Just before the Liberal leadership convention, the Liberal Women’s Caucus released their Pink Book, a slick public relations item that dresses up big government programs as progressive policies to benefit women.

Belinda Stronach, heiress to the Magna fortune and self-anointed protector of middle-class women everywhere, is chair of the Liberal Women’s Caucus. Upon release of the Pink Book, she said the Tory government “is pursuing an ideological agenda that ignores the needs of many women.”

Toronto Liberal MP Judy Sgro went further, saying the Conservatives “would clearly prefer that women would stay barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen and move us backwards 40 years.”

But the real criticism of the Pink Book is that it is a pale version of past Liberal Red Books – campaign documents that promised more spending here and there to buy the votes of Canadians. While it is true polling data indicates women are more likely to vote for liberal parties than conservative ones, women are not monolithic in their political thinking and not all female voters support a national daycare program, expansive pay equity legislation, increased maternity benefits and restoration of full funding for the Status of Women secretariat. Save for this last item, which was a response to the Harper government’s 25 per cent cut to the program in September, none of these are new policies to attract female voters and renew the Liberal party, as much as they are a recycling of past Liberal promises. Jean Chretien ran on establishing a national daycare program in 1993. It was never instituted because the (conservatively estimated) $5 billion price tag was considered too hefty a price tag during the fiscal austerity of the 1990s.

The latest 28-page document – half of which has nothing more than greetings from various Liberals and photos – calls for billions in new spending under the guise of “income security,” “improved maternity benefits” and “child care.” Specifically, they call for an increase of 25 per cent to the Status of Women Secretariat’s pre-September cut to funding (cost: approximately $10 million); reinstating the Court Challenges Program (over $10 million); funding “early learning” and “child care” ($1 billion over five years); a national caregiver agenda to watch aging parents ($1 billion over five years); maintaining the national gun registry (which has already cost $2 billion since its inception a decade ago and now has a yearly price tag of $90 million).

The gun registry as a women’s issue? If the question is protecting women, what about locking up violent sexual predators for life? Of course not – that’s never been part of the Liberal playbook.

Laura Penny, a critic of Pink Book politics and the position that women are of the sort of single worldview the book perpetuates, wrote in the Globe and Mail that the rose-coloured Liberal document’s “main focus is to equalize economics between the sexes.” But it’s not about equalizing economics as much as redistributing wealth to single and working women and feminist groups.

The Liberals may care about women, but they care about big government even more.