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WHY ARE WE PAYING THESE MPs' SALARIES?

At one time, Parliament actually reflected the views of the public. That is certainly not the case today.

There is no more glaring an example of the MPs using their position to promote their own personal views than the feminist MPs' reaction to the funding cuts to the Status of Women.

For example, Liberal MP Maria Minna (Beaches - East York) arrogantly stated, in her question to the Minister for the Status of Women about the cuts on September 21, 2006 (Hansard page 3090), that she was raising questions "on behalf of all women in Canada". Who gave her the authority to speak on behalf of all Canadian women? No one. She, in fact, represents only her constituents and it is dubious whether they do support her.

The House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women set aside two days to review the funding cuts. The televised hearings (to be shown on CPAC) took place on December 6th and December 13th, 2006. The number of witnesses before the Committee who opposed the cuts in funding totaled 17, while those in support of the cuts, consisted of a grand total of two groups! The latter two organizations spoke very well, even though they had no specific background knowledge on the SOW.

It is interesting that on November 23, 2006, REAL Women received an email from the Status of Women Committee stating that we had been proposed as witnesses and that we were invited to submit a one page brief outlining our views on the SOW cuts. We responded to the request and submitted our Statement on November 28, 2006.

It was no surprise that the Status of Women did not select us as one of its witnesses! Perhaps if we had not been so clear in our statement and had added a little deception to our statement we may have made the cut as a witness, but then, with so many feminist MPs on the Committee, that would still be unlikely.

So much for democracy and for MPs' listening to all views. Why are we paying these people's salaries?

REAL Women was not about to take the matter lying down, however. We wrote directly to the chairperson of the Standing Committee on the Status of Women, Liberal MP Judy Sgro (York West), inquiring about why we had not been selected as a witness, especially since we had specific information on the Status of Women funding situation. No response. We then let others know about the biased stick handling by the feminist MPs sitting on the Status of Women Committee. Consequently, we were gratified to be notified just before Christmas, that another day for hearings would take place when the House of Commons resumes sitting at the end of January, and that we would be appearing then as a witness. That should be a very interesting day!

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