Ding dong! Canada’s National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC), the Great PC North’s equivalent to our own rad-fem National Organization for Women, is so broke that it’s now out of business! (Thanks to libertarian Catholic blogger Kathy Shaidle of Toronto for tipping us off. “Woo-hoo!” yelps Kathy, and I’m right along with her.)
Yes, indeedy! NAC, which supports Big Government intervention in practically everything but especially in family life, couldn’t survive without its own Big Government funding from Ottawa, and it has announced that it can no longer maintain office hours or man (oh, sorry!) its telephones. The organization also owes the Canadian government some $30,000 in unpaid back taxes–not very inspiring for a group whose main platform is…raising taxes to pay for the nanny state that it advocates.
One of NAC’s pet causes has been the Ottawa government’s decision to use national unemployment insurance to subsidize months of paid maternal and disability leave for employees–a novel definition of the word “unemployment” that could send Canadian employers’ costs skyrocketing and weaken Canada’s competitiveness in world markets. (Fortunately, Quebec’s Court of Appeal recently ruled that the Ottawa policy was unconstitutional, holding that it interfered with the right of individual provinces to set their own maternity- and disability-leave policies.) NAC was also a major player at the infamous U.N. World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance held in Durban, South Africa on the very eve of Sept. 11, 2001, at which various demagogues blamed the United States for international terrorism.
Well, now it’s over. NAC, founded in 1972 as an umbrella organization of 700 Canadian feminist groups, used to be on the government dole itself, until a Liberal government in Ottawa pulled the plug some seven years ago. The NAC has never been able to cover the shortfall with private donations. In the fall of 2001, around the same time as the U.N. debacle, NAC’s last president resigned because the organization lacked funds to pay her. Without a functioning office and with a website that looks as though it hasn’t been updated in at least two years, this seems to be it.
Couldn’t happen to a more deserving group.