News and Issues

The Medical Reform Group in Ontario, a group of  group of licensed Canadian medical doctors, has launched a campaign called Doctors for Fair Taxation. They believe that government revenues should be increased through taxes in “a fair fashion to protect needed public services and reduce government deficits and debt.”

They are calling for four new Federal and Ontario income tax brackets at $100,000, $170,000, $640,000 and $1,850,000 corresponding to the top 10%, 1%, one tenth of one percent, and one hundredth of one percent of taxpayers. They estimate that these new tax brackets would raise approximately $3.5 billion in new revenue for the federal government and $1.7 billion for the Ontario government.

Read their press release here.

CBC reported recently on a research project being carried out by Jim Brophy and Margaret Keith through a project of the National Network on Environments and Women's Health (NNEWH).

Brophy and Keith are trying to find out how breast cancer may be caused by exposure to carcinogens in the workplace, part of their ongoing effort to raise concern about on-the-job exposures to toxic substances. They are trying to learn more about why more breast cancers are occurring now in industrialized countries.

This article is the second in a three-part series, Exposed: On the Job, about cancer-causing agents in the workplace

Read Work-related carcinogens need more scrutiny.

Women in Ontario will soon have the oppportunity to give birth in a midwifery-led birth centre. The Ontario government announced a pilot project of two new birth centres this week, a development that was celebrated by the Association of Ontario Midwives, which represents 550 registered midwives.

The announcement came after more than 10,000 supporters sent the Liberal government messages advocating for midwifery-led birth centres, and hundreds of others used Facebook and Twitter to promote the benefits of birth centres on the AOM's Social Media Day of Action, February 29.

Read more about in the AOM press release.

A new study is making waves in environmental health. Hormones and Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals: Low-Dose Effects and Nonmonotonic Dose Responses, published this month in Endocrine Reviews, supports what many scientists have been saying for several years: that even very low doses of chemicals can have an impact on human health by disrupting our endocrine systems.

Read about the report and its implications: Scientists Warn of Low-Dose Risks of Chemical Exposure (Environment 360).

To learn about how endocrine-disrupting chemicals can particularly affect women, see the recent report by the National Network on Environments and Women’s Health (NNEWH): Sex, Gender and Chemicals: Factoring Women into Canada’s Chemicals Management Plan.

Seems like everyone’s been talking about the weather this winter, and how warm it’s been – unseasonably warm – in many parts of Canada.  While enjoying our balmy January, some of us felt uneasy, too. There’s the elephant in the room: climate change. Is this winter a blip on the screen, an anomaly, something we shouldn’t expect will happen year after year? Or does it mean that cold winters are history?*

Clearly, our climate is changing. The first decade of this century set records for warmth, worldwide. Our uneasiness this year isn’t just about one temperate winter. It’s about how climate change will affect the health of our world and its inhabitants. And as this issue comes under greater scrutiny, we are learning that climate change is affecting and will affect women differently – and worse – than men.

Learn more here about how gender and health relate to climate change...

This month the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) released its Alternative Federal Budget 2012: A Budget for the Rest of Us.

This year’s Alternative Federal Budget (AFB) talks about investment in public programs, job creation, and infrastructure that would  benefit all Canadians and still balance the books.

The CCPA’s budget has a significant portion focussing on health and the health care system and the effects of poverty on health, noting that, “Greater investment in the determinants of health can also produce healthier citizens, more able to contribute to their maximum potential.”

The AFB also talks about how women are still lagging behind men economically, and how gender-based violence has significant negative impacts on the economy.

Here are some of the comments on how women and girls fare in Canada: 

“The Canadian gender pay gap is now the fifth-largest among twenty-two OECD countries. In Canada, women with full-time jobs earn 23% less than men.”

“The World Health Organization and other national health agencies, including Health Canada and the Centers for Disease Control have demonstrated that gender-based violence has a significant negative impact on the economy.” 

“Canada cannot afford to leave women out of its recovery strategy. Nor can the budget fail to address the shameful levels of violence and poverty experienced by women and girls in Canada because they are women and girls.”

The complete budget document and two-page summary are available on CCPA’s website in both English and French.

This week saw freedom of speech censored across America over the issue of abortion rights. Gary Trudeau’s comic strip Doonesbury deals this week with the Texas’ new legislation that forces women seeking an abortion to first undergo a transvaginal ultrasound. The column also refers to the fact that Rush Limbaugh last week called a law student at Georgetown University who testified before the congressional committee on birth control a “slut”. 

Not to have dealt with these issues would have amounted to “comedy malpractice”, Trudeau has said. 

Several newspapers have pulled the column.

Read about this censorship, and about the issue of enforced transvaginal ultrasound and other attacks on reproductive freedom, in this week’s Our Bodies, Our Blog: Doonesbury Starts Week-Long Abortion Storyline.

Every year in Canada, thousands of idealistic young women volunteer for a medical procedure that will stimulate their ovaries to produce eggs. Their eggs are then surgically harvested for use by infertile couples desperate for a baby. Although it is illegal in Canada to pay for human eggs, there is a thriving black market. Also, there are no regulations governing the care these young women receive during this procedure. Sometimes, things go terribly wrong. Freelance science journalist Alison Motluk follows the stories of several young women who became egg donors.

This documentary was partly funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). It first aired Feb 19/12, The Sunday Edition, CBC Radio.

Listen to it online on CBC.

Alison is still interviewing women who have donated in Canada. Any donors who would like to share their stories can contact her directly at alison@motluk.com or at egg.donor.story@gmail.com

Alison has written & broadcast previously about donor conception, including:
* The  Human Egg Trade (April/10. The Walrus)
* The anonymous donor dilemma: To google or not to google? (Apr 18/10. Globe
& Mail)
* Canadian court bans anonymous sperm and egg donation (May 27/11, Nature)
* Brave New Family (2 hour documentary re sperm donation. Oct/07, CBC Radio)
* From Here to Maternity (2 hour documentary re egg donation. Jun/09, CBC
Radio )

Nisha Lewis, Marketing & Media Relations Supervisor at Girl Guides of Canada shares her thoughts on this year's theme on the Nataional Easting Disorders Information Centre (NEDIC) blog.

See her post at: www.nedic.ca/blog

This year’s International Women’s Day is our 101^st!  Imagine: we’re now in the second century since women around the world began celebrating our achievements to gain economic, political and social equality. While it’s true that some of us have gained much, many challenges – some of them monumental – still face women across the globe.

Women’s health has always been a powerful focus of – and catalyst for – the women’s movement, from the early hard-fought battles for reproductive rights – including effective birth control and legal and safe abortion – to the great efforts of the past 30 years to ensure sex and gender analysis is integrated into health research and health care delivery. The Canadian Women’s Health Network grew out of these challenges, with many women coming together to share the wealth of their knowledge and to work to improve the health of women and girls in Canada.

This March, we plan to continue working towards that goal, and also to celebrate the fact that so many women across the country are honouring this century-plus-one-year-old tradition.

Here are some of the events across Canada celebrating IWD 2012: