Letters

The National Action Committee on the
Status of Women (NAC) is an organization
Tepresenting almost 600 women’s groups
across the country. These groups have dif-
ferent ideologies and points of view, but.
Come together in NAC to find common
ground. Policy is passed at an annual gen-
eral meeting where each group is entitled to
One delegate and one vote.

NAC was formed by 35 groups in 1972 to
Monitor and press for implementation of
the recommendations of the Royal Com-
Mission on the Status of Women. Its steady
growth has taken place because of years of
Struggle by women in the member groups
for our dignity and rightful place in society.
This struggle has included lobbying for
€qual pay for work of equal value, for equal-
ity rights in the Canadian constitution and
for affirmative action to remedy the legacy
of discriminatory practices in Canadian
society.

The government of Canada has ratified
the UN Convention for the Elimination of
All Forms of Discrimination Against
Women. It has ratified the International
Labour Organization Convention No. 100
for equal pay for work of equal value. It has
passed a Charter of Rights and Freedoms
and committed itself to eliminating discrim-
ination in all its forms.

NAC, as an umbrella organization, and
Many equality-seeking women’s groups are
funded by the government through the
Women’s Program, Secretary of State. It is

Getting facts
along process

I appreciated Jack Phillip’s letter,
(“Openness is best chance for re-
forms,” Tribune, March 6, 1989), put-
ting the German Democratic Repub-
lic’s banning of the Soviet magazine,
Sputnik, into perspective.

No doubt there is a considerable
amount of bad history being pro-
duced on the Soviet Union today.
This is explainable because it is being
written not by historians, but by novel-
ists, journalists, playwrights and oth-
ers who are not trained to write
history.

However, they are filling a vacuum
because Soviet historians have been
noticeably absent in unearthing the
facts behind the emotional rumours ©
and first-hand accounts of the popu-
list writers. Rather, historians seem to
be limiting themselves to publishing
lengthy letters pointing out the flaws
in the work of others.

The reluctance of Soviet historians
to make use of the new climate and
material available to them is also
understandable. To produce real his-
tory now would be to disassociate
themselves from everything they built
their careers and reputations on. In
addition they have trained a new gen-
eration of historians in their image.

I raise this to point out the intense
complexities the Soviet Union and
CPSU is experiencing in getting at the
truth. It is more than just “opening up
the archives” — it is having the per-
sonnel trained at unmasking histori-
cal truth, not covering it up.

Maurice Wright,
Toronto

Ssstad

Status of Women and affiliated groups are carrying out mandate for equality outlined

in UN conventions which Canada has signed. R.E.A.L. Women’s policies are con-

trary to those conventions.

through such funding that women’s centres,

" transition houses for battered women, rape

crisis centres, legal rights groups and others
obtain funding in the spirit of the interna-
tional obligations Canada has agreed to.
Most women’s groups accomplish a great
deal with very little funding and they share a
common commitment to ending the
adverse effects of discrimination against
women.

After hearing submissions from groups
across the country, a parliamentary com-
mittee established by the government
recommended that:

“Funding be directed to women’s groups
... whose principle objectives and activities
support the attainment of equality for
women as stated in the Charter of Rights,
Dimensions and Equality: A Federal
Government Work Plan for Women and
other legal documents to which Canada isa
signatory including the Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination
Against Women, and the Forward-Looking
Strategies.”

A recent decision by the Honourable
Gerry Weiner, the Secretary of State, to give
funding to R.E.A.L. Women is a regressive
and unacceptable decision. R.E.A.L.
Women have developed policies and state-
ments which are contrary to the established
view of equality as adopted by the Cana-
dian government.

For example, R.E.A.L. Women does not
support the Charter of Rights. They do not
support fundamental equality rights by
which the courts can override legislation.

Contrary to the ILO Convention No. 100,
they do not support equal pay for work of
equal value. They are opposed to affirma-
tive action as “preferential treatment” on
the basis of sex and to child care services.

The budget for the Women’s Program
has been frozen for the past three years. This
has been a cutback for equality-seeking
groups. It is thus offensive to see funds
which should be directed to groups truly
promoting equality of women given to a
group which in no way qualifies as an
equality-seeking group.

In awarding a grant to R.E.A.L. Women,
a group which for the last five years has not
been considered equality-seeking, the govern-
ment contradicts itself. On the one hand, it
claims to support the equality of women
and signs international agreements to that
effect and on the other, it funds an organiza-
tion which actively works against such
equality.

To show its committment to women’s
equality in Canada, the government should
increase the budget for the Women’s Pro-
gram and introduce an improved Child
Care Act, and improved Employment
Equity Act and many other badly-needed
legislative reforms. The decision to fund
R.E.A.L. Women, combined with govern-
ment inaction on these and other areas of
concern to women, leads many Canadian
women to question whether this is indeed a
government for “all” the people.

Lynn Kaye, President,
National Action Committee
on the Status of Women

Reader was
way off base

on ‘Verses’

Peter Marcus needs to go back to
the drawing board with his definition
of hate literature (“Editorial on
Rushdie novel queried,” Tribune let-
ters, Mar. 20, 1989).

Satanic Verses is not hate literature.
It is a novel that offends Moslems
because they feel it demeans their
prophet, Mohammed. However, it
does not foment hatred and violence
against an oppressed group of people
as true hate literature does.

As for the book’s title, which is the
sole piece of evidence Marcus pres-
ented to back his claim, Rushdie bor-
rowed the phrase “satanic verses”
from al-Tabari, one of the canonic
Islamic sources. According to Tabari,
Mohammed received verses which
Archangel Gabriel later told him were
“satanic verses” inspired by the devil,
and so they were removed from
Koran.

Marcus is right that the book isn’t a
rigorous analysis of Islam. It isn’t
supposed to be. Like all good litera-
ture it’s an exploration, not a concre-
tion of dogma. In Rushdie’s own
words: “Literature is where I go to
explore the highest and lowest places
in human society and in the human
spirit, where I hope to find not abso-
lute truth but the truth of the tale, of
the imagination, and of the heart.”

The terrorist response to Rushdie
and his novel is not an attack against
one person or one book. It is an attack
against democracy. We are all Salman
Rushdie. I personally received anti-
Semitic hate mail shortly after the
Vancouver Sun published my letter
criticizing those who wish to kill
Rushdie and burn or ban his book.

When we have writers afraid to
write books, publishers afraid to pub-
lish them, bookstores afraid to sell
them and readers afraid to buy them,
then we no longer have democracy.

And spare me this hooey about
“with freedom must come responsi-
bility” (i.e. self censorship). A writer’s
responsibility is to write.

Kim Goldberg
Nanaimo

New Democrats’ record on FTA defended

I would like to respond to a letter you ran
on March 13 written by Don Nordin of
Gabriola Island (“NDP still at odds over
free trade,” Tribune letters March 13, 1989).

If Nordin is going to chastise the NDP for
trying to stop this regressive approach to the
Free Trade Agreement (FTA) then he had
better get his head screwed on right. The
NDP was the first political party in Canada
that opposed the FTA. The Liberals with
their mighty force of MPs sat on the fence
for a week while they pondered what they
should do about it.

Then John Turner made the announce-
ment that he would be against the FTA.
What he did was split the Liberal party right
down the middle, with half of the senators
for and half against, half of the Liberal
premiers for and half against.

You say the NDP was undoing the work
of Concerned Citizens Against Free Trade
by sending out the FTA synopsis. Well let
me tell you, I got no less than 10 synposes
from the Liberal party when I wrote various
Liberal MPs for more information, and an
armful of leaflets put out by the Conserva-

tives I asked myself at the time: why are the
Liberals sending me this garbage?

If Nordin wants to expound to someone
then he should do it to the Liberals. They
were the ones that had the troops and the
dollars to fight the FTA properly, not the
NDP.

Nordin claims that he did a lot of work to

~ stop the FTA. Well, let me tell you, he dida

very poor job, because he only elected one
person from B.C. whereas the NDP elected
19.

Cecil Cropley, Cawston

Pacific Tribune, April 3, 1989 « 5

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