Step It Up Ontario!

Days to honour mothers take place in many countries and in diverse ways. Some of the earliest were observed in ancient Greece and Rome.

In North America, the idea was picked up by Julia Ward Howe, an abolitionist and social activist.  In turn, she was influenced by an idea championed by a young Appalachian woman whose daughter eventually lobbied to have the day formally recognized as a national day in 1907.  Canada and other countries adopted the idea in 1909.

Julia Ward Howe conceived of Mother’s Day as a “day of peace” and activism against war, rather than the consumer-driven event that we often see now.  She urged women to unite in solidarity to end all war.  Here is an excerpt from her Mother’s Day Proclamation of 1870.

“From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says: "Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe out dishonour, nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace.”

Women in Ontario can still connect to these words in our fight to end violence against all women and their children.  Let’s educate our provincial political candidates to make the connections as well.

What they should know:

• In 2006, 27 women and 12 children in Ontario were murdered in situations where the intimate male partner was either charged with the murder, or committed suicide. 20 children were left motherless. One woman was pregnant.

• One half of all Canadian women have experienced at least one incident of sexual or physical violence, and 1 in 4 Canadian women will be sexually assaulted during her lifetime, including your mother, grandmother or daughter.

• In 2003/04, 11,565 children stayed in women’s shelters in Ontario. The numbers of women with children staying in shelters has dropped in the past decade. Advocates believe it may be linked to new child welfare reporting rules and rising poverty.

• Of renters in Canada, 42% of female lone parents have trouble paying for their housing.

• In Ontario, families raising children have not made any headway to increase their economic situation in 30 years. The richest families have 75 times the income the poorest of these families (usually lone-parent mothers) have to raise their children.

• Almost 40% of lone parent families headed by women are poor. The average female-led lone parent family lives $9,400 below the poverty line. Female-led lone parents live on less than 60% of the income of male-led lone parents.

• In 2000, the median annual income of Aboriginal women was $12,300—about $5000 less than all women and $3000 less than Aboriginal men. Women of colour earned $3000 less than other women and $9000 less than men of colour. 35% of women who recently immigrated to Canada lived in poverty in 2001 compared to less than 20% of women who arrived before 1981. Women with disabilities earn an average $5000 less per year than other women and almost $10,000 less than men with disabilities. 

• Women on Ontario Works are unable to get the supports they need—child care, transportation, ESL, etc.—to access training or education in order to move from social assistance to work that will support their children.

• Only 9% of children under age 12 in Ontario who need child care have access to a regulated child care space. Less than half of their mothers receive any publicly-funded subsidy to pay for child care.

• Recent child welfare research for Ontario shows that in almost 25% of reports of “domestic violence” to child welfare, women were charged with “failure to protect” because their male partners exposed children to violence.

• 75% of legal aid in Ontario goes to criminal and immigration law and only 25% goes to family law. 75% of family law legal aid applicants are women; the majority of criminal law legal aid applicants are men.

• In 2002, for the first time, mothers were given sole custody of less than half of children subject to a court order at divorce. Joint custody orders were given for almost 42% of cases. The majority of children, however, live solely with their mothers regardless of the court order.  Joint custody most often means joint control, not joint care giving.

You can help change this!

Make Mother’s Day in Ontario a day to join with other women to advocate for:

• An end to the poverty of women in Ontario, where it will be 2011 before women can expect a $10 minimum wage

• Enforcement of Employment Standards and legislation to eliminate exploitive labour practices that force women, especially immigrant women, women of colour and Aboriginal women to work several low-paid, part-time and contract jobs to raise their children

• 40% increase in the social assistance rates—both Ontario Works and the Ontario Disabilities Support Program

• An end to all clawback of the Child Tax Benefit Supplement in addition to the introduction of the new Child Benefit announced in the recent budget

• The budget increase announced for Legal Aid Ontario to be directed to family law legal aid certificates

• Mandatory training and accountability to end discrimination against lesbians, low-income women and women with disabilities in family law custody and access decisions

• More effective response within child welfare to hold abusers, not mothers, accountable for child exposure to violence against women

• Keeping the promise to provide $300 million per year to expand regulated non-profit child care in Ontario

• Creation of low-income and social housing to meet the need of the 122,426 low-income Ontario households that were on social housing waiting lists at the beginning of 2006

Call, email or write to the four Parties running in the next provincial election. Use this information and your own knowledge. Ask them what is in their platform to solve these issues. Ask them how much money they will be providing to do it!

Do it for Mothers and their children! Do it today! 

Click below for contact information for the provincial political Parties.

• Ontario Liberal Party

• The Ontario Progressive Conservative Party

• The Ontario New Democratic Party

• Green Party of Ontario