by Hilary White
OTTAWA, March 9, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A women’s rights organization representing 55,000 Canadian women is today thanking the Harper government for sticking to its promise to give Canadians choice in childcare. Real Women of Canada, is urging the Conservatives not to bow to pressure from special interest groups campaigning for a government funded day care system that, they say, discriminates against families and fails to put the needs of children first.
Real Women spokesman, Gwen Landoldt told LifeSiteNews, “The problem with the Liberal plan is that it does not focus on the needs of children. They’re proposing to fund an institution, not the actual child.”
Landoldt continued, “We are grateful that we finally have a political leader that understands the needs of women for childcare that focuses on children. Canadian women want the choice. Every family is different. We don’t all want to get put into a single institutionalized government childcare program.”
The letter comes at the same moment the Canadian feminist lobby is heavily pressuring the Harper government to drop its Choice in Childcare promises. Yesterday, in a well-coordinated campaign blitz, Canadian feminist lobbyists used the occasion of International Women’s Day to stage meetings, demonstrations and news conferences calling for a nationalized childcare program.
Speaking to reporters in Ottawa, Monica Lysack, of the Canadian Child Care Advocacy Association, revealed the single-mindedness of the feminist lobby to whom childcare can mean only one thing. “While families welcome financial support, it is not child care,” Lysack said.
A Vanier Institute poll from 2005, however, showed that the preference of actual Canadian families is for more choice and freedom in childcare. According to the poll, a nationalized publicly funded universal day care program comes fifth on the list of their priorities and that what they want is that the needs of children be the centre of childcare.Â
The Conservatives won the election on their promise to put $1200 a year per child under six directly into the hands of families.
To Harper’s assertion that Canadian families want real financial help rearing their children, Barbara Byers, executive vice-president of the Canadian Labour Congress, retorted, “Help with diapers maybe, but not child care.”
“This government has its focus on the family all wrong,” Byers said. “For working women, childcare is all about equality.”
The unions have a special interest in a childcare program that would significantly increase their membership, funding and political clout should it go forward. In Quebec, unionized childcare workers saw a 40% increase in their salaries after putting pressure on families through labour actions.
The lobbyists are also finding support from the extreme left in the three opposition parties. Liberal MP Carolyn Bennett (St. Paul’s) and New Democratic MP Olivia Chow (Trinity-Spadina) met with the Monica Lysack and agreed to make the Liberal’s $5 billion national child-care system their first priority.
Real Women’s letter to MP’s has called upon the Harper government to defund the powerful radical feminist lobby that allows only one interpretation of women’s rights and equality to be represented.
Lorraine McNamara, Real Women’s National President, writes, “The feminist ideology does not now, and never has had the support of the vast majority of Canadian women.”
McNamara writes, “Feminist groups have few, if any, members, and are, in effect, mostly phantom organizations sustained only by the funding they receive from the Status of Women. Since these organizations represent no one but the women who run them, they should not receive financial support from the Canadian taxpayer.”