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Every year, Save the Children, an international non-governmental organization, produces the Mothers' Index, a ranking of how well mothers are faring in countries around the world.
Countries are ranked based on mothers' access to health care services, education, family planning programs, maternity leave benefits and the participation of women in national government, among many other factors. The index also examines the conditions for women in general and children.
The latest Mothers' Index, ranks Sweden and the other Northern European countries as the best countries to live in if you are a mother. Not surprisingly, these countries are also tops if you are a woman or child.
In 2002, Canada was the second best country in the world for mothers. However, over the past six years, Canada has gradually dropped in the rankings. Now, we are ranked 15th &em; Canadian mothers are worse off today.
According to Statistics Canada, there are over a million single parents. Eighty per cent of these lone-parents are mothers. Their average income is only $30,000, which keeps 30 per cent of these mothers and their children in poverty. Worse, women earn only 70 per cent of what men do, comprise the majority of minimum-wage earners, and have fewer employment benefits and less job security.
Mothers still have limited choices in child care. Our current patchwork of child care facilities and programs across the country was given a failing grade by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. The OECD called on Canada to double our child care spending to 0.4 per cent of GDP. Instead, in 2006, the Canadian government gave mothers the Universal Child Care Benefit, a taxable payment of $100 per child a month. This paltry amount is insufficient to cover the costs of child care.
Moreover, Canada is one of the only developed countries that does not have a national child care and early childhood education strategy.
Not enough is done in Canada to prevent violence against women and to stop spousal abuse.
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There are many deficiencies in the current maternity and parental benefit system. Approximately 40 per cent of new mothers still do not receive any maternity leave because they are self-employed, they did not accumulate enough work hours, or they cannot afford the low wage replacement income while they are on leave. Women's Network PEI, assisted by an advisory committee of women from Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland and Labrador has recommended several improvements to the program to address these problems in the report Looking Beyond the Surface. We are now waiting for the federal government to act on these recommendations.
The worsening state of mothers in Canada is closely related to the federal government's declining commitment to gender equality in public policy and its decreasing financial support to women's organizations and social programs, as explained by political science professors Janine Brodie and Isabella Bakker in their 2007 study Canada's Social Policy Regime and Women: An Assessment of the Last Decade.
Two years ago, Ottawa drastically reduced the budget of the Status of Women of Canada and closed some of its offices across the country, and has not yet restored its funding.
Last year, the government also stopped funding the National Association of Women and the Law and the Court Challenges program, two important organizations that worked to protect women's rights.
In her report Budget 2008: What's In It for Women? economist Armine Yalnizyan found the recent federal budget offered very little for women. She noted that in the 400-page document, women are mentioned only six times, there is no funding for child care, and the tax cuts will further constrain the government's ability to deliver much needed social programs.
Consequently, the ability of women's groups to provide services and to do the research and advocacy on women's issues has now been severely impaired.
To put Canada back on top as one of the best countries in the world for mothers and children, the federal government must include them as a priority in public policy and spending. The Canadian government must also renew its 1995 commitment to the United Nations' Platform for Action on Gender Equality.
All mothers in Canada deserve maternity benefits and affordable, high quality child care. They also deserve pay equity, affordable housing, and more funding and access to legal aid. It is time for the federal government to make mothers &em; women &em; and their children a priority.
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- reprinted from The Chronicle Herald