The following has been excerpted from the Alternative Federal Budget 2007. To read the full document, click here (pdf) [1]

Last year marked the 25th anniversary of Canada’s ratification of the most comprehensive treaty on women’s human rights: the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Towards Women (CEDAW). But Canada, as a 2003 UN committee noted, still had a long way to go towards meeting its treaty obligations.

The UN committee reviewed Canada’s performance under CEDAW and made 23 recommendations to governments in Canada regarding this country’s treatment of women. It strongly urged Canada to expand affordable child care facilities, modify the eligibility rules for Employment Insurance to reflect women’s non-standard employment patterns, and increase its efforts to combat poverty among women.

The committee also asked our governments to reconsider the current fiscal arrangements between the federal government and the provinces and territories, urging the re-establishment of adequate national standards to eliminate the unequal treatment women receive across the country.

During the 2006 federal election, leaders of the four major federal parties, including Prime Minister Harper, pledged their support to uphold women’s human rights in Canada during the next Parliament. These leaders said that, once elected, they would take immediate and concrete measures, as recommended by the United Nations, to ensure that Canada fulfills its equality commitments to women.

In light of the public commitment made by our political leaders to act on the UN recommendations, Canadians rightly expected all of the parties to work towards their implementation. Yet, in 2006, the Conservative government made several changes affecting women’s equality provisions that call into question the sincerity of its commitment to implement the UN recommendations. Some programs were eliminated, some suffered funding cutbacks, and others were fundamentally and detrimentally altered.

In addition, some government equality commitments to action were stalled or reversed. The justifications for these measures were that women are already strong, already equal, and therefore don’t need these policy supports. In actuality, however, although women have equality rights on paper, much more work needs to be done to make these equality rights a reality for all women in Canada.

Women’s programs

With women holding only 21% of the seats in the federal Parliament, issues of significance to women do not always get the attention they deserve. Women’s organizations in Canada thus play a vital democratic role. Changes to the Terms and Conditions of the Women’s Program in the fall 2006 have, however, completely eliminated funding for all activities linked to lobbying and advocacy, and for most research.

The AFB will reinstate the previous Terms and Conditions, along with providing a substantial increase to the budget of the Women’s Program of Status of Women Canada to $100 million annually.As well, in addition to project funding, core funding will be restored to equality-seeking groups, including women-centred services.

The AFB will also reinstate the $5 million cut from the operational budget of Status of Women Canada. The capacity of the Status of Women was completely undermined, with 16 offices being reduced to four, and 131 staff being reduced to 70. These measures will cost a total of $4.2 million per year.

Attachment of standards and conditions for the Canada Social Transfer

To improve transparency and accountability for the Canada Social Transfer, the AFB will create separate transfers for Post-Secondary Education and Social Assistance and Services.

The new Canada Social Assistance and Services Transfer must have clearly designated responsibilities attached to it; adequate funding to meet its mandate; and regular and public accounting of expenditures on each designated program by the recipient provinces and territories.

Funds from this transfer will be designated for social assistance and a number of other services, including civil legal aid, shelters for battered women, women’s centres, and other specified social services. The AFB will provide adequate funding to support the designated programs and services.

Gender budgeting

The AFB will also hold a full and transparent gender-budgeting exercise encompassing all aspects of the federal budget. This requires rigorous methodology, along with a commitment to substantive women’s equality as the objective of the exercise. In addition, we will ensure that every federal government report includes a tax incidence analysis for women. This is part of making the federal budget more democratic, as outlined in the Preface of the AFB.