On the weekend of November 17th to 19th, we held our regional meetings for the Atlantic and Ontario-Quebec-Nunavut regions. Each meeting brought together chapter and community organizers from the region and saw members carry out actions that tied into our national pharmacare campaign. Read on for more about each region’s meeting!
Atlantic Region
The Atlantic regional meeting happened in beautiful coastal Lawrencetown, NS. We spent the Saturday discussing the importance of organizing and building power in community – with nine participants in attendance, 8 chapter members from 5 active chapters, and one community leader. The discussions were about understanding who has power; positionality, structural oppression and privilege; and the difference between solidarity and unity.
Much of this was led by our amazing guest speaker Ajay Parasram, a professor of History and International Development from Dalhousie University. The members had tangible questions about how to organize around our campaigns within our challenging local contexts as well.
On Sunday, we went directly to MP Darren Fisher’s neighbourhood to canvass and poster. MP Fisher is the Associate Minister of Health and the MP for Dartmouth–Cole Harbour, and by targeting his own constituency we felt it would increase the pressure on him and his government to bring forward legislation for universal public pharmacare.
Learning about the power of organizing and then implementing these learnings together was a powerful way to wrap up the weekend. We hope that everyone who attended left feeling a stronger sense of their own power and a stronger commitment to the community that is the Council.
Ontario-Quebec-Nunavut Region
Over twenty members from seven Council of Canadians chapters, as well as community leaders active in Council campaigns, gathered in the beautiful Ganaraska Forest Centre for our Ontario-Quebec-Nunavut Regional Meeting. The chapters and members activists are a force that powers the Council’s campaign for pharmacare, Blue Communities, and Just Transition, but also are leaders in their communities advocating for local, regional, national, and international issues. Just this year alone, our chapters defended public health care, advocated for actions to address housing and homelessness, opposed Ford’s sprawl agenda, made progress on local climate policies like transit and renewable energy, opposed harmful waste disposal projects, built relationships and showed up in solidarity with local Indigenous communities, advocated for trade justice, and stood for peace.
Before settling into the beautiful forest nestled among the rolling hills in Northumberland County, the chapter members and allies gathered in Ajax, outside Health Minister Mark Holland’s constituency office. We delivered 10,385 petition signatures to the minister in a giant pill bottle-shaped box, calling for a public, universal, single-payer pharmacare program. Many of these signatures have been collected by our chapters at farmer’s markets, outside pharmacies, and at community events they represent the incredible groundswell of support for pharmacare and the much-needed work chapters are doing to build grassroots community power, one conversation at a time.
The meeting created a much-needed opportunity for chapter members to share lessons, exchange ideas, get to know one another and build meaningful connections in workshops, over a campfire, on a hike, or a game of skip bo. We delved into the nuts and bolts of organizing strategies, learned from one another about best practices to engage different communities, and connected over shared issues of interest. Syed Hussan from the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change shared a presentation on building power to win, and the importance of organizing in our communities. We left the weekend energized by the new relationships, experiences, potential collaborations, and renewed commitment to the work advocating for people, the planet, and our democracy.
