In early April, REAL Women of Canada held its annual convention and general meeting of members in Calgary, Alberta.
However, proceedings at the convention were officially monitored by a representative of the Secretary of State Women’s Program, following the announcement on the eve of the convention that her department had awarded just over $13,000 to assist with convention costs. This brings the amount granted to REAL Women over a nine-year period to just over $41,000, during which time the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC) received almost $4,000,000 from the Women’s Program.
A REAL Women representative explained that she understood the remaining two-thirds of the organization’s funding request was denied because the group does not receive core funding and its directors are not “doubly disadvantaged.” (REAL Women has always been denied core funding, generally because it does not use the “politically correct” definition of equality.)
One convention resolution urged a return to traditional values with their moral absolutes as the only significant way to address the problem of domestic violence.
Other resolutions urged that in-school sex education programs be based on the concepts of sexual abstinence prior to marriage and fidelity within marriage, and that officials resist pressure to install condom machines in schools or to establish school-based clinics that provide sexual counseling.
“It is clear that REAL Women members across Canada, as well as members of our affiliate groups, want a return to the best ideals of the Christian values on which our country was founded,” says Mrs. Judy Anderson, national president of REAL Women of Canada.
