Public Service Alliance of Canada BC

This course is a follow-up from the Women at Work Part I that was held last year. Each participant or group of participants from 5 geographic areas were asked to decide on a course that would be meaningful to women activists in their respective geographic areas, and to set a date and recruit participants for this one day course. The areas were to be each location where there is an existing Women’s Committee and one location where there might be sufficient interest to start another Women’s Committee. Therefore, the areas will be: Vancouver, Victoria, Prince George, Okanagan and North Island. We agreed to hold the Vancouver training in Surrey.

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Active Geographies, Embodied Chronologies: Women And Struggle On The Left Coast

How do struggles for place connect to struggles for justice? What connects social and cultural activists across the decades? We invite your creative and critical responses to these questions of how women define our own relations over space and time.

B.C. has a longstanding history of colonization, whether it takes the form of land theft, the uprooting of culturally specific groups and underserved communities, or the effects of globalization on residents in the Downtown Eastside and Strathcona, to name a few examples.

This anthology follows up on discussions which began at a workshop entitled A Walk with Women Warriors: a re-mapping of Activism, that took place at the Strathcona Community Centre in 2004. That workshop opened up a dialogue in an attempt to bridge generations of west coast women activists, starting with but not necessarily limited to “East Asian Canadian” communities on urbanized Coast Salish land, particularly the neighbourhoods now described as Strathcona and the Downtown Eastside. Situated around the idea of space,’place,’ and time, the event acknowledged the role of women of colour and their allies in claiming place and identities in their struggle for a just world.

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Minutes of the Vancouver Regional Women’s Committee May 25, 2006

In attendance:

• Angela Marafon
• Alethea Boire
• Stephanie Oostrander
• Patricia Ganczar
• Cheryl Oenema
• Kay Sinclair
• Deanna Wilson
• Regina Brennan

Continue reading below, or download the Vancouver RWC minutes May 25, 2006 (pdf).

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Eliminating separate assistance program reduces Ottawa’s payment to most needy

OTTAWA — Low- and middle-income families will realize the smallest net benefit from the Harper government’s $1,200-a-year child-care payment in part because the Conservatives are scrapping a separate assistance program.

The Conservative plan for meeting the country’s child-care needs is to give families a direct payment of $100 a month, $1,200 annually, for every child under 6. The specifics of how that plan will be unveiled are expected to be in next Tuesday’s budget.

But the young-child supplement of the Canada Child Tax Benefit, which currently pays $20.25 a month to parents who do not claim child-care expenses for their preschool-age children, will be eliminated at the same time. The benefit is due to increase in July to $249 annually.

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OTTAWA – “With two-thirds of mothers with children under the age of three working outside the home to support their families; with three quarters of mothers with children between three and five working outside the home and with more than half of all Canadian children in some form of child care, governments across the country, federal and provincial, have a duty to make sure our children enjoy high-quality and safe child care,” says Ken Georgetti, president of the Canadian Labour Congress.

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Fighting The Blues, the Canadian Labour Congress 13th National Women’s Conference will be held in Ottawa from June 11 to 14, 2006. This is a timely conference for the Labour movement. With the election of a minority Conservative government the challenges for working families and especially for women are greater than ever. The labour and women’s movements have made some important gains over the last decades. We must build our movement to ensure that we maintain the advances we have achieved and move our agenda forward in our workplaces, our communities and our legislatures.

Visit the CLC website for the call letter, registration and more information.

Subsidies have been made available by the National and Regional Offices to assist a PSAC member in BC to attend the conference. Please note the PSAC BC Regional Council conference grant guidelines. Applications for a subsidy (available here) should be received in REVP’s office no later than May 1st. The conference registration deadline is May 23rd.

The fight continues for a national child care program. As outlined in the Throne Speech on Tuesday, the Harper government is moving forward on financial support for families and ignoring the need for quality child care options.

Here are two press releases issued by the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada and a backgrounder on the Conservative’s Community Child Care Investment Program.

• Click for Throne Speech - New government must tackle stable funding for child care press release issued on April 3, 2006.
• Click for Child care to become focus of Parliamentary struggle: Throne Speech shows no compromise press release issued April 4, 2006.
• Here is the backgrounder on the Conservative’s Community Child Care Investment Program.

Via email: It was all coming together: a long-awaited national child care program, the first new social program since medicare. Less than six months ago, federal and provincial governments had signed historic agreements that signaled the beginning of a program aimed at meeting the needs of Canadian children and families.

Now, the new Conservative government has cancelled these agreements, cutting $4 billion in federal funds for child care. Without federal funding, many provincial plans to improve and expand child care will barely, if ever, get off the ground.

The dream of a community-based early learning and care program for all children, regardless of whether their parents are at home or in the workforce, has been 30 years in the making. Now, it could all evaporate.

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Deregulation, privatization and trade liberalization have increased existing inequalities between and within countries, between men and women, and between women of different races and class conditions. Privatization of services is creating a two-tiered system of for-profit services for those who can afford them and under-resourced service delivery for the poor. Access based on ability to pay transfers to women the responsibility for basic services, while reducing their opportunities for employment in the public sector. Quality public services cannot be achieved on the backs of women.

The Public Service International is committed to promoting the fundamental human rights of women, including equality between men and women at the work place, in the trade unions and in the broader political, social, economic, and cultural context.

Read more at world-psi.org.

Adrian Dix, MLA for Vancouver-Kingsway invites you to attend a Community Childcare Forum:
With the cancellation of the Federal-Provincial child care agreement as of March 2007, child care in our community is in jeopardy once again. Come and express your views.

• Wednesday March 29, 2006 6:15 to 8:00 pm
• Collingwood Neighborhood House 5288 Joyce Street,Multi-purpose room
• Dinner starts at 5:30 pm, child minding available.

For more information about the Canada wide campaign to protect child care, CODE BLUE FOR CHILDCARE, please check out the following web sites www.childcareadvocacy.ca and www.cccabc.bc.ca

In addition to the CCCA’s campaign, the CLC is planning a lobbying campaign on parliament hill in May 2006 to target three priorities

• anti scab legislation
• child care agreements
• healthcare privatization

This information was presented at last nights New Westminster District Labour Council meeting.

Minutes of the Vancouver Regional Women’s Committee October 26, 2005

In attendance:

• Deanna Wilson
• Alethea Boire
• Stephanie Oostrander
• Sanda Turner
• Juliana Sou
• May Chiu
• Regina Brennan

Download the minutes , or read below.

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Minutes of the Vancouver Regional Women’s Committee, March 14, 2006

In attendance:

• Angela Marafon
• Alethea Boire
• Stephanie Oostrander
• Sanda Turner
• Patricia Ganczar
• Parveen Deepak
• Trudy Wilson
• Cheryl Oenema
• Regina Brennan

Agenda:

1. Review of the Regional Women’s Committee Handbook
2. Summer School for Union Women
3. Pre-convention Seminar for Women Delegates
4. PSAC Convention Observer Funding
5. Mail
6. Fall planning

Continue reading below, or download the Vancouver RWC minutes March 14, 2006 (pdf)

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One of our new Prime Minister’s first acts was to strongly advise another newly-elected government to honour the agreements negotiated and signed by its predecessor.

Yet, that’s what his new government wants to do. It wants to scrap the child care agreements signed last fall by the federal government and each province. Five-year funding deals will be terminated in March 2007, over the strong objections of provincial governments who made plans to better serve young families and their children.

Why do this? What makes the Prime Minister’s own vision of child care so compelling that it should override and cancel the vision each and every premier signed onto in their contract with Ottawa? Why take away badly-needed child care spaces – like the 6000 spaces that would have been created for working families in Toronto alone.

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It’s time to rise again – we all need a universal child care program

International Women’s Day represents nearly a century of struggle for the equality of women world-wide.

This March 8th women in the PSAC are not only celebrating the gains we have achieved over the last century, we are also actively participating in a campaign to ensure that child care is publicly (and not for profit) delivered, universal and affordable.

Given the election of the Conservative government, the challenges facing working women and their families are greater than ever. In fact, the threats to the rights we have won at are stake and PSAC women will not stand by and allow those rights to be eroded.

That is why the PSAC has made CHILD CARE one of our main priorities this year. We know that the number of women in the labour force is high and growing. At the same time, the overwhelming responsibility for the care of children remains with women and the lack of affordable child care spaces in quality public and not for profit centres remains a major obstacle to women’s full equality.

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Remembering our Sisters

This event will highlight photos of some of the sixty-five commemorative quilts produced by women of the Downtown Eastside. Poetry and music will be featured at an event taking place at 119 West Pender Street, on March 8, 2006 from 4:00pmm. til 7:00 p.m. International Women’s Day. A special guest, poet and Guatemalan woman’s activist Sandra Moran will perform and bring greetings from the women of a country also devastated by hundreds of cases of missing and murdered women. Teenage girls from North Vancouver will perfom a touching piece of music they wrote in commemoration of women from the Downtown Eastside.Remembering Our Sisters uses the celebratory occasion of International Women’s Day to both commemorate the more than sixty-five women who have disappeared from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and to celebrate the art and political activism of those who continue the struggle for equality and survival among some of Vancouver’s most marginalized women.

The organizations Wish Drop-In Centre, PEERS and PACE, groups that provide counselling services for current and exiting sex-trade workers, are hosting the celebration, art and performances with broad community support from women in BC’s Labour Movement and others.

Dear Friends of Child Care:

Code Blue for Child Care is a national campaign that is being led by the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada and a coalition of our partners. Code Blue means “medical emergency”. Canadian politicians need to know that saving child care is an urgent need. Make your voice heard before Parliament resumes on April 3.

Do your part by signing the open letter online or  download the PDF to collect signatures on paper and mail them to the CCAAC: http://www.buildchildcare.ca/updir/buildchildcare/code_blue_letter.pdf

Circulate this to as many people as you can - friends, co-workers, family, daycare parents - so that they can add their voices to those telling Stephen Harper that he can’t take away our child care!

The letter is linked on the CCAAC website with other resources for Code Blue.  Check it regularly for updates.

Sincerely, Debra Mayer and Jamie Kass, CCAAC Co-chairs

Hadani Ditmars, an internationally known journalist based in Canada, will be speaking in Prince George at the College of New Caledonia on Wed., March 8th/06 at 7:00pm. (International Women’s Day)

The meeting is organized by the Northern Women’s Forum and the Active Voice Coalition. Everyone is invited to participate in this event and meet Ms. Ditmars.

Sponsored by: Status of Women Committee - Faculty Association of College of New Caledonia.

Unfortunately, the March 4/06 IWD breakfast hosted by the Local Labour Council is now sold out. A dozen sisters from PSAC will be in attendance.

At least two premiers want to raise the thorny issue of day-care funding when they meet with Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Ottawa on Friday night.

Harper’s human resources and social development minister, Diane Finley, sent letters this week confirming that the Conservatives will terminate a $5-billion series of federal-provincial child-care deals after the first year is up.

Read more at cbc.ca.

Tell Stephen Harper to honour the promise of a national child care program: sign the open letter at buildchildcare.ca!

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY 2006 - March and Rally Saturday March 4th

• Gather at the Broadway Skytrain @ 11am
• March to Grandview Park (Commercial & Charles) @ 11:30 am Rally starts at Noon - 1 pm
• To volunteer or for more information call 604-708-0447
• Wheelchair accessible, ASL Interpretation provided

The federal election is over. As a result, child care is at risk as never before. After 30 years of hard work, the foundation of Canada’s newest social program is on the chopping block, with cuts of almost $4 billion on the line. Families, communities, providers, and advocates will not stand by and watch this happen.

Join Code Blue for Child Care and make your voice heard.

CODE BLUE FOR CHILD CARE is a Canada wide campaign to protect the progress we’ve made on child care. Code Blue brings together national, provincial/territorial child care organizations; labour, women’s and social justice groups; and Canadians from all walks of life. Code Blue will speak for the 64% of Canadians who voted for a child care system to meet the needs of Canada’s children, families and communities.

Visit childcareadvocacy.ca for more information.