Ottawa: Women's Thirteen Demands on federal government

Canadian Women's March Committee, 8 October 2000

On Sunday, October 15, 2000, thousands of women, children and men will gather in Ottawa for a march and rally on Parliament Hill.

see.... http://www.canada.marchofwomen.org/en/index

Women's Thirteen Demands......

Women in Canada Call on the Federal Government to:

1. Restore federal funding to health care and enforce the rules against the privatization of our health care system, beginning with Alberta.

2. Spend an additional 1% of the budget on social housing.

3. Set up the promised national child-care fund, starting with an immediate contribution of $2 billion.

4. Increase Old Age Security payments to provide older women with a decent standard of living.

5. Use the surplus from the Employment Insurance Fund to increase benefits, provide longer payment periods and improve access, as well as improve maternity and family benefits.

6. Support women's organizing for equality and democracy by:

- allocating $50 million to front-line, independent, feminist, women-controlled groups committed to ending violence against women, such as women's centres, rape crisis centres and women's shelters;

- recognizing and funding the three autonomous national Aboriginal women's organisations to ensure full participation in all significant public policy decisions as well as providing adequate funding to Aboriginal women's services, including shelters, in all rural, remote and urban Aboriginal communities;

- funding a national meeting of lesbians to discuss and prioritise areas for legislative and public policy reform;

- providing $30 million in core funding for equality-seeking women's organizations, which represents only $2.00 for every woman and girl child in Canada - our Fair Share

7. Fund consultations with a wide range of women's equality-seeking organizations prior to all legislative reform of relevance to women's security and equality rights, beginning with the Criminal Code and ensure access for women from marginalized communities.

8. Implement a progressive immigration reform to:

- provide domestic workers with full immigration status on arrival;

- abolish the "head tax" on all immigrants;

- include persecution on the basis of gender and sexual orientation as grounds for claiming refugee status.

9. Contribute to the elimination of poverty around the world by:

- supporting the cancellation of the debts of the 53 poorest countries;

- increasing Canada's international development aid to 0.7% of the Gross National Product

10. Adopt national standards which guarantee the right to welfare for everyone in need and ban workfare.

11. Recognize the ongoing exclusion of women with disabilities from economic, political and social life and take the essential first step of ensuring and funding full access for women with disabilities to all consultations on issues of relevance to women.

12. Establish a national system of grants based on need, not merit, to enable access to post-secondary education and reduce student debt.

13. Adopt proactive pay equity legislation.

Please Note: Where these demands involve issues under the jurisdiction of Québec, the Canadian Women's March recognizes that Québec has the right to determine its own standards, programs and policies in those areas.