OTTAWA –Liberals are working today on Parliament Hill by hosting a forum on women’s issues to steer gender equality back on course, and to discuss concrete solutions for some of the most challenging issues facing Canadian women.
“40 years after the Royal Commission on the Status of Women tabled its ground-breaking report, too many women are still being left behind in Canadian society,” said Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff. “In fact, under the Harper government, the gender gap is growing – a fact that is simply unacceptable.”
“Canada desperately needs a forum like today’s forum. It allows all of us to examine these issues so that we can work together to bring about substantive positive change,” said Liberal Status of Women’s Critic Anita Neville.
The morning panel, “Canadian women: 40 years passed, 40 years ahead,” will include some of this country’s most outspoken and decorated defenders of women’s equality and right. Touching on everything from low-income housing to Aboriginal women to pension and income security, participants will focus on how far gender equality has come, where we are now and where we need to be in the future.
Canada’s first female Foreign Affairs Minister, Flora MacDonald, will make a keynote speech about empowering women and girls in her current role as founder of Future Generations Canada, an aid organization dedicated to development in Afghanistan.
The afternoon panel will discuss strategies for women’s economic security in 2010 and the future. Women in Canada still earn just 70 percent of what their male colleagues make, regardless of education level. Women make up a disproportionate share of low-income Canadians, particularly Aboriginal women, women with disabilities and immigrant and refugee women.
“This gender gap must be addressed if we are to really secure Canada’s future prosperity,” said Liberal Women’s Caucus Chair Maria Minna. “Liberals will take the ideas and proposals heard at today’s forum to the House of Commons to push the government to take action on addressing these issues.”
“The first step the government should take is to support Mr. Ignatieff’s Private Member’s Bill on pay equity,” said LaSalle-Émard MP Lise Zarac. “This is just one example of the kinds of actions we need to be taking to let this government know that they cannot strip Canadian women of the rights they have fought so hard for.”
Mr. Ignatieff’s Private Member’s Bill on pay equity had its first hour of debate last month before the Prime Minister shut down Parliament until March. The bill would repeal the measures in the Conservative budget that effectively classified pay equity as a labour issue to be negotiated during the regular collective bargaining process, when pay equity is an issue of fundamental human rights and gender equality.
Background:
Royal Commission on Status of Women
• The Royal Commission on the Status of Women was formed by under the direction of Prime Minister Lester Pearson’s Liberal government in 1967, and reported 167 recommendations to Parliament in December 1970.
• In March 1971, Prime Minister Trudeau appointed a panel to examine the recommendations and to propose an implementation plan.
• The Royal Commission was a response to the demands of advocacy organizations for government to take a comprehensive examination of the role of Canadian women.
Some of the Commission’s most notable recommendations:
• A minimum age requirement of eighteen for marriage;
• That abortion be permitted on the demand of any pregnant woman who was into her 3rd month or earlier, and after that point with the consent of a physician;
• Affirmation of the value of pay equity, that work of equal value be compensated equally;
• Proposing a national child care program, through federal and provincial agreements, to care for 450,000 Canadian children under the age of six to assist women who work both within and outside of the home;
• A federally guaranteed annual income to all heads of single-parent families;
• Sixty-eight of the recommendations by the Commission related to women and work, and the need to eliminate long-standing biases that kept women out of the labour force;
• The creation of adult education, literacy courses and teacher training for Aboriginal women;
• The report included a recommendation for the immediate appointment of ten women to the Senate of Canada, as well as the appointment of additional women judges and the encouragement of more women to run for elected office at all levels
