Equality for Women is Progress for All

IWD 2014 greetings from the Communist Party of Canada and the Young Communist League of Canada

For over a century, March 8 has been the international day to honour the women in all countries who strive to achieve full equality. On IWD 2014, the Communist Party of Canada and the Young Communist League of Canada send our warmest greetings to all women in the fight against poverty, austerity, violence, misogyny and war. As the United Nations has declared for this year's IWD, "equality for women is progress for all."

Here, the ruling class claims that Canada is a country of equality, fairness and social justice. Yet recent years have seen huge struggles around issues such as access to education, pay equity, union rights, jobs, devastation of the environment, deportations of migrants. Women have played a leading role in the Quebec student strike, the Idle No More movement, grassroots environmental struggles, and defence of labour and social rights.

Time for a national, public, accessible, quality, not for profit childcare system

Statement by the labour coalition Rethink Childcare.ca

Young families are squeezed on all sides. Today’s young mothers and fathers need to work harder and longer than did their parents, while erosion of Canada’s social safety net has left them struggling to survive.

Young families, including newcomers to Canada and Aboriginal families (who experience Canada’s most extreme inequality) need good family policy, but especially childcare. Child care enables parents to get the education/training they need to access good jobs and should allow mothers and fathers to work without enduring years-long child care wait lists or breaking the family budget.

Child care makes it more possible for low income or sole support parents (who are mostly women) to take advantage of opportunities for advancement. At the same time, all parents can better balance work and family if they can be confident that their children are safe, thriving and happy.

In the battle to stop EI attack, French-speaking communities rise up

Occupation of a New Brunswick Service Canada office

Special feature report,
Rebel Youth Magazine

As public pressure against the Harper Conservative government's recent Employment Insurance (EI) reforms continues this fall, labour and community activists move forward with one of the more dynamic and united union-led fightbacks Québec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia have seen in recent years, this special feature of Rebel Youth magazine reports, which appears in the October 1st issue of People's Voice Newspaper.

While a protest movement against the EI cuts has developed over the past year in response to a "double round" of EI cuts effecting the whole country, they've spread like wild-fire especially across French-speaking Acadien and Québécois cities and towns, and even villages.

This is because the double round of attacks to EI by the Harper Tories after the 2012 federal budget is disproportionately impacting workers in seasonal industries. It is a reality linked with long-standing questions of the economic underdevelopment across Canada and social inequalities faced by the French-speaking national communities.

International Women's Day 2013

Statement by the Central Women’s Commission, Communist Party of Canada and endorsed by the Young Communist League of Canada

March 8 is a day to honour women’s struggles, take stock of hard‑won gains, and to demand full equality.

This year, International Women’s Day comes amidst inspiring new struggles. Working people around the world, particularly in Europe, continue their huge struggles against austerity measures. In Canada we saw students in Quebec rose up, leading a fight against tuition fee increases, against neo‑liberal policies, and in opposition to a draconian bill that attempted to repress dissent. The result: the Quebec Liberal government’s defeat at the polls, a tuition freeze and the scrapping of Loi 10. Young women played a key and leading role in that struggle.

The “Idle No More” movement has initiated an historic struggle against Bill C‑45 and the entire racist agenda of the Harper Tory government.

25 years after Morgentaler, struggle continues to defend and expand the reproductive rights of women

This article is the first part in a series we are running on Rebel Youth in preparation for International Women's Day on March 8th.

In the same week as women and men celebrate the 25th anniversary of the historic Morgentaler decision which decriminalized abortion in Canada, a group of right-wing Harper Conservative MPs want to push women's reproductive rights back into the dark ages.

The latest attempt to attack abortion rights has come from three Tory MPs: Maurice Vellacott of Saskatoon-Wanuskwein in Saskatchewan, Leon Benoit of Vegreville-Wainwright in Alberta and Wladyslaw Lizon of Mississauga East-Cooksville in Ontario.

In their letter (addressed to the RCMP Commissioner on House of Commons letterhead) the MP's demand the RCMP launch a "national investigation" into abortions after 19 weeks gestation calling them "possible murders."  

The pro-lifers: Anti-choice, anti-communist, anti-women, and anti-student

Rebel Youth presents the following excerpt from a statement by an anti-choice / anti-abortion group at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario. The group was banned by the student union for harassing students with large graphic images such as foetuses and, in essence, pressuring women who might be considering an abortion, further stigmatizing those who have, and working to deny women's right to chose. Read their own words, below, and check out their graphic, seeing how this issue is fought in terms of 'freedom of speech.'  The LUSU has a constitution demanding equal rights for women, as does Lakehead University.