These cuts will also affect abused women's issues in this country, according to the head of the Women's Shelter in this city.
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Women upset with cuts to Status of Women Canada take protest to the web JAMES KELLER
HALIFAX (CP) - Joanne Hussey says Prime Minister Stephen Harper owes her 29 cents - the amount of money, for every dollar, that Canadian women earn less than men.
It's the message behind a campaign she and four other Halifax women have started, setting up a website and distributing pins and postcards to argue funding cuts to Status of Women Canada will only maintain that disparity.
And what began as a local project to pique interest in the Nova Scotia capital has quickly grown, with thousands of hits on the site and e-mails of support from across the country.
"I think that it's really important the government knows that there isn't widespread support for these types of decisions," says Hussey.
"We don't want our government making decisions that reverse strides that have been made over the last 20 and 30 years."
Hussey's website -
www.thewomenareangry.org - is one of at least two such efforts that have sprouted up since Heritage Minister Bev Oda announced $5 million in cuts to Status of Women Canada's annual budget, effective April 1.
The cuts were coupled with changes that will end funding to women's organizations that do lobbying, advocacy or research on rights issues, and the closure of most of the federal agency's regional offices.
The Women Are Angry site is part of what Hussey hopes will be a groundswell of vocal criticism that will engage the public and convince Ottawa to restore - and ultimately improve - Status of Women Canada.
Audra Williams, who runs statusreport.ca - an online clearing house of information about Status of Women and ways to take action - says Canadians need to see the funding cuts as the "writing on the wall."
"It's important to realize that minister Oda is in charge of Status of Women Canada and it seems to be an agency she feels should not exist," says Williams, who runs a small communications business in Halifax focusing on activism and independent businesses.
"Anytime you can steer conversation towards an important issue and follow that up with what you can do, that's super valuable."
Oda says she hasn't visited either website, but she argues the cuts will make the agency more efficient and better position it to help women in their everyday lives.
She says the widely used 29-cent figure featured on Hussey's site is proof that it's time for action, not research, and she says that's where the money saved from the cuts will go.
"There's been a lot of research," she says. "So when you look at millions of dollars that has gone to studying, we believe that now is the time to start doing something about the facts that we know."
Oda insists her government will instead fund organizations and programs she says more directly affect women. Those could include the YWCA and the Salvation Army, or programs that encourage women to enter professions traditionally dominated by men.
But Oda's arguments have done little to calm fierce criticism from political opposition, women's groups, academics and others who say the cuts represent a step backward for women.
"A lot of this machinery was built up in the 1970s, and it really was cutting edge," says Alexandra Dobrowolsky, head of the political science department at Saint Mary's University in Halifax.
"But over the years, we've seen more cutbacks and these last set of cutbacks have really been devastating."
Dobrowolsky, whose has received money from Status of Women in the past, says the agency has funded research that is vital to identifying unique problems facing women in Canada, and finding ways to address them.
"It's not accurate at all to say this research is going nowhere," she says. "You're sparking a lot of debate and you're getting people mobilized."
While it was the recent funding cuts that prompted Hussey to start her website, she says restoring the money isn't the only thing that needs to change.
"We're not just saying if the budget cuts were reversed everything would be fine - the status quo isn't going to work either," she says.
"There were things that predate the cuts that were certainly reasons to be angry. We really needed to see action at the federal and provincial levels prior to the budget cuts."
