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FINANCE COMMITTEE PRE-BUDGET CONSULTATION HIGHLIGHTS

REAL Women of Canada was invited this year to appear before the House of Commons Finance Committee Pre-Budget Consultation. About 400 groups and individuals have made similar presentations to the committee in cities across Canada. REAL Women was placed on a panel with five other groups at our September 26 presentation in Ottawa. In our presentation, we emphasized that the future prosperity of our country depends on the strength of our families. Consequently, the family, which is the foundation of a nation, we said, must be central to the formation of all public policy. Government decisions, especially tax and social policy, must be fair and equally beneficial to all Canadians.

We recommended the following:

1. End tax discrimination against the single-income family.
2. Convert the child care expense deduction (CCED) into a refundable child tax credit for all children.
3. Make the spousal deduction equal to an increased personal exemption.
4. Provide over-all tax relief for families.
5. Any government funding of day care must go directly to parents.
6. Eliminate funding to special interest groups.

See REALity Nov/Dec 2005 on REAL Women's presentation in 2005 for a detailed explanation of each recommendation.

This year, we answered questions from the MPs on the Committee on such issues as child poverty, low income families, the Quebec day care plan, women in the workforce, income splitting, and the freedom to care for one's own children at home. To our surprise, the NDP questions centered around abortion! Judy Wasylycia-Leis (NDP, Winnipeg North Centre) also took exception to our description of feminism. In fact, we did not describe feminism, but merely asked that feminist funding be cut because no one group or department can speak for all women, just as no one group could speak for all men. Without allowing us the opportunity to respond to her comments, Ms Wasylycia-Leis then turned to another panelist representing the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada, to help defend her concept of feminism:

It was at this point that REAL Woman intervened in her discussion with the medical association in order to correct the record, which now reads as follows:

Mrs. Diane Watts (REAL Women of Canada): I'd like to correct an assumption that has been made about our organization.…. We have no problem with feminists or for that matter anyone in a democratic society, expressing themselves, expressing views, and promoting whatever they want to promote for women and their views of equality, and dignity, etc. But we object to the government funding an organization that claims to speak for all women but speaks only for feminists. This is what we object to, because the feminist perspective does not represent the views of all women. This is why young women have rejected feminism. Yet we have a department that claims to represent and continues to claim to represent all women.

Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis: I think women's organizations try to ensure that there are choices for women and that obstacles facing women are dealt with so they're not harmful to our health and well-being. That's why I would like Mr. Lalonde... to explain to you why it is important to have funding for women's organizations that look at things through a gender lens.

Dr. Andre Lalonde. (Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada): We obviously have a very strong policy on sexual reproductive rights. If you don't believe this, then there is no use in having poverty reduction. We know that the poorest of the poor is the single mom who is pregnant. We are paying dearly for this because we then have to repair "le pot casse" [the broken jar] in later years, with child abandonment, child problems, youth problems, etc... We need to be all-inclusive in Canada. We need to include mothers, and we need to include people who have not had a chance to have stable relations for whatever reason. We're not looking to be judgmental. We're looking to provide them with support because this is the quality of the Canadian life. Everybody has an equal chance, but we're there to help them attain that equal chance.

This narrow understanding of problems that the medical association believes can be solved by the application of sexual reproductive rights (abortion and birth control), indicates clearly why women who do not hold these superficial notions about well-being, choices, poverty reduction, all-inclusiveness and quality of Canadian life need to join in the public debate.

It seems, however, that times are now changing and the family friendly tax policy is finally a possibility for Canadians, judging from the comments by the other Committee members and by the Conservatives' recent decision to allow pension splitting (see "Financial Help Granted to Seniors - Pension Splitting").

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