REALity Volume XXXVI Issue No. 5 May 2017
The Liberal 2017 budget is a cartoon budget as it is only animation, not reality. It reflects a pretend world focussing on the feminists’ demands for gender analysis with women breathlessly waiting for instructions from our all-knowing Prime Minister Trudeau to hand them taxpayers’ money. The provisions in this budget benefit only well-educated, professional feminists who circulate in Trudeau’s world, but ignore most other women.
Women are a lot smarter than Trudeau seems to think. We can figure out by ourselves that he has created a feminist budget for upper and middle class, well-off feminist women only, not for low income women. Also, he doesn’t seem to understand that Canadian women are quite capable of knowing what they want, and can make intelligent and responsible decisions for themselves and their families without his assistance.
By this 2017 budget, however, Prime Minister Trudeau has made it clear that he prefers to make decisions for women. He assumes that women should properly participate in the paid workforce placing their children in substitute care, rather than looking after their children themselves. This way, the working mothers’ income will help raise the GNP and help his government’s floundering economy. In effect, Trudeau views women primarily as taxpayers rather than as responsible parents with the intelligence to choose their own lifestyle.
The $7 billion allotted over the next decade for new child care spaces is a boon for upper echelon two income families. Its success is premised on cooperation of the provinces (which have jurisdiction over child care) and which ultimately will determine how this money is spent. The budget suggests this provision could “create up to 40,000 subsidized child care spaces and help to train child care workers”. This is not helpful for those many women who do not wish to use such child care facilities.
The budget also adds a new caregiver leave provision which allows people to use employment insurance for 15 weeks to care for a critically ill relative. Why doesn’t this leave apply to grandparents or other relatives, to assist them financially to take leave to provide child care for their grandchildren or other dependent children in their families?
The budget makes a grand show of extending parental leave from 12 months to 18 months, but again this provision only benefits women who can afford a two-thirds cut in pay, spread over the 18 month leave period. This is not a choice for the 38% of women who are lower income, and excluded from parental leave because they don’t make enough or haven’t worked long enough to qualify for employment insurance. Women can figure out all by themselves that this provision is not helpful to most of us.
The budget also makes much of the fact that it is addressing gender-based violence by providing funding targeted for new gender and diversity training for judges. This is based on the notion that judges need professional training to be gender and culture sensitive to victims. But violence occurs equally to men who can also be victims. It’s not likely that they will be included in this project. It appears this $100 million over 5 years is targeted to so-called gender-based violence so as to indoctrinate judges to be biased in favour of a female victim. What about the rights of the defendant to be protected from judicial bias?
Finally Trudeau, as always, is obsessed with homosexuality and has handed out tax credits to the minuscule number of homosexuals who access reproductive technologies to create children for themselves. It is well documented that children thrive best with a mother and father in a long term relationship such as marriage. Apparently the best interests of children are only of marginal concern to this government. In contrast, it fails to respond to Canada’s demographic winter (only 1.6 children are born to each woman of reproductive age) to assist parents in raising their children. Instead, Trudeau snatches away tax credits for children’s activities and parents’ bus fares, cancelled income splitting, and reduced saving opportunities in Tax Free Savings Accounts.
The budget provides for the installing of a special advisor on homosexual issues in the Privy Council Office. Why doesn’t Trudeau install a special advisor for low income families so their needs can be met for a change?
This budget, as seen through feminist lenses, ignores the fact that men also live in Canada. The latter are over represented among manufacturing workers as well as unskilled labourers who have been laid off. The budget is silent in targeting any solutions for them. Men and women should be treated equally, and tax measures can’t be just for women but have to be for everyone.
One thing is certain about this budget, it has created an additional $28.5 billion deficit to our economy which is going to be passed on to our children and grandchildren. They will have to bear the burden of Trudeau’s obsession with feminism.