THE STATUS OF WOMEN MUST BE ABANDONED

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THE STATUS OF WOMEN MUST BE ABANDONED

AN EGREGIOUS ABUSE OF TAXPAYER’S MONEY

The Royal Commission on the Status of Women (RCSW) tabled its report in 1970 and recommended that the federal government establish a special agency to further the advancement and equality of women.

As a result, the Status of Women was established in 1973. Since that time, it has handed out over one hundred million dollars to so-called women’s groups. In fact, only feminist groups have been the major beneficiaries of this largesse. Acting as agents of change, the latter have used taxpayers’ monies to further the feminist ideology in Canada. This is the reason feminists have been more influential in Canada than anywhere else in the world. With large amounts of government grants, they have infiltrated the schools, universities and government, as well as the courts.

In the last ten years, annual grants given directly to feminist groups from the Status of Women (Women’s Program) have almost doubled, from $8 million in 1998 to $15 million for 2007-2008. Total funding for the Status of Women agency for 2007-2008 (last available data) was $25 million, which covers administrative costs, salaries, grants, etc. The total allocation to the Status of Women for the last ten years (1998-2008) is $225 million.

The RCSW took place over forty years ago. Much has changed since then. For example, today, women are perfectly capable of making their own decisions with regard to their lives and do not require a government agency to support them because of supposed discrimination by a mythical “patriarchal” society. Women today comprise 66% of university students, 59% of medical graduates and 55% of law graduates. It is significant that the current unemployment statistics indicate that men, rather than women, are experiencing the most unemployment difficulties.

It seems that it is now men who are lagging behind women. Yet, the Status of Women, with its entrenched feminist bureaucrats, is still pushing the feminist agenda, undeterred by the remarkable changes that have taken place in Canada in the past few generations. Why then is this absurd agency still allowed to exist?

The Conservative government did try to come to grips with the problems of Status of Women in September 2006, when it stopped the direct core funding of prominent feminist groups, such as the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC) and LEAF (Women’s Legal Education Action Fund), the latter being the legal arm of the feminist movement. The Conservative government also stopped feminist “research.” Instead, the government specified that only projects which would directly assist women were to be funded.

Feminist Research Projects

The “research” previously funded by the Status of Women was advocacy research, since its purpose was to advocate and promote the feminist ideology only.

For example, one of these so-called research projects, funded by the Status of Women, was carried out by a feminist professor, Pierette Bouchard, in the Faculty of Education at Laval University in Quebec, along with her two research assistants, Isabelle Boily and Marie-Claude Proulx. Their “study” was released in 2003, which, apparently, helped reveal a “reactionary ideology attacking the gains by women and to discredit feminism.”

This report, posted on the Status of Women’s website, reported that a “masculinist” lobby threatens to overturn policies that protect women’s rights. The research included an analysis of Internet sites operated by these so-called “masculinist” groups. One of these groups has a website called B.C. Fathers, created by Ken Wiebe of Victoria. Mr. Wiebe brought an action of defamation in the B.C. Supreme Court against the researcher, her assistants and the Status of Women based on the researchers’ claim that these men’s groups were engaged in “hateful, violent and unrestrained discourse against feminism” and were a vehicle for “hate mongering.”

The B.C. Supreme Court concluded, in January 2008, that Mr. Wiebe was indeed defamed by the researcher, her assistants and the Status of Women, but that the comments “however exaggerated, obstinate or prejudiced” were permitted under the law because of the legal defence of “fair comment”. The latter refers to matters of opinion which is not capable of proof, but is allowed to be expressed, although others disagree, provided the opinion is considered an honest belief.

That is, although the researchers and the Status of Women were found to have made defamatory remarks against Mr. Wiebe and his organization, since it was an “honestly held opinion”, the court claim by Mr. Wiebe was dismissed.

Nonetheless, this case does reveal the nonsense spilled out at the Status of Women by its funded researchers. What an obscene waste of the taxpayers’ money!

Notwithstanding the setbacks caused by government policy on funding and the detrimental court decision, the militant feminist bureaucrats in the Status of Women are still hard at it, spending the taxpayers’ money, circumventing government policy by generously funding some additional, newly organized feminist groups. These latter have received thousands of dollars in huge grants since 2006, when the new funding policies were supposedly put in place. The two most prominent groups now receiving funding are the Feminist Alliance For International Action (FAFIA) and Equal Voice.

Feminist Alliance for International Action (FAFIA),

(FAFIA) has received huge sums from the Status of Women since it was formed in 2002. It received $330,000 from the Status of Women in 2006-2007, and $180,470 in 2007-2008 and in the fiscal year 2008 – 2009, it received the enormous grant of $480,000, supposedly to organize a series of training events for 105 women across Canada to “become familiar with the tools related to the UN Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW)”, i.e., how to agitate for feminist goals. This money will keep FAFIA operational to continue its feminist work for a year or so, at which time it will, undoubtedly, receive another large grant from the Status of Women – as regular as clockwork. This most recent grant is supposed to enable FAFIA to hold four regional workshops. However, no matter how lavish the workshops, they don’t cost $480,000! These feminist applications for grants are “padded” in order to allow the feminist groups to receive funds to cover their operational expenses, such as offices, equipment and staff, while they carry out their “project”. For example, granting funds to FAFIA provided it with funding to carry out other feminist activities, such as researching and drafting a paper to attack MP Maurice Vellacott’s bill on shared parenting (see article “Family Under the Spotlight”, p. 4).

Another of FAFIA’s major activities is to appear before select UN monitoring committees, which are feminist dominated, to report on the Canadian government’s many alleged failures to support “women,” which failure contravenes UN treaties. For example, when the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women Monitoring Committee issued a report on Canada, which included FAFIA’s criticisms of the Conservative Government, the opposition parties used this report to attack the Conservative government, (Hansard, November 25, 2008, page 242, 249, and 250. Also, see Hansard November 28, 2008, page 278). The Conservative government, therefore, is allowing taxpayers’ funds to be used to facilitate attacks on itself and to undermine its policies. Sheer madness!

Equal Voice

Equal Voice is a feminist organization promoting policies to encourage more women to enter politics. It has regularly received $70,000 annually from the Status of Women, but in 2009, it hit the jackpot receiving an additional $1.2 million over 38 months from the Status of Women to develop a special mentor’s program to train young women to attain political office. Although Equal Voice is supposedly non-partisan, it is, in fact, a feminist organization with feminist supporters from all the political parties, such as former Prime Minister (for a brief few months) Kim Campbell, Judy Erola (former Liberal Minister for the Status of Women), Audrey McLaughlin, (former federal NDP leader) and Pat Carney, a feminist Progressive Conservative Senator, now retired.

Equal Voice claims that, with this generous funding from the Status of Women, it is “poised to become the most active voice for Canadian women” – what women? Since when do feminist organizations represent anyone but themselves?

It is significant that the grants to Equal Voice and FAFIA are both supposed to be used for the “training” of women. We know that the “training” will be in the feminist ideology and the trainees, young women, immigrant and aboriginal women, will be trained to serve as the next generation of feminist agitators – all at the taxpayers’ expense.

Professional Feminists

Mention should be made here about the efforts of the professional feminists who spend their entire lives living on comfortable salaries provided by the taxpayer, while spending their careers solely pushing feminism in Canada.

Feminist organizations have few members, and, therefore, rely on these well-educated professional feminists to promote their platform. These professional feminists have no other occupation than that of operating these organizations. They move sideways from one feminist organization to the other – never stopping in their quest to revolutionalize society on the taxpayers’ dollar. Some of these women are:

Shelagh Day

A self-acknowledged lesbian, she was one of the founders of the legal arm of the feminist movement LEAF (Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund). She then became vice president of the feminist umbrella group the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC) in which capacity she attended the Charlottetown Constitutional Conferences in 1992, supposedly representing “women” at the taxpayers’ expense. Next, she chaired the equality panel of the Court Challenges Program, generously handing out funds to feminist and homosexual groups to support their legal challenges. Ms Day was also a member of the Canadian delegation at the UN Conference for Women held in Beijing in 1995. She represented the homosexual organization EGALE (Equality for Gays and Lesbians Everywhere) at that conference – of course, with all expenses paid by the taxpayers. Ms Day’s most recent reincarnation was in the recently formed (1999) umbrella feminist group Feminist Alliance for International Action (FAFIA), referred to above, where she chairs its human rights committee.

Andrée Coté

She is former president of the government funded NAWL (National Association for Women and the Law), and is currently Director of Legislation and Law Reform for the public service union PSAC (Public Service Alliance of Canada). She has also been a spokesperson for the Pay Equity Network, comprised of Status of Women funded NAWL, the Court Challenges Program, and LEAF (Legal Education and Action Fund), NOIVMW (National Organization of Immigrant and Visible Minority Women in Canada) and FAFIA (Feminist Action for International Action), and various labour organizations. Coté was Human Rights Officer for PSAC during their Call to Action against Bill C-484, a bill to make violence against the unborn child a separate crime in cases of violence against the mother. She was Research Associate at the Centre for Feminist Research, York University and also represented the pro-abortion, same-sex marriage World March for Women (REALity, May June 2000). Her feminist publications have been funded by Status of Women, NAWL, and the Quebec and Ontario governments through feminist organizations. She has also co-authored a brief for the Ontario Women’s Network on Custody and Access (2001).

Nancy Peckford

At present, she is executive director of Equal Voice, which, as stated above, recently received $1,200,000 from the Status of Women. She has published “Women and electoral reform: Pursuing a feminist policy agenda in Canada”. She is former Director of Programs for FAFIA. Peckford has been a researcher with NAWL (2001), Lobby Coordinator for the 2000 March for Women (2000), Provincial Coordinator of the Ontario Women’s Network on Child Custody and Access (2002), and a program officer with the Canadian Labour Congress’ Women’s and Human Rights Department (2003). In 2007-2008, while executive director of FAFIA, she served as one of the three experts for the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women’s study on gender budgeting. Such a well-paid career – funded almost entirely by the taxpayer.

Where is the Conservative Minister Responsible for the Status of Women?

Where is the Conservative Minister responsible for the Status of Women in all this, since she must approve these questionable grants before they are finalized? The current Minister, the Hon. Helena Guergis (Simcoe Grey) must either be lacking in common sense to believe the nonsense plied her by the bureaucrats in her department, or she is sympathetic to the duplicity being carried out by her department and is delighted to push these funds into feminist hands. Either way, she is an ineffective, toothless representative of the Conservative government and should be removed.

Conclusion

The Status of Women organization and its vast empire, including its tentacles which are present in every federal government department, by way of the policy of so-called “gender mainstreaming,” should be abolished. Funds used for this anachronistic agency should be used to meet the real needs of men, women and children who genuinely require assistance: such funds should not be funneled off to the well-educated, professional feminists, whose power and influence over the years have stemmed solely from funding by this government agency.

Please write to the following to request the disbanding of the Status of Women:

The Right Hon. Stephen Harper
Office of the Prime Minister
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A2
Fax: 613-941-6900

The Hon. James Moore
Minister of Canadian Heritage
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A6
Fax: (613) 992-9868

Your MP
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A6