January 21, 2020
We are entering a new decade inspired by the growing hunger for change and transformation we are seeing around the world. We can only move forward by understanding our role and place in history while fearlessly continuing the work that has been previously laid by progressive and revolutionary women towards justice and liberation. It is a pivotal moment for us to assert the historical momentum of women leading socialist calls, ideas, and movements as capitalism continues to be denounced in the broader society.
We in the Philippine Women Centre of Ontario, as part of the National Alliance of Philippine Women in Canada, continuously assert the social responsibility of reproductive work and for the care of the most vulnerable in our society. We relentlessly denounce anti-woman government programs like Canada’s caregiver program–recently what’s been renamed Canada’s Home Child Care Provider Pilot and Home Support Worker pilot program–that are inherently exploitative for us as Filipino women, and thus for women in Canada as a whole. Under Canada’s caregiver program, women/workers from the global south remain locked in exploitative conditions under the whims and actions of individual Canadian employers; all while the government continues to undermine the growing demands for national childcare, healthcare needs and a growing elderly population. While continual criticism of this policy has led to reforms over the previous decades, it is our firm stance that this program, in any and all forms, be scrapped. Such a position ultimately challenges us to imagine the implementation of national child care, genuine immigration and transnational working status and rights in this country. Instead, a de facto, privatized childcare/care program like the Canada’s Caregiver program continues to stand as a barrier for our community’s genuine settlement, integration and participation in a society that our women have wrung their hands raw to serve and raise.
The trafficking of women and girls continues to be a prevailing issue in a first world country like Canada. In the last year alone, there has been a rise in sex trafficking rings across Canada. Toronto is seen as being the number one city for human trafficking in Canada. Last October over 300 charges were laid after a year long investigation into organized crime ring that forced over 12 women and girls into the sex trade between Quebec and Toronto. Only a few weeks later, news broke of four individuals charged for abuse and sex trafficking of a young woman in Toronto. These occurrences are only two of more than a handful of publicized cases in the last year and shows that even a sexually “free” country like Canada is complicit in women’s oppression. We remain adamant, in spite of neoliberal normalization to commodify sexuality and women’s bodies, that sex trafficking and the business of selling sex is detrimental to women of colour, to Indigenous women and women from the global south. The existence of the sex industry, founded on patriarchal and profit driven desires continue to undermine women’s sovereignty over our bodies, our land, and our communities. These very systems often give us no choice but to enter these exploitive industries when our labour and worth is not valued.
In the last year, we saw a historic moment upon the release of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) report where Indigenous women and their communities called out this longstanding issue as Genocide. When Indigenous women bravely announce that there is genocide taking place in Canada against their women, we stand in full solidarity with them. Canada’s ongoing colonization of Indigenous lands and displacement of women is the historic foundation of the continuing oppression of First Nations and Indigenous women in this country. One woman taken away from their community by violence is one too many. We join our voices with Indigenous women in their feminist, anti-patriarchy, anti-capitalist, and anti-imperial resistance to condemn systemic violence enacted through policies such as child-welfare, the destruction of Indigenous Nations by extractive resource industries, and the disproportionate sex trafficking of indigenous women as continued practice of Canada’s colonization project.
A new decade brings us ever evolving challenges to women’s development and equality. We remain unwavered in our role to continue addressing systemic violence against women while building solidarity with women across Canada and around the world on issues from reproductive work, to the trafficking and sexual exploitation of women. We move forward— strengthened by our collective presence and growing voices—even more resolved to fight for women’s liberation and for the transformation of our society.
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