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INCREASED GOVERNMENT FUNDING FOR FEMINIST ONLY ORGANIZATIONS

When the Royal Commission on the Status of Women tabled its report in 1970, one of its most far reaching recommendations was that governments - both federal and provincial - should establish a Status of Women Council and also fund women's volunteer organizations across the country. These government supported councils and the funding of women's groups had the effect of establishing feminists in Canada as a major political force. This has directly led to the appointment of many feminists to high profile and influential positions, such as to the courts, especially, the Supreme Court of Canada, Human Rights Commissions and many significant government bureaucracies. In fact, because of the government's support, feminists in Canada have become far more influential here, than in any other country in the world.

Provincial Status of Women Councils have now, for the most part, been abandoned in Canada, with a few exceptions, such as the Status of Women in New Brunswick. These groups were disbanded because they were plainly a waste of money, as they represented the views of only a few women, i.e. radical feminists, not mainstream women.

Status of Women Funds Feminist Only Groups

However, the federal government's Women's Programme at Status of Women Canada has lingered on, constantly pushing the envelope in order to spread the feminist ideology for the small number of women who still support its out-dated, impractical tenets.

Over the years, since 1973, federal grants to the Women's Programme funding have sustained radical feminist groups by way of core funding grants. These grants cover rent, telephone, fax, computers, salaries etc. - all the administrative costs for feminist groups. The latter groups, as a result, have become agents for change on behalf of radical feminism, whether the majority of women wanted it or not - which they don't.

In addition to core funding, the Women's Programme Status of Women has also handed out generous grants for short-term projects to cover specific undertakings by feminist groups. For example, the feminist umbrella group NAC (National Action Committee on the Status of Women), received a grant of $66,457.00 in August, 1984 to assist it in organizing the so-called Women's (read: feminist) debate on national TV during the 1984 federal election. The party leaders, looking like deer caught in the headlights, were forced to answer convoluted questions on national T.V. asked by the feminists, who proclaimed they were representing all the women of Canada. The special grant to NAC to pay for this was in addition to its regular core funding grant that year of $457,867.00.

This feminist bandwagon kept rolling on the government payroll, with a handful of lucky females enjoying all its benefits without any requirement that they actually represent the majority of women, or for that matter, that they have any members at all, just so long as they continued to promote the feminist ideology. Certainly, these recipients of government largesse were not required to show any results for their expenditures of the taxpayers' money. Life couldn't be better for them.

Status of Women Changes Policy

However, in 1998, the Status of Women changed its policies from making core funding grants to making mainly project grants that provided "concrete measurable outcomes." This was a blow to most feminist groups, such as NAC, which had no other source of funding. With few actual members, coupled with internal squabbling, NAC ceased to carry on and collapsed into an ignominious debt-ridden shadow of its former self. There were a few feminist groups, however, that still found favour with Status of Women, which continued to receive large core funding grants. The favoured organizations included the National Association of Women and the Law, and the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women (CRIAW). One of the latter group's founding members is recently retired Supreme Court of Canada Justice, Claire L'Heureux-Dubé, who was also a board member for the organization, despite the fact she was, at that time, sitting as a judge on the Quebec Superior Court. This was a clear conflict of interest, especially since the judge's legal opinions, both on that court and later on the Supreme Court of Canada, were based on feminist ideology.

Hard Times for the Feminists

Because of the waning influence of feminists in Canada, caused by the money prop of core funding being knocked out from under them, feminist Liberal MPs began last year to lobby for a renewed system of funding to feminist groups in order to revitalize them from what they have become -mere phantom organizations.

These Liberal feminist MPs have convinced the Prime Minister's Office to establish a new Standing Committee on the Status of Women, so as to enable them to examine "the problem" of the lack of funding for women's groups. Compare the situation of feminist groups with REAL Women, which has been in existence since 1983 and which has operated independently on the money received from membership fees and donations with the exception of only a few minor government grants awarded to us a few years ago. REAL Women thrived without debts while feminist groups have collapsed. We have shown that a volunteer women's organization can remain vibrant and active without government funding. All it needs is the support of its members, which we are very fortunate to have. That is, REAL Women has grassroots support, which feminist groups do not have and, as a result, we are self-sustaining. Feminist groups, on the other hand, have no support, and are in reality nothing more than the artificial creations manufactured by government.

Strategy to Restore Funding

This recently established House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women, headed by Liberal MP feminist Anita Neville (Winnipeg-South-Centre), began to review the funding issue by having women's groups across the country testify before the committee about their intense difficulty caused by a lack of government funding. Of course, the purpose of the hearings was to ensure a return to the generous funding of past women's (feminist) groups. The committee's report was tabled in the House of Commons in May, 2005. To absolutely no one's surprise, the report recommendations included that:

• The federal government increase funding to the Women's Programme at Status of Women by at least 25%.



• The Women's Programme revise its funding policies by increasing core funding to women's groups.



• The Status of Women immediately engage "equality seeking" organizations to determine the future direction of the Women's Programme. The expression "equality seeking organization" is the feminist code-word for feminist only groups. REAL Women includes equality for women in its objects of incorporation, but we are not accepted as an "equality seeking organization" since we do not support feminist ideology. In short, the propaganda expression "equality seeking organization" is designed to cut REAL Women out of the funding loop.



• Funding agreements with women's groups should be for 3-year periods, rather than the current one year period.

Grants by the Status of Women

Real Women requested, in 2003, under the Access to Information Act, a list of the grants made by the Status of Women for the ten-year period 1992 - 2002. We summarized the results of our request in the article "At the Status of Women the Feminist Tap Keeps Flowing" (REALity September / October 2003, p.13).

Conservative MP, Maurice Vellacott (Saskatoon-Wanuskewin) has now applied, under the "Access to Information Act" to the Status of Women for a list of grants made in 2004 - 2005. According to this information, that agency gave away $10,840,000.00 in grants to feminist groups in 2004 - 2005. Some of these grants included the following:

The prostitutes' association called Experiential Women (above) appeared before the Justice Sub-committee on Prostitution when REAL Women made it presentations to that Committee on February 14, 2005. This prostitutes' group argued that there should be no legal restrictions on prostitution, i.e. that prostitution in Canada be made completely open and unregulated and be treated as a legal activity, the same as other businesses.

This is one of the Status of Women's favourite groups, which has continued to receive core funding over the years. Its membership consists of only a handful of feminist lawyers whose views are regarded as "gospel" not only by the Status of Women, but also by the Liberal government itself.

This is another group favoured with continued core spending. The purpose of this organization is to assist women prisoners, most recently, Karla Homolka.

Despite the fact that this organization has all but collapsed, it was given a grant in order to organize a meeting of all feminist groups in Canada to try to unite them to form an effective national lobby group.

Child Care Lobbyists

The childcare workers associations, whose sole purpose is to lobby the government for a national, government operated day care system, have received extremely generous grants from the Status of Women since 1982. In 2004-2005, the childcare lobby received the following grants:

Coalition of Child Care Advocates of BC	$ 10,000.00
Child Care Advisory Association of Canada (CCAC)	$483,753.00
Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care	$ 25,000.00
TOTAL	$518,753.00
Homosexual and Lesbian Organizations
Gay and Lesbian Health Services of Saskatoon	$ 90,280.00
United Nations Women's Platform for Action Committee (Manitoba)	$151,100.00

The United Nations Platform for Action Committee Manitoba provides a Canadian umbrella group for feminist NGOs to promote abortion, contraception and feminism world-wide.

There were a gaggle of other feminist groups which received grants in 2004-2005 for what purpose is anyone's guess. Some of these include:

Altogether, 161 feminist groups received government funding in the 2004 - 2005 fiscal year.

Please write to the Prime Minister, the Right Honourable Paul Martin and the Minister of Finance, the Honourable Ralph Goodale, and your MP to object to this abuse of taxpayers' money by funding groups whose views represent those of only a very small minority of women.

The Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance may be contacted at the following addresses:

Minister of Finance
Hon. Ralph Goodale
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A6

Prime Minister of Canada
Right Honourable, Paul Martin
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A6

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