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Calgary HRC Minutes- March 2013

Human Rights Committee Meeting – March 20th, 2013

CalgaryRegional Office

Those in Attendance:

Evelyn Egger, Garth Caron, Timothy Hunt, Phil Chan, Nina Kiviluoma,Raj Hari

Regrets:

Dale Marianicz

Meeting was called to order at 5:30pm.

Welcome to new member Phil Chan from Statistic Canada. Please add to e mail list

Minutes:

Review of the previous HRC Meeting minutes of August 29, 2012

(note: the last two meetings, January 9th & February 06th, were cancelled due to lack of quorum)

Motion to accept the previous minutes – Brother Garth, seconded by Sister Evelyn

Unanimous

Brother Timothy gave brief out line of meetings that have been postponed to this date. Both of those meetings were cancelled due to lack of quorum. The HR Committee will try to arrange meeting dates to ensure we meet on timely basis. Per the by-laws, we as a committee are to meet four (4) times a year.

Budget:

The Prairie Region Council has mandated that they will keep back $700/year from our regional funding to accommodate the delegate funding for the Prairie Region Convention (ie. June 2014 is the next occurance), therefore we are not to forecast any budgeting towards this function, rather budgeting for only HRCevents.

When booking anything for the next delegate make sure that all plans are coordinated through WE Travel. Hotel reservations will be made by the REVP’s staff and direct billed to their office budget.

Human Rights “MEGA” Conference:

There is going to be a National Human Rights “MEGA” Conference which will be held in Toronto (Sheraton Centre Toronto Hotel – across the street from Toronto City Hall) in November of this year, dates are to be announced (hopefully before summer). We would need to get at least one PSAC member to nominate someone from our committee for each of the four (GLBT = Aboriginal Peoples, Racially Visible, Persons With Disabilities & Gay Lesbian Bi-Sexual Transgendered/Trans-Sexual/Two-Spiritied) equity seeking groups. This conference will be four (4) days long with travel on a Sunday, starting on the Monday and returning on the Thursday afternoon (or Friday in our case for two hour time change).

Global Fest 2013 – Social Justice Funding:

Funding request for Global Fest 2013 was approved by the Social Justice Fund (SJF) for this August. We are proposing an alliance with CUPE/UFCW to contribute to a tent on festival site. Each group should be able to contribute to the public awareness of Human Rights and any campaigns that we may be working on.

Lunch and learns will be held August 12th through the 16th. (no full details of subject matter, tba). The Lunch and Learn on the Friday 16th to focus on “GLBT” and will have a panel with a PSAC member on it
Citizenship ceremony will require volunteer(s)
Potential for Olivia Chow to attend the session (not confirmed, see Dolly)
Deposit the SJF $2,500 cheque upon receipt and then issue a cheque to GlobalFest 2013, get Brother Raj or Sister Dolly to sign off on the contract (forthcoming)

Important dates for our committee this year:

April 10th: Day of Pink (CLCinitiative) – Against Bullying & Homophobia
May 17th: National Day Against Homophobia
End of May 24th to 26th & May 29th to June 01st – Fairy Tales Film Festival - Sister Evelyn – Sister Evelyn motioned to donate $300, 2nd - Brother Garth - UNANIMOUS
June 8th: Carifest 2013. Contact Dawne regarding participation - Evelyn
June 21st: National Aboriginal Day. (May set up at HarryHaysBuilding)
June 28th-30th: Rodeo / ARGRA - AlbertaRockiesGay Rodeo Association(GLBT) being held in Strathmore. Brother Garth is coordinating volunteers
September 1st: CalgaryGay Pride Parade
September (various dates): GLBT awareness BBQ in Medicine Hatand Dance held in Lethbridge. Need to recruit volunteers to participate and hand out HRCunion information
September 2nd: Labour Day BBQ. We will contribute the condiments for the festivities as we have in years past. Although Timothy and Garth will not attending this year. Evelyn will confirm at a later date.
October 17th: “Spirit Day - Purple Day of Mourning” day against bullying
December 01st: International Aids Day
December 03rd: Persons With Disabilities (PWD) day

December 10th: International Human Rights day

Things of things to do this year:

Discussion to have HRCelections October 2013 – To be confirmed next meeting.
Invite a speaker to the next meeting (May 8th) - James Demers, Programs Manager from Fairytales Presentation Society.