Mr. Speaker, I find it appalling that the member who spoke for the government said that this time could be used for other important issues, as if this is not important. The other comment she made was that the Conservatives would not fund one opinion over another. The last time I looked, I thought that women's rights were human rights and not subject to opinion. They are not a matter of opinion; they are a matter of fact.
I will present a scenario. Two years ago, the Conservative government removed equality from the Status of Women program and shut down 12 of 16 offices.
After two years of aggressive lobbying from all opposition parties in the House of Commons, all provincial Status of Women ministers across this country, all women's organizations in the country and after advocacy organizations, like Women and the Law, were forced to shut their doors, and after they shut down the women's rights and then the voices of women in this country, the Conservatives came out with the word again and put it somewhere. Why? Because we are coming to an election soon, after all, and the Conservatives want to be perceived as moderate. They are trying to fool women.
Yesterday they put the word “equality” in the cover page and not actually in the program mandate. Because my colleague and I issued a press release and were pretty aggressive on that, today we have a different version. The Conservatives have now put “equality” in the program mandate but the criteria for the funding with respect to research and advocacy on behalf of women is still not there. They are still not eligible for funding and regional offices are still shut down.
This shows real contempt for Canadian women on the part of the Conservative government in my view. The Conservatives are playing a shell game with the women of this country, because at the core of the Conservatives they really do not believe in women's equality. I do not believe so after what I have seen.
All the projects funded may help the individual woman who is lucky enough to access some of those programs the Conservatives are funding that deal with their specific problem individually, whether it be access to training or something else, but it will not change the conditions, the policies and the environmental culture that caused that problem in the first place. It will most certainly not help the thousands of Canadian women who are affected by the systemic barriers to services or the law.
For example, women in this country cannot access civil law because legal aid funds do not cover that and yet their spouse, who may have assaulted them, can access legal aid assistance under the Criminal Code, while the woman cannot access it because it is civil. That is pretty sad.
Those are the kinds of injustices for which those organizations work and fight. It is the research on policies and laws that discriminate against women that was done by women's organizations and then their lobby that really gave women their voice, which then resulted in changes by government, things like changing the assault of women. Police never charged the person who assaulted when they went to a home. The woman had to charge the person. Now it is the police who must charge the person who assaults.
Parental leave, rape shield law, property rights at time of divorce, all of these things were done because women had voices through organizations that did research and then helped them to lobby for those things.
The Conservatives are playing, as I said, a disgusting shell game because of a possible election coming up. They do not truly believe in any of this. Otherwise this would not be happening at the eleventh hour and they would have done it properly and made the proper changes.
Another example is that the Conservatives initially took out the word “political”. Now they have inserted another word that says “democratic”. However, it means very little. It is attached to nothing. Women's organizations will still remain shut down. Advocacy on their behalf will remain shut down as well. Pay equity will still remain a dream for women. The United Nations recommendations to give women more equal rights will still not be a reality and will not mean anything.
I have been told that the government cannot fund women's organizations that lobby and yet it can give $500,000 to the Canadian Conference of Defence Associations, which is a lobby organization for defence contracts. We cannot give money to women's organizations to lobby for women's rights in this country. How sad is that?
The government has made women voiceless, just like it has done with its backbench members who cannot say anything. Women in Canada are not allowed to be advocates.
Does the government really think Canadian women are stupid? The minister should be ashamed of herself and either show respect for Canadian women or resign. It is quite obvious she has absolutely no influence over the Prime Minister in this area of policy.
On top of all this, the Conservatives have shut down the court challenges program, which allowed women to challenge government laws on policies that assisted women to attain their rights. This was a very valuable tool for women and it remains shut down. This again shows to me that this work means nothing, otherwise the government would have reinstated the court challenges program which gave women the strength and power to access their rights.
Unless people have money in this country, they cannot access their charter rights. The government has left it up to only those men or women who have money. No one else can access their charter rights.
Equality is not a word that should be thrown around lightly without substance behind it. Many people are struggling all over the world to fight for their equality and many are dying for it. We in this House have been talking about Afghanistan. Our soldiers have given their lives in Afghanistan to assist women, in part, to regain their rights in Afghanistan and yet the government turns around and plays charades in its shameful games with Canadian women's rights, human rights. I find that appalling and embarrassing as a Canadian. I cannot believe that the Conservatives would do that.
We are lucky to live in a country that prides itself on multiculturalism, compassion and goodwill toward one another but we are not perfect. We have a history of issues and problems in areas marked with violence. We are learning from that but we have a great deal more to learn. We should be condemned for the way we treat women and for the way we treat our aboriginal women in particular.
In a time when we should be moving forward and correcting these past wrongs, what does the government do? First, it cancels good programs and then, because it thinks it will go to the electorate and the polls indicate that women may not vote for the Conservatives, they put a word back in that means absolutely nothing.
By eliminating the early learning and child care agreements that we had established across this country, by eliminating the Kelowna accord, a real plan to help eradicate poverty among first nations communities and by closing 12 out of 16 Status of Women offices across this country, the government is telling women too bad, so sad. The Conservatives claim it is not their problem if women do not have child care and cannot go to work. They are saying that they should stay on welfare.
I met with rural women this summer and their major problem is that they do not have access to government services in their region. Many of them do not have access to computers, transportation and many other services. The government is telling these women to figure out a way to look after the problem themselves because it is not its problem.
This is a sad day in our country. Canada has shown the way around the world in many different ways through our international development agency, as I know from my time there. We have advocated for women's equality. We are ensuring that other governments in the world, like South Africa, have women's equality in its constitution. Africa actually has a champion for all women's policies. We have been aggressive and strong around the world, and then we do not even do it in our own home. It is a disgrace.