Returning to Humanity: Human Rights and Dignity through Income Security and Housing
Guest speakers
Tom Cooper, Director of the Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction and co-founder of the Ontario Living Wage Network
Shannon Down, Executive Director of Waterloo Region Community Legal Services
Sujit Choudhry, Lawyer, Constitutional Law
About the forum
After three years of holding our Religious Leader’s Forum online, we are once again gathering in person at Queens Park to share stories and insights and hear the wisdom of guest speakers. It is an opportunity for us to renew the fellowship of our interfaith connections and to network with colleagues who join us from across the province.
This year, our theme is “Returning to Humanity: Human Rights and Dignity through Income Security and Housing” and we will be joined by Rabbi Ryan Leszner of Darchei Noam Reconstructionist Synagogue who will provide our opening theological reflection.
For more than 30 years ISARC has examined provincial social policy and legislation and raised concerns about income security issues and housing and homelessness.
Recently, as the economic gap has grown even wider and more and more people are pushed to the margins, it has become painfully clear that deplorable rates and inadequate programs are symptoms of an even greater challenge: an unravelling of basic human rights for unhoused and unemployed citizens of our province.
Increasingly a distinction is being made between “citizens” and “homeless people.” Dismantling of encampments, indifference to the basic needs of the most vulnerable and efforts to force migration of homeless or newcomer populations out of neighbourhoods and municipalities has entrenched an attitude of viewing the poorest among us as “problems” to be dealt with.
Currently the “criminalization of the homeless” in BC and Ontario has become part of an investigation by the United Nations. It is time for us to look beyond rates and housing programs to examine underlying attitudes and tolerance of human rights violations which are affecting public policy and social programs.
As always, we find that when we come together to share hard truths, we discover a renewed energy to work together for justice and change.