Status of Women Canada gives $300,000 a year to groups in New Brunswick working to improve our communities

NB Telegraph-Journal News - As published on page A5 on August 31, 2006

COUNTERPOINT

Community groups are neither left nor right

Status of Women Canada gives $300,000 a year to groups in New Brunswick working to improve our communities

Commentary

By Ginette Petitpas-Taylor
Commentary

A rose grower who lived on the route of the 1995 Québec women's march against poverty was so inspired that he brought 10,000 roses to the crowd. Was he being leftist or anti-family?

When New Brunswickers rally in support of groups such as the New Brunswick Coalition of Transition Houses and Saint John's Urban Core Support Network, are they all by definition - gasp - radical feminists?

Some people have time and inclination to debate these points. Others don't, and just get on with the work of improving their community and working for greater fairness and opportunities.

Some are trying hard to create the illusion that there is a bandwagon calling for an end to funding of equality-seeking groups and of government sections such as Status of Women Canada. Others know that "equality-seeking groups" is a term that "people from away" use for the groups that work in our communities to end violence, get people out of poverty or ensure there is quality child care.

Lately, whenever I've come across arguments, such as by conservative columnists, for the abolition of government support for equality-seeking groups, two things have come to mind.

One is, What support? Women's groups in New Brunswick work with little government assistance, with at most occasional project funding. Any financial assistance they have received from Status of Women Canada has been good for New Brunswick communities.

The other thought is, When did it become a liberal - with a capital or a small 'l' - or left-wing thing to support reducing poverty, violence and discrimination?

Canadians are fair-minded people, but mostly they are practical - few of us have the time or inclination for American-style name-calling and false divisions of right and left. Few New Brunswickers will support the abolition of funding for Status of Women Canada, since it means even less funds for local groups.

Canadian families have a vivid and recent example of attempts to create false divisions that did not serve them well. During the federal election campaign earlier this year, the Conservative and Liberal promises on child care presented two solutions to two different problems. Both were attempts to answer real needs and both solutions are needed.

But somehow, politics and media requiring the appearance of conflict, families were presented as divided into two warring camps, stay-at-home and working-parent families. The reality is different.

A stay-at-home parent today may be working for pay, outside or inside the home, next month. Stay-at-home parents need child care when they are sick, have other responsibilities or want to have their child benefit from the stimulation of child care programs. That is how most women see it, not in the us-versus-them view being projected.

For ordinary New Brunswick families - those that don't judge people or groups based on whether they are "feminist," "right," "left" or indifferent - child care is what you need to raise a family, and it includes supports to stay-at-home and to working parents, home-based services and day care centers.

Women remain seriously under-represented in decision-making positions and face unequal opportunities in many aspects of their lives. For certain groups, notably women with disabilities and Aboriginal women, the inequalities are especially severe.

The work of creating equality is a work in progress that has the support of most Canadians and certainly most New Brunswickers. With the small amount received from Status of Women Canada in the last few years by New Brunswick's Coalition for Pay Equity, they have gained respect and support, from individuals, groups and institutions in the province, for the idea of valuing women's traditional work. Making Waves, another New Brunswick group that has received a few dollars from Status of Women Canada, has been applauded by schools, provincial politicians and youth for its work with youth to prevent violence.

An Ottawa-based group called Realistic, Equal, Active and For Life, is asking its supporters to send letters urging the federal government to abolish its Status of Women Canada and end the funding for the Court Challenges Program, the Federal Law Commission and others.

Realistic, Equal, Active and For Life are now concerned that their campaign has recently been met "by a massive counter offensive with letters pouring in to the Prime Minister and his Cabinet and individual MPs from across the country expressing concerns about the disbandment of the Status of Women."

At this point, only the federal government can put an end to this silliness by stating that Canada stands for more, not less, equality and diversity.

There are an enraged few misrepresenting the position of what they insist on calling their "opponents" and then pretending to refute it. They pretend Status of Women Canada wastes millions on ideology-based groups, whatever that is.

Tell that to the many groups dividing up the $300,000 that Status of Women Canada spends in New Brunswick - or better yet, please don't bother them. They're busy working on dating violence prevention, on supporting women moving from income assistance to employment, on improving the value we give to traditional female work.

Ginette Petitpas-Taylor is Chairperson of the N.B. Advisory Council on the Status of Women.