Libby in the News

There was cautious optimism Thursday in response to the federal government's promise of $10 million over two years to address the issue of hundreds of missing and murdered native women in Canada. "It's a start, because five and 10 years ago, the issue of missing and murdered aboriginal women in Canada never passed the lips of a single cabinet minister, that I'm aware of, over all those years," said Ernie Crey, whose sister Dawn disappeared from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside in 2000....Vancouver East NDP MP Libby Davies, whose riding includes the Downtown Eastside where 64 women disappeared from 1978 to 2001, said the solution to this epidemic cannot come solely through "a criminal justice lens."

Canada's showcase home pavilion at the 2010 Winter Olympics is a fine example of German engineering. The Canada Pavilion tent was not made in Canada, but rather manufactured in Germany by the Losberger Group and hastily assembled for the Games. NDP MP Libby Davies said it is disappointing that "something as symbolic" as the country's Olympic pavilion couldn't be Canadianmade. "What strikes me is people everywhere are so proud wearing Canadian jackets. It feels embarrassing that the Canadian government couldn't take the time to buy Canadian," said the Vancouver East MP.

Hundreds of homeless and poverty protesters -- using the Olympic spotlight to their advantage -- flooded into a vacant lot in the 100-block of West Hastings Street on Monday and erected a tent city. Libby Davies, NDP MP for Vancouver East, said she supported the tent city as a way to raise awareness for greater government support, especially by a federal government in need of a national housing strategy to help the poor and homeless.... "This is a prime site for social housing," she said. "I'm so happy so many people are here today to draw attention to this issue. It's a vacant lot and it's very visible, a symbol of what's going on in this neighbourhood."

OTTAWA — Opposition parties say Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s office has gone too far with hyper-partisan attacks, and it’s time to apologize and play fair. Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff demanded Thursday that Harper say sorry for a Conservative party email circulated by the Prime Minister’s Office that depicted one of the country’s top bankers as a shill for the Liberal party. And the NDP called on Harper to rein in his main spokesman, Dimitri Soudas, whom it accused of making “reckless and conspiratorial partisan smears.” The NDP complaint came on the heels of Soudas accusing New Democrat MP Libby Davies of encouraging a Vancouver protest Wednesday which he said endangered the lives of children, war vets and other Chinese Canadians who were awaiting a visit from the prime minister.... Soudas fired off emails to all reporters in the national press gallery accusing Davies, who had tweeted about the “impressive“ turnout,“ of encouraging protesters to block the exits... “It’s turned into a day of almost terror for local seniors, children, veterans,” he wrote....Davies participated in the protest but said she didn’t organize it and had no knowledge that exits had been blocked. Vancouver police said they removed the chains and tape, made no arrests and allowed the protest to continue without further incident.

Federal Justice Minister Rob Nicholson, who is pushing the government's tough on crime agenda and plans to revive the bill on mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes in the next Parliamentary session, did not support the proposed law when he was a Mulroney backbencher. In 1988, Mr. Nicholson vice-chaired a Parliamentary committee that released a report recommending mandatory minimum sentences not be used, except in the case of repeat violent sexual offenders. The committee found, based on testimony and the U.S. experience, that the law didn't work and increases prison populations....NDP MP Libby Davies (Vancouver East, B.C.), whose party voted against Bill C-15, said Mr. Nicholson's zest for introducing mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes is purely political.

A sports arena is not the place to do the people's business, federal cabinet minister James Moore declared yesterday, as he strongly distanced his government from British Columbia's contentious policy of buying up nearly $1-million worth of Olympic tickets, including many in private suites, for the use of provincial politicians and prospective investors. "They are free to take that approach," Mr. Moore said, "but I certainly don't plan on doing any government business in the stands of a hockey game. In my judgment, I don't think that's realistic." Opposition MPs have spurned even that, arguing that it is not right for MPs to have special access to Olympic tickets, regardless of whether they pay for them...Added Libby Davies of the NDP: "We decided we did not want any preferential treatment, where the public could not get tickets. So we declined them."

Prorogation means no Parliament on Monday, but that doesn't mean a reprieve from politics. There will be no official debates, no Question Period, no committee meetings, no discussion of consequence about Canada and its future. But there will be press conferences – a slew of them – as parties aim to seize political advantage while Parliament is suspended.

The B.C. Court of Appeal has dismissed a federal government appeal of an exemption granted InSite, Vancouver's supervised-injection site, which means the facility -- the first of its kind in Canada -- will remain open. The federal government is expected to appeal Friday's ruling, a split 2-1 decision that carries an automatic right of appeal, to the Supreme Court of Canada. Dr. Julio Montaner, president of the International AIDS Society, called Friday's court ruling "a tremendous victory for [those of] us involved in the Downtown Eastside. It sends a very clear message to [Prime Minister] Stephen Harper and his draconian policies." New Democrat MP for Vancouver East Libby Davies told the rally that the federal government should not waste further time and money on an appeal.

VANCOUVER -- The B.C. Court of Appeal has dismissed a federal government appeal, which means InSite, the Vancouver supervised safe-injection site that was the first of its kind in Canada, will remain open. The federal government is expected to appeal Friday's split 2-1 ruling to the Supreme Court of Canada. Dr. Julio Montaner, president of the International AIDS Society, called Friday's court ruling "a tremendous victory for us involved in the Downtown Eastside. It sends a very clear message to [Prime Minister] Stephen Harper and his draconian policies." Vancouver East MP Libby Davies told the rally that federal government should not waste further time and money on an appeal. "They need to think about common sense here," she said.

It will never get the attention of the official Olympic torch relay, but Sunday a generic wooden spoon changed hands near the Olympic Countdown Clock in downtown Vancouver. On the receiving end was New Democratic Party MP Libby Davies, who becomes the 55th participant in the 2010 Homelessness Hunger Strike Relay, a low-key handoff that will see Davies stick to a liquid-only diet for a week in order to raise awareness of homelessness as the 2010 Winter Olympics loom large.

Stephen Harper will revive a contentious plan to reform the Senate after Parliament resumes in March, setting the stage for a showdown with the opposition and a handful of provinces over whether senators should be elected and held to term limits. New Democratic MP Libby Davies argued that after Mr. Harper moved to shut down Parliament in December, Canadians will be skeptical that the Prime Minister is really interested in democratic reform. “He wants to control committees in the Senate, he wants to get away from the Afghan detainees issue in the Commons,” she said. “When he puts [Senate reform] out there as some kind of democratic priority, I think it's laughable.”

As the NDP House leader, lesbian MP Libby Davies is in charge of her party's day-to-day business in the Commons. The trouble is, it's difficult to do that job when you're effectively shut out of work for two months. On Dec 30, Prime Minister Stephen Harper phoned the Governor General to request prorogation — ending the current session of Parliament — with an eye to a new throne speech on Mar 3 and a budget speech the following day.

The Conservative government has shut down Parliament for two months, until after the Vancouver Winter Olympics. Prime Minister Stephen Harper telephoned Gov. Gen. Michaëlle Jean on Wednesday to ask her permission to end the parliamentary session. Jean signed the proclamation later that day, granting his request. The move triggered immediate condemnation from opposition MPs who labelled the Conservative government's move an "almost despotic" attempt to muzzle parliamentarians amid controversy over the Afghan detainees affair.....NDP House Leader Libby Davies said she was "appalled" by Harper's decision and accused the prime minister of "running from" opposition demands for a public inquiry into what and when the government knew about allegations of torture of detainees transferred into Afghan custody by Canadian soldiers in 2006. "By proroguing Parliament, he is unilaterally making a decision to stop any kind of disclosure from happening," Davies told CBC News from Vancouver.

Canada’s Prince of Pot finds great irony in his pending extradition south of the border. “They’re going to legalize marijuana in California, in Nevada, and much of the United States very soon,” Marc Emery noted in a phone interview with the Georgia Straight. “It’s quite possible I’ll be incarcerated even though I’m one of the people who provided the wherewithal for all these legalization movements to happen. I’ll be in jail being persecuted while they’re out, Americans are actually out, celebrating.”

Delta-Richmond East Conservative MP John Cummins supports the HST, but says Premier Gordon Campbell is using it to gouge B.C. residents. The harmonized sales tax moved closer to reality in B.C. and Ontario last week after the House of Commons voted in favour of the tax. The Liberals and Bloc Quebecois backed the Conservative government's motion for an amendment to the Excise Tax Act. The NDP was in opposition....Asking why the Conservative government is trying to ram through the HST bill, NDP Deputy Leader Libby Davies (Vancouver-East) said, "It seems like Mr. (Prime Minister Stephen) Harper is pulling a page out of Mr. Campbell's playbook. Mislead, obfuscate and try limit public debate on the HST."

Speaking at UBC's Liu Institute on Thurs. Nov. 26, Miloon Kothari, a former UN Special Rapporteur, called for Canada to give greater legal recognition to housing rights and to undertake a national housing strategy. Mr. Kothari is the author of the 2007 UN Human Rights Council Report on Adequate Housing in Canada. Kothari cited the Montreal Charter as a positive example which requires the city and its partners to take appropriate housing measures. He noted that a private member's bill submitted by Vancouver MP Libby Davies calls for a national housing strategy and has currently passed second reading in the House of Commons.

A leading Palestinian activist has said that it may be time to dissolve the Palestinian Authority and “dump the occupation back at Israel’s doorstep”. Huwaida Arraf is a Palestinian-American Christian and founding member of the International Solidarity Movement. She told the Straight that the disintegration of the Palestinian territories’ governing party could be the best thing for its people. “Creating the Palestinian Authority, in a way, relieved Israel of a lot of the obligations of an occupying power,” she explained in a telephone interview from New York City. “They kind of relieved themselves of the minuscule administrative tasks and, at the same time, can [now] blame the Palestinian Authority for a lot of things that are not even in its control.”

OTTAWA — Members of Parliament are scrambling to climb aboard the Twitter bandwagon - and getting elbowed by controversial, satirical and even phoney postings. Victims of fake Twitter accounts now include Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Senator Mike Duffy, the former CTV journalist. And satirical accounts currently make fun of NDP Leader Jack Layton's moustache and Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff's cat. As for controversy, Liberal MP Michelle Simson recently had to apologize to Tory MP Dean Del Mastro after tweeting the following during a committee meeting: "In committee this morning. M.P. Del Mastro should grow up (not out)." That was followed by: "Gosh, I hate to see a grown M.P. pout. Smile, Dean." The incident prompted New Democrat MP Charlie Angus to complain Twitter has been turning MPs into Grade 9 cheerleaders and jocks in the school cafeteria. Despite the pitfalls and embarrassments, politicians say social networking is an effective way to connect with constituents and others.

A recently released guidebook for new immigrants, Discover Canada, is a mixed bag of trivia and ideology. The handbook has an explicit section on gender equality, where it condemns the "barbaric cultural practices" of spousal abuse, honour killings and female genital mutilation. There is a section on diversity that gives a shout out to atheism but leaves out gays or lesbians. Queer people are relegated to a sidebar next to a photo of Mark Tewksbury, in the section devoted to sports, arts and culture. And that has MPs shaking their heads. "I always worried that it was more of a political, ideological message more than anything else," says lesbian NDP MP Libby Davies of the guide.