I helped to organizean all candidates meeting last night in my riding on behalf of the Stouffville Ministerial, which represents the 21 local churches.
Our aim for the All-Candidates Meeting was to provide an information forum (not debate) to hear where candidates stand on issues of concern to the churches and the local community. We wanted to provide the opportunity for the churches and parishes of our community to positively engage the political process.
The following questions for the MP candidates were developed for the event after extensive consultation with the Stouffville churches. The fifth and final draft (below) was submitted to candidates on Saturday, April 23 and each of the candidates had a chance to respond to them at the event (shout out to Arnold Neufeldt-Fast for doing most of the leg work on the questions).
Also, be sure to check out a series of elections guides produced by Canadian Churches.
Also, be sure to check out a series of elections guides produced by Canadian Churches.
Section 1: Respect for life and human dignity
1. Prisons and Corrections
a. Preamble: The churches believe that God calls human beings “to do justice and to love mercy.” Last year in Stouffville, the York Regional Police Chief to Town Council that crime was down 7%, and called us “one of Canada’s safest communities.”[1]The volume and severity of crimes across Canada has also been dropping, for which we give thanks.[2] Yet when a crime happens, victims, offenders, families and the public are all in need of healing. Incarceration alone does not meet victims’ needs for healing or a sense of safety. A number of our churches have been pioneers in the restorative justice movement which allows offenders to take responsibility for the impact of their behaviour on other people and, in many cases, enables closure and resolution to conflict.[3]
b. Question: In what ways might the government of Canada invest in resources in order to promote safe communities, bring healing to victims, and to help prisoners become productive citizens?
Section 2: Desire to build a more just society
2. Poverty reduction in Canada
a. Preamble: The way we treat the poor and the needy in our society is a central concern for all Christian churches. According to the manager of the W-S Food Bank, the number of clients has doubled in the past year, and affordable housing is a key problem and a cause of great stress for many families in this region. These are very real concerns for our churches locally and nationally.[4]
b. Question: How will you and your party work to make poverty reduction in Canada a priority?
3. Right relationships with First Nations People
a. Preamble: Our churches are on a journey of truth and reconciliation with Aboriginal peoples in Canada. We are all settlers and beneficiaries of land that is not our own. Recently our town learned that Stouffville was home to the largest Huron settlement in the lower Great Lakes region.[5] Yet in the last two hundred years, First Nations peoples have been regularly stripped of their culture and dignity, and have not benefited from the prosperity of our region and our country. For example, federally funded reserve schools receive about $2000 less per student funding annually than provincial schools. The 2010 UN State of the World's Indigenous Peoples report states that in Canada, “key socio-economic indicators for Aboriginal people are unacceptably lower than for non-Aboriginal Canadians."
b. Question: In November 2010 Canada endorsed the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. What commitment will you and your party make to bring Aboriginal people in Canada up to the socio-economic standards of ordinary Canadians?
Section 3: Promoting the integrity of the person and the family
4. Family
a. Preamble: We believe that God has established families to provide physical, emotional and spiritual care for their members. Today Canadian families are increasingly under stress, and family breakdown is common. In Ontario, for example, one person is divorced or separated for every five people legally married.[6] Stressors are many, and may include low paid work and financial insecurity, the need to care both for dependent children and elderly parents, the wait to reunite an immigrant family, etc.
b. Question: What particular policy will you propose to reduce the stress on families and to promote the integrity of the family?
Section 4: Canada in the world: providing leadership for justice and peace
5. Military
a. Preamble: The first settlers of the villages of Markham and Stouffville were Mennonites from Pennsylvania. They, and the many Quakers who also pioneered in this riding, were people of peace who came to Upper Canada critical of early American militarism. Many of the people in this room are descendents of these first pacifist settlers. We know from our international relief work that security preparedness involves more than military capacity. It includes adequate funding for development, democracy promotion, disarmament, and diplomacy (5Ds). Currently, Canadian government security spending is weighted heavily towards military defence, while projected non-military expenditures on diplomacy and development are frozen or being reduced. This is a concern to many of the churches
b. Question: How will your party work towards a vision of international peace?
6. Addressing Poverty Globally
a. Preamble: Our churches believe that every person is created in the image of God, and therefore it is God’s desire that no person should go hungry. To address global hunger, fifteen Canadian church denominations are partners in the Canadian Foodgrains Bank. The farmers of Oak Ridges-Markham are perhaps the largest donors of crops to the Canadian Foodgrains Bank on a per capita basis.[7] Our town also partners with Igoma, Tanzania, and this month organized a “Food for Thought” fundraiser. CBM, a major Christian relief agency is located in town, and the Give a Day to World Aids movement also has its roots in Stouffville. In short, meeting the challenge of global hunger and investing in international development is a concern of this community.
The UN member states, including Canada, agreed on eight UN Millennium Development Goals to be reached by 2015. These goals reflect integral values of the churches – to feed the hungry, care for the sick, and strive for justice for the oppressed.
b. Question: What commitment will you and your party make to help Canada become a leader in meeting the Millennium Development Goals? What commitment will you and your party make to help Canada become a leader in meeting the Millennium Development Goals?
7. Refugee Policy
a. Preamble: Our churches are compelled by scripture to care for the homeless and the foreigner, the hungry and thirsty. Consequently, all of our churches are involved with relief work overseas, and in the opportunity of offering hospitality to newcomers and refugees to Canada. Today, there are more people who have been forcibly displaced from their homes than ever before (approximately 42 million).[8] Yet at the same time, there has been a serious decline in the number of refugees admitted to Canada in the past years, as well as the number of family reunification migrants.[9] This concerns us.
b. Question: How will you and your party uphold Canada’s humanitarian and international obligation to provide protection to thousands of refugees every year? How will you ensure this is done?
Section 5: A healthy country in a healthy environment (creation care)
8. Climate Justice
a. Preamble: The churches believe that humans are called to be stewards of God’s good creation (Gen 1:28). Our town has lived through two significant environmental crises. Because of unregulated forestry in Whitchurch Township in the 1800s, by 1910 only 7% of forests remained standing. As a result, the land suffered from soil erosion, desertification and cycles of flash spring floods and summer droughts—and the town’s main industry collapsed.[10] Today we have the thriving Vivian Forestbecause of the Reforestation Act of 1911.
In the 1960s and 70s our town became Toronto’s dumpsite for liquid industrial and solid waste. Young mothers noticed that the town’s miscarriage and birth defect rate was much higher than the provincial average. With little oversight, the well-being of families in our town was shaken.[11]
Today, many of us are concerned when plans for growth, wealth, and consumption are not sustainable and come at the cost of environmental destruction and increased human suffering—locally and nationally, and globally. Our churches are recovering the important biblical mandate of creation care.
b. Question: What would you and your party do to show leadership in environmental stewardship so that we can bequeath a sustainable and healthy environment to future generations, locally and globally?
[1] Cited in Stouffville Sun-Tribune (Aug. 19, 2010), 4 (print version only). See also "Canada's Most Dangerous Cities," Macleans, October 14, 2010, which ranks York Region 95 out 100 (i.e., fifth safest place in Canada).
[2] “Crime decreased again last year,” CBC News (July 20, 2010),http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2010/07/20/crime-statistics020.html, accessedApril 12, 2011.
[3] See the following denominational election kits: CCC 3, CCCB 1, CCJC, ELCIC 2, MENN, SA, and UCC 14.
[5] See “Mantle Site; Wendat (Huron) Ancestral Village,”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantle_Site,_Wendat_%28Huron%29_Ancestral_Village
[7] According to Stouffville farmer Richard Reesor (email correspondence), who also volunteers one-quarter of his time with CFGB and Mennonite Central Committee on food-security issues in Kenya; see: http://www.agcanada.com/Article.aspx?ID=14979.
[11] “Birth Defects Mystery,” New Scientist (July 18, 1981): 137; The Sorry Saga of Stouffville's Polluted Water (Mar 18, 1982), 700; Legislative Assembly of Ontario,Proceedings, April 6, 1982; H. Rosenberg, “The Kitchen and the Multinational Corporation: An analysis of the links between the household and global corporations,” Journal of Business Ethics 6 (1987): 179f.; Globe and Mail (May 12, 1982).
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