Pamela Cross

Criminal Injuries Compensation Board: A Call to Action

2010-05-16T14:45:00.002-04:00

As many of you will know, victims of crime (including women who have experienced male violence) can apply to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board for financial compensation. The Compensation for Victims of Crime Act, section 9(1)(c) requires the Board to notify offenders of upcoming hearings, where practicable (emphasis mine). Once notified, an offender has the right to attend the hearing,

Arise then . . . women of this day!

2010-05-09T20:24:00.003-04:00

(Mothers Day Proclamation 1870)Many of us who are mothers can remember lying in bed (as we had been sternly instructed to do the night before) on Mothers Day morning, listening fondly to the not-so-quiet kitchen sounds of breakfast in bed preparations (“Sshh! Don’t wake her up!”), even as we knew we would be greeted later with a sticky mess to clean up. We can also remember the bouquets of tissue

Rewriting Bill C-510

2010-04-18T20:48:00.003-04:00

Conservative backbencher and chair of the Parliamentary all-party “pro-life” caucus Rod Bruinooge recently introduced a Bill to penalize those who “coerce” women into having an abortion.Despite his position with the “pro-life” caucus, Bruinooge maintains that he is not trying to make abortion illegal; he just wants to protect women from being forced to have abortions against their will.Those of

Talking with boys

2010-03-24T18:51:00.001-04:00

The Globe and Mail of Monday March 23th contains an important column by Anthony Wolf in its Life section. Unfortunately, this article does not seem to appear online, so let me tell you a bit about it. Maybe it is not too late for you to track down a copy of the paper and read the full article.Wolf is a clinical psychologist who is worried about boys abusing their girlfriends and wants parents to

International Women's Week 2010: Just how far have we come?

2010-03-09T19:45:00.003-05:00

International Women’s Week began on a high note for me when I turned on CBC radio on March 7th to listen to Sunday Morning. The show began with Parachute Club’s “Rise Up,” surely a song to inspire hope if there ever was one.Then, it was three hours of stories about amazing women: The 1969 Abortion Caravan: a documentary that every high school student should hear so they can be inspired by the

Where have the women gone?

2010-02-13T08:11:00.001-05:00

Like many other Canadians, I have been riveted to ongoing media coverage of the murders of Marie France Comeau and Jessica Lloyd, the sexual assaults of two other women in Eastern Ontario and the charges laid against Russell Williams. Perhaps because my political activism also includes work to end the Canadian military presence in Afghanistan, the fact of Williams’ high rank in the Canadian Air

CEDAW, family law and women's equality

2010-02-13T07:07:00.002-05:00

These remarks were made on February 8, 2010, at the Kathleen A. Lahey Feminist Speaker Series, held annually at the University of Windsor Faculty of Law. This year’s lecture was entitled : Why the F word matters more than ever: Using CEDAW to promote women’s equality in diverse societies.The family remains an institution of significant inequality for women, especially heterosexual women, in

Family court reform in Ontario

2010-01-12T19:41:00.004-05:00

It is well established that intimate partner abuse does not end at the point of separation. In fact, significant evidence exists to demonstrate that the risk of abuse and lethality heightens with separation. Violence at this time often includes a wide spectrum of abusive behaviours, including physical assault, threats of physical violence, controlling behaviours and/or psychological abuse that

Get a grip and move on? Not just yet!

2009-12-12T06:04:00.002-05:00

Margaret Wente describes December 6th commemorations as “a large helping of overheated nonsense” in her December 8th column entitled “Montreal massacre death cult.” She proceeds to claim that “women in Canada have never been safer than they are today,” that, while women still experience spousal abuse, “the laws are tough” and that Marc Lepine’s actions were “random,” the result of a troubled

Remember Resist: 20th Anniversary Memorial for the Montreal Massacre

2009-12-07T11:13:00.002-05:00

Every community has its own way of commemorating December 6th. Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter uses this opportunity each year to take over public space (the main branch of the Vancouver Public Library) for a public education event. This year, the Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women, held on December 5th, brought together a diverse group of feminists to talk about

December 6th 20 years later

2009-12-02T12:37:00.004-05:00

It has been 20 years since Marc Lepine gunned down 14 women at L’Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal specifically because they were women. This will be the 20th year of speeches and vigils commemorating those murders, of remembering lost hopes and possibilities, of committing ourselves once again to working to eliminate violence against women. For those of us older than 35 or so, December 6, 1989 is

Looking Back, Looking Forward

2009-11-29T13:15:00.004-05:00

Keynote address presented at the Kingston Interval House Annual General Meeting, November 24, 2009.December 1, 1975: Kingston Interval House first opens its doors. The need for a shelter for abused women had first been raised some months earlier by the Kingston Women’s Centre. A group of women from the Centre approached Judge George Thompson, at the time Kingston’s family court judge, for support

Why we still need feminism in law school

2009-11-15T15:03:00.013-05:00

These remarks were made at the University of Western Ontario Faculty of Law on November 11, 2009.Law can function as either a tool or a weapon. Used well, it can be a tool to effect social justice. Used badly, it is a weapon that will increase social injustice.Either way, law, and those who study, understand, apply and interpret it, have a lot of power in our

Person's Day 2009

2009-11-15T14:58:00.004-05:00

Person’s Day is an important opportunity to remember those Famous Five women who challenged Canadian law by insisting that women, too, were persons and so had legal rights. Each year since 1979, the Governor General’s Awards in Commemoration of the Persons Case honour ongoing contributions made to women’s equality rights in Canada. Women’s equality can be and is achieved in many different arenas

Improvements to Restraining Orders in Ontario Proclaimed on October 15th!

2009-10-20T11:28:00.003-04:00

After more than a decade of work, including extensive consultations by the provincial government with violence against women advocates and activists, the Ontario government has proclaimed those sections of Bill 133 that deal with restraining orders. These changes to the law will significantly increase safety for women and children who are fleeing violent situations.Abused women and their

ABORTION IN CANADA: Legal but still not accessible

2009-10-20T11:25:00.003-04:00

A recent study conducted by the Guttmacher Institute (www.guttmacher.org) shows that the number of abortions being provided worldwide fell from 45.5 million in 1995 to 41.6 million in 2003, the most recent year for which figures are available. The reason for this is largely that more women have access to and are using contraceptives.However, 40% of the world’s women live in countries with highly

Thoughts on Mediation

2009-10-08T05:48:00.006-04:00

These remarks were delivered at the Third Annual Warren Winkler Lecture on Civil Justice Reform held in Ottawa on Tuesday October 6. This year's lecture was entitled "Perspectives on Procedural Reform in Family Law Matters" and included a panel discussion on mediation.Mediation, while not the universal panacea that some of its promoters would have us believe, is an excellent tool for many who are

The collision between children’s best interests and fathers’ “rights”

2009-10-06T09:12:00.002-04:00

If the first article in the Toronto Star series on post-separation parenting (running October 3 – 7) is an illustration of what is to come, it appears the Star has decided to take an unapologetically sympathetic position towards fathers that does not reflect the reality of many Canadian families, in particular those where there has been violence.The article begins with the provocative headline: "

Do Women Really Ask For It?

2009-10-02T09:57:00.003-04:00

The myth that women ask to be raped and its sister myth that women fabricate allegations of rape as acts of vengeance remain alive and well in 2009. A colleague and I had the opportunity to explore these myths in a paper we co-wrote and presented at a conference in Budapest, Hungary in May.Called Evil, Women and the Feminine, the inter-disciplinary conference examined issues surrounding the

When is Equality Not Really Equal?

2009-09-30T14:08:00.006-04:00

Apparently, when women in Canada enter the workforce. A recent study conducted by Statistics Canada, and widely heralded in the mainstream media, indicates that women now outrank men in the workforce for the first time in history. Even during World War II, when women entered the workforce in unprecedented numbers, men outranked them.While there may be some cause to celebrate this advancement of

Not in the Best Interests of Women and Children

2009-09-22T12:47:00.001-04:00

On June 16, 2009, Saskatoon-Wanuskawin Conservative Party MP Maurice Vellacott introduced Bill C-422 to the House of Commons.This Bill is the latest incarnation of a series of Bills, Motions and other legal and political maneouvrings that have attempted to eliminate the concepts of custody and access from the federal Divorce Act in favour of a presumption in favour of equal parenting.Mr.

Bringing a feminist analysis to community violence against women collaborations and protocols

2009-09-22T12:34:00.001-04:00

A couple of years ago, I was invited by a small, mostly rural community to speak at the launch of their sexual assault protocol.This invitation came about as communities across Ontario were receiving funding to develop sexual assault, partner abuse and child abuse protocols and to develop and expand community collaborations.While most of us working in the violence against women field shared a

Still taking back the night

2009-09-09T10:51:00.005-04:00

A world in which we still need to fight violence against women seems far away as I sit at my desk and look out at my sun-dappled garden of morning glories, brown-eyed susans, hollyhocks and crysanthemums.However, Take Back the Night marches, rallies, speak outs and other gatherings are not at all far away as we move into September.The first Take Back the Night march was held in Belgium in 1977,

Welcome

2009-09-08T16:06:00.003-04:00

Another blog? Yet someone else who believes their thoughts and ideas are worth taking up more cyberspace?In a word, yes. The world may not need another blog on cooking or home repair or parenting, but we do need a space for intelligent discussion and debate about women, equality, law and policy in Canada.I am a feminist, and have been since my daughter was born 35 years ago, which was when I