CST

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.

To download the report, click here:

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.

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.

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.