Pay Equity in the News October 19th, 2007

I am sending this week’s news clips with our sincere congratulations to Wendy Robbins, who received the Governor General's Award in Commemoration of the Persons Case. I want to correct a couple of errors in the article on Wendy, however: 1) pay equity has NOT been applied to the public sector yet; and 2) the Coalition did receive funding from Status of Women Canada but this funding will NOT cover our advocacy activities.

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Je vous envoie les articles de la semaine avec nos plus sincères félicitations pour Wendy Robbins, qui a reçu le Prix du Gouverneur général en commémoration de l’Affaire Personne. Je corrige cependant deux erreurs qui se sont glissées dans l’article au sujet de Wendy: 1) l’équité salariale n’a pas encore été appliqué dans le secteur public; et 2) la Coalition a reçu du financement de Condition féminine Canada mais ce financement ne couvrira pas nos activités de revendication.

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N.B. woman 'a force - one who has broken through many, many barriers'

Rights Wendy Robbins receives national award for her contributions toward equality for women

Rob Linke
TELEGRAPH-JOURNAL

Published Thursday October 18th, 2007

Appeared on page A5

OTTAWA - As a social activist, a pioneer in women's studies and a champion of the cause of pay equity in New Brunswick, Wendy Robbins is hardly one to shrink from a battle.

Yet with the spotlight of recognition on her Wednesday at Rideau Hall, her voice catches, her eyes well over and she interrupts her speech for just a second to compose herself.

Nervous? Hardly.

Robbins, the only Atlantic Canadian this year to receive the prestigious Governor General's Award in Commemoration of the Persons Case, explained later that she was suddenly overwhelmed.

For her, this ceremony illustrated both how far women have come, and how far they have yet to go.

"It was very emotional as I thought of my daughter," said Robbins, a few minutes after posing for photographers with the other recipients and Gov. Gen. Michaëlle Jean. "She was a Rhodes scholar, able to do things my mother wasn't able to do.

"Things are remarkably different in our generation than in our parents' generation, and they're even more different for our children. That's the direction I want to keep things heading in."

The award Robbins received is given to just five women a year for a lifetime of contributions toward equality for women. That number - five - itself pays tribute to the five remarkable Canadian women who triumphed in the 1929 Persons Case that finally granted all women legal recognition in Canada.

"Wendy has brought so much energy and so many people together behind her," said her friend Michèle Ollivier, a sociologist at the University of Ottawa. "She's a force - one who has broken through many, many barriers. It has not always been easy for her to be at the forefront."

Robbins, a distinguished academic, co-founded the women's studies interdisciplinary program at the University of New Brunswick. She had also served as the research director of the Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women and co-founded one of the world's first online feminist discussion lists.

She has also been a leader in the pay equity battle, co-founding the coalition that brought pay equity to the provincial civil service.

Robbins' sense of social justice was born of the frustration she felt as a young woman growing up in a Quebec ruled by ironfisted premier Maurice Duplessis.

That's when she saw the sexist obstacles her mother Catherine, now in her eighties, encountered.

Despite being a gold medalist at McGill University in the Quebec of the 1940s and 1950s, Robbins' mother was not allowed to license the family car or get a bank account in her own name or negotiate a loan. Women had only won the right to vote in provincial elections in that province a few years before.

At 10 or 11 years old, Robbins was infuriated to learn women were discriminated against. It infuriates her still.

When Robbins herself was in university, she had to fight against a cap on how many women were accepted into graduate school.

While living in a residence for graduate women, she was exposed to a measles outbreak while pregnant. She was stunned to realize her choices were to either run the risk of raising a deaf-mute child, or having an abortion, which was a crime.

"That got me thinking about how those rights are important, too," she said.

As a professor of English literature, she worked with other academics at the University of New Brunswick to start a women's studies program.

There were already women - primarily francophone Acadians in the Moncton area - working on pay equity when she got involved and became a co-founder of the coalition that pushed change in New Brunswick.

"Sometimes you're just jumping in at the right time to put another shoulder to the wheel," she said.

She and Ollivier, who had worked with her at the old Advisory Council on the Status of Women, started up PAR-L, a listserv that keeps activists, researchers and others from across the country in touch and up-to-date on the issues.

"That was just when personal computers and the Internet were becoming more common," she said, and studies showed just five per cent of online users were women. "There was this huge gap."

One of her biggest accomplishments came to fruition just last year.

She and her friend Rosemary Morgan, a lawyer with the Canadian Association of University Teachers, helped lead the fight to compel Industry Canada, which funds the lucrative Canada Research Chairs program for academics, to open up the awarding of those chairs to more women, natives and visible minorities and the disabled. Millions of dollars in research grants will now flow more equitably thanks to their efforts.

"She's tenacious - she doesn't let go," said Morgan. "She was very much the organizer of all the academics behind that."

Now, Robbins sees women's rights suffering setbacks under the federal Conservatives.

"We're going backwards, we really are."

Regional status of women offices have closed. The coalition for pay equity in New Brunswick no longer has any federal funding. The National Association for Women and the Law, a close ally in some of her battles, closed last week. The flagship Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women will close in March.

"You can see I'm not a huge fan of Stephen Harper," she said, lowering her voice to a whisper and glancing around in mock nervousness in the back of a Rideau Hall ballroom.

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L'Acadie Nouvelle
Opinion, vendredi, 19 octobre 2007, p. 13

Briser le cycle de la pauvreté
Au niveau du salaire minimum, le Canada fait piètre figure. Le salaire minimum moyen au Canada est de 7,65 $. En Irlande, en France, en l'Australie et au Royaume-Uni, il dépasse les 12 $ l'heure.

Danielle Savoie

Des milliers de personnes ont participé, cette semaine, à des rassemblements à travers le monde pour appuyer la Journée internationale pour l'élimination de la pauvreté.

Nous n'aurions plus besoin de manifester si nos politiciens avaient tenu l'engagement pris à la Chambre des communes en 1989 "... d'éliminer la pauvreté infantile au Canada d'ici l'an 2000".

Malheureusement, ce n'est pas le cas!

Cette semaine, dans le discours du Trône, le gouvernement Harper s'est lui aussi engagé à lutter contre la pauvreté et à "aider ceux qui cherchent à briser le cycle de l'itinérance et de la pauvreté".

Si le gouvernement Harper veut vraiment briser le cercle de la pauvreté, il aurait dû annoncer un salaire fédéral minimum de 10 $ l'heure comme le réclament de nombreux groupes sociaux.

Assurer un salaire minimum de subsistance serait un bon point de départ pour éliminer la pauvreté.

Au niveau du salaire minimum, le Canada fait piètre figure. Le salaire minimum moyen au Canada est de 7,65 $. En Irlande, en France, en l'Australie et au Royaume-Uni, il dépasse les 12 $ l'heure.

Au Nouveau-Brunswick, le salaire minimum est encore plus bas que la moyenne nationale, il se chiffre à 7,25 $ l'heure. Un salaire de grève-faim!

En 2006, selon Statistique Canada, 13 000 personnes travaillaient au salaire minimum au Nouveau-Brunswick et plus de 60 % d'entre elles étaient des femmes.

Lorsqu'on travaille au salaire minimum, ça veut dire que l'on vit dans la pauvreté et on gagne à peine 15 000 $ par année. Ça, c'est si vous avez un emploi à temps plein.

Bon nombre de travailleurs et de travailleuses au Nouveau-Brunswick ont des emplois saisonniers. Ils gagnent peut-être un peu plus que le salaire minimum, mais sont au chômage une partie de l'année si, bien sûr, ils réussissent à travailler assez d'heures pour être admissibles à des prestations.

Ce sont ces travailleurs et ces travailleuses qui souvent doivent aller aux comptoirs alimentaires et faire un choix entre payer le loyer, le chauffage, l'essence pour aller travailler ou manger. Un cercle vicieux qui n'en finit pas, car ils n'arrivent jamais à prendre le dessus.

Le temps des promesses est terminé, il faut que les gouvernements passent à l'action.

Le Nouveau-Brunswick devrait faire comme le Québec et adopter une loi visant à lutter contre la pauvreté, se fixer des objectifs clairs et un échéancier.

Une augmentation substantielle du salaire minimum à 10 $ l'heure comme le réclament les groupes sociaux permettrait à tous ces travailleurs et travailleuses d'avoir un revenu décent et de se maintenir au-dessus du seuil de la pauvreté.

J'entends déjà les gens d'affaires monter aux barricades. "On ne peut pas payer ces salaires, on ne sera plus compétitif, on va devoir fermer les portes, on va perdre des emplois..." Bref, la même rengaine qu'on entend lorsqu'on parle d'équité salariale.

Pourtant, cet argent additionnel reviendrait et serait dépensé dans les communautés.

Dans certains pays comme le Royaume-Uni où il y a eu des hausses importantes du salaire minimum, des études ont démontré qu'il n'y a pas eu de pertes d'emplois comme le prédisait le monde des affaires et qu'au contraire, cela a plutôt eu un impact positif sur la productivité.

Le gouvernement Graham devrait aussi tenir ses promesses et adopter une loi sur l'équité salariale. Au Nouveau-Brunswick, les femmes gagnent en moyenne 2,41 $ l'heure de moins que les hommes pour un travail de valeur égale.

Lors de la marche contre la pauvreté à Moncton, le message a été très clair, le gouvernement doit aussi augmenter les prestations d'aide sociale.

Un programme de garderie et un programme national d'assurance-médicaments pour les aînés sont des éléments essentiels dans une stratégie pour éliminer la pauvreté.

Mais surtout, il faut que le gouvernement arrête de refiler ses responsabilités au secteur communautaire. Par exemple, quand le gouvernement laisse au secteur privé et aux organismes communautaires la prestation des soins à domicile, il contribue à maintenir les femmes dans la pauvreté, car elles se retrouvent dans des emplois précaires et à temps partiel sans aucun avantage social.

Si le gouvernement provincial est vraiment sérieux avec sa politique sur l'autosuffisance, s'il veut vraiment mettre "les enfants au premier plan" et bâtir un avenir, il doit arrêter de maintenir les parents dans la pauvreté.

La vraie autosuffisance, c'est d'aider les travailleurs et les travailleuses à avoir un salaire adéquat pour leur permettre de rester dans leur communauté et de ne pas être obligés de s'exiler en Alberta pour survivre.

dsavoie3@nb.sympatico.ca

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Answer the immediate needs, then ask 'why?'

Ginette Petitpas-Taylor

Times and Transcript

Published Thursday September 27th, 2007

Appeared on page D8

"I can recall being told at board meetings on more than one occasion that charities should be run like a business. Considering that Canadian charities hold assets of billions of dollars, have negligible debt, rarely go bankrupt and are consumed by mission, driven by passion and achieve social miracles with limited resources, I would suggest that more businesses should be run like charities."

That's one of my favourite quotes, made by a Saint John community group, from this month's report by the Premier's Community Non-Profit Task Force, presided over by Claudette Bradshaw.

Community groups are indeed under-appreciated -- they get short shrift even as we all, including governments, depend on them more and more.

Give community groups as much respect and support as government gives to business, said another community group to Task Force.

What if?

What if government provided to community groups some of the same financial assistance, networking opportunities and help in hiring and training employees that it does to businesses?

Communities would certainly be better off, let alone community groups and their employees.

As the task force report showed, the non-profit workforce is made up of low paid, mainly female staff who mostly don't have employee benefits.

The task force's final message is a strong challenge to government: Give groups respect, give them more financial stability to allow them to work at root causes rather than symptoms, and work to change attitudes so that we see investing in the non-profit sector as community economic development.

Mrs. Bradshaw's Non-Profit Task Force -- both the process that was followed with groups and the final report -- has made some people believe that a new relationship will indeed be forged with the non-profit sector.

We all await the provincial government's reaction to this report.

If the result of this excellent process is to "institutionalize" services that cover for society's problems and for government's social deficit -- for example, if it only serves to make food banks permanent and better funded -- then we have done worse than waste time.

"When I gave food to the poor, they called me a saint. When I asked why the poor have no food, they called me a communist." That quote by former Brazilian Bishop Helda Camara summarizes the issue.

It is as if, for some, charity is good but social justice is evil.

We need both. Charity is directed at symptoms. Social justice is about "looking up the river" as in that oft-repeated story about villagers living on the edge of a river who start seeing babies floating down the river: They rescue them, and since babies keep coming every day, the villagers build watch towers, prepare clothing for those who survive and give awards to the volunteers, until one day, a group of villagers prepare to go along the river banks to find out what is happening. The other villagers shout, "You can't leave us! We need you here to help save them!"

Which non-profit groups will be included in that new relationship with the provincial government?

That's one crucial issue no one has yet broached.

"Non-profit groups" is hardly a definition. Groups "that don't make a profit" include everything from food banks to sports teams, breast-feeding support groups to search and rescue, festival committees, literacy services, seniors and youth drop-in centres, school breakfast committees and support groups of all types.

More to my point, "non-profit groups" also includes groups advocating for change, for solutions to poverty, violence, eating disorders, pay discrimination and homophobia, in support of aboriginal rights, cycling trails, prisoners' rights, environmental protection and child care, for and against religious education and what have you.

A can of worms? Not really.

It should not be controversial to support reducing poverty, violence and discrimination. The government cannot be seen to be maintaining problems, instead of solving them, which would be the result of only including service-delivery groups among the non-profit groups that it assists and consults.

As New Brunswick advocacy groups said last week, "While the provision of direct services such as food banks and health and educational programs is important, it is critical to address the root causes of such problems as poverty and hunger. It is important that groups are able to devote a portion or all of their resources to advocacy work, and crucial that those whose work involves advocacy have a voice."

Many inequities remain in this province -- poverty being high on the list -- things that do not change without advocacy. Groups that represent the interests of society's most marginalized populations must have a voice.

The English-language groups consulted by the Task Force recommended that the provincial government offer dedicated funding for advocacy groups, coalitions and umbrella groups which contribute to research and policy development. The French-language groups had a similar recommendation in favour of support for groups that speak up for rights guaranteed under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The representative of the New Brunswick Coalition of Transition Houses, a group that has suffered at the hands of the federal government's recent fury against advocacy groups, told the Task Force, "When groups do not have the time, resources and freedom to speak up about the needs and reality of their community, society as a whole loses. Advocacy is part of democracy -- it's a catalyst for change for the better."

Bravo, Mr. Premier. Bravo, Claudette. Bravo, the 1,100 groups who met with the Task Force.

Now what will change?

Ginette Petitpas-Taylor, of Moncton, is Chairperson of the New Brunswick Advisory Council on the Status Of Women. Her column on women's issues appears in the Times & Transcript every Thursday. She may be reached via e-mail at acswcccf@gnb.ca