1. Recognizing that childcare benefits the economy tremendously in giving women and men the opportunity to participate in the paid workforce, we ask for government commitment to a fully funded, accessible, universal, high-quality, and integrated childcare system. In particular the government of Manitoba should:

• Recognize positive investment of childcare by undertaking research to document the return on investments.
• Create more new spaces.
• Supplement wages for workers so that day care workers are paid on par with elementary school teachers.
• Provide more money for training workers and expand training programs.
• Provide more operating grants for centres.
• Provide incentives and legislation for employers to provide childcare for employees.
• Eliminate the $2.48/day/kid that parents who qualify for subsidies are still charged for childcare, as it is still too high.
• Eliminate all parent fees within 10 years.
• In the short-term provide more funding for parent subsidies.
• Provide free childcare for single mothers on social assistance so they can look for work.
• Compare cost of childcare versus the cost of the downtown arena over a generation.
• Work toward cross-departmental and cross-ministerial coordination and collaboration to ensure that childcare needs are taken into consideration in economic development planning, in social and community development planning, and in all other relevant provincial activities.

2. Provide free post-secondary education to enable all to have fuller access in order that all have the opportunity to make full economic contributions. At minimum, provide more educational bursaries. Another idea is to pay students for their studies in exchange for their promise to work in the province/country.

3. Provide more funding for training homecare workers as well as higher wages in order to improve services and provide a living wage.

4. Recognize that food, housing, clean air and water, and community involvement are essential to health and there can be no healthy economy without these.

5. Recognize that preventing social problems reduces the cost of social programs in the end and that social services are an investment in the future. Spend more now for future returns, both financial and social. Focus expenditures on long-term outcome rather than simply immediate costs.

6. The NDP in partnership with labour, community groups and the government should develop an integrated fiscal policy that will secure funds to implement their social, environmental and economic vision for a more co-operative society.

7. Because of the essential economic contributions of essential services, the Province of Manitoba should also lobby the Federal Government about such things as childcare and housing instead of focusing all or most of its energy on lobbying for more money for health care.

B. Innovative programs

8. Provide respite days for single moms (working and otherwise). At minimum, enact legislation in support of paid parent days off for family needs, and provide free vacations for families headed by single moms at government operated cabins at Hecla and Camp Morton. Both were platform policy items in the previous election.

9. Provide recreational facilities for kids, especially those from poorer families. Early intervention is essential.

10. Develop a new “second chance” program, which enables social assistance recipients to receive student loans. This is especially important for teen parents who have had to drop out of school in order to take care of their child/children.

11. Provide long-term housing options to survivors of domestic abuse.

12. Implement a government-housing fund that provides low-interest mortgages (banks charge high-interest) for those wanting to buy their own homes. Monthly payments by homeowners would go back into this fund for the next homebuyer.

13. Make Doula services (paid labour companion) for women covered by Manitoba Health. This would decrease time in labour and save money as well as being helpful and healthier for women

14. Quadruple the midwifery budget so that we have at least 100 midwives in Manitoba This would provide quality care and save money especially in Northern Manitoba where many women are forced to leave their communities for several weeks in order to give birth to their children.

15. Set up Breast Thermography Clinics for early detection of cancer as part of Breast Cancer Detection program. Thermography is non-squish and available for $250 outside Manitoba, and can detect cancer in early enough stages for prevention strategies to work.

16. Implement a fitness and health dividend, which supports health prevention and decreases need for treatment.

17. Create opportunities for different funding bodies to come together to make their programs known to community groups and for different levels of government to communicate with community organizations. The Women’s Social Justice Forum held in February 2002 and sponsored by a number of Federal government departments including Health, Justice, and Status of Women, is one example.

18. Reduce the “salting” budget by 20% over 5 years while protecting our fresh waters by using a new "salt" on the winter roads and streets. This “salt” is mixed with molasses, and appears more golden than the regular salt. It is far more efficient - has a lower freezing point and is less damaging in terms of corrosion. Because less is needed, costs are reduces and there is less salt in the run-off therefore reducing the salinity of our fresh waters and run-off.

19. Create an intergenerational mentorship program to reduce teen pregnancy.

20. Add more government support to the participatory budget process. Consider adopting the alternative budget system being adopted in Guelph, Ontario and already practiced in Porto Alegre, Brazil as well as other jurisdictions to make the budget more participatory and democratic. Low-income women need especially to be made a part of the budget process as what happens in the budget affects them so deeply. The government could also consider funding community organizations to organize the participatory budget process.

21. Create simpler and more cost-effective processes for community input/disagreement with regards bylaws, etc. The current system of hearings is expensive and tedious.

22. Address the democracy deficit by making government sensitive and accountable to citizens on big issues – not just every 4-5 years at election time.

23. Create a system of Canadian study circles/community meetings to discuss important community issues, supporting grassroots democracy and citizen empowerment. Homeowners hosting these meetings could get a tax break for supporting democracy. (This is a process used in Sweden.)

24. The Manitoba Government should initiate a public consultation process around the next SUFA(Social Union Framework Agreement) review. While the Government is to be commended for the consultation undertaken during the last review, the time frame allowed was inadequate - it was the first time most of us had seen it the document. The next review will be in 2005 so the consultations could start now. The Manitoba Government could be a leader in this process by responding to this request by Manitoba citizens.

25. Teach economic literacy not just for women but also especially for women. Train people in the budget process who could go out and train others.

26. Implement programs to educate men on the importance of supporting women.

27. Raise women’s representation in government from the current 20% to 50%.

28. Support programs that offer transition support for retiring people to work part-time while mentoring younger workers and not lose their pension and benefits.

29. Support community economic development strategies that encourage local production for local consumption, local reinvestment of profits, human dignity, and neighbourhood stability while improving the health of whole communities.

30. Provide employer rewards to businesses who hire people with disabilities. Make accessibility a right.

31. Use profits from publicly owned crown corporations to pay for essential services such as childcare, etc.

32. Implement a gender analysis of all government programs including the budget as a whole with the goal of making gender equity a reality. In particular need of a gender analysis are the welfare system, the student loan system, and a gender analysis of Manitoba Hydro in order to show the impact of hydroelectric development on women in northern communities. Before becoming law, all legislation should be subject to a feminist analysis and input.

33. Form a non-partisan healthy public policy committee to ensure decisions improve health and to screen spending.

34. The Province of Manitoba should adopt an Ethical Procurement Policy that ensures that all products purchased by the Province are made by unionized labour, fairly traded, and No Sweat.

35. Legislate that workers who work on government contracts including courier services need to be unionized.

36. Create women’s bonds that would fund women’s economic development groups.

37. Develop more wind power and other alternative power solutions rather than focusing on hydroelectric development which has had a devastating impact on many communities in Manitoba.

38. Introduce full cost of accounting for manufacturing/processing plants concerning natural resources and the environment. Corporations and industries should pay real costs of exploiting resources (i.e. clean-ups).

39. Give tax breaks to companies who contribute to their community by developing in neglected areas of a province or city, putting childcare on site, paying fair wages, buying locally, and providing long-term employment thereby encouraging corporations to spend more money in their communities.

40. Support lunch and after school programs for low-income families.

41. Add new courses to the public school curriculum including problem solving, economic literacy, parenting, and educating men and boys on feminist issues.

42. Provide free essential services such as hydro and water. Alternatively, subsidize utilities for low-income people (SaskTel does provide a certain number of free phones for people on social assistance). At minimum, remove the provincial sales tax (PST) from these services.

43. Make public transit free. At the very least, provide free bus passes for low-income people including all persons with long-term disabilities, single parents on social assistance, and seniors on fixed low-incomes. Using public transit both enhances individual health and reduces pollution.

44. Fund and encourage inter-faith dialogue to promote unity and well being of our multicultural society.

45. Both Canada and Manitoba should demonstrate their leadership by signing on to the Simultaneous Policy - a peaceful political strategy to democratically drive all the world's nations to apply global solutions to global problems, including combating global warming and environmental destruction, regulating economic globalization for the good of all, and delivering social justice, peace and security, and sustainable prosperity.

C. Recognition of unpaid work

46. Provide greater tax credits and support to the women/families that choose to stay at home with their children. This especially is important to lower income/middle income families. Women often have to make family choices based on economic reasons, and are torn between emotions as they make a decision to work or stay at home to be with their children.

47. Provide supports for unpaid care giving as essential to our entire economy.

48. Recognize community/charitable work by providing tax credits for volunteer work. Recognize the unpaid economic contributions of people on social assistance.

49. Value unpaid work. Count hours spent on unpaid work (childcare, elder care, volunteering) and give tax credits accordingly. One idea is to use the Independent Living Resource Centre’s expertise to determine pay for hours. Consider at programs already in place (i.e. Australia)

50. Link people performing unpaid work to opportunities for education, transport, respite, caregiver support systems, transition support, etc.

D. Redistribution of wealth

51. Reduce taxation on child maintenance. Child maintenance contributions are currently deducted, penny for penny, dime for dime i.e.100% taxation rate. Reduce poverty and support the economy by reducing this particular "taxation" rate by 75%.

52. Stop clawing back childcare subsidy for common law partners. At the same time, implement a claw back on childcare services subsidies from families earning $50,000, proportionately on a sliding scale.

53. Allow people on social assistance to buy their own homes in order that they may get ahead. Rent never ends but a mortgage does.

54. Eliminate interest on student loans and disallow banks to make money on student loans. Banks are privileged to be “chartered” (given a license to print money) and should give back by administering student loans at cost. Currently students are being “gouged” while getting an education, which allows them to contribute to a more educated labour market – something that both government and business want.

55. Legislate the amount that banks can charge for service fees as well as fees charged by pawn brokers.

56. Recognize that we are not doing migrant workers a favour by offering them low-paying jobs but rather that they are doing us a favour by doing difficult work for low pay. Compensation at the most basic level requires respecting the human rights of all migrant workers recognizing that they are often using their tiny wages to support entire family both in Canada and in their country of origin.

57. Provide more money for inner-city housing as opposed to new suburb developments that benefit corporations and individual wealth.

58. Allow social assistance recipients to keep their savings. Do not make poor people poorer by forcing them to cash in RRSPs, RESPs, and other savings before they are eligible for social assistance.

59. Subsidize costs for healthy food for northern Manitoba (i.e. milk) not just for unhealthy food such as alcohol, and pop.

60. Raise minimum wage so that people can pay more taxes. Index minimum wage to the cost of living.

61. Integrate immigrants into labour market. Provide opportunities for foreign-trained professionals to be accredited and licensed to practice their careers in Manitoba and they will pay a significantly higher level of income tax and consumption taxes. At the same time strive for gender parity in immigration

62. Implement a Guaranteed Annual Income according to the NDP Policy on Basic Income, which is high enough to cover essential costs for full community participation.

63. Instil equity in the adult learning sector for women practitioners by insisting on equitable wages for publicly funded learning programs. 90% of the teachers in the 34 provincially funded community based literacy programs are female and the majority of those practitioners donate volunteer hours to ensure the learners in their classes have upgrading and learner-centred programs. 30% of the adult learners who participate in these programs exit social assistance and find jobs while involved with literacy programs. The savings to the public purse outstrip the tax dollars used to run the adult literacy programs. At the same time, teachers in the K to 12 systems earn up to 5 times the salary for similar work and have access to more supports.

64. Increase social assistance rates so that all have access to the essentials in accordance with the United Nations Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights to which Canada is a signatory. Note that bottom income earners are more likely to spend their earnings within their communities thereby benefiting entire communities

65. Increase Aboriginal people’s involvement in the economy in order that we may all benefit.

66. Remove tax from family planning items such as condoms.

67. Make income tax more progressive. One way this can be done is by creating more high-end tax brackets.

68. Tax capital gains at 100% of tax rate.

69. Allow students who graduate and have outstanding student loans to write off the interest on their loan as a tax write-off. Interest on student loans should be a tax write-off in the same way that business writes off entertainment. Student loans are truly a cost of doing business.

70. Make tax concessions given to corporations transparent (i.e. land grants, building funds).

71. Work towards alternatives to public-private partnerships. Too often these partnerships privatize profit and socialize risk. In many such agreements private companies have made a large profit but have not given back to the community. Often taxpayers have been forced to cover the costs if something goes wrong. An alternative is public-public partnerships i.e. using money from Hydro or a pension plan to invest in future returns.

72. Make all government spending transparent and efficient.

73. Recognizing the contributions of the earth towards the economy, develop an ecological framework governing all government activities.

74. Develop a Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) to measure the value of such things as water, trees, peace, and community.

75. Grant charitable-tax status to organizations working on advocacy.

76. Get rid of the balanced-budget legislation and replace with a rolling 2-year budget. A budget should not be thought to be balanced when it is done on the backs of people with low income, people of Aboriginal ancestry, people with disabilities, youth, students, new Canadians, women raising children, and seniors.

77. Increase the level of lowest personal taxable income.

78. Study the value of the revenue loss to governments of tax write offs such as businesses being allowed to write off “entertainment” including box suites in the new arena, business lunches, and alcohol.

E. Better services

79. Enhance the legal aid system in the following ways:

• Increase eligibility and criteria for legal aid funding so that it is accessible to all who need it, including single mothers.
• Provide access to information (perhaps web based) and staff support to answer questions about court process when women are representing themselves in Family Court. Dedicated staff for the public inquiries could be one way to go. This is not to say citizens are to receive free legal advice, but access to someone in the court administration system that can answer straightforward questions about how to file documents, access services, and how to follow the necessary procedures.
• Provide sensitivity training to judges to ensure they listen to people who represent themselves.

80. Provide more funding for foster parents for training in dealing with FAS/FAE children.

81. Neighbourhoods Alive and Healthy Child Initiatives are very successful government programs. Expand on them and make a long-term commitment to them.

82. Eliminate suspensions in schools and replace them with in-school detentions as this is causing an escalating problem in unsupervised children, which leads to far greater and expensive problems further down the road.

83. Make maternity benefits universal by extending parental leave to all workers.

84. Ensure that the health care system reforms take into consideration support staff and don’t lead to such solutions as privatizing food and laundry services.

85. Expand practicum availability at all education levels.

86. Create broad-based programs to help people who have dropped out of school.

87. Support residents associations, which work to improve the quality of housing and support democracy building.

88. Implement a 4% cap on Regional Health Authority administrative spending.

89. Ban trans-fatty acids in order to promote health.

90. Stop the paternalistic policy of welfare (i.e. spouse in the house rule).

91. Consider the strength of the women’s community and other non-government organizations (NGOs). Create incentives to reward organizations to work together (administrative costs are expensive).

92. Much of government expenditure is for projects rather than core funding. Reestablish core funding for such things as rural women’s organizations in addition to project funding. Core funding covers administrative costs and allows for thinking ahead.

93. Make improvements in the Employment and Income Assistance program:

• Eliminate workfare.
• Lobby for change to the Federal Government concerning EI required hours since the shortfall falls on the province.
• Revise the required hours recognizing areas where access to employment is limited.
• Allow people who make small amounts of money to keep more of their earned income.
• Provide day care for infants – after EIA runs out – or extend benefit.

94. Provide more computer training in order to increase accessibility to employment.

95. Provide pro-rated benefits for all workers including part-time workers.

96. Stop free trade and instead promote fair trade.

97. Avoid trade agreements that infringe on Canadian sovereignty at federal, provincial and municipal levels. This includes all agreements that will have a negative impact on public services like health, education, and water.

98. Implement coverage for alternative health services (ie. homeopathy, elder care, counselling).

99. Recognize that optometry and dental are basic health needs.

100. Replace the charity-based social assistance system with a community development model.

101. Work toward better working and living conditions so we do not exploit immigrant workers that come through programs of the Provincial and Federal Governments and the business community. Current working situations create a new type of rationalized/legitimated slavery. ie Brandon Mexican workers in slaughterhouses and hog farms as well, Live-In Caregiver Program.

102. Fund immigrant women’s resource centres including child care.

103. Until there is adequate affordable housing, increase the number and amount of housing subsidies to a larger number of citizens, including single adults under age 55 who qualify and single parents. Have housing subsidies follow the citizens into the private housing sphere where housing stock meets security and sanitation standards. Ensure that low-income housing is not ghettoized but rather that there is a range of mixed income, mixed generation, and social housing. Training programs can also be connected to social housing building projects.

104. Improve language-training programs for refugees/immigrants especially for the workplace.

F. Revenue generation

105. Fund EIA recipients to register and complete courses that are longer than one year. The graduates will earn enough to support themselves and their families in dignity; they will get off EIA, contribute to the economy, thereby turning liability into investment.

106. Increase scholarships and student grants conditional on reaching certain criteria of achievement. Higher incomes will translate into more income taxes paid and more money in the economy.

107. Adopt the policy put forward by the Manitoba Teachers Society to take education funding off municipal property tax and transfer it to a provincial Education Support Levy, which would later be phased out.

108. Increase personal and corporate income tax for higher income levels and larger, more profitable corporations.

109. Tax all foreign (including US) movie video rentals at least 10% to provide money for Canadian Art development funding. Our art and entertainment personal budgets probably go to this area universally, and not into 'less-accessible' Canadian art and film, and this directly affects many women in the arts.

110. Reverse corporate income-tax cuts and end the tax gifts to corporations. Let them move to 'greener' pastures.

111. Implement green taxes such as a Kyoto tax, a plastic bag tax, commuter distance taxes, a tax on vehicles in which there is only one person (Washington state has experimented with this), and fees for consumption and destruction of the environment (water, air, soil).

112. Implement a tax on pornography including internet pornography.

113. Tax violent video games.

114. Decriminalize prostitution and tax it.

115. Legalize marijuana and tax it.

116. Investigate government revenue losses from tax shelter savings programs such as RRSPs. Consider implementing stricter limits.

117. Tax out of province Manitobans who earn money here but spend it elsewhere. Ensure that businesses who live/work here but have their headquarters in another country pay tax here.

118. Tax luxury items such as foreign and exotic vacations or consider an idea like the Seattle Latté tax – an additional 10 cents on lattés, which is directed to child development.

119. Increase taxes on products that lead to poor health while lowering taxes on products that promote good health. For example, consider a tax on fast food because it leads to poor health and environmental degradation.

120. Introduce the Tobin Tax, a tax on stock market and foreign currency speculation that is redirected to social development.

121. Stop corporate bailouts and the ease of reopening businesses that have gone bankrupt under a different name as a means of avoiding responsibility.

122. Work to end “capital flight” in which big businesses take money away from communities. Implement currency controls.

123. Raise the prices on Canada’s raw resources (i.e. lumber, etc.)

124. Retain and strengthen our crown corporations – Do not forfeit this opportunity for revenue. In fact, create more crown corporations, for example a federal crown corporation for telephones. Alternatively, SaskTel could buy MTS and create a prairie public phone company.

125. Tax casinos.

126. Tax corporations to support post-secondary education since they benefit from it.

127. Link fines for violent acts to community development as well as victim services.

128. Rather than competing for lowest minimum wage in Canada, Canadian premiers could harmonize up by making a high-wage agreement.

129. Redirect Manitoba Investment Opportunity Program (MIOP) grants toward public services such as childcare.