Number of gay marriages in Canada triples: census

OTTAWA – When Naomi and Kaitlyn Smiley tied the knot in April, it was as traditional as they could get.

The two brides said their vows at a United Church in suburban Burlington, Ont., endured speeches, partied with loved ones and started sharing a last name.

"We are boring, typical people," Kaitlyn Smiley said. "If there is something that sets us apart from the majority of people, it's only when it is pointed out."

But there is something that sets them apart. They are part of an exploding number of same-sex couples saying "I do" in Canada – a right first recognized nationwide in 2005.

The number of same-sex married couples has tripled in the past five years, according to figures released figures by Statistics Canada on Wednesday.

Out of the 64,575 same-sex couples who were counted in the 2011 census, 32.5 per cent were married. It's nearly twice the share reported in 2006, the first census to count such marriages.

The trend is striking when in comparison the marriage numbers for Canadians in general. The number of married couples only rose 2.9 per cent, while the share of married-couple families dropped to 67 per cent in 2011 from 70 per cent.

The number of same-sex marriages has only been measured once before, so only time will tell if the spike in nuptials is permanent or a result of recently getting the right to marry.

Naomi Smiley admits she didn't always think marriage would be in her future.

"I never really saw myself getting married because I didn't see myself in something conventional," she said. "I was born in the 1980s. At the time, you didn't see that for yourself."

It was different for Kaitlyn, who is six years younger than her wife.

"It had always been something I had kind of expected for myself. I had always pictured it would be a step along the way," she said.

More same-sex couples are following up marriage with a baby carriage, according to the census.

Twelve per cent of married same-sex couples now have children, along with eight percent of common-law partners of the same-sex.

For Tania Zulkoskey and Diane Srivastava marriage was an extra layer of legitimacy.

"(We married) For the very traditional, romantic reasons: because were in love and we wanted to celebrate our family, our relationship and we wanted to be seen as legitimate by other family members," said Zulkoskey of their 2009 nuptials.

Shortly after, their family grew to include twins – a boy and a girl – conceived on the couple's first insemination.

Now that the kids are nearing school age, Zulkoskey said marriage has taken on new importance.

"The marriage piece adds a little validity for what our children might experience when they go to school and meet other people who are homophobic and challenge them in any way."

While more Canadian kids are growing up in similar types of family, Zulkoskey said she knows having two moms is still relatively rare and is trying to prepare her children for that reality.

She and her wife got the twins two birth certificates – with and without parental names – so they could avoid discrimination while traveling. Zulkoskey is also trying to teach her kids how to explain their families to other kids with different types of families.

"It is about educating our children how to respond to questions like "Where is your dad?," she said. "A big piece is arming our children with the ability to answer what can seem like tough question that can challenge their own family constructs and that can alter their family identities."

Canada is home to a greater proportion of same sex couples, married or not, than many other countries. 

 

Same-sex couples accounted for 0.8 per cent of all Canadian couples, compared to 0.7 per cent in Australia, 0.4 per cent in the United Kingdom and 0.6 per cent in the United States.

Marriage still remains the minority for same-sex couples. The 2011 census enumerated 21,015 same-sex married couples and 43,560 in common-law relationships.

Although she fought for others to have the right to say "I do," lesbian lawyer Barbara Findlay wasn't rushing for the altar.

"I would never marry," said the Vancouver woman, who has been with her same-sex partner for 22 years.

"Our relationship was solid and committed long before we got marriage rights. It didn't make any sense for us personally to get married," Findlay said, adding that marriage as an institution didn't appeal to her as a feminist.

For the first time ever Statistics Canada counted the number of stepfamilies. 

 

Here again same-sex families were reflected in numbers.

Approximately 464,000 or 12.6 per cent of families in Canada are blended. While 12.5 per cent of opposite-sex families were stepfamilies, 49.7 per cent of same-sex couples with children are stepfamilies.

Brenna Rivier split with her partner after nine years and a daughter. Now her nine-year-old Sadie is part of a blended family after her other mom entered a relationship with a new partner and her children.

Rivier said the rise in blended families across the board has meant other children now have "two moms" as well, whether they are gay or straight.

"Sadie has no qualms about saying she has two moms and she has a step-mom and step brother and sister," Rivier said of her daughter. "For her it is who she is and what she has."

© Global News. A division of Shaw Media Inc., 2012.

19 Sep, 2012

-
Source: http://www.globalnews.ca/Canada/number+of+gay+marriages+in+canada+triples+census/6442718198/story.html
--
Manage subscription | Powered by rssforward.com

10.14 | 0 komentar | Read More

Opposition NDP tables motion calling on PM to join premiers at economic summit

OTTAWA - The Opposition NDP is accusing the federal Conservatives of endangering the fragile economic recovery, and calling on the prime minister to meet with the premiers in an economic forum in November.

In a fiery speech to his caucus, NDP Leader Tom Mulcair described recent cuts to federal spending made by the Tories "reckless."

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been boasting about his party's achievements since taking office in 2006, including the creation of roughly three quarters of a million jobs.

But Mulcair told the first NDP caucus meeting of the fall session of Parliament that Harper's economic record is shoddy, pointing to Canada's record trade deficit in July and massive household debt levels.

Mulcair has tabled a motion, to be debated Thursday, that calls on all levels of government to build a balanced economy.

And it insists that Harper meet with his provincial and territorial counterparts in November when they're slated to hold a national economic summit in Halifax.

© The Canadian Press, 2012

19 Sep, 2012

-
Source: http://www.globalnews.ca/Canada/opposition+ndp+tables+motion+calling+on+pm+to+join+premiers+at+economic+summit/6442718195/story.html
--
Manage subscription | Powered by rssforward.com

09.45 | 0 komentar | Read More

Canadian Auto Workers talks continuing with General Motors and Chrysler

MONTREAL - Talks are continuing with General Motors and Chrysler to reach new collective agreements with the Canadian Auto Workers Union.

Chrysler would only say that talks are ongoing and had no further comment.

The Canadian Auto Workers was holding what it has described as "constructive talks" with GM.

The union cancelled a Monday night strike deadline, agreeing to give Chrysler and GM negotiators more time to review a tentative four-year deal it reached with Ford that it wants to serve as a pattern agreement.

The Ford deal contains no base wage increases, but workers will get $2,000 a year in the second, third and fourth years to cover cost of living increases, and a $3,000 ratification bonus.

Industry observers say the Ford deal is expected to used as the basis for deals with GM and Chrysler.

© The Canadian Press, 2012

19 Sep, 2012

-
Source: http://www.globalnews.ca/Canada/canadian+auto+workers+talks+continuing+with+general+motors+and+chrysler/6442718190/story.html
--
Manage subscription | Powered by rssforward.com

09.15 | 0 komentar | Read More

Friend says military failed to keep close watch on soldier who killed himself

OTTAWA - A former soldier says the military failed to keep a close enough eye on a suicidal Afghan vet the day he killed himself.

Kirk Lackie is testifying at an inquiry into how the Canadian Forces handled the suicide of Cpl. Stuart Langridge.

Lackie and Langridge served together in the military and both struggled with addiction.

On the day Langridge killed himself, Lackie says it appeared that the soldiers tasked with checking on him every half hour allowed more than three hours to lapse between checks.

Lackie says he had to force someone to look in on Langridge and it was then that his body was discovered.

The Military Police Complaints Commission is looking into complaints from Langridge's family that the military botched the investigation into the suicide.

© The Canadian Press, 2012

19 Sep, 2012

-
Source: http://www.globalnews.ca/Canada/friend+says+military+failed+to+keep+close++watch+on+soldier+who+killed+himself/6442718153/story.html
--
Manage subscription | Powered by rssforward.com

09.15 | 0 komentar | Read More

U.S. can't 'austere itself' to a stronger economy, Goldman Sachs CEO says

Goldman Sachs chairman and chief executive officer Lloyd Blankfein in Washington, April 27, 2010. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP, Susan Walsh

TORONTO - Austerity measures are not the best path right now for the United States, the head of U.S. financial giant Goldman Sachs Group Inc said Wednesday.

"You can't austere yourself into a higher GDP," Goldman Sachs chairman and CEO Lloyd Blankfein told a business crowd in Toronto.

"I'm all for implementing budget changes that accelerate over the long term, but in the short term I wouldn't take too much money away from people or cut back on a lot of expenditure programs."

It's also not the time for another stimulus package, he said, but the key for success in the near term will be a balance: holding off on austerity measures while not taking away "the punch bowl."

He said the U.S. is approaching a "fiscal cliff" if warring politicians in Washington don't get together this fall to extend programs and tax cuts that have helped keep the economy out of recession.

The current problems are self-inflicted and within everyone's power to stop, Blankfein said.

He said the U.S. political system is bringing out the extremes within the two main parties — Republicans and Democrats — rather than the moderates.

It's a "defect" of the system, he said, recalling the debate over the U.S. federal government's debt ceiling last year.

"If moderation is a pejorative...and a guarantee of failure at the polls, which it seems to be in some cases, that's not a good environment for compromise," Blankfein said.

But, he said, these situations have a way of working out and even though the fiscal cliff lies ahead, it doesn't have to be a problem because the "basic guts" of it are good.

What hasn't worked out so far is the widening gap between the rich and the poor in the U.S., Blankfein said.

The two goals of the whole financial and economic system should be to expand the wealth of the world and distribute it fairly.

"No one's going to accuse me of being a socialist, and I'm not, and I don't believe in wealth redistribution over producing," Blankfein said.

"But over the long term if the system works well it should accomplish both goals and it hasn't accomplished enough of the second goal in the right way."

Turning to Europe, Blankfein said the last few months have shown that it has both the capacity and the political will to make the euro work.

"If this fails it will be 100 years before you can go back and think of a united Europe and the consequences of a disunited Europe feel very, very heavy to the leadership," he said.

The real challenge for the eurozone, as Blankfein sees it, is how to sponsor growth in the short term and at the same time promise market austerity and more balanced budgets in the long term.

"There's a chance of going off the rail there, but I think it's unlikely at this point," he said.

There are a lot of challenges and a lot of risks ahead in the global economy, Blankfein said, but his message was one of cautious optimism.

"The world's not going to come to an end," he said. "We're going to muddle through."

© The Canadian Press, 2012

19 Sep, 2012

-
Source: http://www.globalnews.ca/Canada/us+cant+austere+itself+to+a+stronger+economy+goldman+sachs+ceo+says/6442718124/story.html
--
Manage subscription | Powered by rssforward.com

09.15 | 0 komentar | Read More

U.S. can't austere itself to a higher GDP, Goldman Sachs CEO says

Goldman Sachs chairman and chief executive officer Lloyd Blankfein in Washington, April 27, 2010. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP, Susan Walsh

TORONTO - Austerity measures are not the best path right now for the United States, the head of U.S. financial giant Goldman Sachs Group Inc said Wednesday.

"You can't austere yourself into a higher GDP," Goldman Sachs chairman and CEO Lloyd Blankfein told a business crowd in Toronto.

"I'm all for implementing budget changes that accelerate over the long term, but in the short term I wouldn't take too much money away from people or cut back on a lot of expenditure programs."

It's also not the time for another stimulus package, he said, but the key for success in the near term will be a balance: holding off on austerity measures while not taking away "the punch bowl."

He said the U.S. is approaching a "fiscal cliff" that would happen if warring politicians in Washington don't get together this fall to extend programs and tax cuts that have helped keep the economy out of recession.

The current problems are self-inflicted and within everyone's power to stop, Blankfein said.

He said the U.S. political system is bringing out the extremes within the two main parties — Republicans and Democrats — rather than the moderates.

It's a "defect" of the system, he said, recalling the debate over the U.S. federal government's debt ceiling last year.

"If moderation is a pejorative...and a guarantee of failure at the polls, which it seems to be in some cases, that's not a good environment for compromise," Blankfein said.

But, he said, these situations have a way of working out and even though the fiscal cliff lies ahead, it doesn't have to be a problem because the "basic guts" of it are good.

© The Canadian Press, 2012

19 Sep, 2012

-
Source: http://www.globalnews.ca/Canada/us+cant+austere+itself+to+a+higher+gdp+goldman+sachs+ceo+says/6442718124/story.html
--
Manage subscription | Powered by rssforward.com

08.45 | 0 komentar | Read More

Mother of Hilary Bonnell, allegedly killed by cousin, testifies at murder trial

Hilary Bonnell, of Burnt Church, N.B. is shown in this undated handout photo. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO, RCMP

MIRAMICHI, N.B. - A 16-year-old New Brunswick girl allegedly killed by her cousin may have been drinking on the day she was last seen alive, her mother testified Wednesday at the first-degree murder trial of Curtis Wayne Bonnell.

Hilary Bonnell's mother told the Court of Queen's Bench in Miramichi that her daughter phoned her shortly after 3 a.m. on Sept. 5, 2009.

Pam Fillier said Hilary, who was attending a house party in Esgenoopetitj (Es-geh-no-peh-titch) First Nation that night, sounded happy and appeared she may have been drinking.

"She sounded giggly," Fillier said.

Fillier said she phoned Hilary later that morning but there was no answer.

"I thought she was still sleeping," Fillier said.

The jury was then shown surveillance video from a local gas station that showed a girl enter and leave the store between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. that day. Fillier identified the girl as Hilary.

The video also showed a man arrive at the station about three minutes later and drive off in a red pickup truck. Fillier identified him as Curtis Bonnell.

Bonnell, 32, has pleaded not guilty in Hilary's death.

In opening arguments Tuesday, the Crown said the jury would hear evidence that the accused picked Hilary up while driving on a rural stretch of road, sexually assaulted her and killed her before burying her in the woods.

Hilary went missing after going to the house party. Her disappearance gripped the local community and triggered an exhaustive search.

Her body was found two months later, and Curtis Bonnell was charged in December 2009.

Eight weeks have been set aside for the trial.

© The Canadian Press, 2012

19 Sep, 2012

-
Source: http://www.globalnews.ca/Canada/mother+of+hilary+bonnell+allegedly+killed+by+cousin+testifies+at+murder+trial/6442718116/story.html
--
Manage subscription | Powered by rssforward.com

08.45 | 0 komentar | Read More

Foster kids, grandparents, single moms, soccer dads: meet Canada's modern family

OTTAWA - The nuclear family is no longer the norm in Canada.

The mom-pop-and-three-kids-under-one-roof model that typified Canadian households of 50 years ago has morphed into a complex and diverse web of family ties involving living alone, re-marriage, stepchildren, empty-nesters and multiple generations sharing a home.

Statistics Canada has released the third tranche of new data from its 2011 census, this time portraying the changes in Canadian families and living arrangements over five decades.

Married couples are in a long-term decline, single parenting has risen persistently, and families have gradually shrunk. The average family was 3.9 people in 1961, when the baby boom was in full swing. Now, it's 2.9.

"We do see more complexity and definitely more diversity in families," said Statistics Canada demographer Anne Milan.

For the first time, Statistics Canada says there are more people living alone in Canada than there are couples with children. One-person households now make up 27.6 per cent of all homes, a three-fold increase since 1961 that is especially notable in Quebec.

Meanwhile, couples with children have continued their decline, down to 26.5 per cent of all households, from 28.5 per cent in 2006.

Just 10 years ago, couples with children under 24 years old made up 43.6 per cent of all families (not including one-person households) — by far the most typical kind of family.

Now, parents with children make up just 39.2 per cent of families, and a rising proportion of those parents are not officially married. The number of common-law couples surged almost 14 per cent between 2006 and 2011.

For the first time in 2011, Statistics Canada also measured the number of stepfamilies in the country, showing that now one in 10 children lives in some sort of reconstituted arrangement.

"The modern family is changing, and I think it's a wonderful thing," said Shannon Kennedy, an Ottawa-based wedding planner who finds herself on the front lines of fluctuating living arrangements on a daily basis. "The rules of a nuclear family just don't apply any more."

In 2011, the most typical family was a couple with no children, continuing a pattern spotted in 2006. Statistics Canada found that 44.5 per cent of families have no kids at home, partly reflecting the aging of the baby-boomer bulge, the leading edge of which has started turning 65.

Overall, there were 9.4 million families in Canada in 2011, a 5.5 per cent increase from 2006.

Despite a growing population overall, the number of married couples declined outright by 132,715 over the past decade.

Lone-parent families and multiple-family households, on the other hand, were on the rise. Single parents increased by 8.0 per cent from 2006, and more of those parents were fathers — although eight out of 10 lone parents were still mothers.

Same-sex couples were also on a steep incline, up 42.4 per cent from 2006. About half of these couples were married, while the rest were common-law. Still, same-sex couples only made up 0.8 per cent of all couples in 2011.

And for the first time, Statistics Canada zeroed in on children living in untraditional arrangements.

In Canada's first-ever national count of foster children, the agency revealed that there were 29,590 of them under the age of 14 in 2011, with the highest predominance in Manitoba, where there is a high First Nations population. Overall, 29 per cent of the country's foster children were younger than 5, and 30 per cent were between 5 and 9 years old.

More than 17,000 households are involved in taking care of foster children, and more than half of those households had taken in at least two kids.

The pure numbers are only a start in figuring out how best to support some of the most vulnerable children in Canada, researchers say. But now that they are armed with better data, social scientists will be better able to determine the needs of foster children.

"For 10 years, I've wanted to track this," said John Dunn, a former foster child who now advocates on their behalf.

What he needs to get a full picture is more data on how much money is flowing into the household — information that won't come until next August.

The census-takers also found that about one in 10 children under the age of 14 lived in some sort of stepfamily.

But such families are so complex that Statistics Canada had to include several diagrams with its census documents in order to better explain where those children came from.

Of the 3.7 million couple-families with children, 87.4 per cent are considered "intact," with all the kids counted as the offspring of both parents.

About 12.6 per cent were considered stepfamilies. Of those, 7.4 per cent were considered "simple" stepfamilies, in which all children are directly related to just one of the spouses.

The rest of the stepfamilies are considered "complex." More than half of them had three or more children.

Stepfamilies were most common in Quebec, and least common in Ontario. By city, stepfamilies were most common in Trois-Rivieres, Quebec, and least common in Toronto and Vancouver.

The wide variety of family ties is throwing wedding-planner Kennedy for a loop. Emily Post, the guru of etiquette for most of the 20th century, is no longer of much help, she said.

"You don't necessarily have two families. In some cases, you have four families coming together at a wedding."

She looks to the processional in order to incorporate divergent family demands. Any number of people can be included in the walking up the aisle, even forming a "relay" with one parent handing off the bride to a second or third parent halfway to the altar.

"Any scenario where you get more than one mom involved, you have to kind of juggle that," Kennedy said with a chuckle.

"The best thing about modern weddings is, there are no rules."

© The Canadian Press, 2012

19 Sep, 2012

-
Source: http://www.globalnews.ca/Canada/foster+kids+grandparents+single+moms+soccer+dads+meet+canadas+modern+family/6442718075/story.html
--
Manage subscription | Powered by rssforward.com

07.45 | 0 komentar | Read More

Just friends: census may have counted roommates as married gay couples

Alisha, left, and Julie, walk in a park in Halifax on Thursday, Sept. 13, 2012. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan

OTTAWA - An unexpectedly high number of same-sex marriages in places like the oilpatch left census-takers scratching their heads — until they realized many of the "couples" were only splitting the rent.

As a result, Statistics Canada said Wednesday, it may have overestimated by as many as 4,500 the number of same-sex married couples in parts of the country.

A last-minute discovery forced the agency to hold back some census data on gay and lesbian married couples when they realized they couldn't be certain if some people were hitched or only roommates.

So during Wednesday's release of the latest tranche of census data, Statistics Canada only provided same-sex marriage numbers for the country's larger cities and not for smaller communities, where the numbers might be off.

It all amounts to an asterisk in the latest batch of numbers about same-sex marriage in Canada.

"We observed that there was a possible over estimation of same-sex families," said census manager Marc Hamel. "The counts for some smaller communities seemed too high."

None of this changes the fact that more and more of Canada's gay and lesbian couples are tying the knot.

Statistics Canada said same-sex marriage nearly tripled between 2006 and 2011. The census data also shows the number of same-sex couples jumped 42.2 per cent during that same period.

The agency counted 21,015 married gay and lesbian couples and another 43,560 in common-law relationships. That's up from the 2006 census, which enumerated 45,345 of them — 7,465 married and 37,885 common-law.

One possible explanation for the error is people who leave home for transient work in places like Alberta and Saskatchewan, Hamel said.

Roommates who are married — just not to each other — could have been counted as a couple.

"It could be related to how some people enumerated themselves," Hamel said.

"We seem to observe that in more transient communities where we have a lot of temporary workers coming in. So it could be people living together, for example, and reporting each other as married, but not necessarily to each other."

Changes to the census form may also be partly to blame.

The 2006 census form — the first to count same-sex couples — didn't have a designated box for gays and lesbians to indicate they were married.

The 2011 census form did have a special check box for same-sex married couples. The differences between the two census forms may have had some bearing on the data, Hamel said.

© The Canadian Press, 2012

19 Sep, 2012

-
Source: http://www.globalnews.ca/Canada/just+friends+census+may+have+counted+roommates+as+married+gay+couples/6442718032/story.html
--
Manage subscription | Powered by rssforward.com

07.17 | 0 komentar | Read More

Gettin' together: new census highlights spike in same-sex and common-law unions

John Clark and Michelle Rhodes relax in their Toronto townhouse on Sunday, September 18, 2012. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Patrick Dell

OTTAWA - Highlights from the latest release of data from the 2011 Canadian census, focused on families and living arrangements:

— Canada home to 9,389,700 "census families" — married or common-law couples, or single parents — in 2011, 5.5 per cent more than in 2006.

— For the first time, there were more common-law couples in Canada — 16.7 per cent of all census families — than single-parent families, at 16.3 per cent.

— Same-sex marriage nearly tripled between 2006 and 2011 as same-sex couples grew by 42.4 per cent. Same-sex common-law couples grew 15 per cent, compared with 13.8 per cent for opposite-sex common-law couples.

— Common-law couples increased 13.9 per cent between 2006 and 2011, compared with 3.1 per cent for married couples over the same time period.

— Single fathers grew by 16.2 per cent, compared with six per cent for single mothers, as lone-parent families grew eight per cent since 2006. Single mothers still comprise 80 per cent of single-parent families.

— Stepfamilies, counted for the first time in 2011, comprised 12.6 per cent of Canada's 3.7 million couples with children. Nearly 60 per cent were "simple" stepfamilies — families in which the children are the biological or adopted offspring of only one parent.

— The census counted 29,590 foster children aged 14 and under living in private households.

— Ten per cent of all children aged 14 or under living in private households were members of a stepfamily.

— The number of couples without children at home (44.5 per cent) continued to outpace those couples with kids living at home (39.2 per cent).

© The Canadian Press, 2012

19 Sep, 2012

-
Source: http://www.globalnews.ca/Canada/gettin+together+new+census+highlights+spike+in+same-sex+and+common-law+unions/6442718039/story.html
--
Manage subscription | Powered by rssforward.com

07.17 | 0 komentar | Read More