WOMANvoice 2006 & Status of Women Canada

It was a priviledge to attend WomanVoice, an event created to celebrate women's voices that was originally born of the Montreal Massacre. This event is a celebration of women's lives as well as a peaceful protest against all forms of violence against women. It was celebrated on December 6th at Ellington's Cafe on St. Clair Avenue. This was an excellent example of local community members bringing their talents together for an issues that affects women locally, nationally and internationally.

Honey Novak, of the Toronto based Creative Vocalization Studio hosted 14 diverse women artists were invited to participate in an evening of spoken word, theatrical impromtu and song. The evening included a multicultural line up of Japanese, Chinese and African Canadian voices. The evening's fun was brought to a peak with the female clown and the sex'd up Granny talk that brought the house to its knees in laughter about the upfront and honest sexual issues that face seniors.

Looming over the positive contribution of the evening was the distastrious news that the federal government was cutting the majority of funding to Status of Women Canada. It had been known since the beginning of the month that the organization which was mandated to work on all facets of women's struggle in this country would no longer be mandated to advocate on Women's issues.

The Green Party of Canada position in the 2006 federal election places itself at direct odds with the direction in which the conservative government is taking Status of Women Canada. The Green Party of Canada 2006 platform called on the strengthening of Status of Women Canada so that it can focus in on issues such as eliminating institutional racism for aborignal women.

The focus on the Green position would see a strengthening of advocacy and action on a number of fronts including education, shelters and ensuring the issues get discussed at mulitple levels of government including municipal, provincial and federal departments.

The Greens also recognize the fact that we may need to work on women's issues in Canada but we would also get the country working on it from a global perspective throught the United Nations and reinforce our support for the the UN's global initiative for the elimination of discrimination and violence against women.