On the occasion of the Government of Canada's submission of its follow-up report to the CEDAW Committee, we call on the Government of Canada to immediately:
- Establish a federal and pan-Canadian strategy now for eliminating poverty, and women's poverty in particular, grounded in the rights to equality and to an adequate standard of living, and one that ensures that incomes for women and men who require social support reach a level that is adequate to meet their needs;
- Establish a transparent monitoring mechanism to ensure the accountability of provincial and territorial governments for the use of transferred funds so as to ensure that funding decisions meet the needs of the most vulnerable groups and do not result in discrimination against women;
- Carry out an impact assessment of social programs to determine whether they are adequate to realize the human rights of women, including the most vulnerable groups of women;
- Establish a co-ordinated national action plan to address violence against Aboriginal women and girls, that includes:
- a thorough investigations of the cases of Aboriginal women and girls who have gone missing or been murdered in recent decades;
- an inquiry and investigation into the systemic failures of law enforcement agencies that will lead to changes to police protocols, lines of authority, systems of co-ordination, training, and statistics-keeping to ensure that Aboriginal women and girls will be protected equally by law enforcement authorities and that violence against them will be investigated and prosecuted promptly and effectively;
- a specific and integrated plan for addressing the social and economic conditions of Aboriginal women and girls, both on and off reserves, including: poverty, poor health, inadequate housing, low school-completion rates, high rates of child apprehension, low employment rates, and low incomes.
We call on the Government of Canada to act immediately to respect, protect, and fulfill the human rights of women.