Cuts to Status of Women
Sorry for the long delay in my blog. I will be starting up again on a regular basis.
Can anyone doubt that today's cuts to Status of Women Canada is the beginning of the end of the women's program. FAFIA http://www.fafia-afai.org/ and NAWL http://www.nawl.ca/ managed to protect their funding by a major lobby campaign so the cuts announced yesterday are "administrative cuts." The Harper government is smart. They don't want to cut project funding right away and risk the wrath of the women's movement. This is a trial balloon. If they get away with it without much opposition, project funding will be next.
Even more signicant is their elmination of the Court Challenges Program. This is a critical source of funding for marginalized groups who want to launch a charter challenge. Many critics have already pointed out that the Charter has helped corporations and other privileged groups more than it has helped women, people with disabilities and racialized groups now it will be much more slanted in the direction of the privileged. Ideologically, this is the clearest symbol of where the Harper government will be going if ever they are to get a majority.
posted by Judy Rebick @ 11:00 AM
3 comments
3 Comments:
When you say risk the wrath of the women's movement, don't you mean the feminist movement? Last time I looked Real Women are run by women, and they are part of a woman's movement , I don't see them getting in a roar about possibly axing the SOW. Guess you feel you can generalize without being accurate. Sad.
I agree the cut to NACSOW by Harper are emblematic of what the Tories stand for. However many Canadians no longer want tax dollars funding feminist lobbyists. Many women I know who have both professional careers and children do not feel at all connected to NACSOW's mission.
Well, are you actually that surprised that SoW lost a little bit of money?
Thankfully the Access to Information Act was able to expose what they were acutally funding. Including a pro-prostitution organization. How is advocating for something that exploits women and their bodies in the interests of women? A recent poll of Canadians showed that about half of women would like to see pornography banned, just think of what they'd think of prostitution.
And CCP? They were a non-profit organization that was clear to fund whatever they wanted without accountability. Without being a government agency (thanks to Chretian's Liberals), they were free from the Access to Information Act exposing their funding of special interset organizations.
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