Public Forum on BC's global forestry challenges

February 22, 2006

Canadian Forum on Women’s Activism in Constitutional and Democratic Reform will be held in Room 200 West Block, Parliament Buildings, Ottawa, Canada, on February 14 – 15, 2006.

February 14 2006 marks 25 years of Canadian women’s constitutional activism. Through an unprecedented grassroots campaign in 1981, led by the Ad Hoc Committee of Canadian Women and the Constitution, women and other activists across the country fundamentally changed Canadian history to ensure stronger equality sections of the newly patriated Canadian Constitution’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms (sections 15 and 28). On the same day as the conference 25 years ago, in the same room on Parliament Hill, many of the original Ad Hockers will return to the nation’s capital to join parliamentarians, students and other activists for a two-day intergenerational forum on democratic renewal, which will open with a celebratory retrospective and produce forward looking strategies in a global context for intergenerational women’s equality rights.

The International Women’s Rights Project is working in partnership with the Centre for Global Studies of University of Victoria (CFGS), members of the original Ad Hoc Committee, the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario (ETFO), the Department of Justice Canada, Status of Women Canada, the Universities of Ottawa and Victoria, York University, Canadian parliamentarians including Senators Lucie Pépin, Nancy Ruth and Lillian Dyck, private foundations and grassroots organizations, including the Afghan Women’s Organization, Power Camp, Equal Voice, Taking IT Global, to organize this forum as a platform for ongoing strategies for change. The IWRP model includes fostering intergenerational women’s leadership; youth leaders make up almost half of the planning group, with direct responsibiity for the youth roundtable on Februay 15th.

International women’s rights leaders from Rwanda, South Africa and Afghanistan will be featured in the international strategies session, chaired by Prof. Penelope Andrews of South Africa. Other speakers will include Doris Anderson, Michele Landsberg, the Hon. Irwin Cotler, Canada’s Minister of Justice and Attorney General, as well as a number of current Members of Parliament, including the Hon. Carolyn Bennett and Ed Broadbent, and former parliamentarians, such as the Hon. Flora McDonald and the Hon. Judy Erola, who supported women’s rights activists during the patriation of the Canadian Constitution and the entrenchment of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in the early 1980s. The program has evolved from electronic meetings of a national intergenerational planning group of more than twenty members and its youth committee. As well as the Forum, curricula for schools and universities on women’s constitutional activism are in development, with multimedia planning tools.

The Forum is part of the overall Women’s Activism and Constitutions Project of the IWRP, including a forum on women’s constitutional activism in South Africa, to be held at the University of Witwatersrand in November 2006: “Putting Women on the Agenda II”.

Marilou McPhedran, a founding “Ad Hocker” and co-director of the IWRP, is chair of the Canadian forum, while IWRP co-director Susan Bazilli is coordinating the South African forum. For more information please contact IWRP at iwrp@uvic.ca at the Centre for Global Studies.