United Nations complaint- update 2004

521-18 A ST NW
Calgary Alberta
Canada T2N2H3
April 15, 2004

Director
Commission on the Status of Women
Division for the Advancement of Women
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms
of Discrimination Against Women
United Nations Plaza
DC 2 -1225
New York, New York 10017
USA

Dear Director:

Further to my complaint in the spring of 1997 and your consideration of it pursuant to resolution 76(V), and resolutions 304 ( (X) and 1983/27 of the Economic and Social Council, I would like to update you about progress in the handling of this complaint, and to inform you further of international trends in which I know you take an interest.

I am deeply concerned that my original complaint which raised several points and was supported nationally and internationally, was however deemed inappropriate in the Canadian government reply to you, and they denied all my claims. I am pleased that your report in 1999 did observe despite this denial several international trends which I feel were related to my original concerns- an absence of women in decision-making, a high incidence of women and children in poverty, and legal systems that discriminate.

What has happened since? I have done an intense study of our national system, of related laws, and of international policies in these same issues. Nothing in Canada has changed for the better related to my claims and in addition, I understand that my government has now opted out of some aspects of the UN complaint process to which I had access. This deeply concerns me.

I would therefore like to renew my complaint or to start a new one on a similar theme but noting not only my own governments continued discriminations, but also some troubling international trends. I therefore will comply with the complaint guidelines as set forth.

1. Author
-My family name is Smith and my first name is Beverley
-I am a Canadian citizen
-I am female and married with four adult children
-I am a part-time school teacher and a homemaker
-My telephone and fax numbers are 403-283-2400. My email is bevgsmith@alumni.ucalgary.ca
-I am submitting this communication as an individual who feels she is a victim of discrimination but I feel also that there are many other women in my position

2. Alleged Victim
-see above

3. State party concerned
-Canada

4. Alleged violations:

Violations of several basic tenets of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (Sept 3 1981) to which my country was signatory.

Preamble:
In order for women to genuinely attain equality in society, they must get recognition for their many faceted roles, not just their money-earning ability but also their traditional caregiving roles. It is my observation that Canada and many other nations have not yet come the full way to valuing all of womens work and all of their roles, and that a discrimination lingers against the traditional role, in language, in tax policy and in economic practice downgrading the role of caregiving which is a traditionally female role. Admittedly now sometimes men do this role and they too suffer the discrimination but the role itself is now the subject of discrimination and this is so deeply ingrained in society as a female role that it is a discrimination analogous to gender, as serious as a discrimination against maternity is analogous to gender.

In Canada women are finally given access to education and paid careers on a par with men, but under considerable pressure to embark on that route to equality, being forced to leave traditional caregiving roles or preferences. I feel that a society that does not discriminate against women would not pressure them into what used to be male roles, in order to be equal. That is a false equality, a half-way step only. I feel women can certainly do any paid work men can do but if we stop there we are only saying still as centuries have said, that womens home-based roles are to be scorned. We need the courage to claim equality also for the roles women have had for centuries and I feel this level of equality is seriously lacking and needs to be addressed internationally. I feel tax policy should not tilt the balance in how women choose to devote their time between paid careers and families. However in Canada it seriously does tilt the balance, and violates several tenets of the Convention as a result.

a. ensure equal rights of men and women to enjoy all economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights
-Canada does not let women have a full personal tax deduction if they are caregivers in the home. They are only allowed a smaller deduction as if they were less than fully human.
-Caregiving women who work is unwaged are forced to be seen as dependent on men, even if they understand between themselves that they are mutually dependent, partners, equals, interdependent. Canada denies households the option of being taxed based on the reality that they share income, and because every person is taxed as an individual the caregiver in the home is seen as a helpless child who is not contributing anything to the family. This is an insult to women and denies them social and cultural equality.
-Canada tax law uses the definition of work to only count paid work. The degrading of all unpaid work not only undervalues this sector of the economy and takes it for granted, but it also means women who work long hours in the home taking care of the young, sick, elderly, handicapped and dying are demoralized because the state lumps them together with the unemployed as not working. They therefore suffer all the social stigma and negative stereotyping that they are lazy, not pulling their own weight, not trying hard enough, failures in life. This I feel is a serious part of the womens movement to address that final negative stereotype of the homemaker role which most women from time to time in their lives do have.
-Canada denies caregivers pensions for their caregiving years and denies them to have registered retirement savings plans in their own name. This forced dependency on a male earner not only ignores the valuable work they are doing for society and the savings to the economy to keep people out of costly institutional care, but it also ensures those who made such a salary sacrifice are penalized for their entire lives for that choice and ensures the feminization of poverty.

b. convinced that the establishment of the new international economic order based on equity and justice will contribute
-Canada has not yet admitted a new economic order. It seems that Canada and the US and many other industrialized nations have the idea that the new order means all people, men and women, now have paid jobs most of their lives. That however is not the real new order, since in reality many people are going to great lengths to also prioritize the nonearning but very important parts of their lives caregiving of the young being a key element of that. Internet technology has enabled a whole range of career options such as home-based office and telecommuting which are not being recognized by Canada for the shift they are creating in how we understand the needs of citizens. It is not true that most parents need for instance a good daycare 7Am to 5PM. In fact in Canada most parents by polls and by practice have a wide range of needs and ways of meeting their career and family obligations with daycare being a less common solution. Care by grandparents, care by parents taking turns (tag-team), care by dads at home are all very common. Home schooling is growing. The new economy in fact is not a one-size fits all situation yet Canada has a tax policy which assumes a one-size fits all lifestyle. The effect is that most parents are excluded from the very benefits Canada says it has created to address womens equality.

c. the social significance of maternity
-Canada has made very small token moves only to value maternity. It has created a benefits package which is very farm from universal which already discriminates between women and therefore between children. But the criterion for the program is also seriously discriminatory against women since it is not based on the value of child-bearing or the importance of every child to society, but is based on a male paradigm of amount of money earned. Not only does such a policy exclude most new mothers, but it is a reverse benefit to what is logical. It might be logical to at least if you are not universal, to help the poorest most. But this policy gives the most benefits to the highest-earning women. The maternity benefits policy has also been roundly criticized in our national paper for exluding so very many women who do earn money because it has conditions on how they earn it. The maternity benefit does not go to self-employed women or employer women, only to employees. It is based on hours of paid work the previous year, and has an arbitrary figure of 600 hours for benefits. This means that anyone with 599 hours does not qualify. One could envisage a system whereby the womans career of paid work hours might count but no- Canada only counts the previous 12 months, and of course this excludes any mother who had a difficult pregnancy or another small child at home who was not able to put in the 600 paid hours because she was so busy putting in unpaid hours. Here again we see a penalty and a discrimination against doing the traditional caregiving role.

In addition however the maternity benefits package Canada does allow is based only on women despite the Convention trying to get men to take a more active role in parenting. Surely any child conceived is the child of both the father and the mother but in Canada the mans paid work hours and contributions to any maternity benefits program (which are compulsory) do not count towards his spouse getting maternity benefits.

Canada also allows a very wide and lopsided range of maternity benefits so that women get 100% of salary while at home with the baby, with private industry topping up what government gives, while other companies give no top up. This creates even among those who do get some maternity benefits, huge inequities. The federal program does NOT subsidize full salary which means that the official policy is that taking care of a newborn is not as valuable as any other paid role. That is a discrimination.

c. Article 1 impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by women..of human rights and fundamental freedoms
Canadian women who take time away from paid work to provide unpaid care of others are impaired in their financial status immediately not only by loss of salary which may be a personal choice and logical, but also by loss of social recognition (they are now considered not working in tax law), by loss of pension, by loss of income for caregiving through maternity benefits, but also by loss of many other benefits the state used to give (family allowance, deduction for dependent children) and loss of any benefits the state claims it still gives because it makes getting them conditional on unfair criteria. In other words women are denied enjoyment of basic equality and freedoms if they take any time to do unpaid caregiving in the home.
I am attaching a lengthy legal document I prepared to point out specifically the violations of these basic freedom deprivations. I have asked 3 of our federal Attorneys General to look at these legal principles but with change of cabinet and with what could be seen as arrogance of government, none of the 3 has even seriously considered my request apparently and certainly none has acted on it. Under our Supreme Court Act for instance, those who drafted the legislation envisaged a situation where for some cases of national importance an ordinary citizen might feel that current laws violate basic freedoms and there should be some avenue for that citizen to have the Court look at the alleged violations. This option of an application for a Supreme Court reference is I think crucial to democracy, not to be taken lightly, but somewhat of a democratic obligation of good government on matters that seriously affect large number of people. Yet my government has refused my application and given on good reason at all for this refusal. All I am requesting is that the Supreme Court rule to see if current laws are in effect discriminating against women- and there seems to be no risk to government to show that they are fair laws if government really believes they are fair. Yet the Canadian government has not been willing to have the Court look at the laws to see if they are fair.

d. Article 2 - agree to pursue by all appropriate means and without delay a policy of eliminating discrimination
I started writing to my government in 1976. It is now 2004. I have been writing for nearly 28 years. I have lodged 4 complaints at our Human Rights Commission and always been told that the commission was not the appropriate place to complain since it handles only individual complaints not ones that relate to shared concerns of a group. I have written to every member of parliament, every Senator, taken part in petitions and rallies, have made presentations to Finance Committees for many years annually expressing my concerns. I have joined groups and am currently president of a national group and oddly enough this group is usually excluded from the governments consultation process when it speaks about womens issues and equality. I therefore feel that Canada has not adhered to article 2.

e. Article 2 (d) to refrain from engaging in any act or practice of discrimination
Far from discouraging discrimination against caregivers, the Canadian government leads the way in such discrimination. It itself has a tax policy which denies such people, usually women, financial equality, equal deductions to earners, access to tax help for costs of raising children that are given if women use nonhome-based care (daycare), and denies them pensions. The state forces women to be dependent on men and this forcing is not accidental but intentional in what is expressed in some documents as actual
disincentives to being in the home. Canada is stuck at the half-way point of viewing womens equality, wanting to force them out of the home to earn money in order to be empowered and independent and self-sufficient. I feel that though that is one route to those goals, it is also important for the liberation of women to recognize they already are working, already are contributing to society, already are crucial to the economy, the family and to the mental health of the nation doing what women have always done. To nudge women away from a traditional role is a huge discrimination against that role and the state actually in Canada brags that it does this.

f. Article 2 (f) to take all appropriate measures, including legislation, to modify or abolish existing laws, regulations, customs and practices which constitute discrimination against women
As noted, this government has not changed any laws to universally value caregivers in the home who are unpaid. It has not changed its definition of work to include unpaid work. It has not allowed my application for a Supreme Court reference. I feel that not only is it not taking all appropriate measures but it is working very hard to not change - to justify present practice if it can, and Canadas denial of my claims in my 1997 complaint shows a stubbornness to even consider change. In fact in this weeks issue of one of our national news magazines, Macleans, a finance department official is quoted as saying that complaints such as mine are a myth she has quickly exploded. I find such arrogance and reluctance to consider fairer treatment, very troubling.

g. Article 3 ensure the full development and advancement of women
It is commonly thought by my government apparently that to advance women they need to get an education to do anything but traditional roles. It seems to me that this is also an insult to women because it is not a broad enough definition of development and advancement. Of course women can do anything men can do and have a right to any formal education they want. But it is my observation that the caregiving role which nurtures our young is grossly undervalued for the contribution it makes to developing our children, male and female, and helping them advance by ensuring they feel loved. And I also notice that when my government does give the appearance finally of valuing children or the role, it goes to great effort to only value caregiving when it is NOT done by women in the home. It will fund for instance care of a child by a strange, but not care by a relative. It will fund care of the sick or handicapped by any stranger, but not by a loving relative. This also is a discrimination against a traditional womens role and it seriously reduces options for families about how to care for their young, sick, elderly because it only funds one lifestyle. It also seriously risks the full benefit of good care of our young and their full advancement and development if it assumes that only strangers are competent at caregiving.

I am troubled to observe that in the fight to get equality for women, when we did finally notice that cooking mattered, we only for many years trusted male chefs. When we did notice that taking care of a baby mattered, we still only at first consulted male doctors. It was as if men insisted still on saying we were not only not good at earning money but we were not even good at what we already did and they could do it better and tell us how to do it.

In Canada this condescending and patriarchal attitude is still evident regarding caregiving. .For instance we have a national Plan of Action and policy which does not fund taking care of children at all, but which massively funds giving advice to parents about how to take care of children. This education program may be theoretically well intended but the assumption is very clear that women are not even very good at taking care of children and they need the state to tell them how to do it. And there is a sinister and other troubling assumption that if a woman is unmarried or in poverty she is extremely incompetent, not only needing help to parent by gratuitous advice, but by being forced to leave her child in care provided by the state so that someone professional can take care of the child. This is a huge discrimination against women in poverty.

The professionalization and commercialization of caregiving however seriously concerns me because if we are to look at a new economy that actually counts womens unpaid labor as worthwhile, we should value it in its selfless, traditional and loving way. To value it only when provided by someone paid in some ways does not go far enough to really valuing the role. The idea for instance that an early childhood worker is an expert, is a professional, or is a teacher is quite a leap when one notices that the assumption is being made by the state that the parent herself, who has spent a lot of time with the child, or for instance a parent who already has several other children are themselves not expert, not competent. This assumption runs counter to international conventions that specifically say that the parent is the one to first consult about the best interests of the child. My government seems to mistrust parents and to assume that the only good provider of care of a child is anyone but the parent. That is how our tax law works and it is a sinister and very unkind assumption.

I am concerned however that commercial interests not only tend to have funds to lobby government well, but that they can adopt terms that mislead government into thinking for instance that the best interests of children are served by funding their own commercial group.. The idea for instance that large chains of daycares should be considered a national necessity would guarantee for some daycare operators an income for life and if their argument is, and it is, that no other style of child-rearing should be funded, they really are getting the state to prefer and discriminate in favor of their business, to the detriment of womens options and freedoms to choose lifestyles.

h. Article 5 (a)to modify the social and cultural patterns of conduct of men and women
Here again my government seems stuck in the idea that men have to learn to do more housework. That is a naïve view of what women have done for centuries and seriously undervalues the complexities and intensity of listening to troubled teens, of toilet-training, of taking kids on educational outings at some personal inconvenience. Canada has not gone to enough trouble yet to value unpaid labor and has only done token studies of it in two of its census, lumping together housework and childcare quite indiscriminately and focusing not on the value of care of others to an economy but on the simple issue of which gender takes out the garbage. To me Canada has much more work to do to address the value of the caregiving role itself and its efforts to date fall far short of modifying the social and cultural understanding of the value of this role.

i. Article 5(b) achieving the elimination of prejudices and all other practices which are based on the idea of the inferiority or the superiority of either of the sexes
Canada refers to women who dont work to mean women in the home. In its tax documents it talks of a working women and a working couple clearly however ignoring the nonpaid work of women in the home and favoring and giving social approval only to women who do paid work. The term work has many connotations but to assume women in the home do not work links them to vacuum cleaners that dont work meaning they are broken.
The state also has some clearly stereotyped terms to insult the caregiving role in other ways too. For instance it has tax benefits for child care which one might assume would be for the care of any child but they are in fact only for care by a stranger. The term child care sounds universal but it is not. The state therefore undermines the value of that segment of the population usually mothers whose main career and occupation during the day is taking care of children and excludes them from being designated as child-care providers. This is illogical, exclusive and insulting.
In addition when it uses the term working mother it means a mother who earns money and yet a working engineer is one who is currently engineering just like a working television is one that is operating well as a television. The stereotype and assumption of the government use of terms is that a mothers best and only work done is by leaving her child so she can earn. That is a negative view of mothering and yet it is the states use of terms that perpetuates it. The state also uses the misleading expression early childhood education to get public approval of its funding direction since who could be against kids or education? And yet it directs its funds only to children in one type of experience, nonparental care, usually daycare, and therefore it is assuming apparently that parents do not educate their children and only strangers do. This also is an insulting and demeaning assumption. Denying funding however to all parenting styles and to all kids creates these inequalities and is a state-run policy of intentional discrimination against a traditional womens role option.

j. Article 5 (b) maternity as a social function Here again Canada claims that it allows either a father or a mother to get parental leave benefits after a child is born. And yet that is misleading since a mothers contribution to the funding plan can qualify for a man to take a few weeks to be home with the child but a mans contribution to the fund will not qualify his wife to be home with the child. The state seems to still assume that the woman not the man is in charge of child-rearing and only her income qualifies for the state to help.
Were maternity actually viewed as a social function as it is in some European countries the benefit for being home with a newborn would have only one criterion the existence of a newborn baby. In Canada we are far from that criterion.

k. Article 7 (b) to participate in the formulation of government policy I have raised my concerns for 27 years. Often I hear no reply from government when I write and I am told by my premier or by some aide to a cabinet minister that there is no chance I will EVER get to meet them. This blocking of access I find troubling in a democracy. Our government promised to have a womens advisor in every department when it signed the Beijing Accord but it still does not have one as far as I know, to seek equality in the Finance Department. My government sometimes does hold consultations about caregiving issues. For instance last summer one of our Senators, Senator Landon Pearson said she was consulting all Canadians to formulate a National Plan of Action for Children. However she did not advertise this consultation and held closed-door by invitation only meetings with a preselected group of people and only after and reluctantly released names for those invited and most were representatives of organizations which make their living off their concern for kids. There was no invitation to several organizations with which I deal regularly who represent unpaid caregivers. We exist, we are quite obvious because we write to government so often, yet we were intentionally excluded. This is actually quite common. Government will hold a convention or meeting and not inform us till very late if at all and we are not eligible though we represent unpaid work for any financial help to fly the 3000 km to the meeting or to pay the registration fees. In other words the consultation process my government has set up is mostly a sham regarding caregiving. It excludes specially and ironically those whose main occupation is caregiving and who do it free, selflessly. This failure to consult women in their own area of expertise and failure to give women input into the formulation of laws that will affect them is a serious violation I feel of article 7 (b)

l. Article 11 (a) the right to work
My government seems stuck at the half-way with the equality movement, trying to ensure women can all earn money. It does not work hard to ensure women who want to be home taking care of their kids have the right to do that work . It helps women leave their traditional roles but does not help them pursue them.

m. Article 11 © the right to free choice of profession and employment
Canada does not really allow women a free choice of career. Many polls indicate women want more time with their children, many are having increasing demands on their time providing elder care, many at paid employment suffer intense anxiety, stress and depression because they feel so torn and yet my government does not help them have the choice to be home to meet those caregiving obligations. It only helps them leave them. This however hinges on something I think is vital to the final stage of the fight for equality of women the definition of work and of a profession. Surely we have to have the courage ultimately to say that womens profession in the home is also a valid career option for some women and for some stages of life and for some time. To undervalue it is the antithesis of equality.

n. Article 11 © the right to job security and all benefits
It is ironic but true that because Canada so undervalues traditional womens work, it also makes sure that anyone doing it feels very insecure. There is the forced dependency on men. Even though our divorce laws finally recognize on dissolution of marriage that what a woman did during the marriage was her half and she is entitled to half the family assets, while still married she is not. She is viewed within marriage as a burden on the man and that is grossly insulting. She has no options to end an unhappy marriage that do not also involve her having to leave her children in order to earn money so she may well stay in an unhappy marriage, even an abusive one because the state does not independently recognize the caregiving work she is doing as her own work. She is denied independent financial means. That is degrading. Children in homes in poverty, where having a single income is for instance taxed in some cases 42% higher than having two earners (also an unfairness against lifestyle) those children also feel very insecure. Poverty creates insecurity and Canada has high rates of child poverty, probably because it does not have any universal benefit for children across the board. So Canadas tax policy not only deprives children of security but also deprives their mothers of security.

o. Article 11 1 (d) the right to equal remuneration
I find it odd that those who argue for women to leave the home to have value also often argue how important it is to have good care of children and that is why we need very highly paid daycare staff. It is ironic because if care of children is so important, then care by a mother should be as funded as care by a stranger. We have to aim not just at equal remuneration between men and women doing the same job but between women and women doing the same job.

p. Article 11 1 (e) The right to social security
As mentioned in Canada we have a retirement provision which does allow men to share income with women, but the catch is that a man and woman do not get two pensions they have to share one. This actually removes social security and Canadas senior women are notoriously the poorest demographic in the land, and most of it is simply due to the fact they were home for a time as unpaid caregivers, and the longer they were home the poorer they are. This therefore is a violation of Article 11 1 (e)

qArticle 12 (b) to introduce maternity leave
Canada has extended its maternity leave for federal employees to one year. This sounds good but as noted earlier so many people are excluded that this guise of generosity actually does not benefit most new mothers and creates a huge discrimination against all those excluded. The term leave itself is problematic given that a leave implies you need permission to do something somewhat selfish, and the term also has the connotation of a sailor on shore leave, on holiday. Leave then is also a term that undervalues traditional caregiving, sees it as not useful work but as time off from useful work, and that sees it and treats it as a holiday when it in fact involves some of the most demanding and exhausting work a woman ever will do.

r. Article 13 (a) the right to family benefits
Canada has no universal benefits for children.
Not only that but what benefits it has are not fairly administered. Even though the caregiver is the one whose income is the most critical for determining if there is a need for societal financial help, it is not the income of the caregiver that is the criterion for help. The state assumes the earner s income as the determiner and therefore though it taxes people based on individual income (refusing to consider sharing), when it returns benefits to households it assumes sharing and refuses to consider individual income. This inconsistency always works in the states favor and is grossly discriminatory against the caregiver and the family.

s. Article 14 (b) the right to bank loans, mortgages
Women can qualify for these rights as can men but caregivers, who are overwhelmingly female, cannot. This means there is still a discrimination against women. Banks are allowed to have policy that assumes a woman in the home cant be trusted and is a child under the law. She may not even be allowed to consult a loans officer without her husbands presence. Even if the couple clearly feels they are equal partners and have so defined their bank accounts, the bank itself will only negotiate with the earner and will ignore the nonearner in any transactions. Some stores will actually refuse cheques or credit cards that the caregiver spouse uses again assuming that she is not trustworthy without a note from some man This is a discrimination and a violation of article 14. Under our divorce law the woman, though a nonearner, is still half-owner of all family assets and has the same collateral and actual income of the earner yet banks and the federal government view her as without any dependable or reliable income and therefore untrustworthy.

In a way also, since the state deprives caregivers of any financial equality, it perpetuates the vicious circle, ensuring the caregiver is poor and then letting banks penalize her for her personal poverty. If the state truly valued her equal contribution to the household and her caregiving, it would provide her with equal benefits it gives to earning mothers, and then she would have means and would qualify for bank loans. The state not only does not adhere to article 14 (b) but it creates and perpetuates the problem in nonadherence.

t. Article 14 © to benefit directly from social security programs
Canada has several such programs- employment insurance, pensions, health care. The unpaid caregiver in the home is excluded from these programs unless she works through a spouse who earns money. The programs are not universal in fact but are of benefit only to those who contribute to them. All who earn money are forced to contribute so all earners do have a universal program But those whose work is unpaid only get health care indirectly and therefore inconsistently. In some situations for instance a company will offer its employees dental care up to $2,000 a year. A family that needs $4,000 dental work for a child does not have to pay anything if the two parents both have paid income and therefore the dental coverage. However a single earner family only has one dental policy so it only get $2,000 coverage and though poorer than the dual income family has to pay $2,000 more out of pocket for dental care. Such inequalities are common in medical care, in drug plans especially noteworthy if one family member is seriously ill.
Canada will not even allow caregiver homemakers to contribute to its pension plan and then it denies them benefits saying they did not contribute. It denies maternity, parental and caregiving benefits and palliative care benefits to most women though some qualify, because the criteria are paid labor of 600 hours or more and those who were already at home providing such care oddly enough are the very ones who dont quality because they were already doing unpaid caregiving. The irony is that the state does not value caregiving unless you dont do it.

u. Article 15 equal rights to conclude contracts and to administer property
Canadian women who are caregivers in the home have diminished rights about banking affairs as noted above, and are forced into dependency on men in terms of property. To escape this dependency the state only considers one option to leave the home and the caregiving role. It has not yet considered the option of recognizing the work of the caregiver and her entitlement to property and equality based on that work itself. Women who marry or are in common-law relationships do not automatically have a share in the property that is jointly tenanted and are at the mercy of the male earner in whether or not he permits them to share the bank account or have their names also on the property title. In some ways the restriction is probably due to the simple bias that unpaid citizens are unworthy citizens.

v. Article 16 (d) in all cases the interests of the children shall be paramount
Though Canada follows the best interests of the child principle in determining child custody and access on divorce, it does not follow that principle in terms of child-rearing during a marriage. In that situation the state clearly prejudges the best interests of the child to be access to full-time child care and all other styles of child-rearing do not get funding. Such a bias excludes considerations of variations in needs between shy and outgoing children, delayed and advanced intelligence children, children who are handicapped or ill, many of whom by definition might benefit from specialized care not one-size-fits-all. In addition however the best interests of the child principle is not served when considerations about the childs home situation are excluded, since child tax benefits are given only if there is a dual income household and only as deductions against the income of the lower earner. That means the state subsidizes enrolment in after-school and out of school activities up to the age of 16, under the same umbrella as daycare, but again not for every child, only for children in that particular style of earning in the home. For the same school lunch program, the same art or music class, the same hockey camp or outdoor education week, one family can deduct the cost and the other cannot- yet it is the same course. Were one to assume the course was in the best interests of the child the states unequal treatment of it is unfair.

Recent research has shown the crucial nature of bonding and attachment in the early years so that a child feels secure in the presence of the same adult caregiver for the first 3 years and that person should be someone who loves the child. However Canadas tax law by favoring only daycare favors placing children in institutional care which has a high staff turnover rate and which often is organized so that there are different caregivers at each age group clearly the putting the ability of a child to have the same loving caregiver for 3 years, at risk. The one caregiver who may be available and willing, the parent, or some other relative is the very one excluded from the benefit, so that Canadas tax policy actually is biased against the best interests of the child. By removing from parents a wide range of choices in care style, and prejudicing the choice to only one option, Canada also removes the flexibility that most parents need in fine-tuning their caregiving to the changing needs of the child. In situations of divorce or separation, family crisis, even illness, parents may prefer home-based care or some other care arrangement but state funding is not at all flexible. In frequent cases where the parents change jobs, change timetables, move to a new house, again the state does not allow flexibility in care arrangement to adapt to these circumstances.

The state does not fund children with benefits that flow with the child. Were it to do so, parents would have a wide range of options including daycare, nannies but also homebased care, grandma care, tag-team parenting. However the state funds daycares directly through construction and start-up grants, and then it funds daycares with a per child allotment, in what is commonly called funding for each space. This preferential funding for daycare compared to nondaycare is further exacerbated by the additional prejudice that the funding is for full-time daycare children only. That means that any parent who might want to be home 3 days a week and have the child in daycare 2 days a week is denied access to the funding because the daycare only wants full-time clients. This policy actually then runs counter to what parents have said they prefer for the best interests of their children. Were Canada to fund children directly with funding that flows with the child such inflexibility would be avoided and parents would much more likely be able to do what was in the best interests of the child.
w. Article 16 (f) wardship, adoption, trusteeship in all cases the interests of the children shall be paramount:
It used to be that the mother automatically got custody of the child on divorce and the father had to make child-support payments. However Canada has wisely changed some of those provisions to allow men to have custody when that is deemed in the best interests of the child, and to change the tax arrangement which actually used to be to a mans financial advantage to divorce rather than to stay married because only on divorce were costs of rearing a child deductible. The new laws however harm women. The concept of alimony and spousal support has changed. It used to be that a man would pay it and then could deduct it as a business expense in some ways. The woman had to declare it as income and then pay tax on it, clearly making her seem an employee of the male, not an equal partner, and making it to his tax advantage to divorce. Our laws have not completely corrected those situations since a man can still deduct costs of child-support on divorce which he could not deduct during marriage. Because the issue of divorce is heavily financial instead of based on equality, and because the recognition of the work of child-rearing itself has still not been made, in many cases on divorce both parents are now forced to leave the children to get paid employment. My government seems to assume that the support of a child is only financial and it completely ignores the equally important aspect of supporting a child which is taking care of the child day to day and providing emotional and psychological care. Since my government does not permit women to have independent recognition of their caregiving work in the home, it renders them poor and then it penalizes them for their poverty by reducing their options when a marriage ends. Forcing the mother to leave the child just because the father left actually perpetuates the vulnerability and dependency of women on the whims of men and denies them equality in their own right. In such cases many women are forced to give up their children because they simply cannot afford to take care of them and they make a horrible decision that the child may be better off financially in the care of the wealthier parent. Were my government to value caregiving, women would be allowed to be with their children regardless of divorce, if they so chose and a childs life upon divorce would not be so gut-wrenchingly torn apart.

Summary:
Canada signed the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. I believe however that it has not yet eliminated and that its tax, child-care, pension and employment insurance perpetuate some forms of discrimination against women who are caregivers, a role historically associated with gender. Such women are denied economic and social equality. The legal systems continues the discrimination. Tribunal remedies such as the Supreme Court reference I applied for have been blocked. Acts of discrimination against this sector continue. My government has enabled women to have access to all roles except the traditional one, therefore denying dignity to all roles. And it does not have legislation that ensures caregiving women in the home enjoy basic human rights and freedoms. Though Canada signed a convention stating that culture and tradition are influential forces shaping gender roles and family relations it has perpetuated policies to ignore the value of tradition and culture and to favor any roles that are not traditional ones. It has undermined in fact perpetutation of cultures by giving tax favoritism to raising children or caring for the sick or elderly in standardized institutional care settings that do not recognize cultural heritage or language.
Most European nations value caregiving as vital to the social fabric. Canada does not. Norway gives a cash subsidy to parents who do not use daycare. Belgium allows parents to deduct from their taxable income costs of home-based care, Germany is converting its child-care system to an individual grant called a Kia card which is a voucher system. Austria is replacing its parental benefits so the criterion is the childs needs not the employment status of the parent.
As of 1998 there were universal child benefits in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Spain and Sweden. Some given additional supplements for lone parents.
Where nations do have comprehensive daycare programs, they often are much different from the North American model. The daycare may be quite near where the mother has paid employment, she may be able to see it over lunch and frequently throughout the day, and her paid work day may end at 3PM instead of the North American standard of 5PM, ensuring she can spend a lot of time with her child anyway.
Canada has not significantly reduced its child poverty rate, probably because it does not universally help children and many of its tax benefits actually go the middle and upper class (family trusts, income-splitting for stocks and investments, maternity benefits that increase for richer women) The rate of child poverty in 2000 for instance was 15.5% in Canada, 22.4% in the US, 26.2% in Mexico while with nations that universally fund children the rates were much lower. (Denmark 5.1%, Sweden 2.6%, Finland 4.3%, Norway 3.9%)
In many nations maternity benefits are funded through general revenue. In some nation as 100% funding comes from social security (Vietnam, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary ,Algeria, Cameroon) while in Angola 100% is funded by the employer. In Canada there is a mix of both state and employer funding, always however conditional on paid work, which therefore creates inequalities between women who do get the benefit but which more seriously excludes from benefits most new mothers.

Many countries allow taxation based on household income not just individual income, but Canada does not recognize sharing of income and penalizes it. Countries that allow the option at least of household-based tax include Germany, Greece, Luxembourg, Ireland, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland and the US.
Kathy OHara of the Canadian Policy Research Network found in 1998 that in 8 countries many parents would prefer to have a parent at home with the children. France has a neutral policy to supporting both at home parents and daycare users. The Netherlands helps parents with part-time paid work and gives flexible hours. Germany supports the at home parent with money, tax incentives and pension benefits. Sweden give long parental leave, income support, flexible hours and part-time paid work. the UK, US and Canada however do not apparently value at-home care of children and have nearly nothing in place to recognize that option.
Child has recognized that older women care for grandchildren and are making significant contributions to their families but this unpaid work.
The US for many years had a marriage tax penalty which it only recently has removed making the deduction for a married person equal to the deduction for a single person instead of less and making the cutoff for the 15% tax bracket the same for married and single people instead of lower for those who declared income jointly (making them pay higher tax for being married). Canada continues what the Fraser Institute has called the Leave-it-to-Beaver tax penalty which is a tax penalty for the single income household, higher tax rates, lower deductions and exclusion for childrens benefits.
Many nations are working to enable women to work outside the home but without penalizing the time spent in the home. Some give full-time benefits for part-time paid labor. Italy has eliminated many problems of poverty of women in old age by funding a homemakers pension.
Many nations have a universal family allowance and some such as in Norway have it increase in amount for larger families per child . Sweden allows subsidies directly paid to parents . If the father fails to pay child support the state pays it and then collects if from the father, ensuring the child is not in poverty
Sweden is often cited as a model of how women should all use daycare but even its system does not have the long 7AM 6PM style of daycare common in North America. In Sweden a study by Brngt-Erik Andersson found that daycare usually lasts 5-6 hours a day only, there is a 1-4 adult to child ratio, and if a woman has 2 or 3 children she can be home as long as 5 years. Even Sweden is starting to value time with a child not just time away from a child.
UNICEF in the 2001 report State of the Worlds Children said it aimed at allowing parents increased time to meet their child-rearing responsibilities and that encourage family-given child care. Canada has not moved in that direction.
In Spain the head of Michelin and Cia has suggested Nov 21 2002 that there be a family salary to enable one member of the family to stay at home and to look after the children This past month in March 2004 mass demonstrations have taken place in France and Germany and Italy against planned cutbacks to social programs. People do want the state to help them with costs of caregiving.

Nations that do offer a universal benefit for children differ in how they allot it. In Canada it is not significantly increased for the number of children, or for the age of children, even in the small child tax benefit that is given to the poor. Many benefits are tied to household income not to number of family members living off that income, so having a large family is actually penalized. Other nations handle things differently. Some nations give universal allowance which can be 22% of base wage or even 33% for each additional child (France). Some countries increase the amount if there is a large family (Austria, Belgium, Denmark). Some countries have birth grants. The UK government has recently proposed them and Belgium, Austria, Bulgaria, Finland, France and Czechoslovakia have instituted them. Some countries continue to financially help older teens and young adults. Czechoslovakia extends benefits to some to age 25, Yugoslavia to age 26, Italy to age 26, but it only goes to 18 in Israel, New Zealand and to 16 in Canada.
The public overwhelmingly wants more choices. In China maternity leave is given because all women are recognized as in motherhood contributing to the national economy. In Yemen there is recognition of the value of grandmother care.In Hungary there is a child-care grant so women can be home till the child is 3 or get heop with nursery costs. The grant is 40-50% of the mothers average wage.
Most industrialized nations are facing a decline in birth rate which threatens their ability to collect adequate taxes in a generation, and to fund social programs. Those very countries that do not value children are the ones with the lowest birth rates. The brith rate in Japan is 1.34, in Canada 1.4, in Spain 1.2. A birth rate of 2.1 is deemed essential to just maintain the tax base.
Statistics gathered by UNICEF show that there are many benefits to having parents spend time with children. Lack of breast feeding has been estimated to cause 1.5 million deaths per year. Fewer than 30% of babies are breastfed worldwide for 4 months.

I mention these international trends to show that the issue of what to do about the caregiving part of life is being discussed in many nations and is seen now as a critical issue for the womens movement. It has also become evident that a one-size-fits-all daycare provision by the state does not adequately address the diversity of needs or preferences of women, men or children.

5. Steps taken to exhaust domestic remedies
I wrote letters to government asking for changes in policy, starting in 1976. I received either no reply or form-letter replies thanking me for writing and not answering the questions. I wrote to media outlets, joined womens groups, signed petitions, went to rallies, traveled at my own expense to meet government officials and members of parliament, complained to the Human Rights Commission four times, wrote articles for magazines to raise public awareness.

I have met with our Finance Minister but generally politicians have refused to meet me to discuss the issues. I have requested our Attorney General have the Supreme Court review the legislation and he has not only refused to do so but the latest Attorney General has not even acknowledged my request.

When excluded from consultations with government I have organized other petitions, written to the media and tried to raise public awareness. For this work I have been happy to discover polls now generally agree with my argument about the fairness there would be to equal treatment of women in the home. There seems to have been a growing awareness among the public and in the media that caregiving is a vital part of the economy, is crucial to mental health, is part of our sociological fibre and that choice of lifestyle is a legal right. Yet legislation has not changed to recognize this growing awareness of unfairness of present policy.

I have noticed that economists are writing more about the value of unpaid labor around the world (Mary Mellor UK, Marilyn Waring NZ, Isabella Bakker- Canada ) and some are suggesting we need an entirely new concept of our natural resources including our children, to recognize more goes on in an economy than just paying for goods and services (Herman Daly US) Yet most western industrialized nations remain entrenched in the male paradigm of an economy that the only work done that matters are traditional male roles and the flow of cash.

I have noticed sociologists writing about the care ethic and how crucial it is to society and legal scholars have been writing about the logical extension of the right to choose, to not just be the right to choose profession but were we to be consistent, the right to choose sexual orientation without discrimination, the right to choose to have a child or not without discrimination (abortion) then it must surely imply we have a right to choose our style of dividing money between those we care about and the right to decide how and where to raise our children.

Mental health experts and medical doctors have also been noticing the importance of touch, of bonding, the brain development that hinges on stimulation of the child in early years by a loving adult.
So I have found in the past 7 years much more supporting evidence for what I argue, from many fields. And yet still my government does not change its policy.

I have also noticed a catch-22 in the dilemma of promoting equality for women. Underclasses often have the same dilemma throughout history. Being without money of our own we have no money to advertise or promote our issues and no money to travel, to assemble, to network. We are by definition not powerful and do not already have the ear of those in power. And the added problem for female caregivers in the home is that we are very very busy working in some cases 18 hours days 7 days a week so we also have very little time to also fight for our right to do the caregiving work. This means that like women who struggled to get the vote for all women, those who do make the time and somehow work without funds for this cause are a few, but are working for the benefit of much vaster numbers. We are however easy for government to ignore because we not have a solid organizational profile. To recognize in fact that women who work in the home are a huge portion of an economy but that each is in some ways an independent operator, is to redefine in some ways how we expect to hear from our citizens. For too long government has discounted any individual and has only favored hearing from registered and usually huge trade unions or businesses. This bias against hearing from the ordinary person makes it difficult for ordinary people to make their views heard. Even in presentations to government for instance, individuals were often given 5 minutes to speak while organizations were given 20 minutes. What is more common is that individuals are not even invited to consultations so governments tend to hear only from those on the topic of children who have a huge financial vested interest in children. The speakers at such consultations are paid to be there, the organizations exist based on government funding and their bias is always to get more funding for their organization though their plea will sound like it is for the wellbeing of children. The problem is that those who actually are with children all the time, who are there for love of them and without pay, are not even deemed to be knowledgeable, expert of even stakeholders in the decisions. We have therefore had a huge problem in making our voice heard. And yet we have persevered.

In 1993 for instance an organization of which I was a member made a court challenge at the Income Tax Court level to see if the governments unequal treatment of ways of taking care of children was fair. The judge did admit a discrimination in the law. However the Income Tax Court is not allowed to rule that a law is unfair, only to rule whether the law is being followed so the judge was not able to make this a Charter of Rights issue. We could have taken the issue to a higher court that could rule on whether a law itself was unfair but we had run out of money and court appeals can cost in the millions. The dilemma then of being in poverty continued.

6. Other International Procedures

As you know in 1997 I made a complaint at the Division for the Advancement of Women at the UN. My government delayed replying till 1999 and then did not let me see its reply, a copy of which I was only able to get through a leaked and unnamed source. They denied my claims but the public apparently did not.

In the meantime I had found support from many organizations in my country and internationally. UNICA in Rome, the World Movement of Mothers in Paris, the Federation of Women in the Home in Brussels, Endeavor Forum in Australia all lent their support and I got encouragement from the National Assembly of Women in the UK and from several womens groups in the US, including the now renamed Mothers at Home organization.

What I argue for has been labeled in some quarters the third wave of feminism. I am happy to hear that label because it seems logical to me. The first wave got women the vote and the right to sit in parliaments and senates. The second wave in the 1960s got women the right to enter any profession, even ones formerly all male, and the right to any level of education, to corporate head offices and to equal pay for work of equal value at those jobs. It changed the language to remove stereotypes that assumed doctors or lawyers were male. But the third wave was still necessary because the first two had not gone far enough- they still treated the traditional caregiver role as not working and second class. To fully liberate women and to give them choices about how to make their contributions to society, it was necessary to come that final step and to say that women could work outside the home but that they did not have to in order to be equal to men- that they were already equal and deserved dignity and equality and financial recognition doing traditional caregiving roles also. When we have attained that final liberation women (and men) will have a fully free choice about balancing career and family responsibilities, neither role being penalized.

I would like to note that internationally there have been many trends that are of note in relation to this complaint.

7 Date and Signature:
April 15, 2004

_______________________________

I am enclosing supportive documents of all of the above claims including
-copy of research I prepared about legal rights being violated in the Supreme Court reference application ( on CD)
-copy of research I prepared about trends in caregiving and why this issue matters, entitled Stealing Candy from a Baby
-assorted other documents as brief summaries and samples from my 27 years of work.
-Your office already has on hand some of my earlier research including Throwing out the Baby with the Bathwater

Beverley Smith is a long-time researcher and activist promoting equality for all roles for men and women, paid and unpaid, and for the state to value the family side of the career family balance. The international movement to support caregivers has no political or religious affiliation and is not affiliated with any movements against daycare, against gays, against abortion. It is a movement for choices and for the state to value choices of how to provide care of those we love.

A complete copy of her research is available in book form at cost. Ask for “Stealing Candy from a Baby” Cost $20 Cdn. plus postage.

Beverley Smith was named 1999 Calgarian of the Year by Business in Calgary magazine, was nominated for the YWCA Women of Distinction Award In Feb 2003 she has requested personally that the Attorney General refer to the Supreme Court to decide if current laws affecting caregivers are consistent with the Charter of Rights
http://Beverley_smith__1.tripod.com/thecaregiverscase
In May 2003 she was awarded the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal for her work on behalf of options in caregiving. In March 2004 she was invited to be guest speaker at an International Women’s day meeting of members of the federal Department of Finance and the Treasury Board.