Fathers Canada

Quote:
"You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life." -- Winston Churchill.

Political Commentary and Opinions

According to the Status of Women Canada (SWC) which is a federal government organization, that is funded with the misuse of tax payers money, that allegedly claims it promotes the full participation of women in the economic, social and democratic life of Canada, but also has in the past, put out research material using Canadian tax dollars to fund slander as shown in the BC Courts. The SWC says it works to advance equality for women and to remove the barriers to women's participation in society, putting particular emphasis on increasing women's economic security and eliminating violence against women. While this is a nice theory, in reality, it uses children and men to justify their rights by violating men's and male children rights and freedoms, to keep their personal agenda to get the canadian's tax payers money. 

The Status of Women, which is a Canadian federal government department (formerly headed by the infamous Hedy Fry), seeks funding to monitor statements expressed by pro-family- and pro-male activists on Internet websites, with the aim to ferret out criticisms of feminism and label them violations of Canada's hate-language laws, so that instances of such "crimes" can be legally prosecuted.

Perhaps some of you tried to access during the past weekend the web pages of the Canadian federal government's department "Status of Women Canada" (SWC — there is no equivalent or comparable government department for the Status of Men), that is, the pages that contain information relating to funding requests for government-sponsored efforts to curb perceived advances by "masculinists" that endanger the advantages gained by feminists during the past few decades.

The Internet addresses for the two documents were not operational during May 24-25, 2003 (a weekend), but they appear to be accessible during working days.  [Update 2008 08 07: Various links to the document being discussed here no longer function.  Fortunately, http://web.archive.org still provides access to archived versions of the document.]

Here is an abstract of the report:

School Success by Gender: A Catalyst for the Masculinist Discourse

ABSTRACT

This research investigates the advocacy discourse focussing on boys and men during the decade between 1990 and 2000, as reported in the Canadian and international press. Our objective is to explain the dynamics of this discourse, using the school drop-out theme, which is our field of research, in order to identify other themes that authors link together: suicide, child custody, violence perpetrated by women, etc. The research is based on articles published in Canadian, French, American and Australian daily newspapers and mass-circulation Canadian magazines. The analysis reveals an ideology that questions women's rights and discredits feminism.

In this context, the report makes recommendations on the issue of gendered school success. It is important to dispel the social perception that boys are the only ones having trouble in school. To this end, we recommend that new initiatives be introduced and existing measures reinforced to encourage girls to keep working hard in school. Resource allocation needs to take into account the barriers girls continue to face, and measures must be maintained to encourage them to take an interest in up-and-coming professions and demarginalize such choices for those who dare to make them. As a result of the new issues raised by masculinists, we make a number of general recommendations for protecting the gains that women have made. In particular, we stress the urgency for women to "take ownership" of the Internet. There is also a need to ensure closer monitoring of hate-mongering sites to determine whether legal action should be taken. It is important as well to disseminate egalitarian messages and to support studies that provide a context for problems, such as alleged violence by women.

Another abstract of the main document in question was shown at the Status of Women website but appears to be no longer accessible there as they we told to remove that material at once. That abstract read:

School Success by Gender: A Catalyst for the Masculinist Discourse
[By] Pierrette Bouchard, Isabelle Boily and Marie-Claude Proulx
(Published by Status of Women Canada in March 2003)

School Success by Gender: A Catalyst for the Masculinist Discourse is based on an analysis of the discourses on school success by gender in the media. It asserts that many industrialized societies, including Quebec and the rest of Canada, are finding more boys than girls having problems in school. The researchers looked at more than 500 Canadian and international newspaper and magazine articles published between 1990 and 2000. The report tracks the development of discourses focused on men and boys, referred to as "masculinist" discourses, over that decade.

The researchers found that over the decade, the discourses become increasingly anti-girl/anti-women and that other themes such as divorce, fathers' custody of children, boys' suicide and loss of male identity appear. There is more direct criticism of policies that protect the rights of women. This lead the researchers to study other areas of the masculinist discourses, beyond school success by gender.

The research report examines the economic environment that fuelled the masculinist discourse, its structure and content. Factual data are then provided to contrast the masculinist discourse and to demonstrate its biases and limitations. It examines the discourse's impact on women and women's groups, and makes recommendations for public policy.

Recommendations include increased monitoring of Internet sites and possible legal action with respect to hate propaganda on the Internet, that women's groups develop and disseminate through the Internet positive, egalitarian messages to counter this discourse, that they form a network of experts in fields on which the masculinists are focusing. They also suggest that whenever possible, the release of gendered data be accompanied by contextual analysis.

It is astounding that SWC is concerned about threats to feminist gains of the past few decades, gains that were made through massive government funding at the rate of hundreds of millions of dollars per year, while the perceived "masculinist" threats originate in a true grass-roots movement by largely pro-family men and women without any funding at all from government sources who undergo great personal hardship and sacrifices. They are activists that try nothing more than to prevent the total destruction of our traditional social, cultural and moral standards.

That a government department should be worried about any perceived threats to the advancement of the socialist-feminist ideology and related government policies, and that it even recommends "increased monitoring of Internet sites and possible legal action with respect to hate propaganda on the Internet", smacks of the methods used in other totalitarian socialist countries of the recent past that to their dismay found that government-sponsored and -controlled indoctrination is a prescription to social decay, economic collapse and total chaos.

Judging by the increasing levels of government debt and unfunded liabilities of the various social safety nets (in the order of three trillion dollars) in Canada that were and are being incurred largely on account of the socialist-feminist policies that are being imposed on Canadian citizens and taxpayers, it is quite probable that, if the recommendations by SWC Canada will be adopted, Canada will inexorably follow the path to economic oblivion already taken by the totalitarian socialist regimes that recently perished.

Throwing more money into the black hole of social changes steered by socialist-feminists will do nothing more than accelerate Canada's political, social and economic decline. We cannot afford to continue with the implementation of the agenda for the planned destruction of our families. A country with strong and healthy families in whom men have their rightful and equitable place and status has little need for welfare and other forms of income equalization and asset transfers "from those who have to those in need".

The hit-list of organizations and writers who will be under the intensive scrutiny of SWC was accessible in Appendix II of their report. (The SWC website appears to have the report removed, while the archived file of the report no longer contains an Appendix II.  However, the ZIP file identified in the next paragraph still provides access to Appendix II of the report.)

The list in Appendix II of the report contains not only the names of Canadian organizations and individuals, but also those of organizations and individuals in the USA, Australia and France. (In case the web pages of SWC should again become inaccessible, a ZIP file of the report (1MB; ) is accessible at the website of Fathers for Life.)

One can only wonder how long it will be until SWC demands additional taxpayer funding to take on foreign pro-family organizations and individuals for the commission of hate crimes against feminism and "brings them to justice" in the International Criminal Court.

Some of this material is from fathersforlife website

In Other News

A national men's group is claiming victory over what it calls a feminist agenda on domestic violence Posted: Thursday, September 02, 2010 An independent investigation has upheld the group's complaint about a public awareness campaign in South Australia. The Ombudsman's inquiry found parts of the $870,000 campaign contained errors. The Don't Cross The Line campaign has been running in newspapers, on television and radio and on a website. The Ombudsman in South Australia found some statistics initially published on the site were false and misleading. Advocacy group Men's Health Australia made a complaint against the Office of the Status of Women over 10 matters on the website. The Ombudsman's final report substantiates seven of them and another two in part. The Government had said one in 17 women was a victim of domestic violence annually, but the figure related to violence generally. Michael Woods is one of the men's group's supporters and is from the Men's Health Information and Research Centre at the University of Western Sydney. "It is a shame that a government department is unable, despite being notified a year ago, to address its own shortcomings and it required this sort of action," he said. The ideological commitment of people in that department must be so strong that they would reject scientific data in favour of their own biases." The SA minister responsible for the campaign, Gail Gago, says the statistical errors were innocent ones. "There were I think problems with individuals that were transferring information from one source to another and the degree of diligence that should have occurred simply didn't," she said. She rejected the group's claim of an agenda within her department. "Our anti-violence campaign is not a contest about who's the biggest victim," the Minister for the Status of Women said. Ms Gago says the Government has corrected the errors and there was no reason to end the campaign. Domestic violence experts say the case highlights a tussle between men's and women's groups. Men's Health Australia has also complained of incorrect statistics in the New South Wales Domestic Violence and Family Action Plan. But the NSW Ombudsman so far has found no reason to investigate. Dr Michael Flood is a domestic violence researcher from the University of Wollongong. He says the men's group is muddying the debate. "The group's complaint is not motivated by a genuine concern for male victims of violence. I think that it's motivated more by political agendas," he said.  read more ...

Sexual Statism - By Stephen Baskerville Posted: Wednesday, September 01, 2010 The decline of the male economy — and of fatherhood — arises less from the empowerment of women than from the government’s usurpation of the family... ...a widely publicized study purporting to prove that fathers are harmful in rearing children and that lesbians do it better. The study is politics camouflaged as social science... The emergence of sexual politics has elicited strikingly little critical treatment. Yet it represents the most radical change in the nature of government in modern times. The economic effects are only symptoms. More far-reaching are the vast shifts in political power at every level. Feminist ideology pervades every item on the public agenda... Fathers have been marginalized, and their lives are ever more directly administered by the state. They are not simply “absent,” as Rosin writes—they are increasingly likely to be under the control of the judicial and penal systems. Rosin’s article provides a telling example of a particularly state-feminist form of punishment now meted out to men: therapy... This is not law enforcement. It is government indoctrination...  read more ...

Women on Top Posted: Saturday, July 10, 2010 The Salisbury Review author/source: Stephen Baskerville Gender politics is becoming too conspicuous to ignore. Triumphalist proclamations of female political dominance now appear in ostensibly detached scholarly journals. The trend is real, but it represents much more than ‘the macho men’s club’ getting its just comeuppance for causing the financial crisis, as Reihan Salam writes in the prestigious journal Foreign Policy. On the cover of the august Wilson Quarterly, Sara Sklaroff sees fresher salads and smaller bus seats as evidence that ‘women are taking over.’ That journals with pretensions to serious scholarship address on this frivolous level what may be the most profound power shift since the fall of the Roman Empire demonstrates that important questions are not being asked. Salam, Sklaroff, and other prophets of a feminine future are quick with predictions, but they ignore the trends already well advanced in the present. The sexualisation of politics — and the politicization of sex — is the most profound social trend of the last forty years, with roots going back at least a century. In importance it far exceeds (though is also connected to) the challenge radical Islam presents to Western society. The emergence of women into top positions of power is only the tip of the iceberg. More far-reaching are the vast shifts in political power at all levels from the family to the United Nations.  read more ...

**********************************************

BILL C-422 Posted: Saturday, December 05, 2009 Equal Parenting Private Member’s Bill C-422 (Canada) Maurice Vellacott To clarify that Parliament recognizes that society has an interest in ensure that children do not lose either parent unnecessarily, and to move away from the model of "custody" to the model of "parenting time". To define "best interests of the child" as served by maximal ongoing involvement by both parents with the child, to be implemented in the Divorce Act as the rebuttable presumption of equal parenting as the starting point for judicial deliberations. To clarify relocation determinations as recognizing right of the child to continuity of relationships with both parents and placing the onus on the parent moving to justify a change to a parenting time agreement. To require systematic collection of consistent court statistics. To clarify that Parliament recognizes that society has an interest in ensure that children do not lose either parent unnecessarily, and to move away from the model of "custody" to the model of "parenting time". Background The federal government is constitutionally responsible for marriage and divorce, and has presumed to include the custody of children in the Divorce Act. Currently, approximately 90% of separating children end up with what amounts to a sole custody arrangement, although over 2/3 of both fathers and mothers seek joint custody going in to the process (Statistics Canada). Parents lose the right to parent their children in the process because of high legal and courts costs, when one side runs out of money, or because perceived bias of judicial decision-making leads one side to abandon a legal conflict so that the children will not be drawn into the battle. Only in a small minority of cases are "custody" cases decided by a full trial and judicial decision, because few parents can afford it, and fewer subject their children to it, but many cases are decided "in the shadow of the law" which appears to strongly prefer sole custody. The last significant reforms to the Divorce Act were in 1986, with reforms proposed by Liberal Justice Minister Mark McGuigan, and subsequently passed into law by Conservative Justice Minister John Crosby. Reforms included the addition of the "friendly parent rule" allowing Court preference for custody to the parent which encourages access by the other parent. Courts seemed to largely have ignored these and other encouragements, with little or no change in actual parenting time outcomes.  Often what is labeled "joint custody" in court statistics is de facto sole custody with the "physical custody parent" solely deciding education, medical, access schedules and receiving guideline child support (often plus spousal support) regardless of the time invested by the "non-custodial" parent.  Advocates cite the gender equality provisions of the Charter (sections 15 and 28), the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the social costs of raising children of divorce without parental (largely fathers) involvement, as reasons for such reforms. Opponents of such reforms cite fears of domestic violence, judicial freedom to decide the meaning of "best interests of the child" and legal reasoning that parents have no rights, only responsibilities. Parliament studied this issue extensively in a Joint Senate-Commons Committee on Child Custody and Access in 1998, issuing a report "For the Sake of the Child" with 48 recommendations on shared parenting and parallel reforms. None of these recommendations have been implemented. Opinion polls show widespread dissatisfaction with the cost, outcomes and unfairness of the family court system. In private, many lawyers, judges and politicians express great dissatisfaction with the existing sole-custody, adversarial system...  read more ...