OTTAWA – The Canadian Labour Congress is asking Canadians to send 20 postcards in 20 days to the prime minister telling him to take action now to end violence against women.
“On December 6th it will be 20 years since 14 young women were murdered in Montreal simply because they were women,” says Barbara Byers, Executive Vice-President of the Canadian Labour Congress. “Ironically, as this anniversary approaches, our government is trying to eradicate the firearms registry, the one concrete measure taken to reduce gun violence against women.”
Byers says the CLC and its affiliate unions have distributed thousands of postcards and have asked people to return them to Prime Minister Stephen Harper between November 16th and December 6th. The cards urge him to keep the gun registry, and also contain messages asking that Canada improve the lives of women by: improving the funding of shelters for women and children; investing in new social housing; setting a national standard for welfare rates; providing equal pay for work of equal value; and improving services, including a nationally-funded child care program, better public pensions and access to Employment Insurance.
Byers says, “Rather than promoting women’s equality, the federal government is severely limiting women’s capacity to organize, advocate and lobby. They won’t support women’s equality in the workplace and have limited women’s rights to challenge discrimination before the courts. We will not accept an erosion of our hard-won equality rights and we will not be silenced by a socially conservative government agenda.”
The 20 Days 20 Ways postcards are available on the CLC website. The Canadian Labour Congress, the national voice of the labour movement, represents 3.2 million Canadian workers.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009 at 11:27AM by