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Join us and we'll change the 'Body Politic'
We're a group of women and men, more than 700 nation wide,
who are deeply concerned about Canadian politics and we have formed a
multi-partisan action committee devoted to the still-bold idea that more
women must be elected to every level of government in Canada. Formed
in May 2001, Equal Voice has attracted individuals in every province,
women and some men drawn from most groups in society. Many of our members
are elected representatives at the federal, provincial or municipal levels,
and some are cabinet ministers. We are multipartisan, and include representatives
of the major political parties--an advantage when we are pushing our
political leaders to promote the nomination of more women for political
office. We aim to promulgate fresh ideas, to grab media attention and
to embarrass the existing political parties into fairer treatment of
our half of the population.
We call ourselves Equal Voice, or in fuller form:
Equal Voice: An Action Group for the Election of Women.
We've formed a Executive Board of:
| Chair, Rosemary Speirs, writer, Former
Political Journalist |
| Vice-chair, Donna Dasko, pollster
Environics Research |
| Treasurer, Phyllis Tanaka, MSc,RD, Food and Nutrition Consultant,
Nutri-sense Consulting |
| Secretary, Lesley Byrne, Communications Consultant |
| Membership Secretary, Tara Dean, M.A. Politics (women's studies) |
| Youth Chapter, Louisa
Moya, Marketing Communications Specialist |
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| Chair, National Capital Region Chapter, Raylene
Lang-Dion, Government Relations Director, Dominion Institute,
MA politics and women |
| Chair, British Columbia Chapter, Janet Wiegand ,
Corporate Strategic Planner, Vancouver BC |
| Chair, Alberta South, Janice Kinch,
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Nursing, University of Calgary |
| Chair, Alberta North, Shirley Barg, |
| Chair, Toronto, Mehreen Raza, Project
Manager South
Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario |
| Chair, NWT, Sandy Lee,
MLA for Range Lake, NWT
Legislative Assembly |
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We provide education and create awareness about the importance of
electing more women to all levels of government. We encourage the
political parties directly to nominate more women candidates, and
promote women to positions of power within party structures. We advocate
electoral financing reform to lower the money barrier and level the
playing field for women. We call for a system of proportional representation
to modernize our election laws and more fairly represent the female
half of the population.
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Who We Were
The Committee for '94
Created in 1984, the committee had a formal goal
of seeing women elected to half the seats in Parliament in
10 years. The committee was non-partisan, and multi-partisan.
We included non-political members as well as prominent organizers
and fundraisers for all three parties, including some woman
partisans who actually crossed party lines on occasion to help
out strong women candidates running for rival organizations.
The committee set out to educate the public about
the barriers to female election, to press the parties to nominate
and elect more women in winnable seats, to campaign for public
funding of elections so women could realistically compete and
to help women equip themselves to run for office at any level
of government.
After 1994, the goal unmet, the committee petered
out, despite best intentions. Canadian politics was consumed
by deficit-cutting and social causes like ours were left on
the margins.
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