BC Coalition of Women’s Centres
February 13, 2002
For immediate release

BC Coalition of Women’s Centres joins in BC NGO appeal to United Nations Committee on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights

“Campbell’s Cuts are an obvious violation of basic human rights”

The BC Coalition of Women’s Centres is joining other provincial non-governmental organizations in a call to the United Nations to review BC welfare and legal aid cuts. 

A submission to the UN Committee on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights, written by Shelagh Day and Gwen Brodsky of the BC-based Poverty and Human Rights Group, is being released today which “informs the United Nations Committee of the harms that the Government of British Columbia’s planned changes to social assistance and legal aid will cause for the province’s most disadvantaged people.”  

“Campbell’s cuts are an obvious violation of basic human rights,” says Debra Critchley of the Vernon and District Women’s Centre. 

“It is shocking that this government refuses to recognize the life and death situation they are putting people in,” says Debra Critchley.  “People are going to die, whether by starving to death, committing suicide, or through inability to access the justice system.”  She adds, “This government needs to get out of denial.” 

The Government of British Columbia is in the process of instituting massive cuts to welfare, including reducing support payments to single parent families, cutting transit passes to low-income seniors, forcing people with disabilities to look for work, and threatening single parents of children over age 3 with further cuts if they are unable to find employment. 

Cuts to legal aid in BC will include drastically reducing family and poverty law services provided by the Legal Services Society, terminating direct assistance for landlord/tenant, EI, welfare, CPP disability, foreclosures, disability trusts and Supreme Court actions, and closing many Native and Community Law offices. 

“We are outraged by this government’s blatant attack on the most vulnerable in BC,” states Naomi North of the Vancouver Status of  Women.  “Simultaneously providing tax cuts, slashing jobs, slashing social programs and services, most heavily relied on by women and children, not only demonstrates a lack of effective fiscal leadership for BC but also illustrates this governments intentional disregard for basic human rights.”

Women’s centres in BC, which provide information, support, referral, advocacy and other services to women experiencing violence, poverty and other human rights abuses, are also slated for de-funding in 2004.  The submission asserts that this de-funding, among many other cuts, is a specific violation of BC's international human rights treaty commitments.

“The erosion of women's human rights to food and shelter and security of person through the B.C. government cuts is frightening enough in and of itself,” says Louise Hara of the Port Coquitlam Area Women’s Centre. 

“What deepens that concern even further is the apparent move to silence advocates and close avenues for redress through the revision of the BC Human Rights Act,” says Hara, “as well as the 35% cuts to the BC Human Rights Commission budget, the provincial government directive to achieve a 40% cut to Legal Aid services by eliminating Poverty Law and Family Law services, the elimination of core funding to women's centres, the closing of local residential tenancy offices, the closing of welfare offices in 15 communities in the province and the deep cuts to victim service and provincial court services.” 

Hara goes on to say, “This government not only wants to run roughshod over women's rights, they are doing everything in their power to silence the advocates who would raise the alarm.” 

“The BC Coalition of Women’s Centres will continue to seek an end to violations of women’s human rights in British Columbia,” says Dodie Goldney of the Kamloops Women’s Resource Centre.  “We are looking toward investigating all measures through which women and women’s centres might seek redress on human rights abuses by the BC Government.”

Goldney adds, “The Government of BC cannot continue its quest to balance the budget through the eradication of human rights for BC’s most vulnerable citizens.” 

The submission to the United Nations Committee asks “that the Committee give urgent attention to the introduction by the Government of British Columbia of retrogressive measures, contrary to its (human rights) treaty commitments to the residents of this province.”

The submission will be released at a news conference on Wednesday, February 13, at 11:00 a.m. at 456 West Broadway.  Naomi North of the Vancouver Status of Women will represent the BC Coalition of Women’s Centres at the news conference. 

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