Editorial

It’s easy to get caught up in the Christmas rush.

With all the holiday shopping that needs to be done and the family gatherings and parties with friends that one has to attend, there is only so much time.

November not only commemorates All Saints and All Souls days but celebrates the birth of Philippine national hero, Andres Bonifacio, on November 30.

About two weeks before the writ dropped on September 11, 2019, signaling the start of the federal election campaign, results of a survey were released by Simon Fraser University’s Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue in Vancouver.

As the world warms up with the activities of its more than seven billion global population, extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and intense: sea levels are rising, prolonged droughts are putting pressure on food crops, and many animal and plant species are being driven to extinction. Since climate change is primarily man-made, we as individuals can do something to resolve a problem of this scale and severity.

There are an estimated 370 million indigenous people in the world, living across 90 countries, making up less than five per cent of the world's population, but account for 15 per cent of the poorest.

Indigenous peoples speak a huge majority of the world’s estimated 7,000 languages and represent 5,000 different cultures.

Canada is among the few countries in the world that still accept high levels of immigration.

Canadians follow the rule of law, which makes Canada an ideal destination for prospective immigrants.

June 2019 is a special month for Canadian Filipinos.

For the first time in Canada, Filipino Heritage Month is being celebrated across the country.

In legendary Camelot, they sang about their merry month of May of long ago, but in the Philippines, people are still singing about their own “Mary Month of May” to this day. 

2019 is shaping up to be a historic year for Canadian Filipinos.

In the Philippines, general elections are taking place mid-way into the current Duterte administration in May, and ballots for overseas voting have been mailed to every registered voter residing elsewhere in the world.

The world is marking International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination on March 21.

The annual event is an opportunity to renew the commitment to eradicate all forms of discrimination because of race.

For most, to call 2018 a crazy year is an understatement, what with new realities like fake news and the #MeToo movement. But 2019 forces us Filipinos to remind ourselves of who we are, what we are made of, what we are capable of doing. A new year is a chance to turn over a new leaf, to turn our backs on the year that was and to accept a brand new opportunity to make real changes. And we Filipinos can easily do that by going back to the basics through the virtues that we have become known the world over – but this time with the wisdom of those many lessons we have learned as a people.

In 1998, the University of British Columbia’s Institute of Asian Research published a book titled The Silent Debate: Asian Immigration and Racism in Canada (edited by Eleanor R. Laquian, Aprodicio A. Laquian and Terry McGee).