September 22, 2008. Dale Brazao Toronto Star

Catherine Manuel came to Canada as a live-in nanny to care for 8-year-old Brent of Toronto. She ended up changing beds, cleaning toilets and painting the decks at the Whispering Pines bed and breakfast in Jackson’s Point, on the shores of Lake Simcoe.  Manuel was promised about $420 a week to care for young Brent, with weekends and holidays off. Instead, she was underpaid and worked “morning, noon and night” as a cleaner, servant and handywoman.

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By Carlito Pablo, August 21. Georgia Straight

With the low rental-vacancy rates in Metro Vancouver, it’s tough enough to find a place that’s suitable and affordable. Imagine what’s it like for a single mom with six children ranging in age from eight to 19. She can hardly read or write English. She and her brood have never lived in a western city before but have spent about 10 years in refugee camps in Kenya. They arrived in the country only about eight months ago. This is the situation Congolese refugee Bitisho Bembeleza has to contend with, and, according to the 35-year-old mother, it makes her cry every day.

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by Geordie Gwalgen Dent The Dominion – http://www.dominionpaper.ca

“I feel great,” mused Abdul Husseini, a server at the Holiday Inn restaurant on Toronto’s airport strip. On July 15, he was in the middle of a hotel walkout, part of a series of spontaneous rolling strikes aimed at securing an agreement in three Toronto airport hotels. Two weeks and one strike later, tentative agreements had been reached at all three hotels. Victory for Husseini’s union, UNITE HERE Local 75, was the result of an intense and aggressive campaign, targeting the remaining three member hotels without a contract: the Radisson, Holiday Inn and Fairmont Royal York. Most of the UNITE HERE hotels in Toronto had already settled with the Local 75 “standard contract,” according to Husseini, but Westmont Hospitality Group, who owns or operates these three hotels, had been holding out since 2007, leaving their staff some of the worst paid on the airport strip. “Cooks in my restaurant are paid $4 less than other hotels,” said Husseini.

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Amy Luft, Christopher Maughan and Julia Kilpatrick. The Gazette. Monday, August 11, 2008

The mother of an 18-year-old shot and killed by a police officer in broad daylight is demanding explanations from the Montreal police force. But people in the neighbourhood where Fredy Villenueva was fatally wounded weren’t waiting for explanations last night. Their fury erupted into a riot in Montreal North, with knots of protesters roaming the streets and setting fire to cars and garbage barricades. The Montreal riot police squad was called out, and hundreds of officers formed a perimeter four or five blocks away from the Ground Zero at Rolland Blvd. and Pascal St.

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Refugees Welcome? Families flee to Canada for better lives, but the debt incurred makes it hard. Now advocates want policies changed to ease the process
 
Suzanne Ahearne. Vancouver Sun. Thursday, July 24, 2008

VANCOUVER – Phillipo Kijori-Amisi remembers the day he decided not to wait for peace to return to his native Burundi. He, his wife and infant son had fled from Hutu-Tutsi violence more than three years before and had ended up in a refugee camp in neighbouring Tanzania. His wife had given birth to two more babies and now they were five mouths to feed, in a country whose resources were already bursting from playing host to more than 470,000 Burundians in a decade of war. He earned bits of money for extra food and water by repairing watches and radios for international personnel overseeing the camp.Then, he was badly beaten and had his fingers broken in an outbreak of violence in the camp. From his home in Vancouver where he and his wife Anitha Ngendakuriyo now live, he recalls the desperation he felt: “I asked them [UN staff] to help send me to another country. … There was a meeting and it was decided that maybe the Canadian government could take us.”

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