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Protesters call for NDP to do more for poor, disabled
Protesters outside Saturday's NDP leadership convention called for the closure of the Manitoba Developmental Centre in Portage la Prairie. (DAVID LIPNOWSKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS)
WINNIPEG - A decade of NDP government hasn’t ended poverty, nor has it closed the province’s largest institution for the disabled, dozens of chilled protesters charged outside the leadership convention Saturday.
While security guards kept the protesters from entering the Winnipeg Convention Centre, two overlapping groups pushed for the eradication of poverty and the closure of the Manitoba Developmental Centre in Portage la Prairie.
University of Manitoba Students Union president Sid Rahsid said 125,000 Manitobans live in poverty, including one in five children.
"Poverty in the province is staggering," said Rashid.
Education will help children get out of poverty, but to do so, they need better housing and they need reduced fees, right from child care through university tuition, said Rashid.
The Canadian Federation of Students has a petition campaign organized on campuses throughout Manitoba, and will present the petitions at the legislature Nov. 5, he said. "We’re aiming at getting 15,000 signed."
A few feet away, other protesters called for the closing of the Manitoba Developmental Centre, which houses about 300 people with disabilities.
Other provinces are closing such institutions, said Harry Wolbert, co-chair of the Manitoba League of Persons with Disabilities. Wolbert said that the MDC is like a prison.
"We want the residents to be moved to the community," he said. "It’s an inhumane facility" which denies the residents freedom, and is simply a way for the government to "warehouse" the disabled, he said.
Neither Greg Selinger nor Steve Ashton had come out to talk to the protesters, said Rashid and Wolbert.
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