Canada’s governing party versus Canadian women

The governing Canadian Conservative Party, who recently won re-election in October, have just finished holding their national party convention. They could call it their "anti-woman" convention, because they’ve passed a number of misogynistic policy resolutions.

Resolution P-207 resurrects a bill that was killed earlier this year, "the unborn victims of violence," in which a violent act against a pregnant woman which results in harm to the fetus can result in additional criminal charges.

Translation: Let’s define the fetus as a separate person under the law, entitled to legal protections, which immediately opens to the door to anti-choice legislation.

Another policy adopted is for "income splitting" in which couples can choose to be taxed on their combined income, which is great if one member (as in, almost always the man) is in a higher tax bracket.

Translation: Let’s make it more economically attractive for women to stay at home rather than pursue careers.

As well, there is a resolution (P-213) that rewords their policy on women’s equality like this:

The Conservative Party supports gender equality through all policy and legislative considerations the full  participation of women in the social, economic, and cultural life of Canada.
i) The Canadian workforce has evolved to include more women than ever before. The Conservative Party  believes all Canadians have the right to freedom from discrimination in the workplace and equality of  opportunity.
ii) Individuals should be judged on skills, qualifications and merits. Women must be entitled to equal pay for work of equal value equal work.

Translation: Conservatives don’t believe women should be equal.

They have also advocated that Canada’s Human Rights Commission (HRC) should no longer investigate or adjudicate "hate speech" provisions of Canada’s Human Rights Code (this one is not specifically anti-women, but women are protected under the code). Hate speech legislation is controversial because it does indeed impede freedom of speech, and I’m not totally in favour of it. That said, it’s no surprise that the social conservatives are in favour of ditching it, because surprise, surprise, it’s sexist, homophobic and racist people who are most likely to be hauled in front of the Commission.

Translation: We want to be free to be as vocally bigoted as we want.

Now, the Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, has said that party policy resolutions may not be enacted by the government. He wants to be "pragmatic." Translation: He has a minority government and he’s worried that too much social conservatism could bring him down.

One can only hope.