troy was born in 1917 in Dublin, Ireland. In the late 1950s, he travelled to Toronto to open a new school, then headed west in 1964 to Edmonton where he settled. There is a school in Edmonton’s southeast named after him.

Housing opportunities combine with volunteer hours

Opportunities for off-reserve housing for First Nations people in Edmonton and surrounding area is being provided through a partnership between the First Nations Technical Services Advisory Group and Habitat for Humanity Edmonton. Homes are located in northeast Edmonton and are to be sold at cost with no interest. Criteria to qualify for the housing includes present housing being substandard or being rented at more than 40 per cent of the renter’s income and a gross annual income between $32,000 and $54,000. Volunteers hours (supplied by the new home owner, family or friends) are being accepted in place of cash down payment. Jeremy Makokis, of First Nations Technical Services Advisory Group can be reached at (780) 483-8601 for more information.

Local social workers encouraged to take up the fight for equality

Alberta social workers have been urged to get involved in fighting for equal funding for Aboriginal children in care on reserves. Cindy Blackstock, executive director of the Ottawa-based First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada, met with nearly 900 Edmonton social workers on March 19 to urge them to get involved. She is quoted in the Edmonton Journal as saying, “Government funding inequalities create a perfect storm of disadvantage for Aboriginal kids. We end up with a two-tiered system.” In February 2007, Blackstock helped launch a federal human rights complaint to try and get equal funding. She noted that today there were three times as many Aboriginal children in foster care than attended residential schools at their peak. Figures are staggering. In Alberta, Children’s Services Minister Yvonne Fritz said that 65 per cent of the children in care are Aboriginal.

Deregulation concerns voiced at water roundtable

Edmonton was the site of a roundtable recently hosted by the Council of Canadians bringing over a dozen Alberta environmental, social justice, labour and First Nations groups together to discuss the threat of water markets in Alberta. Representatives of the Treaty 8 and Treaty 6 First Nations attended along with CUPE Alberta, Treaty Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, Public Interest Alberta, Sierra Club, the Environmental Law Centre, the Parkland Institute and members of landowner and surface rights groups. In 2008, the government announced a review of the current water allocation system and commissioned three reports, all of which recommended deregulated markets allowing for water licenses to be transferred without public oversight. Meeting attendees voiced concern over the government’s lack of public consultation. First Nations groups have not been consulted in the process so far and the Assembly of First Nations has publicly declared markets a violation of First Nations Treaty rights.

Compiled by Shari Narine