Episode 14 - Election Special Connecting Literacy and Civic Engagement

With the upcoming election on October 21st, our theme for the next few episodes will be about literacy and civic engagement. We will feature special guests who will talk to us about the importance of participating in the election, why you should vote, and what some of the barriers and opportunities there are to civic engagement. Did you know that the voter turnout in the last federal election in 2015 was 68.3%? On this week’s episode, the first of our election special we speak with the Honourable David Lametti, who is the Member of Parliament for LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, the Minister of Justice and the Attorney General of Canada. We learn about his role and the perspective of civic engagement from a candidate’s perspective. We also talk with Melanie Valcin from Frontier College about the connections between literacy and civic engagement and the Forum that is taking place on September 17th across Canada and online. Are you registered? How can you check? As part of our election series, we will be talking about voting basics. We chat about how to register or check if you are registered to vote. When we vote we have the opportunity to vote for issues and representatives who will talk about our needs in the government when laws and policies are being made. Links Mentioned Honourable David Lametti's biography on the Department of Justice website https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/abt-apd/min.html Frontier College's Discussion paper on Literacy and Civic Engagement https://tinyurl.com/y3gfpbdz Register for the Forum on Literacy and Civic Engagement September 17th https://tinyurl.com/yxom8h2s To check if you are registered to vote go to the Online Voter Registration https://ereg.elections.ca/CWelcome.aspx?lang=e To learn more about the election https://www.elections.ca/ and ABC's guide to Civic Literacy https://abclifeliteracy.ca/civic-literacy Learn about how the government works https://lop.parl.ca/about/parliament/guidetohoc/index-e.htm Upcoming Events TLE - Starting October 2019 and running through to January 2020, The Learning Exchange will be sponsoring ABC Life Literacy’s Up Skills for Work Series to adult learners TLE’s 1000 Books Before Kindergarten reading program will run from Oct. 2018 to Oct. 2019 to support families in the development of language and literacy skills in their young children. Watch for fun and interesting events throughout the year WQLC events E-parent workshops on Digital Literacy Oct 22 and Nov 5 https://www.facebook.com/events/395500908015049/ CVLC English Language Workshops Oct 8th https://cvlc-chateauguay.weebly.com/community-events.html QCRC Fall Fest and Travellin' Toddler Time Sept 21 and Oct 18 http://www.qcrc.org/events.html LQ and RECLAIM at Fetes des Cartier de Verdun Sept 28th https://www.facebook.com/events/701443053597709/ LQ at the 2020 Scotiabank Charity Race (April 25-26 2020)