In the coming months, the Canadian Council on Social Development (CCSD) will work with partners from across the country to promote awareness on the Canada Social Transfer. It is work that will build a foundation upon which Canadians can build the kind of Canada we want for the 21st century. It is encouraging a broad and inclusive dialogue on the future of our social programs.

The focus of this roundtable will be the following: “In order to fulfill Canada’s international human rights commitments to women, what role, if any, should the federal government play in the development and implementation of social policy?”

Women’s disproportionate poverty and reliance on social programs, including social assistance and related social services, are well-documented. For women, and particularly for women whose race, disability, age or single motherhood deepens their disadvantage, access to adequate social programs is integrally linked to human rights. Legislation and transfers that establish social programs, and determine funding levels for them, are indispensable practical vehicles that give life to women’s human rights.

Image courtesy of UNPACIn its 2007 budget, the federal government implemented a solution to the fiscal imbalance through the additional transfer of dollars to provinces and territories. The ways in which this money is transferred, and how it will be spent by provincial and territorial governments, will greatly affect women’s access to social services and programs.

Read FAFIA’s overview on the fiscal (im)balance, and what it means for women.

**Nancy Peckford, Director of Programs at FAFIA, recently presented at the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance meeting.

Recently, CCSD President Marcel Lauzière and Chairman Wayne Helgason wrote to Prime Minister Harper to remind him of the key role social development plays in this country.

The Standing Senate Committee on National Finance recently published its second interim report on the Committee’s study of the fiscal balance between different levels of government in Canada, entitled The Vertical and Municipal Fiscal Balances.

Nancy Peckford, Director of Programs at FAFIA presented to the Committee regarding FAFIA’s position on the Canada Social Transfer. FAFIA believes that federal fiscal mechanisms can be better utilized to ensure that Canada meets its equality obligations to women.

In 2006, the Conference Board of Canada hosted the CBIC Scholar-In-Residence Lecture Canada by Picasso: The faces of Federalism. Janice Gross Stein, Belzberg Professor of Conflict Management in the Department of Political Science and Director of the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto, was a contributor at this lecture, and emphasized the need for national standards.

Shelagh Day and Gwen Brodsky have authored a study entitled: Women and the Canada Social Transfer:Securing the Social Union (in PDF). The report explains how social assistance and legal aid have been in decline in Canada for the past decade and how this has had devastating effects on poor women. The report calls for national standards, federal legislation, and new mechanisms to rescue the social union and to meet Canada’s human rights obligations.