Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to be in the House to follow up on a question that I asked the minister on Wednesday, March 17.
Members will recall that I asked about the government's action plan as it related to the Status of Women. We had been told many times over the years that the former minister of state for Status of Women had been developing an action plan for Canadian women. She told us several times that it would be finished soon and it would be forthcoming.
In March we learned, in fact, that the action plan was what she called her three pillars: increasing women's economic security and prosperity, ending violence against women and enhancing women's leadership in democratic participation. I really question the validity and the viability of a plan that was done without consultation.
I particularly question the viability of the plan. In her last appearance before the Standing Committee on Status of Women, I asked the minister how she determined the funding for the various groups in the community that receive funding under either the community program or the partnership program. She told me that the staff of the Status of Women reviewed applications and made recommendations, but that she ultimately had the final say, yea or nay, as to whether a group received funding. To me, that does not speak of an action plan when one can make decisions based on ideological preconceptions in order to determine whether an organization gets funding.
We know that when she talked about violence against women, one of her colleagues said that the answer to this was to put more people in jail. I do not know how that constitutes an action plan.
I do not know how it constitutes an action plan when she recommends we do away with the long gun registry when the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police say that the gun registry has 11,000 hits a day. We know that a disproportionate number of them deal with domestic violence issues.
The restructuring of the Status of Women ended the funding for advocacy and research. We know long-standing grant recipients are no longer funded, such as the Womanspace Resource Centre in Lethbridge, which helped women who needed help with tax returns, securing housing and becoming independent. It lost its funding after 25 years. The phones were disconnected and the doors closed.
We know the YWCA in Montreal did not get funding. We know organizations in Quebec and the Equal Pay Coalition had their funding denied because they chose to speak out against pay equity. We know there has been no advocacy by the previous minister or anyone on that side on behalf of women.
We know there has been no research. We know the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, which gave money to support women who had been abused, had its money withdrawn. The minister cited the economic action plan as a plan for women. We know there were very few benefits to women under the economic action plan.
It is incumbent upon the government to file a real action plan for women.