Board member Yvon Poirier travelled to Edmonton recently to represent CCEDNet in the General Assembly charged with planning the first Peoples’ Social Forum (PSF) in Canada. At the meeting, a broad range of participants from labour, Aboriginal, international solidarity and other sectors decided to go forward with the project and hold the event in the Ottawa area in August 2014.
CCEDNet has joined the organizing process in order to try and include community economic development and the social economy as economic alternatives on the Forum program. Our broader goal of building a people-centered agenda in Canada will require reaching out to new constituencies and building new alliances, an opportunity that the Forum offers. The Forum will explore a very wide range of subjects and can help forge links between often dispersed strategies and efforts.
Our partner in Québec, the Chantier de l’économie sociale has also formally joined the Peoples’ Social Forum process.
Two reports on the Edmonton meeting are available:
- a blog post on rabble.ca (in English) by Ethan Cox, an independent journalist from Montréal
- an article (in French) by Michel Lambert, the Executive Director of Alternatives, a Canadian NGO working domestically and internationally.
CCEDNet will provide regular updates on preparations for the Forum and hopes that members and partners will get involved, either at the PSF itself, or in regional meetings that will be organised in the months before the event.
Yvon Poirier
CCEDNet participant at the Edmonton meeting
