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President's Report June 2003 Dr. Ailsa Watkinson provided a summary of her activities for the year as the CAEFS' President. Her activities included a trip to Vancouver to meet with the Board of Directors of the Elizabeth Fry Society of Greater Vancouver, and a visit to the Burnaby Correctional Centre for Women in the fall. Ailsa also participated in the Inquest Working Group, along with representatives of the Council of Elizabeth Fry Societies of Ontario (CEFSO), the Elizabeth Fry Society of Sudbury, the National Anti-Poverty Organization (NAPO), the Women's Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF) and the National Association of Women and the Law (NAWL). For more information regarding the details of the Inquest into the Death of Kimberly Rogers visit the following web site: http://dawn.thot.net/Kimberly_Rogers. Prior to the February meeting of the Board of Directors, and along with the Past President and Executive Director, Ailsa also met with senior policy staff and the Minister, the Solicitor General of Canada. This winter and spring there were a number of meetings and quite a bit of work on the development of CAEFS' submissions to the Canadian Human Rights Commission regarding the systemic review of the human rights violations experienced by federally sentenced women. The impetus for CAEFS' to seek and secure this review was the filing of a complaint by the Elizabeth Fry Society of Saskatchewan in 2000. After that, the Board decided that CAEFS should broaden the initiative to a national level and so the request for a systemic review and special report were made on International Women's Day, March 8, 2001. CAEFS and other equality-seeking national groups formed a coalition to provide input regarding the systemic human rights investigation by the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC). In addition to a February 7, 2003 presentation to the CHRC, on May 13, 2003, CAEFS and other national equality-seeking groups presented our written submissions to the Commission. We announced this the following day at a press conference on Parliament Hill. All of the written materials are available on the CAEFS' web site - www.elizabethfry.ca. On May 14th, 2003, the same day as the press conference, the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) was called before the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee to report on the CSC's response to Chapter 4 of the Auditor General's Report. Lucie McClung, Nancy Stableforth and Larry Motiuk represented CSC at the hearing. In addition, many other CSC staff also attended the hearing. The Committee asked many questions and raised their concerns based upon the press releases they had received that morning from us and the other national groups. In her response to these questions, Commissioner McClung stated that, while she disagreed with CAEFS, CSC has an active and ongoing relationship with individual local Elizabeth Fry members. Ailsa raised the concerns that she and other Board members have regarding the manner in which this represents attempts by CSC to interfere with the strength of our organization by trying to divide the membership. Ailsa further reported that, in her capacity as a member of the International Association of Schools of Social Work, she presented a paper she entitled, The Second Coming. The paper examines the current trend of the government to download responsibilities to community-based organizations, and the resulting increased reliance on faith-based organizations, particularly in the context of prison services and programs. In order to help publicize the cultural and religious biases inherent in such programming, Kim and Ailsa will also present a paper at the Social Welfare and Policy conference in June 2003. Ailsa thanked Kim for all her work this year and for the past 11 years and for her demonstrated commitment to capacity building within CAEFS and amongst community-based services, as well as women with the lived experience of criminalization. Ailsa also announced that Dawn McBride is retiring from the CAEFS' Board and thanked her for her mentorship and many years of dedicated service and leadership of CAEFS. Dawn will be greatly missed, but has agreed to continue on with CAEFS providing pro-bono services. Ailsa also thanked Paula King and the Elizabeth Fry Society of Simcoe County for organizing the CAEFS' AGM this year. |
