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blogcutterToday I donated to Evidence for Democracy:
https://evidencefordemocracy.ca
It can be hard to stay reasonably well-informed about Covid-19 - or indeed about ANY of the issues of the day - during a pandemic when our local daily newspaper has shrunk to a shell of its former self, the CBC local news has shrunk from an hour to half an hour, and our opportunities for getting out and seeing the world first hand are severely limited. And yet, informing oneself as best one can and then reflecting on things, exchanging ideas with others, holding our elected representatives to account and formulating a considered but flexible viewpoint, is integral to participating in Canadian society and doing our bit to realize our ideal of what the world might be.
In selecting worthy recipients of my donations, I try to strike a balance between the micro and the macro. The micro category includes things like food banks and help lines - immediate practical help to those in the community most in need of assistance; the macro category includes organizations and foundations working towards larger goals or visions of a better world. While there can certainly be a degree of overlap, I'm considering Evidence for Democracy to fit into the macro group.
Also in that group would be the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, which I contributed to several weeks ago. At that time, I opted to subscribe to their newsletter and just today received in my e-mail a preliminary version ("to be updated and submitted to the CCLA Board and Membership for consideration") of their report Canadian Rights During COVID-19: CCLA's Interim Report on COVID's First Wave. The first half is a kind of report card, grading the various emergency initiatives on the basis of the extent to which they are rational, proportionate and justified in a free and democratic society (the Charter criteria). The second half discusses the impact of the measures in terms of the various marginalized groups and concludes with a forecast of the future of civil liberties in Canada and suggestions as to how we can prevent "a second wave of civil rights violations". I haven't gone through all 60 pages yet but it looks interesting and highly readable.
I'll likely have more to say on both CCLA and Evidence for Democracy in future posts. Both sites are updated regularly and I'll be following them closely.
https://evidencefordemocracy.ca
It can be hard to stay reasonably well-informed about Covid-19 - or indeed about ANY of the issues of the day - during a pandemic when our local daily newspaper has shrunk to a shell of its former self, the CBC local news has shrunk from an hour to half an hour, and our opportunities for getting out and seeing the world first hand are severely limited. And yet, informing oneself as best one can and then reflecting on things, exchanging ideas with others, holding our elected representatives to account and formulating a considered but flexible viewpoint, is integral to participating in Canadian society and doing our bit to realize our ideal of what the world might be.
In selecting worthy recipients of my donations, I try to strike a balance between the micro and the macro. The micro category includes things like food banks and help lines - immediate practical help to those in the community most in need of assistance; the macro category includes organizations and foundations working towards larger goals or visions of a better world. While there can certainly be a degree of overlap, I'm considering Evidence for Democracy to fit into the macro group.
Also in that group would be the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, which I contributed to several weeks ago. At that time, I opted to subscribe to their newsletter and just today received in my e-mail a preliminary version ("to be updated and submitted to the CCLA Board and Membership for consideration") of their report Canadian Rights During COVID-19: CCLA's Interim Report on COVID's First Wave. The first half is a kind of report card, grading the various emergency initiatives on the basis of the extent to which they are rational, proportionate and justified in a free and democratic society (the Charter criteria). The second half discusses the impact of the measures in terms of the various marginalized groups and concludes with a forecast of the future of civil liberties in Canada and suggestions as to how we can prevent "a second wave of civil rights violations". I haven't gone through all 60 pages yet but it looks interesting and highly readable.
I'll likely have more to say on both CCLA and Evidence for Democracy in future posts. Both sites are updated regularly and I'll be following them closely.
