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Canadian Tories Hammer Feminists In Pocket Book

Filed under: General — Intrepid @ 11:03 pm Sun 8th October 2006

From: BC Fathers (Canada)
Presenter: Dick Freeman
Author: Norma Greenway
News Service: Can Way
Via: The Honor Network

Women’s Groups Fear Tories will cut Funding of Militant Feminist Hate Groups

(Rights group forced to close, other organizations could follow as money dries up)

OTTAWA – A leading Canadian women’s rights group has been forced to close its office for lack of money and other federally financed organizations fear a similar fate as the Conservative government zeroes in on a promise to cut spending by $1 billion this fiscal year.

The prospect cheers Gwen Landolt, vice-presi¬dent of the pro-life, pro-family conservative lobby group REAL Women Canada and a fierce critic of federal funding of “feminist” and other special inter¬est groups.

“It’s simply an abuse of taxpayers’ money to fund only one ideology,” Landolt said in an interview.

Suspense over how much, if any, money will flow to women’s and other groups should end within the next week or so when the government tells Canadians what programs it plans to curb or kill to meet its budget commitment.

Opposition MPs accuse the government of using the spending review to dismantle by “stealth” the 30-year-old agency known as Status of Women Canada, which, among other things, hands out almost $11 million a year to groups committed to promoting gender equality and the full participation of women in society.

Bev Oda, minister responsible for the status of women, is playing her cards close to her chest, refus¬ing requests for interviews and sidestepping direct questions about possible funding cuts. Agency offi¬cials also have not returned repeated phone calls.

Under heated questioning in the House of Com¬mons this week, Oda said the government is com¬mitted to taking “dramatic” action to improve the lives of women.

But she also said money had been wasted on social and cultural groups in the past, and the gov¬ernment was determined to ensure it gets put to the best use in the future.

NDP MP Irene Mathyssen, the party’s status of women critic, said the government’s foot dragging on hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of pend¬ing funding applications from women’s group’s means programs are being cut one by one.

“We are raising the alarm,” Mathyssen said in an interview. “This government clearly has no interest in the status of women.”

The Ottawa-based National Association of Women and the Law NAWL, which has sought yearly finding of about $350AE to finance its advo¬cacy and research activities on such issues as equal pay for work of equal value, was forced to shutdown earlier this month – and lay off its two paid employees – after it ran out of funds.

NAWL treasurer Alison Dewar said the group, which is still paying rent on its office, hopes to reopen if it gets federal funding.

Landolt said the Harper government should kill Status of Women Canada.

“It [the agency] is based on the whole concept that women are victims of a patriarchal society,” Landolt said. “Nobody really believes that anymore. Its time has passed.”

2 Comments »

  1. Can you see this hitting mainstream media all over NZ, yeah right.

    Comment by Bevan Berg — Sun 8th October 2006 @ 11:18 pm

  2. Thanks Intrepid,
    I noticed on other sites this political change in Canada. Hopefully nz will one day soon follow suit and remove a lot of female privelige due to feminist porkbarrel politics.

    Yes Bevan,
    I too predict the nz mainstream media silence about this event which has huge ramifications for feminsism globally will be deafening.
    It therefore behooves us to spread the news as far and wide as possible.

    Comment by Stephen — Mon 9th October 2006 @ 2:14 am

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