T1B

The Harper government has shown so little interest in women's issues that provinces have decided to meet on their own to plot a national strategy without bothering to invite federal Status of Women Minister Bev Oda.

The snub follows two recent federal-provincial meetings on women's issues at which Oda put in only brief appearances and displayed "a complete lack of interest," according to Sandra Pupatello, Ontario's minister responsible for women's issues.


At a meeting of federal and provincial ministers in Saint John, N.B., in October, Pupatello said Oda showed up for only an hour.


"Because we have ministers who travel literally from coast to coast to coast, a couple of them that take two days just to get there, they were really quite offended that she would come for an hour," Pupatello said in an interview Wednesday.


Their frustration deepened on Dec. 15, when a federally organized teleconference, supposedly aimed at finishing up the agenda from the October meeting, was similarly cut short.


Pupatello said Oda "attended for 20 minutes and then had to excuse herself and insisted that the meeting be over when she left the call."


"It's hard to have an FPT (federal-provincial-territorial meeting) with no F. That sort of sums it up . . . It's just very frustrating because you feel like you're at the altar and the bride didn't show."


After the teleconference call, Pupatello concluded that provincial and territorial ministers need to get together on their own to devise a national action plan "because I'm not going through this charade of FPTs as if we're actually doing something dramatic here because we're not."


She said "every minister across the board" concurred with her assessment of the situation.


Indeed, another minister from a province not usually considered adversarial with the Harper government, privately expressed virtually identical criticisms.