_. Cuts forcing women’s centre closures db slabs sme Leallel ul Canada [om 6 | ee oo a} A | | a Representatives of Lower Mainland women’s centres met with Mary Collins, newly-appointed Minister Responsible for the Status of Women, last Wednesday to demand full restoration of funding to Brit- ish Columbia’s women’s centres. More than 30 women’s centres across the province, the majority of them in rural areas and small towns, have learned that their funding from the federal government will be eliminated as a result of the cuts to the Women’s Program of the Secretary of State included in the recent federal budget. “The Women’s program with its tiny $11.2 million budget for the entire country is already severely underfunded. The government’s decision to cut $1.6 million from the program’s budget clearly sends a strong message to Canadian women that their real needs are not respected in Ottawa,” said Donna Cameron, spokesper- son for the British Columbia and Yukon Association of Women’s Centres. Trisha Joel, representative of the Van- couver Status of Women, said that Collins refused to accept the request from the women’s representatives that she be their advocate in pressing the federal government to roll back the cuts to the women’s pro- grams. Collins stated that the cutbacks were firm and that the federal cabinet had already stated there would be no changes to the budget. Collins did agree to try to arrange a meet- ing for the women’s group representatives with Secretary of State Gerry Weiner and. she also agreed to meet with the provincial Minister Responsible for Women’s Pro- grams, Carol Gran, to try to arrange emer- gency funding from the province to keep the centres open. “The possibility of provincial funding for the women’s centres is a really long shot. This government’s record on women’s pro- grams is worse than terrible,” said Joel. “But we have to make the attempt. If the centres close and the employees are fired, many of these communities will lose a vital social service not provided by any govern- ment agency.” Joel said that it would be late April before the Vancouver Status of Women, one of the oldest women’s groups in Can- ada, would know the extent of cuts to its federal funding. “T ast year we suffered a 15 percent cut in our grant from the Women’s Program, the same as the cut to their overall budget. We have every reason to assume that Ottawa will attempt to cut our grant by least 15 per cent,” said Joel. “This would happen at a ~ time when there has been increasing - The test for the Communist Party in the period leading up to its next convention is whether it can place a new image of social- ism before the Canadian people, CP leader George Hewison told the party’s leading body last weekend. Hewison opened what would be an intense and stormy meeting of the CP’s central committee by throwing down the gauntlet for party renewal. “We have the task of leading our party on the path of change,” he told the 65- member body, made up of leading members from across Canada. “The world has changed, Canada has changed, everything has changed ... we need a new vision of socialism in Canada — profoundly Canadian, pro- foundly revolutionary, profoundly scien- tific, profoundly democratic, and pro- foundly relevant. We need a major renewal of our party to help carry forward such a vision,” Hewison said. After three days of debate, the commit- tee, which leads the party work between biennial conventions, endorsed a resolu- tion on organizational renewal which will frarhe a six-month discussion process by the entire party membership, leading up to the Oct. 5-8 convention in Toronto. ‘‘We must enter a clear, basic, unfet- tered discussion of our theory, practices, forms and policies,” the paper reads. “In this pre-convention period, all questions must be subject to free and full debate.” Indeed, the draft resolution puts every organizational and theoretical concept on which the world communist movement has been based for the past 70 years up for re-examination. Without determining the answers, it places a number of questions before the party membership, including the role and nature of a revolutionary party. It asks if democratic centralism is the organiza- tional principle on which the party should be based — including how to accommo- date a structure whereby majority decisions are binding on all party members — and whether it conforms to “Canadian working-class democratic traditions.” The paper asks if proletarian interna- tionalism is still a valid precept of the world communist movement and if the party’s theory, Marxism-Leninism, should remain its guide. Responding to the new international climate, where nearly every Communist Party in the socialist world has given up its constitutional monopoly on power, the resolution asks: “Should we adopt an GEORGE HEWISON ... need a new vision of socialism in Canada. unequivocal commitment to political plu- ralism?” The paper also calls on the party to look at its own history and examine “how past methods and outlooks distorted demo- cratic procedures and clashed with the demands placed on the party.” The draft resolution, endorsed almost unanimously by the meeting, stresses that the discussion should proceed in “the knowledge that the Canadian working class needs a strong revolutionary, dis- tinctly Canadian socialist movement.” Members concurred with the need to re-examine the fundamentals on which the party was based. “The world is shak- ing. We can’t proclaim sacred cows any- more,” one stressed. “The party was grounded on many precepts that have since been proven bankrupt. The books from which I studied Marxism-Leninism have been torn up.” A formulation welcoming the “left unity processes” was one of the most con- tentious issues of the weekend. “This search [for answers] goes far beyond our party. Others are examining how the left, including the socialist- minded left can commonly examine con- cepts and ideas and, where possible, coordinate some activities. In this process many ideas are being put forward, includ- ing the possible option of a united party of the socialist left as a long-term, strategic vision,” the resolution states. “Left unity processes” refer to reports from across the country, of a growing Leading committee of CP debates changes in structure, organization interest among socialists, in and outside the Communist Party, to collectively access the impact of events in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and their implications for Canada. Speakers noted that upheavals in East- ern Europe were not the only factors prompting the left to re-assess its tactics. The traditional ways of fighting for reforms have reached an impasse in the neo-conservative age, said one Toronto member. “Many people involved in struggle have = come to realize the need for fundamental S social change. The bourgeois economic < offensive has forced this conclusion on the * leaders of the people’s movements. Some © are saying we can’t go any further without 2 challenging capital.” 2 Some raised concerns that a focus on 2 left unity could lead the party to neglect * the broad unity needed to mobilize against the government and its agenda. “Left ‘ unity cannot be at the expense of the peo- ple’s movements,” said one speaker. “We have to grab on to the mass sentiment for democracy. g “There is a need to re-examine new developments by both the party and the independent left. But this re-examination has to take place separately. The party has to be renewed, but don’t change the par- ty’s [principles] to attract the left.” In addition to the pre-convention dis- cussions, a three-member party review commission, previously elected by mail-in ballot, was mandated to begin its work. The commission, which comprises Miguel Figueroa of Halifax, Claire DaSylva from Montreal and Gary Swann from Vancouver Island, will hit the road in early April, meeting with party organiza-_ tions in every region of the country. All members are being invited to express their opinions on the present and future role of the party. Its report will be ready in late August. : In an unusual move, the central com- mittee, which normally convenes twice a year, will meet again March 30 to April 1 to complete the backlog of work. Before it are three other documents — social and economic alternatives for Canada, the new international situation, and theory and education — on which debate began but wasn’t concluded. Time also prevented a resolution reas- sessing the party’s stand on the 1968 War- saw Pact intervention in Czechoslovakia from making it to the floor. It will be brought forward at the March meeting. 6 e Pacific Tribune, March 5, 1990 demand for the advocacy and education. work of VSW.” Joel also stated that the organization is particularly concerned about the possibility of cuts to Kinesis, the monthly feminist newspaper published by the Vancouver Sta- tus of Women. “VSW does not accept that the federal deficit should be fought on the backs of women’s services. A government serious about deficit reduction would move to elim- inate tax breaks for upper income Canadi- ans and corporations. Instead we see cutbacks on already poorly-funded women’s services,” said Joel. ; In Toronto, Alice de Wolfe, executive director of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women said the federal” budget is a disastrous step back for women in Canada. Women’s programs will be devasta.-d, she said. ‘‘What the federal government Is doing is cutting to the bone of the women’s movement. They are hindering its capacity to respond to events in society and they are hurting our capacity to communicate.” Three national publications — Canadian Women’s Studies, Health Sharing, and Resources for Feminist Research — have lost all government funding, leaving theif future in serious doubt. National women’s groups involved in research, such as the Canadian Council of Learning Opportunities and the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women, are facing an across-the-board cut of 20 per cent. “Forty women’s centres in Quebec have had funding cutbacks and two in New- foundland have had their funding cut com- pletely. For a number of these centres it will mean going under.” De Wolfe said this was a depression budget and as the crisis intensifies it will be women who will pay the main price as jobs are lost and what gains that have been made towards equality are turned back. “This budget will hurt women,” she emphasized. “It will affect child care, health care, education and non-indexing of income tax means there will be higher taxes. We are still assessing the total damage and pain this budget will cause.” Military spending spared, says EAR While it cut deeply into key social pro- gram funding and cancelled an important project for B.C. shipyard workers, the fed- eral government allowed military spending to be maintained in the federal budget, the president of the End the Arms Race peace coalition said last week. While military spending is being increased by $560 million, the $500 million contract to build an icebreaker in B.C. is being can- celled, EAR president Frank Kennedy said in a statement on the budget Feb. 23. ““A mere five per cent cut in the depart- ment of National Defence would have saved Canadian taxpayers a half billion dol- lars but instead we are giving that much away to the military,” he said. The peace coalition contrasted the government’s action with Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s comments to the Open Skies conference in Ottawa Feb. 12 in which he stated: “(We must). . . seize this unprece- dented moment in history to replace the cold war and its incalculable costs in human wealth, misspent human genius and wasted social opportunity with a new ethic of co- operation based on peace, prosperity and common purpose.” “Tt is unjustifiable that the Canadian government can increase military spending while cutting deep into transfer payments directing affecting health care, post- secondary education and other vital social programs across this country,” Kennedy said.