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Government of Canada to Amend Indian Act

Kahnawake (June 4, 2009) - Quebec Native Women warmly congratulates Sharon McIvor for successfully fighting for the equality of Aboriginal women’s rights. Her commitment and convictions will allow thousands of Aboriginal men and women to regain their Indian status. For this achievement, Sharon McIvor deserves our deep admiration and gratitude.

On June 2, 2009, Minister Chuck Strahl, Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs of Canada announced that the Government of Canada will not appeal the decision of the British Columbia Court of Appeal ruling in the Sharon McIvor case of April 6, 2009. This judgment found sections 6(1)(a) and 6(1)(c) of the Indian Act to be discriminatory and unconstitutional. The federal government has 12 months in which to comply with the ruling.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) recently released its Spring 2009 issue of Our Schools/Our Selves entitled Beyond Child’s Play: Caring for and educating young children in Canada. This report takes a broad, comprehensive view of child care and early childhood education and examines it though a variety of different lenses to offer readers a number of points of entry into this nuanced and multifaceted topic.

Lynell Anderson and Jody Dallaire of the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada co-authored the article “The Fight for a Publicly-Funded Child Care System in Canada” which appears in the publication.

Budget 2009 was promised as an ‘economic recovery’ and ‘stimulus’ budget, and a plan to ensure that those who are most economically vulnerable would get support during a period of recession.

Women had every reason to hope they would be seen as equally able to stimulate the economy and would enjoy protections too, as women make up over half the population in Canada and many women are among the most economically vulnerable.

As a group, women are poorer; hold less secure jobs; own less property; have fewer savings; and have less pension income. Forty percent (40%) of women in Canada do not even make enough money to pay income taxes even in the best of times. The poorest are Aboriginal women, racialized women, immigrant women, women with disabilities, single women with children and older women who live alone.

But the World Bank recently concluded that “the business case for expanding women’s
economic opportunities is becoming increasingly evident; this is nothing more than smart
economics.” Women, and particular vulnerable groups of women, are hardest hit during
times of economic crisis and also have the greatest potential to contribute to the
economy.

Twelve recipients of the Governor General’s Award in Commemoration of the Person’s Case and more than ninety experts on human rights law and women’s rights have signed a letter calling on Prime Minister Harper to withdraw the Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act. The PSEC Act was introduced as part of Budget 2009.

The proposed legislation empties the right to pay equity of any meaning, say legal scholars and women’s rights specialists from across Canada. By permitting the evaluation of pay for male and female dominated jobs to take into account that male-dominated jobs are valued more highly in the market, this legislation will re-inject sex discrimination into federal public sector pay practices rather than eliminating it. Pay equity laws were created because market forces consistently undervalued women’s work compared to men’s.

“This new report is a wake-up call for our governments, but in particular the federal
government which is primarily responsible for ensuring Canada abides by this Convention,” says
Elaine Garland, President of the National Anti-Poverty Organization (NAPO). “The UN is urging
Canada to ensure that, as a matter of human rights, anyone on social assistance receives sufficient
income to attain an adequate standard of living. To do otherwise is to ensure grinding, debilitating
poverty, in particular for women who are disproportionately susceptible to deprivation.”

(Ottawa) A key United Nations human rights monitoring body has issued a report highly critical of Canada’s record on women’s human rights. The UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) reviewed Canada’s compliance with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, and issued its Concluding Observations in Geneva this week. The Committee asked Canada to report back in one year on steps taken to address inadequate social assistance rates across the country and the failure of law enforcement agencies to deal with the disappearance and murder of Aboriginal women and girls.

OTTAWA- (27 October, 2008)-Representatives from the Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action (FAFIA) a pan-Canadian alliance of 70 women’s equality seeking groups, watched as the UN CEDAW Committee in Geneva asked hard questions of the Canadian government regarding Canada’s failure to live up to the equality guarantees to women contained in the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination (CEDAW) against Women ratified by Canada in 1981.

***Please see Canada’s opening statements for the CEDAW review held October 22, 2008. All of the NGOs of Canada had only seven minutes for opening statements. In the interest of time and getting key issues on the official record, FAFIA’s delegation opted to focus on main themes outlined in the report.

The FAFIA CEDAW civil society report can be found here

Canada’s performance in achieving women’s human rights is currently being reviewed by the United Nation’s Committee on the International Covenant on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

FAFIA, along with its member groups, has submitted a comprehensive national civil society report to the UN CEDAW Committee to advise this review.

Nearly 40 women’s equality seeking groups and individuals collaborated on this testimony of Canada’s adherence to CEDAW and its implementation of the CEDAW committee’s recommendations of 2003.

During the 2006 federal election campaign, FAFIA issued a pledge to all federal party leaders asking them to support women’s human rights by upholding the UN Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and implementing CEDAW recommendations.

All parties signed the pledges and asserted their commitment to women’s equality.

Since 2006, many CEDAW recommendations go ignored and women’s inequality persists. Due to such factors as lack of affordable housing childcare; insufficient social assistance rates; and funding cuts for women’s advocacy and research, women’s equality has taken a step backwards.

During the 2008 federal election, FAFIA asked all Federal Party leaders to once again sign a pledge to uphold CEDAW and ensure the implementation of recommendations and also to create a government mechanism to lend accountability in ensuring the implementation of recommendations, and to continually follow-up on the progress of the implementation.

I’m not a feminist, but… what? Am I a feminist? What does it mean to be a feminist?

This video, made for the Ottawa 2009 International Women’s Day event “I’m not a feminist, but…” presents a thin slice of the range of thoughts and feelings folks have about the word feminism – from institutional transformation to ‘Mom’.

March 27-29 2009

Fauteux Hall, University of Ottawa, 57 Louis Pasteur

Twelve recipients of the Governor General’s Award in Commemoration of the Person’s Case and more than ninety experts on human rights law and women’s rights have signed a letter calling on Prime Minister Harper to withdraw the Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act. The PSEC Act was introduced as part of Budget 2009.

The proposed legislation empties the right to pay equity of any meaning, say legal scholars and women’s rights specialists from across Canada. By permitting the evaluation of pay for male and female dominated jobs to take into account that male-dominated jobs are valued more highly in the market, this legislation will re-inject sex discrimination into federal public sector pay practices rather than eliminating it. Pay equity laws were created because market forces consistently undervalued women’s work compared to men’s.

OTTAWA- (27 October, 2008)-Representatives from the Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action (FAFIA) a pan-Canadian alliance of 70 women’s equality seeking groups, watched as the UN CEDAW Committee in Geneva asked hard questions of the Canadian government regarding Canada’s failure to live up to the equality guarantees to women contained in the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination (CEDAW) against Women ratified by Canada in 1981.

***Please see Canada’s opening statements for the CEDAW review held October 22, 2008. All of the NGOs of Canada had only seven minutes for opening statements. In the interest of time and getting key issues on the official record, FAFIA’s delegation opted to focus on main themes outlined in the report.

The FAFIA CEDAW civil society report can be found here

Canada’s performance in achieving women’s human rights is currently being reviewed by the United Nation’s Committee on the International Covenant on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

FAFIA, along with its member groups, has submitted a comprehensive national civil society report to the UN CEDAW Committee to advise this review.

Nearly 40 women’s equality seeking groups and individuals collaborated on this testimony of Canada’s adherence to CEDAW and its implementation of the CEDAW committee’s recommendations of 2003.

During the 2006 federal election campaign, FAFIA issued a pledge to all federal party leaders asking them to support women’s human rights by upholding the UN Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and implementing CEDAW recommendations.

All parties signed the pledges and asserted their commitment to women’s equality.

Since 2006, many CEDAW recommendations go ignored and women’s inequality persists. Due to such factors as lack of affordable housing childcare; insufficient social assistance rates; and funding cuts for women’s advocacy and research, women’s equality has taken a step backwards.

During the 2008 federal election, FAFIA asked all Federal Party leaders to once again sign a pledge to uphold CEDAW and ensure the implementation of recommendations and also to create a government mechanism to lend accountability in ensuring the implementation of recommendations, and to continually follow-up on the progress of the implementation.

Women are more likely than men to experience housing insecurity. Women and children, particularly women of color and Aboriginal women, are the fastest growing group using shelters in Canada.

As part of its summer cinema program, the NFB Mediatheque will screen Helene Klodawsky’s powerful and improvised alternative drama Family Motel, an original narrative of one woman’s struggle to protect her family, from August 7 to 12.

Last March, Bill C 484, the Unborn Victims of Crime Act, passed second reading in the House of Commons. This bill seeks to amend the Criminal Code and to create a separate offence for causing the injury or death of an “unborn child” when a pregnant woman is the victim of a crime. This would mean that the murderer of a pregnant woman could be accused of a second murder, that of the foetus.

The 52nd session of the United Nations’ Commission on the Status of Women took place in March 2008. The theme for these sessions was “Financing for Women’s Equality”.

FAFIA led a delegation of eight women to attend these sessions. The delegation took part in a training session on women’s economic security in Canada to lend domestic context to these international meetings.

Please find our training materials on women’s economic securiy after the jump…