Women let down: Government cuts to Status of Women Canada's budget betray our UN commitment and Harper's own words
Vancouver Sun
December 7, 2006
Editorial -- By: Margot Young, associate professor of law at the University of British Columbia.

EXCERPT

Last week we learned what the federal government's $5 million in cuts to Status of Women Canada -- the federal government agency centrally responsible for promoting gender equality and women's full participation in Canadian society -- will mean.

The results of these cuts, a 40-per-cent reduction in the agency's operational budget will be severe.

Twelve of the 16 regional Status of Women Canada offices will be closed by April 1, 2007. Women in Vancouver, for example, will have to deal with a Western Canadian office located somewhere in Alberta. The policy research fund -- an important funding source for independent research on women in Canada -- appears to be slated for abolition. And Status of Women Canada will be less able to carry out its unique tasks of holding the government accountable to its commitment to gender-based analysis and of monitoring Canada's observance of women's human rights.

These cuts ignore and, indeed, mock recent recommendations by the federally-appointed expert panel on accountability mechanisms for gender equality.

Ironically, these cuts falls on the 25th anniversary of Canada's ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. Canada ratified -- that is, committed itself to adhere to and respect -- this international treaty on Dec. 10, 1981.

Canada is not alone in recognizing this important set of international obligations to women's equality; 184 other countries have also done so. When Canada signed onto this convention, it joined the international community in recognizing that "the full and complete development of a country ... require[s] the maximum participation of women on equal terms with men in all fields."

It is also almost the one-year anniversary of another promise. On Jan. 18, 2006, Stephen Harper, in the middle of a federal election campaign, pledged that: "If elected, I will take concrete and immediate measures, as recommended by the United Nations, to ensure that Canada fully upholds its commitments to women in Canada." Now Prime Minister Harper's own political integrity, as well as that of our country's government generally, is bound up with his government's observance of these gender equality obligations.

In 2003, the year of Canada's most recent periodic review under the women's convention, the United Nations committee reviewing Canada was hard-hitting in its criticism of Canada's failure to observe international human rights obligations towards women. Bev Oda, minister of Canadian heritage and status of women, may assert that women in Canada are equal to men. But, data and the findings by this UN committee of international human rights experts belie such platitudes.

Canada has much work to do. For instance, pay inequality remains the norm: Women still earn 71 cents on the male dollar, making Canada 38th in the world in terms of the gender wage gap ratio. Racialized and aboriginal women suffer even larger wage gaps. Poverty remains disproportionately a female issue....

Canadian women's participation in society is unequal: Canada ranks 25th in the world in terms of the representation of women in professional and technical occupations and ranks 30th in the world for representation of women in Parliament, with a participation rate of only 20.8 per cent of seats for more than half of the population.

Oda ignores such well-documented facts, and the international concern they provoke, proving that the Status of Women cuts are ideological. If there were any doubt of this, note that the federal government has also changed the terms for the women's program -- the source of funding for women's organizations -- under Status of Women Canada, removing the goal of respect for and promotion of equality from the program's mandate. Additionally, federal funds can no longer be used by women's groups for advocacy, lobbying of government, and research. This restriction will hobble women's groups whose track record of effective, essential, and independent advocacy for women's equality has been critical to understanding and addressing the many problems of inequality faced by Canadian women.

Simply put, the activities of these groups are critical for a dynamic and thriving democracy, for meaningful citizenship for all Canadians, and for the achievement of social justice....

So, the Dec. 10 anniversary calls not for celebration but for protest. And the January anniversary of Harper's personal pledge reminds us that accountability on women's equality issues must be freshly demanded.