I heard the news today, and I was rather delighted. As you may have read, the Conservative Government has cut $5 million dollars from administrative costs from Status of Women. Status of Women has a budget of about $23 million. $10 million goes to the Woman's Program-- that's the Program that funds feminist projects. A very small amount goes to research, and the rest goes to operations. So out of an operational budget of about $13 million, SOW got $5 million cut.
That's about 39% of its operational budget.
That's huge.
The Woman's Program remains untouched. That's a main political tool of SoW. However, there will be fewer bureaucrats to administer it. A smaller department can only mean fewer bureaucrats, and therefore a slower applicaton process.
I would have liked to see the Woman's Program cut, but maybe this is better in the long run.
This is a step in the right direction. But the whole department has got to go. I don't want to fuel speculation by anticipating what will happen to it-- someone might mistake my personal guess as a directive to the PMO in the vast right-wing conspiracy to make Canada into a theocratic dictatorship. That's how it works here in Canada. A so-con's correct prediction gets distorted into a leftwinger's vision of impending doom.
UPDATE AND CORRECTION: I was just looking over the Backgrounder on the cuts.
It turns out that the $5 million cut is over a 2 year period. The actual cut is not as deep. It's only a 20% cut out of a $13 million operating budget.
I will examine this more closely.
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