The chairman of Canada’s truth and reconciliation commission says removing more than 100,000 aboriginal children from their homes and placing them in residential schools was an act of genocide.

Justice Murray Sinclair says the United Nations defines genocide to include the removal of children based on race, then placing them with another race to indoctrinate them. He says Canada has been careful to ensure its residential school policy was not “caught up” in the UN’s definition.

Jagrup Brar is tired. It's day 29 of his month-long challenge to live on $610 in the province's Lower Mainland, and the Surrey-Fleetwood MLA ran out of money three days ago.

He's just finished a two-and-a-half hour shift at the Carnegie Community Centre cafeteria on a Sunday morning, cutting fruits and vegetables in exchange for a $2 voucher for breakfast or lunch. Today, it's breakfast: a scone, two hard-boiled eggs, and a cup of tea.

Later, he'll line up for about two hours outside in the rain in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside to find a free lunch or supper. In the last month he's lost eight pounds, an hour and a half of sleep every night, is $7 in debt, and is mentally exhausted.

But Brar is also happy. He believes his month of hardship, nearing its end, has succeeded in bringing public awareness to the realities of living in poverty in British Columbia.

At noon last Monday, January 30th, David Arthur Johnston set up a tent in Victoria’s Centennial Square, perhaps for the last time. Johnston is in an ongoing battle with the City over the right for homeless people to have a designated public space, where they can shelter themselves during daylight hours. So far, Johnston says the City has pretty much left him alone, with the exception of taking pictures and giving him a copy of a previous judgment that forbid him from entering the square. In addition, according to Johnston, the City has indicated that they would ask the court for a six month jail sentence. Johnston claims he will engage in a hunger strike for the duration of whatever sentence he receives.

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