Present: Chris Di Liberatore, Robert Lewis, Dawn Hardy, Dina Crawley, Jeannie Baldwin, REVP & Cathy Murphy, Regional Coordinator
Regrets: Lesley Thompson, PSAC Communications Officer
1. Review of report from the February 8, 2013 meeting
We reviewed our last report to the PSAC Atlantic Council. An update is that the Political Action Committee met and selected two members to participate in the “Breaking the Silence” tour in Guatemala.
2. Review of the 2014 Budget
We reviewed the 2014 Political Action Draft Budget that is consistent with what was disbursed in prior years. We added a line item ($1500) for the People’s Social Forum: www.peoplessocialforum.ca and we will be doing a letter to the Atlantic Council and Area Council’s to see if we have interest for members to sit on the organizing committee with Lesley for this forum which is taking place in Ottawa from August 21-24, 2014. We also added a line item ($1500) for the EI Campaign as part of our Atlantic Activities and increased the amount for the Tommy Sexton AIDS Awareness from $250 to $500. We received an acknowledgement of contribution from the NB Common Front for Social Justice. We discussed our previous proposal to organize a symposium for the Area Councils which has not occurred. We will be trying to organize this event in 2014.
3. Political Action Update from Directors
Our committee members report on various activities that each director participated in since our last meeting which included: CLC Political Action Conference in March 2013, Lobbying MP’s on issues such as the Rand Formula and Pay in Arrears, municipal elections for NFLD and Provincial elections in NS, DCL Conference, Campaigns such as We Are All Affected Leadership training for the one-on-one campaign, and negotiations just to name a few activities. NS has a new website called: www.nsaffected.com and everyone is encouraged to view the website and if you have submissions you like to have on the website, please feel free to put them forward.
4. Political Action Update from REVP
Jeannie indicated that she will be providing a comprehensive report at council but wanted to highlight the following:
• Town Hall meetings were recently held regarding Veterans and we have the following links that you can access:
http://psacunion.ca/stop-veterans-affairs-office-closures
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKuGWYFwfsU
• PSAC is preparing a video related to EI that will be launched in December.
• PSAC has a video project pending about Search and Rescue
• CLC has created a contest called “One minute Message” video contest: http://www.canadianlabour.ca/national/news/we-have-winner you can view the top five entries from this link.
• The PSAC will be actively participating in the activities in Calgary during the Premier’s meeting in November.
Respectfully submitted in solidarity,
Dawn Hardy, Chairperson and Chris DiLiberatore, Co-Chairperson