Just months before Prime Minister Stephen Harper hosts world leaders at a summit dedicated to the discussion of maternal health, a group of women's rights organizations have accused his government of overseeing a systematic erosion of gender equality in Canada.
"We want to expose Canada's record and make sure that the government understands that we need change for women in this country," said Barbara Byers, executive vice-president of the Canadian Labour Congress.
A report released yesterday by the CLC, in partnership with several labour and women's groups, asserts that gender equality in Canada has stalled under the Conservative government. It will be presented next week in New York to the UN Commission on the Status of Women, a potentially embarrassing rebuke on the world stage as Canada prepares to host this June's G8 summit, which Mr. Harper has said will focus on the issue of world maternal health.
Ms. Byers questioned Canada's ability to lead international policy discussion Monday, in light of its ongoing problems with access to affordable childcare, aboriginal issues and employment equity.
"I think our credibility is taking a huge hit," she said.
The report criticizes the Conservatives for eliminating a $5-billion national childcare program proposed by their Liberal predecessors and for closing 12 Status of Women offices across the country while cutting funding to advocacy organizations.
Helena Guergis, the Minister of State for the Status of Women, said last night that she disagrees with the report.
"I recognize we still have work to do, no one says we don't, but I think we've made great gains," she said.
Responding to some of the criticism levied by the report's authors - the CLC, Feminist Alliance for International Action, Public Service Alliance of Canada and the Canadian Teachers' Federation - Ms. Guergis said she closed Status of Women offices that had gone unused and had redirected the money into "front-line programming."
She said her office is focusing on three pillars of women's issues: economic security, ending violence against women, and female involvement in politics.
In 2009, she noted, Canada rose in the rankings of the Global Gender Gap Report, put out by the World Economic Forum, moving to 25 from 31.
As for childcare, she said her party campaigned on the promise of a $100 monthly payment to families, and added that the allotment of spaces falls under provincial jurisdiction.
She said she was pleased that the Prime Minister decided to focus the G8 on maternal health, and said she has received positive feedback from the international community.
But Kathy Lahey, a professor of law and gender studies at Queen's University, also questioned the sincerity of the G8's focus on women's issues.
"The emphasis on maternal health does not square with the current lack of resources of the most basic kind for women in Canada," she said. "I think the UN is already on notice that there are significant differences in perspective between the Harper government and women's groups that are actually involved in these issues."
Billed as a "reality check," the report released yesterday was a response to a government report on women's issues submitted to the UN last year, which painted a largely positive picture of gender equality in Canada.
Yesterday's report acknowledges that women's access to higher education has improved in recent years, as they now make up more than half of all students enrolled in undergraduate programs.
But that development has not translated to employment equity or influence on the national level, the report states, as women still earn only 70.5 cents for every dollar earned by men and account for just over 22 per cent of Parliament.