…:::jamieleigh:::…

Yesterday I had the honour of attending a CFLS lecture series featuring Shelagh Day, an internationally recognised human rights activist and Director of the Poverty and Human Rights Centre. Her talk was titled “Nothing to Report: What Will Canada Say to the United Nations About Women’s Poverty in Canada and About Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women?”

In her talk, Shelagh explained how Canada reported to the UN Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 2008. The reporting cycle is usually 4-5 years, but Canada was given a lengthy list of recommendations and asked to report back in one year.

Time is up.

Among CEDAW’s concerns were four very important ones:

#13- NO accountability for the federal transfer of funds under the Canada Social Transfer (CST) to the provinces and territories. Concern over cuts and the resulting negative impact to vulnerable groups of women.

#14- No minimum standards in social assistance, discrimination against women.

#31- Concern over the hundreds of missing and murdered women that have not been investigated, thus perpetrators unpunished.

#32-”The Committee urges the State party to examine the reasons for the failure to investigate the cases of missing or murdered aboriginal women and to take the necessary steps to remedy the deficiencies in the system. The Committee calls upon the State party to urgently carry out thorough investigations of the cases of aboriginal women who have gone missing or been murdered in recent decades. It also urges the State party to carry out an analysis of those cases in order to determine whether there is a racialized pattern to the disappearances and take measures to address the problem if that is the case.”

bottom line: no federal accountability.

Discrimination against women, especially vulnerable women, exists in Canada in a powerfully structural way. The feds are passing the buck to the provinces; jurisdictional issues add to the systemic racism and sexism.

I think that the feds have been able to get away with this for so long because of (among many other reasons) the vast geographical barriers allow for a lack of accountability.

While the UN Charter has specific language regarding human rights “all possible measures”, the Canadian charter does not. I would like to see NGOs, activists, scholars, businesses, and individual persons challenge the government to establish effective accountability mechanisms.

One thing that Shelagh mentioned in her talk still resonates with me this morning: “Does the right to equality have a positive obligation on the federal government?”

I certainly hope so. But I think that it is going to take an immense amount of pressure from the public in order to realise this obligation.

Anyone with me?