Religious Rights vs. Equality

I am not against Muslims wearing turbans or Hijabs in public, just like I am not against Canadian men and women wearing cowboy hats, baseball hats or spaghetti strainers, live and let live.

The problem I have is that because I am not religious and I do not believe in religion I do not have the same rights as people who do believe in this religion.

Muslim men are allowed to wear their turbans in their drivers licence identification. Jewish men do not wear their Kippahs in this ID do they? Are Hutterite men allowed to wear their hats in their drivers licence pictures? I do not believe so. Nuns would not be allowed full head wear during this process either. So why is it only one religion is allowed to have their head wear on during picture Identification?

There is a lot of back and forth debate, with name calling and slander, going on about whether the Turban and the Hijab are religious wear.

I see many Muslim men and women not wearing this head wear and many of them will admit that it is not in the Quran as a religious belief. They will say the Hijab and the Burka are ways to suppress their women and the Turban is to show which mosque they belong to…if that means the turban is a religious symbol, okay I will give that to you, but your driver’s licence is not in color so you still do not need to wear it in your picture.

Many people say if we are allowing Hutterite women, Mennonite women, Nuns and Cancer patients to wear scarves and head wear why we are not allowing Muslim women.I don’t have a problem with Muslim women wearing the Hijab, in PUBLIC.

When it comes to areas where I, as a Canadian citizen, am not allowed to wear a hat, I do not agree that any other individual should be allowed to either. Plain and simple, I do not care if it is a religious belief or not.

You should not have any more right than the person next door just because of your religion.

That said, the Burka is a completely different story. Not only does this garment hide an individual it can hide a weapon. It does not have to be a woman under this garment, as we well know.

When women go to a Muslim country they are expected to cover their heads and/or faces. Like Muslim women we are expected to follow Muslim laws and traditions. While the First Lady did not do this, she was well protected. I don’t think the average woman would be and could very well take the chance of being shot. My point, we are expected to follow Muslim laws and traditions in Muslim countries, but Muslims cannot follow Canadian laws and traditions in Canada? One being, no head wear in our courtrooms and no head wear in our driver’s licences.

Taking off a scarf in a courtroom or a turban in photo identification would go a long way to showing all Canadians that all Muslims want to be a part of our country and not just use their religion as a way to get what they want. No one should get special treatment because of their religion.

I do not believe in any religion. So because a group of people who believe in a religion do, they are allowed more rights than I here in Canada where I was born and raised?

I welcome you with open arms to our wonderful country called Canada, but do not use your religion to get rights in my country that I am not allowed to have myself.

Living on less than $20,000/year in Canada

It is transparency time. My disability is mental; I was diagnosed with Bi-polar disease when I was 28 years old. I worked off and on up until going on disability, which is why I am capable of receiving Canada Pension Plan for the Disabled. I would not be able to receive CPPD if I had not worked.

Here is the breakdown,

From the Canada Pension Plan for the Disabled on my T4A (P) slip my taxable income from them (what I receive for myself) was $6,345.24 for the year 2014.  From CPPD I receive non-taxable income (what I received for my daughter) $2,768.69 for the year 2014.

 In total I received $9,113.88 from the federal government Canada Pension Plan for the Disabled.

On my T5007 slip from the Saskatchewan government box 11 for Social Assistance Payments, which is used for their Disability as well as their Employment Supplement, is a grand total of $2,124.48 for the 2014 year.

The breakdown was $1,556.08 for the year from Saskatchewan Assured Income for the Disabled and $568.40 for the year from Saskatchewan Employment Supplement.

Even though anyone between certain income brackets receive GST/HST and Child Tax Credit, I am going to add the amounts that I receive for them here to give you all the information of what I lived on in 2014 from the governmental offices in Canada as a Mentally Disabled person with one child living with them.

I receive a little more for Child Tax Credit because my daughter was born missing her left hand. She is 13 years old and while she gets along pretty well in life there are daily struggles that can cause extra expenses. As all parents with children who have disabilities are able to receive and qualify for.

Each month from January to May of 2014 I received $523.32, in June it went up to $523.48 and in July I started receiving $528.08. So I received just about as much from Child Tax Credit for my daughter as I did from my taxable income from CPPD. Child Tax Credit grand total for the year 2014 was $6308.56.

Each of us “poor” people gets a check back quarterly called GST checks. Some are GST/HST.

My grand total GST/HST checks each year come to $1,155.00.

We are now receiving the Saskatchewan Employment Supplement because my common law returned to work. Which was difficult for someone with a back that has broken disks, but you take what you can get, so he works a job part time at just above minimum wage; we survive. His wages just cover his expenses, including getting to and from work which is a 1 ½ drive each day, insurance for the vehicle, his bills, etc.

So Taxpayers of Canada my grand total, unless my addition is whacked, comes to $18,701.92 of your hard earned dollars I have had to use to live off of for the year of 2014.

In total, $11,238.36 came from Canada Pension Plan for the Disabled, from Saskatchewan’s Disability program and from the Employment Supplement in Saskatchewan.

I work hard at figuring out which brain altering drugs the doctors put me on which will help me feel “normal” and I work hard at building my self esteem/self worth enough to feel comfortable putting on a smile and greeting you each day at a Wal-Mart, McDonald's, Tim Horton’s or Salvation Army when I am able to return to work.

In the mean time I would like you to know we are also working hard at supplying our own food by growing a garden during the summer, we can and freeze fruits and vegetables so that the funds we do receive can go to purchases we need for my daughters school lunches, purchase ever increasing meat and travel once in a while to see my sons, daughter and grandchildren.

I do not live off the government to “get rich” nor to “stay lazy”. It is not a lifestyle I choose.

I am not just demeaned by strangers but by family members as well, which can make it even harder to build up that self esteem and self worth when chemicals in your brain are not working properly and you start to believe they are right because they are better than you. They are doing better than you, they are successful and they are happy, so why not just listen to them?

What “they” do not understand is that the lack of chemicals won’t allow you to listen to reason; the chemicals only allow you to hear that you are a failure, especially to those who are supposed to be there for you the most.

So when you do start to see a light at the end of the tunnel and someone pulls the carpet out from under you, the fall can be devastating.

While changes have been made in my life and I am back on the tracks I cannot guarantee the wheels will not fall off again, but I can only hope that they will stay on the tracks and while I keep plugging away and gain a forward motion I can only hope and pray I can become self sufficient once again. It would be nice to be able to buy something new without feeling guilt.

It is a struggle trying to live on less than $20,000 a year and much of the time I rely on my credit to get me through the month. 

I thank you for your understanding.

Anti-Vaxxers did not Cause Measles Outbreak

What we are forgetting about Measles is that it doesn't matter if we have gotten the vaccine or not, we can still contract the disease and we can still be contagious with the disease while having it.

I am no scientist, but I have to wonder, with the travelling that people do all over the world to countries that could be but are not as up to date on the vaccinations, countries where the wealthy are very wealthy and the poor are left to die in the streets, China and Saudi Arabia for example why are we blaming “anti-vaxxers” for a Measles outbreak?

We have businessmen, international aid workers, government officials, etc going to these countries and we have people from these countries coming to ours that are not protected from diseases we have supposedly wiped off our continent. And it surprises people that we are just now having an outbreak of Measles?

It won’t matter if someone has or has not had the MMR vaccinations as to whether it takes hold here in North America. It is here because it was brought here from another country by someone who is:

 1. An illegal immigrant

2. A foreign worker/refugee who is not up to date with shots or

3. A person who came into contact with someone who had measles in a country that did not have measles under control.

THAT person could very well have had their MMR, come back to North America without knowing they had the disease and began to spread it…a good example of this is when Ebola made it to United States several times.

Coming down on people who are “Anti-Vaxxers” is exactly the propaganda that government and pharmaceuticals want us to do.

We want to believe we have to protect our children from everything and we can’t. That includes disease.

I believe that one day vaccines will come back to bite us in the ass.

Measles has not mutated they say. So the same strain I contracted as a child of 7 or 8 is the same strain that hit Disneyland and is now in Ontario?

As I said I am no scientist, but I do believe that disease is part of our environment. We keep curing diseases, we keep making people live longer, we have more people on this Earth than ever before and our resources are running thin…your governments are saying this as well.

To me death from disease means there was a reason…and there is a reason, our Earth cannot handle the amount of people on it; death from the hand of a drunk driver makes no sense.

Our governments cannot control when a disease will break out. We are not prepared for this outbreak BECAUSE we ASSUMED the wrong thing, that we had wiped Measles off the face of North America.

Assuming something makes an Ass out of You and Me.

Are people still going to blame those who have not gotten their children vaccinated over the governments who haven’t even kept control of terrorist’s comings and goings?

I am not going to say this is a terrorist attack that would be silly right? Why on earth would a terrorist stand around in Disneyland with Measles? I mean it would be pretty stupid to distract a country with a disease that we have supposedly decimated, but then again…it is being reported that even doctors don’t know what the symptoms look like for Measles anymore it has been so long. 

Anyways, that is just another "stupid" possibility. 

If someone hasn't had their vaccines it is going to mean that they are going to get even sicker, they will have even a greater risk of the worst side effects of Measles. It doesn't mean that they are the cause of the disease.

Babies who have not had the chance to have their vaccines have always been at risk of all diseases, whether or not “anti-vaxxers” got their immunizations or not so stop blaming those who chose to not vaccinate and start trying to place blame on where it belongs…

1.     Anyone who goes to countries that have no immunization guarantees like North America need to be in 2-3 week quarantine after returning from those countries. You want the luxury of world travel, whether you are immunized or not, you can still contract diseases and you can still bring said diseases back to our countries.

2.     Any doctors and nurses that go to 3^rd world countries need to be in 2-3 week quarantine after returning from those countries. You want to help those in need, you can still contract the diseases like Measles and bring it back to the United States or Canada and spread it.

3.      Refugees/foreign workers should be in quarantine for 2-3 weeks after receiving their first doses of immunizations which should be given as soon as they arrive.

Now if testing can be done to prove that they do not have any diseases that are contagious, then quarantine wouldn't be needed, but it is not because people are not vaccinating that Measles is spreading, Measles is spreading in North America because someone brought it here from a country that has no immunization benefits.

***Yes my children are vaccinated.