Elusiveness of a Just Society in Canada: Causes and Solutions | Panel

You're invited to a historic and illustrious panel discussion on the elusiveness of a just society in Canada for all.

For many, Canada is drifting without the apparent political will to redress worsening problems of economc disintegration involving a growing "working poor" and homelessness; institutionalized racism; and oppression of the very ability of express our expressions of profound oppression which subverts the very integrity of our Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Our panelists come together to collectively identify the root causes of growing injustices in society and how we can solve them together to rejuvenate the Canadian Dream for all.

Here are bios of our panelists:

Reverend Alexa Gilmour

Rev. Gilmour, is a passionate human rights activist, writer, United Church of Canada minister, and founder of the Contagious Hope Network. She focuses on intersectional coalition building in order to break down silos and invite individuals to meet the basic needs of their neighbour and advocate for systemic change. She has received awards and recognition for her work from all levels of government and civil society. Her writing has been featured in Broadview Magazine, The United Church of Canada’s Anti-Racism campaign, and a book chapter called “Public Witness in the Local Congregation,” in For the Sake of the Common Good (McGill-Queen’s U Press, 2022).

The Hon. Maxime Bernier

Maxime Bernier is known as a dependable politician who speaks his mind. A man of ideas, his belief in personal responsibility and freedom is at the heart of his political vision. In his public statements, he expresses those values and his unwavering commitment to reducing the size of government.
Mr. Bernier is a dedicated and experienced runner and has participated in several marathons. A tough and determined competitor, he once ran 106 km across his constituency, completing the run in 13 hours and raising $165,000 for the Beauce food bank.
In 1985, Mr. Bernier earned a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the Université du Québec à Montréal and entered Law at the University of Ottawa. He was called to the Quebec Bar in 1990.
Mr. Bernier has a long-standing interest in business and during his career worked for several financial and banking institutions before becoming Executive Vice-President of the Montreal Economic Institute in 2005.
Many people in the region encouraged him to enter politics. He took up the challenge and was elected Member of Parliament for Beauce on January 23, 2006, with the largest majority outside Alberta (he will remain MP of the constituency until 2019). He was appointed to Cabinet on February 6, 2006, as Minister of Industry.
Mr. Bernier also served as Minister of Foreign Affairs from August 14, 2007 to May 26, 2008.
He was re-elected to represent Beauce on October 14, 2008, again receiving the largest majority of all MPs in Quebec.
Re-elected on May 2, 2011, he was appointed Minister of State for Small Business and Tourism.
Maxime Bernier was re-elected a fourth time in November, 2015, receiving more than 59% of the vote.
On August 23, 2018, he left the Conservative Party of Canada to sit as an independent MP and announced the launch of a new party.

Imam Syed Soharwardy

A Sunni scholar, a shaykh of the Suhrawardi Sufi order, chairman of the Al-Madinah Calgary Islamic Assembly, and is the founder and current president of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada. In January 1998, he founded the group Muslims Against Terrorism.

• Studied Islamic sciences at Darul Uloom Soharwardia, Karachi and started as the assistant Imam at the Jamia

Baghdadi Masjid, Martin Road, Karachi at the age of 17 years (1972).

• Have four degrees in Engineering including two master’s degrees from US and Canada.

• Walked across Canada and led “Multi-Faith Walk Against Violence” covering 6,500KM in seven months. This walk helped in explaining Islam and exposing terrorists, which helped in removing misunderstandings about Islam and Muslims to thousands of Canadians. (2008)

• Founded Muslims Against Terrorism in 1997 in Calgary, which became a worldwide movement after the tragedy of 9/11/2001 in New York.

• Founder of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada (ISCC), which is a national Islamic organization in Canada and has more than 34 affiliated mosques, Islamic Centres, and foodbanks from Nova Scotia to British Columbia.

• Chairman of 12 registered charities, which manage mosques, and halal Foodbanks and provide community services in major cities of Canada.

• Authored a book, “Defeating Hate – A Comprehensive Rebutal to Taleban, AlQaeda, ISIS, and Islamophobes.

• Published the first Canadian National Muslim Newspaper, “Muslim Free Press” in April 2016 from four Canadian cities; Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, and Vancouver.

• Having more than two decades of track record of speaking up against racism, Islamophobia, and antisemitism, and defending the rights of Muslims and other minorities. Since 1997 remained engaged with the mainstream national Canadian media to create awareness about Islam and speak against Islamophobia.

• After the tragedy of 9/11 ran an Islam awareness campaign, “Islam 101” in Calgary and across Canada and presented the true teachings of Islam to Canadians, which helped Canadians in learning the peaceful and common-sense teachings of the Islamic faith.

• Travel across Canada and participate in Interfaith dialogues at mosques, churches, synagogues, temples, and public places. These dialogues have helped significantly in reducing Islamophobia in Alberta and across Canada.

• Led the group of more than 35 Canadian Imams and Islamic scholars issuing Fatwa (religious edicts) against, o Extremism and violence against Canada and the United States. o Honour Killings, Domestic Violence, and Misogyny Are Un-Islamic and Major Crimes. o Historic Islamic Edict (Fatwa) on Joining ISIS/ISIL.

o Forced and Underage Marriages Are Un-Islamic.

• Founding member of the Interfaith Council of Calgary and the Jewish Muslim Council of Calgary.

• Appeared in front of the Senate’s Standing Commitee on National Defence and Security and provided my opinions on radicalization and extremism.

• Currently building K.G. to high school in Calgary, Alberta. The Green Dome Islamic School will start in the Fall of 2024.

• The land to build a Muslim cemetery, low-income housing, and an Islamic university, 100 acres of land has been purchased in Calgary. The land use change application is under review with Rocky View County.

Angella McEwen

Ms. MacEwen is a Senior Economist at CUPE National. Her primary focus is understanding the impacts of Canadian economic and social policy on workers, especially climate policy and international trade and investment treaties.. Angella holds a MA in Economics (Dalhousie) and a BA in International Development Studies (Saint Mary’s). You can find her defending social democratic ideas on twitter @amacewen.

Senator Kim Pate

Kim Pate was appointed to the Senate of Canada on November 10, 2016. First and foremost, the mother of Michael and Madison, she is also a nationally renowned advocate who has spent nearly 40 years working in and around the legal and penal systems of Canada, with and on behalf of some of the most marginalized, victimized, criminalized and institutionalized — particularly imprisoned youth, men and women.

Senator Pate graduated from Dalhousie Law School in 1984 with honours in the Clinical Law Programme and has completed post graduate work in the area of forensic mental health. She was the Executive Director of the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies (CAEFS) from January 1992 until her appointment to the Senate in November 2016. CAEFS is a federation of local societies who provide services and work in coalition with Aboriginal women, women with mental health issues and other disabling conditions, young women, visible minority and immigrant women, poor women and those isolated and otherwise deprived of potential sources of support. Prior to her work with CAEFS, she worked with youth and men in a number of capacities with the local John Howard Society in Calgary, as well as the national office. She has developed and taught Pr*son Law, Human Rights and Social Justice and Defending Battered Women on Trial courses at the Faculties of Law at the University of Ottawa, Dalhousie University and the University of Saskatchewan. She also occupied the Sallows Chair in Human Rights at the University of Saskatchewan College of Law in 2014 and 2015.

Kim Pate is widely credited as the driving force behind the Inquiry into Certain Events at the Pr*son for Women in Kingston, headed by Justice Louise Arbour. During the Inquiry, she supported women as they aired their experiences and was a critical resource and witness in the Inquiry itself. She also persuaded the Attorney General and Minister of Justice to initiate the Self-Defence Review and appoint the Honourable Madam Justice Lynn Ratushny to review the convictions and sentences of women jailed for using lethal force to defend themselves and/or their children against abusive men. She then worked tirelessly in pursuit of the implementation of the many positive recommendations from both. Senator Pate has been instrumental in building coalitions across the country with other equality-seeking women’s, anti-racism, anti-poverty and human rights groups and organizations; and, in this capacity, has worked with feminist legal scholars, lawyers, other professionals and front-line advocates and activists — from Indigenous communities to transition house and rape crisis centre workers.

Kim Pate is a member of the Order of Canada, a recipient of the Governor General’s Award in Commemoration of the Persons Case, the Canadian Bar Association’s Bertha Wilson Touchstone Award, and six honourary doctorates (Law Society of Upper Canada, University of Ottawa, Carleton University, St. Thomas University, Nipissing University and Wilfrid Laurier University) and numerous other awards. Her extensive list of publications, national and international speaking engagements and her strategic intervention and advocacy for substantive equality testify to her commitment to broader social, economic and cultural change. She continues to make significant contributions to public education around the issues of women’s inequality and discriminatory treatment within social, economic and criminal justice spheres.

Senator Pate strongly believes that the contributions of women who have experienced marginalization, discrimination and oppression should be recognized and respected and she seeks to credit and empower women. She maintains contact with women in Pr*son through her numerous visits to Canada’s federal prisons and strongly encourages other advocates, scholars, service providers, judges and parliamentarians to ground their efforts in a similar way.

Senator Pate lives in Ottawa, Ontario.

Adrian Harewood

Adrian joined Carleton’s School of Journalism and Communication in 2021. He completed a BA in Political Theory & History at McGill University and a MA in History at Carleton University.
Adrian has been a journalist for over a quarter century. He was the host of CBC Ottawa’s drive home radio show All in a Day for 3 years, and then the anchor of CBC Ottawa News at Six for 13 years. In 2017 he was nominated for a Canadian Screen Award for Best Interviewer, and in 2020 he won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Local Anchor. For 7 years Adrian hosted the CBC weekly cultural magazine show Our Ottawa.
He has interviewed Angela Davis, Salman Rushdie, Eduardo Galeano, Bill Clinton, Wayne Shorter, Bob Woodward, Gustavo Dudamel, Sarah Chang, Deepa Mehta, Hugh Masekela, Cassandra Wilson, Willie O’Ree, Tomson Highway, Tony Benn, Azar Nafisi, Naomi Klein, Ken Dryden, k-os, Alanis Obomsawin, Joy Kogawa, Jan Carew, David Sedaris, Jack Layton, Oliver Jones, Steven Pinker, Wanda Robson, Lawrence Hill, Barbara Gowdy, Hans Kung, Austin Clarke, Jim Cuddy, Frank Oz, Preston Manning, Andrea Levy, Branford Marsalis, Margaret Macmillan, Bob Moses, Ken Burns, David Suzuki, Esi Edugyan, Al Green, Malcolm Gladwell, Chris Hedges, Femi Kuti, Tariq Ali, Adrienne Clarkson, Chuck Klosterman, Mary Walsh, Romeo Dallaire, Wade Davis, Measha Brueggergosman, Tom Green, Dick Gregory, Niall Ferguson, Richie Havens, Lyle Lovett, John Irving, Dionne Brand, Conrad Black and Donald Trump.
His writing has appeared in The Globe and Mail, Canadian Dimension, Take One Magazine, NOW Magazine, Mix Magazine, The Halifax Chronicle Herald, and Z Magazine.
Adrian is a member of the Canadian Association of Journalists, the Canadian Association of Black Journalists, and the National Association of Black Journalists. He sits on the editorial board of the University of Ottawa Press and is a board member of Journalists for Human Rights.

Ryan Banfield

Ryan Banfield is a member of the Ottawa Youth Engagement Committee, a volunteer at Next Gen Men and a Frayme Groundbreaker. He was previously a volunteer at St. Joe's Supper Table and the University of Ottawa Students' Union Food Bank. Ryan has written multiple articles about homelessness, politics and other topics for his own Medium blog and for The Fulcrum. Holding a degree in public administration and working in the Government of Canada, Ryan aspires to someday work within a federal government office that allows him to coordinate nationwide reforms to social policy — especially housing and homelessness policy — because he believes that it is morally imperative for governments across Canada to adopt more creative and dynamic strategies to better alleviate housing insecurity and improve Canadians' lives.

Come join us for a thought-provoking discussion on the elusiveness of a just society in Canada. Our panel of experts will dive deep into the causes behind this issue and explore potential solutions. It's a great opportunity to learn and engage with others who are passionate about creating a more equitable society. See you there!

Event Venue

Horticulture Building, 1525 Princess Patricia Way, Ottawa, Canada