The Step it Up! Platform for Parties is a list of measures the Government of Ontario can do in the next government term—if the political will is there—to advance the goal of ending violence against women. These ‘steps’ help all provincial political parties understand our goal and how to get there. They build on the ’10 Steps to End Violence Against Women’ created by the Step it Up! Campaign. Download the pdf of Platform for Parties HERE . Ask your local MPP! Is your Party working to implement our Platform for Parties?
This is what we want to see in all Party plans. This is what Ontarians working to end violence against women will be promoting for the next provincial government term in communities across Ontario. This is just the beginning. Join us. 1. Planning and leadership 1.1. Implement a gender and equity-based analysis and approach to all provincial policy, legislation and budgeting that takes into account specific identified goals and timelines to ensure equity and gender equality in Ontario. 1.2. Establish a Provincial Women’s Advocate Council on Violence Against Women, financially and structurally supported within the Ontario Women’s Directorate, to guide all policy development, program development and legislation related to, or having impact on, women who experience violence, and their children. Participants in the Council would be selected by women’s advocacy groups committed to an integrated, anti-racist/anti-oppressive gender equality rights perspective on violence against women representing all regions of the province. 2. Sexual assault, rape and sexual harassment 2.1. Create a Sexual Violence Action Plan for the province of Ontario, guided by women’s advocates from the Ontario Coalition of Rape Crisis Centres, Action ontarienne contre la violence faites aux femmes, DAWN Ontario and other women’s advocates working from a feminist, anti-racist/anti-oppressive framework. Funding for full participation of representatives selected by these groups must be allocated to ensure that these representatives can create the Action Plan in consultation with survivors and frontline advocates working to end sexual violence across Ontario. 2.2. Amend the Occupational Health and Safety Act to include ‘harassment’, including sexual harassment and fund a province-wide education campaign on sexual harassment in schools, workplaces and in the community. 3. Fairness, Equality, Accessibility 3.1. Establish a mandatory equity and human rights budget review and development mechanism for all provincial Ministries and departments that would assess funding allocations and policy priorities based on the principle of equity and accessibility in Ontario. 3.2. Provide annual mandatory anti-racism/anti-oppression training and policy development in all public and broader public sector services and within all provincially regulated bodies and sectors. 3.3. Support and provide all necessary resources to ensure the implementation of a “provincial strategy led by Aboriginal women to eliminate the multiple forms of abuse that Aboriginal women are currently suffering,” as stated in the Final Summary Report of the Summit to End Violence Against Aboriginal Women by the Ontario Native Women’s Association (ONWA). 3.4. Create a provincial “Don’t ask, Don’t tell” policy in all provincially funded systems and services, including within public services and the broader public sector to ensure that refugee and immigrant women can safely access systems and community services without fear of detention or deportation. 3.5. Fund essential supports to ensure that community-based support services are universally accessible to women with disAbilities and Deaf women, including attendant care, accessible transportation, assistive devices, alternate format information, funded ASL interpretation and other necessary accommodations. 4. Poverty
Create a comprehensive Poverty Reduction Strategy for Ontario that includes both social assistance and workplace policy and legislation initiatives, including:
4.1. An increase in social assistance rates, indexed to the cost of living, to reflect the actual needs of recipients (as recommended in the Gillian Hadley and Kimberley Rogers inquests). 4.2. An immediate raise to the Minimum Wage to $10 dollars an hour, indexed to the cost of living 4.3. Funding to cover pay equity increases and ‘maintenance’ of pay equity for women in proxy comparator workplaces in the broader public sector 4.4. Implementation of policy, legislation and enforcement against exploitive work practices within part-time, casual and contract work. 5. Housing
Follow the recommendation set out in the 2007 Alternative Ontario Budget for “an annual capital commitment of more than $830 million and another $260 million to rehabilitate the existing stock of social housing,” provide funding for 45,000 rent supplements reflecting true rental costs, and reverse the $600 million download of provincial responsibility for social housing operating costs to Ontario municipalities.
6. Child Care
Provide the promised $300 million annually to provide non-profit, quality child care across the province. Guarantee that all $97 million of federal funding designated for child care in Ontario will, in fact, be spent on providing non-profit, publicly-funded quality child care spaces.
7. Education and Training
Restore the freeze on tuition raises and provide OSAP funding loans and grants to part-time students and to social assistance recipients. Double the number of ESL programs and expand to at least double the amount of funding currently provided to support upgrading and employment programs for women leaving abusive situations.
8. Access to justice 8.1. Allocate $5 million annualized funding for full-time legal support workers in independent women’s services and agencies across Ontario for women survivors engaged with legal systems, as recommended by the jury in the May and Hadley inquests (1998 and 2002). 8.2. Broaden restrictive eligibility guidelines, raise tariff fees and increase funding for legal aid in Ontario to reverse the increasing lack of representation within courts and judicial processes for women facing legal issues. Guarantee that funding promised for Legal Aid in the Ontario 2007 budget will be designated to support the family law legal aid certificate program and legal aid clinics and develop a plan to address the disparity of funding between criminal and civil legal aid funding. 8.3. Standardize restraining order forms across the province, provide easy access to emergency orders and charge breaches of orders as a criminal offence. 9. Hold abusers accountable for their actions; Address systemic ‘victim-blaming’ 9.1. Institute mandatory development of province-wide differential responses to violence against women and mandatory training on anti-racism and anti-oppression in public and broader public sectors including child welfare, police, justice, healthcare, education, mental health and social services. Differential responses and training must be developed using the expertise or survivors and women’s advocates from an anti-racist/anti-oppression framework on violence against women, and must include designated components developed and led by Aboriginal women. 9.2. Amend legislation which supports criminalization of women who are marginalized, including but not limited to the Ontario Works and Ontario Disability Support Program legislation to remove workfare and other elements that punish and criminalize social assistance recipients. 9.3. Address the increasing charging of women survivors in the wake of reductions in ‘dual’ charges in the criminal justice system. 9.4. Ban the use of electroshock treatment in the Province of Ontario. 10. Secure permanent funding for women’s services; support the advocacy and expertise of survivors and women’s advocates
Provide a $50 million commitment—as outlined in the Fall of 2000 Emergency Measures Campaign Declaration of Commitment signed by both the Dalton McGuinty and Howard Hampton—for community-based women's services, and for support of survivors and women’s advocates, including: 10.1. An immediate additional $3 million in annualized core funding to community-based sexual assault centres across Ontario 10.2. $13 million in year one of the government term to restore core funding cut from women's shelter budgets between 1995 and 2004, indexed to cost of living increases in addition to coverage of pay equity increases and ongoing maintenance of pay equity for shelter workers. Immediately upon taking office, begin a time-limited (one-year) review of women's shelter and second stage program funding with the goal of reaching full funding for core first stage shelter and second stage housing programs based on true costs, including unique regional costs, by 2011. 10.3. Immediately increase core funding to ensure at least financial and program parity for Aboriginal on-reserve shelters with women’s off-reserve shelters in Ontario. Lobby federal officials to stabilize and make permanent federal funding to Aboriginal women’s services in Canada. Ensure that off-reserve Aboriginal women’s shelters (e.g. Oshki Kizis Lodge in Ottawa) are also provided with adequate funds to meet the critical needs of Aboriginal women. In addition, make a commitment to fund a specific Ontario-wide crisis telephone line for Aboriginal women. 10.4. $2.5 million annually for community-based women’s centres to provide core funding to all local women’s centres and women’s equity-seeking advocacy groups. 10.5. An annualized $4 million commitment to services for survivors and their children within community-based women’s second stage housing programs 10.6. $2.5 million annually to increase trained violence against women cultural interpreters in immigrant and settlement organizations 10.7. $2.5 million annually to increase support for Francophone community-based women’s services 10.8. Allocation of $10 million for research and education work for Provincial women’s organizations engaged in this work 10.9. $3.5 million annually in core program funding to support the ongoing work of women’s anti-violence policy and action coalitions such as Action ontarienne contre la violence faite aux femmes (AOcVF), DAWN Ontario, the Ontario Association of Interval and Transition Houses (OAITH), the Ontario Association of Women’s Centres (OAWC), the Ontario Coalition of Rape Crisis Centres (OCRCC) and the Ontario Native Women’s Association (ONWA) 10.10. $1.5 million annually to support engagement and participation of survivors of violence within local, regional and provincial women’s services and advocacy groups |
