Women in Canada Call on the Federal Government to:
- Restore federal
funding to health care and enforce the rules against the privatisation
of our health care system, beginning with Alberta.
- Spend an additional
1% of the budget on social housing.
- Set up the
promised national child-care fund, starting with an immediate contribution
of $2 billion.
- Increase Old
Age Security payments to provide older women with a decent standard
of living.
- 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.
- Support women's
organising 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
- Adopt national
standards which guarantee the right to welfare for everyone in need
and ban workfare.
- 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.
- Establish a
national system of grants based on need, not merit, to enable access
to post-secondary education and reduce student debt.
- Adopt proactive
pay equity legislation.
Please
Note: Where these demands involve issues under the jurisdiction of Quebec,
the Canadian Women's March recognizes that Quebec has the right to determine
its own standards, programs and policies in those areas.
This
document was produced by the Canadian Women's March Committee.