Debates I'd like to see

Koby wrote a really interesting piece here last week. I wanted to further expand on this question: "if the liberals were to win what issues would need to gain top-of-mindness in the public psyche"

Instead of asking a partisan question I wanted to ask: "which issues are ignored the most which shouldn't be?"

1. Native rights & culture
Canada has been reprimanded by many human rights organizations for its continued degradation of first nations people. Most recently the first nations have sued over policies that favour putting first nations children into non-first nation's foster care homes over providing welfare assistance to the natives directly. Statistically, the first nations have shown the Canadian government actually on average pays less welfare per head to natives than non-natives.
Canada needs sweeping reform on how we treat natives. Natives need equivalent distinct status to at least that of Quebec. I want to see national public debate on this topic and strong policy introduced. Below are some of the ideas I'd like included:
-recognition and use of the word 'genocide' when talking historically about what happened between the Americans, British, Canadians and the people of the first nations
-formal apology from all those governments for policies that to this day result in the repression of first nations persons
-an update in all curriculum to talk about native society before colombus and how technologically, socially advanced they were
-an update in all curriculum to talk about how malicious and systemic the 'whites' were in the continuing genocide of first nations
-an update in all curriculum to teach first nations culture
-recognition of major native holidays and festivals
-native american history month/week/year
-formal inclusion of natives into the constitution and into government structures to provide proper representation in the senate, commons, etc

Who owns this issue between the parties - Nobody! Could someone make it into a debate of national interest? Maybe?

2. Female and minority representation in the government
Representation of women in the government is horrendous. Unfortunately the partisanship name calling of Belinda Stronach was one of the least mature, unprofessional and disappointing moments in political history. Yes one could debate the ethics and merits of Belinda as a politician but lets face it - calling her a dog in national, public debate is appalling. The reaction of the media of having a strong woman running for political office was even worse - does anybody remember the original discussions on how she dressed, comparisons to Paris Hilton, etc - read this article by Dr. Linda Trimble, professor of political science on Belinda being framed. As a conservative or as a liberal she was continually attacked unfairly and sexistly by media and politics. And the media and current politicians probably detered many potentially talented females from entering Canadian politics.

And while I am using Belinda as an example one could also look at Ambrose, Kim Campbell, Sheila Copps, and many other examples of women who have been attacked by their own parties and the media more so than men in similar positions.

I'd like to see debate and policy as to how this could be altered:
1. Mandatory representation of minorities and women in the houses?
2. Mandate specific marketing spend directed to attracting women by political parties.

Who would own this issue? NDP - they have been systemically inclusive of women in their party.

3. Health, nutrition and community building
I'd like to see a lot more discussion in increasing recreational services for adults. More recreational and co-ed adult sports leagues are required - and more playing fields and parks to play them. This is one of the easiest ways to rapidly increase our health. Look at the athletic club structures of turkey or italy where community members belong to a local athletic club where they have varying levels of competitive sports played between different communities.

Read a great book called Bowling Alone to read about the recent collapse of community in the western world in the youngest generations and how they don't vote, don't phone friends, don't go out, etc - something needs to be done and urgently to get people together and communicating again and public debate and awareness needs to occur. The modern day community center panders towards the older generation. New community centers (privatized and commercialized??) need to be developed and marketed with the right sets of services to get people together again.

Who owns this debate? I'm not sure anybody - maybe the NDP.

I'd love to hear about other issues people feel that are not sufficiently represented in the national public debate.

Sources:
1. Assembly of first nations, www.afn.ca
2. http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca, Dr. Linda Trimble
3. Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam