women's rights & why we need to keep fighting for them

I’ll get straight to the point here: Politicians are sneaky. Case in point? Bill C-10, the Budget Implemenatation Act, passed by Canadian Parliament & Senate last week. While hyped as the needed economic stimulus package, to the tune of 100 pages of legislation and $18 billion, it also contained a few gems dreamed up by the powers that be, including another 430 pages including:

• Public Service Equitable Compensation Act (of which more later);
  
• Navigable Waters Protection Act such that environmental assessments for new projects could be waived and access to navigable waters denied owing to their being diverted, blocked, or simply allowed to silt up;
  
• Investment Canada Act such that restrictions on outright offshore acquisitions of Canadian companies & essential resources are substantially weakened;
• 
  Competition Act such that the price discrimination and predatory pricing provisions are “decriminalized”.

While many of these obviously benefit the current regime’s oil-patch buddies, the attack on human rights via the cynically-named Public Service Equitable Compensation Act is more insidious. It effectively absolves the Canadian federal public service from doing anything at all about compensating women equally to men, and throws up road-blocks in the way of unions assisting women to prove the existence of pay inequity, as well as individual complaints. Plus, it over-rides the Canadian Human Rights Act when applied to federal public servants in the matter of equal rights regardless of gender. This kind of anti-feminist, overtly paternalistic activity worries me even more than the anti-environmental, rampant capitalism demonstrated by other parts of the same legislation. Our political process and cultural framework are being Americanized without our consent, and we are being dragged into a neo-feudal world. Give ‘em a millimetre, they’ll take a light year…