Advocacy funding in UK goes after the "dead beat dad", again!

Thousands are protesting today the closing of Status of Women's offices by Stephen Harper's Conservatives. The Honourable Bev Oda, Minister of Status of Women, is currently overseeing this changes.

She justifies the move by suggesting the cuts ensure that 17 cents out of every dollar of funding (instead of 31 cents) is needed only for administrative costs, which means more money is available to benefit women directly.

Such spin from all sides is neither here nor there.

The bottom line is that advocacy funding is only legal under the Charter if it does not put the rights of one gender ahead of the other. Therefore, it is inappropriate for these funds to flow to organizations who seek to delay further changes to the federal Divorce Act. All funding should meet the gender neutral standard demanded by the application of Canada's Charter principles.

Some funding by the Status of Women has been paid to lobbies who seek to delay changes to the Divorce Act, especially since 1998, when a federal report recommended changes that would ultimately make "access" as much of a priority as "child support" in Canadian law and would arguably stop the unilateral flow of child support from men to women. The current situation has been preserved in part via advocacy funding. This is simply innapropriate due to its patriarchy.

Nevertheless, advocacy monies are used to lobby for the status quo.

Ironically, on a day when thousands march on behalf of highly organised advocacy organisations defence of advocacy funding in Ottawa and across Canada, the UK announces (like in the USA) that the names of "deadbeat dads" will be published on the internet to encourage compliance.

Please remember:

· 90.2% of fathers with joint custody pay the support due.
· 79.1% of fathers with visitation privileges pay the support due.
· 44.5% of fathers with no visitation pay the support due.
· 37.9% of fathers are denied any visitation.
· 66% of all support not paid by non-custodial fathers is due to the inability to pay.

Simple analysis of these data suggest that there is a relationship between fathers who have access to their children and fathers who voluntarily pay child support. Connecting the issues of access and child support it seems would go along way to making almost all fathers comply voluntarily with their obligations.

Or, if one insists on being punitive, why doesn't the UK publish the names of mother's who deny access of their children to the other parent, and stigmatise those types of persons in the same way?

In Canada, where Harper's conservatives have reopened the debate, it is essential that Liberals encourage the government either restrict the flow of advocacy funds to those organisations promoting gender discrimination, or fund men's groups who seek to change the Divorce Act for the sake of children, men, women and second families.

Perhaps western democracies who make advocacy funding available to organizations that seek to make gains at the expense of the other gender should listen less to highly organized pitches and politics by certain lobbies and focus instead on the objective criteria of gender equality.

Fairness would suggest that either advocacy funding must be made available to those seeking to make access a priority in family policy or restrictions on inappropriate gender funding are needed.

Consider This a protest by "methods", which, like protests by marches, has its place in Canadian civil disobedience.