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	Canada Revenue Agency says ‘preventing poverty’ not allowed as goal for charity by The Canadian Press, agencies Canada   October 2014   800+ Scientists urge greater freedoms for Canadian Government Experts, writes Michael Halpern from the Union of Concerned Scientists.   New restrictions have made it difficult for scientists around the globe to collaborate with Canadian government scientists. In response, more than 800 scientists from 32 countries have signed a letter urging Canadian Prime Minster Stephen Harper to “remove excessive and burdensome restrictions and barriers to scientific communication and collaboration faced by Canadian government scientists.” The letter was published as an advertisement today in the Ottawa Citizen as part of the Government of Canada’s Science and Technology Week.   “Meeting today’s complex environmental and public health challenges requires the full participation of scientists around the globe,” wrote the scientists. “But recent reports highlight a rapid decline in freedoms and funding extended to Canadian government scientists, which make it more difficult for them to continue research, communicate scientific information and expertise, and collaborate internationally.”   In signing the letter, a number of scientists outlined specific problems they had collaborating with Canadian colleagues. “We have had difficulty in the past with [the Department of Fisheries and Oceans] trying to organize joint studies with their scientists as they did not have funds to carry out full scale collaborative studies,” wrote Ken Drinkwater, a senior scientist with Norway’s Institute of Marine Research.   “My colleagues have been severely limited in their ability to travel to meetings and conferences outside of Canada, which has limited communication on projects,” wrote Jennifer Sieracki, a graduate student at the University of Toledo.   The letter comes on the heels of an analysis by Simon Fraser University and Evidence for Democracy showing that many Canadian government media policies hinder “open and timely communication between scientists and reporters.   Further, 73% of government scientists who responded to a survey conducted by the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC) said that new government policies made it difficult to publish their research and collaborate with international colleagues and that new bureaucratic obstacles make it difficult for the scientists to attend important scientific meetings.   “Travel to conferences has been cut to the point where I don’t even bother applying,” said one scientist who responded to the PIPSC survey. “The approval process has become so bogged down with bureaucracy that almost every move has to be approved by the deputy minister…it has come to the point where co-workers often pay their own way to conferences in order to network with long-term colleagues, and maintain their professional level on an international scale.”   Last week, I spoke at the Canadian Science Policy Conference, outlining different steps the U.S. government has taken to improve its scientists’ ability to communicate and collaborate. Several agencies have improved the ability of their scientists to communicate and publish research through scientific integrity and other policies, and Congress has recognized the importance of scientists participating in professional society meetings.   Canadian government scientists have made many critical contributions to our understanding of environmental, security, and public health challenges. Canadian agencies should create conditions that foster and encourage collaboration with scientists around the world.   http://blog.ucsusa.org/800-scientists-urge-greater-freedoms-for-canadian-government-experts-693   * The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Australia"s national science agency is facing unprecedented cutbacks, with 1400 staff to be made redundant: http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2014/s4148028.htm   July 2014   The Canada Revenue Agency has told a well-known charity that it can no longer try to prevent poverty around the world, it can only alleviate poverty – because preventing poverty might benefit people who are not already poor.   The bizarre bureaucratic brawl over a mission statement is yet more evidence of deteriorating relations between the Harper government and some parts of Canada’s charitable sector.   The lexical scuffle began when Oxfam Canada filed papers with Industry Canada to renew its non-profit status, as required by Oct. 17 this year under a law passed in 2011.   Ottawa-based Oxfam initially submitted wording that its purpose as a charity is “to prevent and relieve poverty, vulnerability and suffering by improving the conditions of individuals whose lives, livelihood, security or well-being are at risk.”   The international development group, founded in 1963, spends about $32 million each year on humanitarian relief and aid in Africa, Asia, and Central and South America, with a special emphasis on women’s rights.   But the submission to Industry Canada also needed the approval of the charities directorate of the Canada Revenue Agency, and that’s where the trouble began.   Agency officials informed Oxfam that “preventing poverty” was not an acceptable goal.   “Relieving poverty is charitable, but preventing it is not,” the group was warned. “Preventing poverty could mean providing for a class of beneficiaries that are not poor.”   Oxfam Canada’s executive director called the exchange an “absurd conversation.”   “Their interpretation was that preventing poverty may or may not involve poor people,” Robert Fox said in an interview with The Canadian Press.   “A group of millionaires could get together to prevent their poverty, and that would not be deemed a charitable purpose.”   The Canada Revenue Agency prevailed, and the official declaration to Industry Canada about the purposes of the non-profit corporation dropped any reference to preventing poverty.   “Our mission statement still indicates we’re committed to ending poverty, but our charitable (purposes) do not use the word ‘end’ or ‘prevent’ – they use the word "alleviate."   Philippe Brideau, spokesman for the Canada Revenue Agency, declined to provide information on the disagreement, saying “we do not comment on specific cases.”   Oxfam Canada was singled out for criticism earlier this year by Employment Minister Jason Kenney over the group’s opposition to Israeli settlements in the West Bank.   And in July last year, Oxfam Canada signed a joint letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, taking issue with reports that government officials had been asked to compile “friend and enemy stakeholder” lists to brief new ministers after the summer cabinet shuffle.   Fox said that despite the new “purpose” statement, the group’s programs and activities have not changed.   The contretemps is yet more evidence of frosty relations between the Harper government and some charities, several dozen of which have been targeted since 2012 for audits of their “political activities.”   The Canada Revenue Agency, armed with $13 million in special funding, is currently auditing some 52 groups, many of whom have criticized the Harper government’s programs and policies, especially on the environment.   The list includes Amnesty International Canada, the David Suzuki Foundation, Canada Without Poverty, and the United Church of Canada’s Kairos charity.   Pen Canada, a Toronto charity that advocates for freedom of speech, joined the ranks of the audited just this week. The group has raised alarms about the government’s muzzling of scientists on the public payroll.   Charities have said the CRA campaign is draining them of cash and resources, creating a so-called “advocacy chill” as they self-censor to avoid aggravating auditors or attracting fresh audits. Auditors have the power to strip a charity of its registration, and therefore its ability to issue income-tax receipts, potentially drying up donations.   http://globalnews.ca/news/1472649/canada-revenue-agency-says-preventing-poverty-not-allowed-as-goal-for-charity/ http://www.oxfam.ca/news http://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/the-leader-of-canadas-green-party-marching-for-climate-action-join-her-in-nyc   June 2014   Holding powerful interests to account is one of journalism"s most important missions. It"s critical to democracy and the preservation of human rights.   That"s why the University of Winnipeg and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation organized a conference to bring journalists, academics and the public together from around the world to debate some of the important issues that investigative journalism can help illuminate.   The conference blends seminars and speeches from working journalists with papers and research presentations from academics.   The conference will cover many themes, from the importance of investigative journalism in highlighting basic human rights, to investigating corruption globally, to an examination of criminal justice abuses like wrongful convictions, imprisonments and torture.   Audio recordings of most conference sessions are available on the schedule page. Videos of Carl Bernstein and Peter Mansbridge speeches are also available: http://winnipeg2014.com/
	The Violence unsettling Central America’s Migrant Children by Donna DeCesare Dart Center - Columbia Journalism School   Since June of this year an emergency at the U.S. Mexico border has been unfolding. The most immediate cause is a spike in the numbers of unaccompanied children picked up by the border patrol after making the dangerous and arduous journey from Central America to the United States. But the roots of this humanitarian crisis run much deeper.   Gang violence and organized crime mayhem are major factors in the level of citizen insecurity behind the recent migration trends. Although most news stories have focused on Central American children, it is worth noting that rate of unaccompanied children from Mexico—while lower—is also increasing. A recent report by Mother Jones combines data on the magnitude of the surge in numbers of migrating Central American and Mexican children, discussion of the combination of extreme violence and poverty that these children are fleeing, compelling personal stories, and some discussion of the kind of monitoring and trauma counseling those who are able to stay here will need if they are to thrive.   The crisis and the media coverage have also exposed the fear and fault lines in U.S. communities where emergency shelters for these children are being built. Protestors in Murietta, California, called to mind the ugly confrontations over school busing that plagued U.S. efforts for racial integration of schools in the 1970s. Claims that the Obama administration’s immigration policies are linked to the surge in children seeking asylum have had a polarizing effect on debate. They have little basis in fact, as Carlos Dada, director of the Salvadoran online news service El Faro and one of the best investigative journalists in Central America, can attest.   An excellent research study done in El Salvador last fall involving more than 400 child respondents by Fulbright fellow Elizabeth Kennedy, is available at the American Immigration Council resource page. "No Childhood Here: Why Central American Children Are Fleeing Their Homes" provides clear and incontestable data that child migrants are ignorant of Obama administration policies and are leaving because they are terrified to stay at home. To those who say, “If they are refugees, why aren’t they going to Costa Rica?,” the answer is quite simple. Many are going there, too. The UNDP has reported steep spikes in the numbers of unaccompanied minors flooding into Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Belize from the violence-afflicted nations of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.   The reason that so many more children from those countries choose the life-threatening journey to the United States is that the vast majority of them know someone here. Ever since the Central American civil wars in the 1980s unleashed a flow of migrants fleeing for their lives, the trail has become a well-worn groove and a safety valve response to surges in economic and citizen security crises.   My book Unsettled/Desasosiego published by UT Press in 2013 chronicles the stories of war refugees and describes how deportation policies spread L.A. gangs to Central America. The stories are as chilling as the stories we are hearing from children at the border today. What has changed is that the explosion of crime and violence, related to the inability of the U.S. war on drugs to influence the enormous profits made selling drugs in the U.S. market, has exposed many more children who live in the trafficking nations to a ticking time bomb. It is impossible to make staying at home a safe and desirable option until the violence unleashed by current drug policy failure is addressed.   Despite the opportunism and shrill partisanship dominating the debate in Washington over the amount and allocation of funding needed to address the child migrant emergency, for the first time in a very long time the governability woes that have been worsening in Central America have made it onto Washington’s radar. Americans are taking notice. A recent poll published in Newsweek shows that most Americans want to treat the children arriving at our border as refugees. And as I write, Time’s Lightbox blog has published a compelling set of images documenting the exodus of children leaving Honduras—currently the world’s most violent country.   Certainly Central American nations bear responsibility for weak and often corrupt state institutions and for failure to make any significant progress on the impunity, which renders their judicial systems more decorative than functional. But many Central American citizens feel they have been held hostage to a drug war designed in Washington that can only exacerbate the levels of violence in the context in which they live. If we in the United States fail to recognize that this humanitarian emergency is a symptom of our own failed vision and drug policies, a crisis that requires a thoughtful collaborative long-term response in partnership with our neighbors to the south, we will ensure an even greater crisis ahead.   The Dart Center has a host of resources for those covering the humanitarian crisis on the U.S. southern border: http://dartcenter.org/blog/violence-unsettling-central-america%E2%80%99s-migrant-children#.U_qT42P_J31 http://www.hrw.org/node/129923 http://www.savethechildren.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=8rKLIXMGIpI4E&b=8943369&ct=14420357
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