UPDATED Below
In these days of action for democracy in Egypt, Canada once again finds itself on the wrong side of humanity’s hope for freedom, thanks to His Harperness’ failure to condemn the brutal totalitarian regime of Hosni Mubarak. In that context, I hope everyone watches this:
UPDATE:
And just to clarify that the bone I’m picking is with the state of Israel and not all of Israel’s people, watch this too:
UPDATED BELOW
Marci McDonald’s 2006 article in The Walrus, Stephen Harper and the Theo-cons, gave us the first systematic analysis of the hidden Christian fundamentalist agenda of Stephen Harper’s goals for Canada – the establishment of the conditions necessary for the Second Coming of you-know-who. Who knows if Harper is such a fantastical fool that he really believes in all that anti-evolutionary, anti-woman, anti-gay, pro-Israel STFUness. What matters is that a bunch of nutbars has such power in the corridors of Canadian political power.
Harper has cemented a partnership with people who have become astonishingly powerful in the US and whose religious ideology nicely parallels social conservatism. Harper is known to be a fiscal conservative, but has needed the support of old-style Progressive Conservatives who haven’t necessarily had the ability to attract the support of the far right wing – if they had, they wouldn’t have lost their Party. Each time Harper throws an anti-gay, anti-choice, pro-Israel, law and order dog biscuit to this crowd he wins votes that would not necessarily fall into his lap via fiscal conservatism alone.
Is all this becoming more clear to Canadians?
Antonia Zerbisias’ interview with McDonald, now the author of a book on these issues – The Armageddon Factor: The Rise of Christian Nationalism in Canada – provides us with a startling (to some people) collection of issues that have come to the fore of late that certainly substantiate the writer’s painstaking research, from the cancellation of Paul Martin’s national daycare programme to the introduction of private members’ bills that would limit women’s free reproductive choice to Harper and company’s otherwise inexplicably over-the-top support of Israeli policy towards Palestine and general opposition to same-sex marriage.
That’s a cartload of issues and each one deserves it’s own discussion. I’m going to have a brief look at how acceptance of the Fundy Formula effects women or, for the sake of the almost alliteration – teh girls – and how “liberals” have failed to appreciate the significance of CON policy and legislation.
From the outset women and women’s advocacy groups have had no difficulty apprehending HarperCON’s anti-woman agenda. As McDonald points out, he began with the cancellation of a national daycare programme, moved on to a systematic assault on women’s equality-seeking groups and from there to defunding NGOs with specific focusses on providing reproductive services to women in developing countries and anti-violence initiatives. He has also engaged in a vicious public assault on his former Minister for the Status of Women, Helena Guergis, whose portfolio had been all but disabled anyway.
These issues share many common characteristics and some that are not so obvious. For instance, though most of us here understand quite well that the lack of a national daycare programme hurts not only the children of Canada but also women who are still their primary caretakers, we were probably less aware that, as McDonald points out, Harper “was also pandering to social conservatives who don’t believe that the government should have any role in child-rearing, who believe that mothers should be at home bringing up their children or who send their children to religious daycares and schools.”
Speaking for myself, I got the “women at home” aspect but missed the part about the children of working mothers placed in religious daycares and schools and the concomitant threat to public education. As McDonald concludes:
It was one of those policies that cut across both of his constituencies, economic and social. That would characterize most of his policies.
But McDonald misses something – that the struggle for a national daycare programme is something that not even Liberals will take to the wall – making it much too easy for Harper to hand out gifts to his social conservative base. Maybe libs and lefties will take daycare if they can get it but it’s certainly nothing to bring down a minority government over. Few issues that are perceived to be or actually are those that effect primarily teh girls are that important. Or none. In fact, when these issues are raised what I hear most often from the libs and even the left, such as it is, is that these issues are “distractions”, diversions from primary purposes, that they might be worth a few jabs in question period and an opportunistic media punchline here or there, but they are really window-dressing issues, dog bones thrown out or removed with little political, social or economic meaning beyond the moment.
For instance. When the cabal reconvened after prorogation, Harper threw one of his bright shiny things into the Throne Speech, promising to make our national anthem “gender neutral”. Quite apart from the discussions about what that would take and the general hue and cry about history and national treasures, what interested me was the response from the centre and the left along the lines that language doesn’t matter, sons are “generic” and Harper is just trying to trick you stupid broads into accepting this bright shiny thing as if it’s something real. Down the toilet went the respectable and now historical feminist argument that yes, language does matter and under the bus, ground into the ruts, went teh girls. Of course Harper had no trouble dumping the proposal and looked like he was responding to the outrage from social conservatives and liberals all in one fell swoop. How nice for him.
I’m beginning to see a similar modus in operation with respect to Helena Guergis. She’s a young, childless woman married to a brown man in political difficulty (even though he’s no longer in office) who “managed” a portfolio that men, conservative and otherwise, don’t care much about. She wasn’t and isn’t worth much to anybody it seems. Any attempt to point out the rampant sexism of the attack on Guergis result in shouts from the left that Guergis is a loose cannon, mythically and powerfully destructive and possibly a blondly stupid disaster with whom we should not concern ourselves one teensy bit. STFU girls.
I was never a Guergis supporter. But did she ever have any supporters? And is there a liberal or left dude that gives an elderberry fart about what happens to women in politics?
It’s also been clear in the past that the abolition of Canada’s long-gun registry is an issue used as a political football by left, right and centre in attempts to prevent the alienation of “rural voters”, all of whom are assumed to be men. Both Michael Ignatieff and Jack Layton failed to whip their parties before the vote on the abolition bill in the last session of Parliament, resulting in an easy “yea” result for the legislation. It remains mighty unclear that anything has changed this time ’round, despite Ignatieff’s attempts to revise the legislation. Will Jack Layton whip? Who the hell knows. So it’s not only girls under the bus on this one, it’s dead girls under the bus.
As for the progressive defunding of women’s equality-seeking groups and NGOs, Ignatieff is perfectly content to use this issue as a political chip – but where the f**k has he been for the last four years while it was happening? Where was he in December 2009 and early 2010 when a Liberal/NDP coalition would have brought down this anti-democratic, anti-woman, homophobic, pro-Israel and the Rapture government and, for instance, its attempted assault on pay equity? As for the Libs failed attempt to underscore the reproductive rights of women with their Parliamentary motion? I actually will stfu on that one.
Women have allowed themselves to be used thus for too long, hoping to get bigger prizes in the end. Or perhaps any prize at all. I’m beginning to hear heartening rumbles from girlfriend-land that none of these hopeless pols ought to rest comfortably in the beds their wives and girlfriends have made for so long, and so patiently.
The Theocons so well described by Marci McDonald are the focus of renewed realizations, discussions and organizing among awakening and already fully conscious women – and a few pro-feminist men. Take care liberal and left doodz. Move out of the crosshairs of that metaphorical but very well-aimed long-gun.
UPDATE:
HarperCON whines:
“Last night’s dominant CBC story … featured an attack on the religious affiliation of some government members and supporters,” the Tory missive says. “Apparently, the CBC thinks it newsworthy that some Conservative Ministers and MPs practice their faith. Even more scandalous, some members of the Prime Minister’s Office go to church!”
Pale is peeved.
And on the Helena Guergis story, there’s this from the PI who started it all:
“I have nothing — I have no evidence, or no information, with respect to the conduct of Ms. Guergis in my possession or knowledge,” he stated.
Instead, he said the mere threat of bad optics, coming after a string of embarrassing gaffes by Guergis, may have been enough to force Harper’s hand.
“This is an issue of optics,” Snowdy said.
Murray Dobbin points out that the Harper Agenda on the economic front is likely even more important than the prorogation:
It is gratifying to see such widespread opposition to Harper’s assault on Parliament and democracy — from almost every major political columnist, newspaper editorials, over a hundred political scientists, and constitutional experts — including a significant number of unusual suspects. It is a clear sign that Harper has overreached yet again — a character flaw that has saved the country from disaster more than once. Harper now sits at 33 percent in the latest Ekos poll, and if the movement continues to grow, Harper’s plan to force an election over his March budget will have to be put on hold. That might have the effect of postponing the worst cuts.
But the sudden support for democracy by parts of the Canadian elite will not extend to defending the legacy of public services, wealth redistribution and government intervention in the economy. Those are the things that are in Stephen Harper’s crosshairs, and progressives will have to fight the campaign to stop him on their own. [more of this must read]
Amidst the excitement of the movement against Harper’s prorogation of Parliament, it’s not only important to keep this in mind, it’s important to strategize about effective responses. Progressives will likely be back on their own at that point.
James Travers at The Star:
Systematically, and without explanation, the Prime Minister is testing every limit on his power. Along with successfully shuttering Parliament for the second time, he’s neutering committees charged with the primary democratic responsibilities of safeguarding the treasury and forcing the government to explain its actions. He’s challenging independent rulings against how Conservatives funded their 2006 election and how this government treats Canadians in trouble abroad.
Politics is an uncompromising blood sport played to win within loose rules. By learning Liberal dirty tricks, adapting to changing circumstances and reinterpreting every regulation in his favour, Harper is proving to be a shrewd and accomplished contestant.
Far less clear is what he accepts as legitimate constraint, the line in the democratic sand not to be crossed. [more]
NJN Network provides us with a list of bills that hit the skids when Stephen prorogued.
From Heroes in Rehab:
The idea is that it is fundamental to our notions of responsible government in a parliamentary democracy that the government of the day must “meet the House”; though majority governments may (by virtue of the number of elected members of the party sitting in the House) possess the ability to ram through legislation and seemingly act at will, even they must answer questions about the government’s actions and agenda in the House, questions asked by the Opposition. This requirement that the government of the day must meet the House is supposed to (through the mechanisms of moral suasion and public debate) keep it honest. Of course, this Harper government does not even have the luxury of a majority, or the democratic mandate that would go along with it. Minority governments are supposed to be more, not less, responsive to the concerns of the elected members of the House. [and more]
From Bow. James Bow.:
Here, now, we have a prime minister who seeks to suspend the work of parliament — not, as it could have been argued last year, to establish a seven week cooling period before facing the prospect of changing a government in the middle of an economic crisis, but to thwart the work of various committees asking questions in the name of accountability. This is a prime minister who has defied the principle of parliamentary supremacy, ignoring a direct order by vote of parliament to turn over uncensored documents to a parliamentary committee for investigation, in order to save his own political skin. Whatever high ideals the move to suspend parliament last year might have had, they’re not present here. The move is nakedly political, and shames our democracy. [James has the goods]
Susan Delacourt at The Star:
… none of us know what Michaelle Jean told Harper during that longer-than-expected chat in December 2008. Who knows? Maybe she said that the Prime Minister should try to make Parliament work, unless the Olympics were on, and then all bets were off.In the end, of course, it’s not Michaelle Jean who has to approve this move. It’s Canadians — including you folks out there reading this — who have to decide whether Harper has a legitimate reason to suspend the work of Parliament. Personally, I haven’t heard one good reason yet. [not much more]
But really, I think it’s going to be difficult to keep this issue alive. There’s so little to talk about. Stephen Harper’s actions are cynical and wrong for fairly obvious reasons and there seems to be fairly general agreement on that. Now on to the Olympics?
I hope not. If Harper’s prorogue move wakes Canadians up and presages the end of this government I’ll be glad he did it. That is all. For now. For the next few days I’ll be reading Arundhati Roy’s Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers. A few words from Roy:
… what have we done to democracy? What have we turned it into? What happens once democracy has been used up? When it has been hollowed out and emptied of meaning? What happens when each of its institutions has metastasized into something dangerous? What happens now that democracy and the free market have fused into a single predatory organism with a thin, constricted imagination that revolves almost entirely around the idea of maximizing profit? [a lot more]
BIG FAT UPPIDTY DATE:
How could I forget James Laxer?
A year ago, the Prime Minister was prepared to mislead his fellow citizens about the essence of our system of government—the requirement that the ministers of the crown must enjoy the backing of the majority of the members of the House of Commons—to retain power. To stay at the helm, he was quite happy to delude Canadians into believing that the PM is directly elected and that the members of parliament from Quebec aren’t quite equal to the others.
When the history of this era is written years from now, the story is likely to be that of a not very talented gang with values distant from those of the Canadian mainstream, holding onto office longer than they should have because the opposition couldn’t figure out how to unite to deal with them. Some will bear more responsibility for this sorry state of affairs than others. [Read the rest – that’s an order!]
From Pushed to the Left and Loving It:
In what other democracy is it permissible for the government of the day to hide from the legislature for months at a time? To ignore explicit parliamentary votes demanding the production of documents? To stonewall independent inquiries? Perhaps the rules allow it elsewhere, but is it the practice? Does convention not still forbid it? Is it not viewed in other countries as dictatorial behaviour, and therefore, you know … not done? [more]
Dawg:
[Stephen Harper’s] contempt for democratic process is never far below the surface. And now, once again, Parliament–Canada’s supreme elected body–is about to be flicked away like a mosquito.
We’re watching political accountability and responsible government melt away before our unbelieving eyes. As one commentator noted not long ago, “The Prime Minister is now in such command that he can get away with pretty much anything. And he is lauded for his conquests.”
But even Harper’s fiercest supporters might want to take a sober second look about now, and put Canada before their party for once. At this point there should be no partisans–only outraged Canadians, of all political hues, who want their country back. [more]
From Prorogue 2: The Resurrection:
Citing “national party security” and national pride, PM Stephen (“I’ll be back”) Harper is seeking emergency measures from Canada’s Governor-General to protect and enhance his power, his perks and his reputation. It’s Prorogue 2: 2010 Edition.
With the winter Olympics around the corner and all eyes on Canada, Harper is conducting a pre-emptive war against transparency and accountability (two of the early promises that helped squeak him into power in 2006) to minimize the potential embarrassment of those pesky little issues. Like living conditions in 1st Nations communities. Like Afghan prisoner treatment. Like carbon emissions. Like silencing whistle-blowers. [more]
From Murray Dobbin’s Blog:
The second prorogation of Parliament in a year demonstrates an absolute contempt for democracy. It is, even to the compliant and conservative media pundits, a transparent effort to cool off the Afghan torture issue which threatened to regain momentum, lost when Parliament recessed for Christmas. The arrogance of the government was further demonstrated in its half-hearted effort to even come up with an excuse – saying that a new Parliament is needed now that the economic crisis has moved to the recovery stage.
Perhaps the even greater contempt for Parliament lies in the fact that some 35 pieces of legislation – the true work of the House of Commons – has simply been wiped from the map. Even Harper’s favourite bills, those getting tough on crime, go down the drain in this crass assault on democracy. Nothing is more important than staying in power and by taking the Afghan scandal off the table Harper can introduce a March budget so draconian that the opposition will have to vote against it. Harper will get the election no one wants and for which he will not be blamed. [more]
I’ll update this post.
Here’s an UPDATE:
It is becoming patently obvious Harper now presides over a minority government that can all-too-readily be characterized as a not-so-benign dictatorship. Harper successfully exploits the first-past-the-post electoral system — which he and Flanagan denounced as immature — and the ideological and political divisions within the opposition parties, to impose his unflinching will on his cabinet, caucus, and what he characterizes as an utterly dysfunctional House of Commons, one made so by the government itself. With his appointment of yet more Conservatives to the Senate, Harper will exercise full and unfettered power over Parliament, a power which he will readily use to cow the judicial branch of government with his so-called tough-on-crime legislation. [more from Michael Biehels]
Susan Riley at The Ottawa Citizen:
Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s decision to shut down Parliament for his own partisan convenience — no more nasty questions about Afghan detainees, no more challenges from a “Liberal-dominated Senate” — is shocking, but hardly surprising.
It is an expression of this prime minister’s contempt not just for Parliament, but for government.
So much for those urgent Tory crime measures that will die on the order paper; so much for an adult debate on the deficit, or pension reform, or Afghanistan after 2011. The assumption is that we will be so wrapped up in the Olympics we won’t notice the long silence from Ottawa. We will, in fact, welcome it.
If Harper is right, we deserve the government we aren’t getting. This is a richly-blessed country with a well-educated, relatively prosperous population and a degraded political culture. And until its citizens move from apathy and cynicism to outrage and involvement, nothing will change. [read the rest]
James Travers at The Star:
…
the timing could hardly be worse for a dark Parliament.While Canadians struggle with recession’s aftershocks, Harper risks being seen as more interested in maximizing a sporting spectacle Conservatives are doing everything possible to make their own.
Less likely to be noticed but no less important, the Prime Minister is piling on fresh evidence that accountability is a fiction, an election promise easily made and forgotten.
Whatever else it achieves, suspending Parliament first and foremost blinkers oversight. Having tried and failed to blame abuse reports on a bureaucrat just doing his job, Harper is now trying to push it under the carpet for two critical months and perhaps much longer. [choke on it]
Echidne on David Letterman:
Bosses harvesting their subordinates for sex is almost always a bad idea.
Dr. Eric Steele on the opposition to gay/lesbian marriage (via Pam’s House Blend):
. . . the clothing of rationality and God’s word have been used forever to hide the naked truth of racism, sexism and other prejudices. The arguments against the right of gays to civil marriage is no different; if you peel off the clothing, what lies underneath most opposition to civil marriage rights for gays is just naked fear, ignorance and prejudice.
Dave Zirin on football and homophobia:
Football came of age at a time when America was embarking on imperial adventures around the globe. Football was seen as a way to toughen up the youth so they wouldn’t become “sissies” and a way to teach the very “values” of Christian expansion and manifest destiny. This philosophy was known as “Muscular Christianity,” and its most prominent spokesman was an aristocrat-turned-boxer named Theodore Roosevelt .
Katha Pollitt on Roman Polanski:
What happened was not some gray, vague he said/she said Katie-Roiphe-style “bad sex.” A 43-year-old man got a 13-year-old girl alone, got her drunk, gave her a quaalude, and, after checking the date of her period, anally raped her, twice, while she protested; she submitted, she told the grand jury “because I was afraid.” Those facts are not in dispute–except by Polanski, who has pooh-poohed the whole business many times (You can read the grand jury transcripts here.) He was allowed to plead guilty to a lesser charge, like many accused rapists, to spare the victim the trauma of a trial and media hoopla. But that doesn’t mean we should all pretend that what happened was some free-spirited Bohemian mix-up. The victim took years to recover.
Diane Loupe on prostituted young women in Georgia:
A Future. Not A Past wanted to get a better estimate of girls on the street, so it funded independent researchers to track how many adolescent girls are being hawked. The research was based on scientific probability measures and estimates of the age of prostitutes, using methods similar to those used by scientists to determine the population of endangered species.
The number of young victims has been increasing since 2007, according to that research.
An estimated 374 juveniles were being commercially sexually exploited in August 2009 in Georgia, up from 251 in 2007 and 361 in 2008, according to Danielle E. Ruedt, public health programs coordinator for the Governor’s Office for Children and Families, which took over funding of the research from the campaign.
Numbers for the street, hotels and escort services have remained flat, but “the Internet number is going through the roof,” said Kaffie McCullough, campaign director of A Future. Not A Past.
Internet ads promising “young girls,” “barely legal” females and other code words for underage females got a much higher response from potential customers than other ads, the campaign’s researchers found.
While applauding the decision of Craigslist, an online provider of information about goods and services for sale, to eliminate its “erotic services” category, McCullough noted that many ads pimping girls have moved to other Web sites.
The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness [pdf], Betsy Stevenson & Justin Wolfers
Katha Pollitt on Stevenson and Wolfers (and Huffington):
But how happy were women, really, in that golden pre-feminist era? Culture critic Caryl Rivers pointed out to me that in 1973, studies showing that married women had the highest levels of psychiatric problems, including depression and anxiety, prompted sociologist Jessie Bernard to declare marriage a “health hazard for women.”
Alex Dibranco on the student sex column movement:
Isabel Murray, feminist columnist for the Free Press, takes Cosmopolitan to task for its heteronormative, male-pleasure-oriented approach, while pointing out that it and similar women’s magazines are nonetheless the only noncampus media addressing female sexuality (explaining why until recently it was the most read magazine among college women). People are downright uncomfortable with the concept of female sexuality: even at Dartmouth’s SexFest, where Murray managed a table, she was struck by how “hesitant and disturbed” people seemed by her dental dams and a two-dimensional model of a vagina–far more so than by the condoms and three-dimensional plastic penis. The most controversial Dartmouth sex column took heat for dealing too explicitly with female sexuality.
Elsie Hambrook on women voters:
Women hang their vote on issues and often, on different issues than what men consider important. New Brunswick’s own Joanna Everitt, a political studies professor at the University of New Brunswick in Saint John, is a Canadian expert on gender and politics. She says there are differences in how women and men vote, and that that split has been growing.
While men are more concerned with a candidate or party’s policies on the economy and federally, on the military, women are more likely to look at social policies, such as health care and education.
That difference has impacted the outcomes of some federal and provincial elections. Women and men vote in similar numbers, but differently, and parties need to be able to attract both genders.
Everitt recently concluded in a report, “If the (federal) Conservatives held as much appeal for women as they did for men in the 2006 election, they would not have ended up forming a minority government.”
Michael Valpy on women voters:
When he was host of BBC Two’s The Late Show in the 1990s, Mr. Ignatieff was called the thinking woman’s crumpet.
But interviews with Canadian women voters – businesswomen, academics, writers, PhD students in their 20s and 30s – elicited words well removed from crumpet. They called him stuffy, drab, arrogant, inauthentic, paternalistic, unmemorable, unsexy and, most of all, untrustworthy.
Michael Ignatieff on “Three Minute Culture”:
Stephen Harper tribute to friendship:
Harper and friends, redux:
But Harper hates more than 50% of Canadians:
So some women created a fan club [snark].
From Corvin Russell at rabble:
From the days of Jean Chretien’s White Paper in 1969, federal governments have dreamed of completing the process of colonization and assimilation through making Aboriginal rights disappear through a strategy of deceit: making Aboriginal rights disappear in the name of “giving” Canada’s Indigenous peoples the “same” rights as other Canadians.
[…]
Now the Harper government is trying to implement much of the same agenda through the back door. Harper’s American mentor, Tom Flanagan, thinks he knows what’s best for First Nations in his book, First Nations, Second Thoughts. And much of that has to do with the abolition of Aboriginal rights and the municipalization of First Nations, with a concomitant increase of dependence and “accountability” to Ottawa, instead of to Indigenous Peoples: as Flanagan says, “Call it assimilation, call it integration, call it adaptation, call it whatever you want: it has to happen.”
This leaked secret memo to cabinet and this memo sent to chiefs and councils suggest that once again, white bureaucrats and politicians in Ottawa are devising solutions to the “Indian problem” that will make life easier for the colonial government and business interests. This time, they’ve learned the lesson of overly public, overly explicit changes to First Nations governance — instead, they are pursuing a strategy of administrative reform whose main advantage, according to the memo to cabinet, is that it can be done without “the need for extensive or time-consuming engagement with First Nations or third parties.”
Read the whole thing here
Who will fight to uphold women’s right to pay equity? Certainly not Stephen Harper and his (neo)Cons. Not Michael Ignatieff either. We can count on the NDP but on their own, they can only hope to get this bill separated from the budget bill so that there’s some chance of it being voted down now that Iggy has decided to sell women out and support the government on the budget. Women fought hard for this most basic of rights, equal pay for work of equal value. Why on earth should they be put in the position of having to bargain for pay equity with their government employer over and over again? How long do you think it will be before the private sector insists on the same “privilege”?
This from Linda Diebel’s blog, the Political Decoder:
The unravelling of rights is exactly what’s happening with the Conservatives’ new “Equitable Compensation Act.” There’s an Orwellian title for you – like the Patriot Act. The change the Conservatives slipped into the recent budget – after failing last year – has nothing to do with equitable pay. In fact, it’s the opposite. It removes any chance women in the federal civil service have of fighting for pay equity by denying them the right to complain to the Human Rights Commission, or to go to court, when they believe there is discrimination. Instead, pay equity issues are to be solved as part of the regular bargaining process but – get this! – if anyone agitates on the basis of pay equity, they face a $50,000 fine. So the Conservative regime is forbidding a woman from fighting for herself and, simultaneously, penalizing her union from fighting for her.
Once this legislation is passed, a woman working in the federal public service will have fewer rights than women working elsewhere in Canada.
“We fought this battle so hard 30 years ago,” [NDP MP Judy] Wasylycia-Leis said in an interview … “and I never thought we’d lose what we won. It’s shocking. They are taking it away in one fell swoop with the stroke of a pen . . . It hurts.”
There is still a way to stop it, she says. The act is part of the budget legislation and Wasylycia-Leis and her NDP colleagues are trying to divide it off into a separate bill that would then face its own vote in the House that, hopefully, wouldn’t be a non-confidence motion. If the Liberals and (one would think) the Bloc unites with the NDP, it could be defeated. The act should be in committee the week of February 23 and the House not long after.
Wasylycia-Leis says she’s embarrassed men in other parties haven’t fought harder for such a basic right for women. Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, she argues, could have refused to support a budget that contains this new pay equity regime, instead of demanding only progress reports. “Maybe,” she said, “they’re not aware what this does to women.” [emphasis added]
Oh they’re aware Judy. But I know you know that. I would prefer it a great deal if this bill was called what it is – the Inequitable Compensation Act. At least that would be honest. But then, we’re talking about politicians.
I’m supposed to be too old to be shocked. I’m shocked.
From Kathleen Lahey at Relentlessly Progressive Economists:
Budget 2009:
Designed to Leave Women Behind – AgainThe big picture: Women make up slightly more than half the population of Canada, and are directly responsible for caring for the majority of minor children in the country on a day to day basis.
The expectation: As an ‘economic recovery’ and ‘stimulus’ budget intended to concentrate scarce financial resources in the hands of the most vulnerable, Budget 2009 was expected to carefully identify and respond to the needs of those on the economic margins, and to move Canada further toward the goal of genuinely equal treatment of all.
The Budget: Budget 2009 not only fails to target the most vulnerable, but it seems to have been carefully crafted to exclude women from as much of the $64 billion in new deficit-financed spending and tax cuts as possible; women’s estimated shares of the first year’s worth ($22 bill.) are outlined in these notes …
Read the rest here
mirabile dictu 