This fall, on a day dubbed the “Day of Defiance” by British Columbian activists, I awoke at dawn and trudged through the morning fog down to the Ministry of Health where I joined several hundred picketers to protest the actions of the B.C. Liberal government. Chants were chanted; speeches were given to loud cheers and well timed shouts of “shame!” It was all very energizing, mobilizing and, well, familiar.

You see, before I lived in B.C., I lived in Ontario.

Today, December 6, is a national day of remembrance that commemorates the massacre of fourteen women in Montreal in 1989. It’s a chance each year to renew our commitment to ending violence against women in Canada. In the past few years, I have seen a move on the part of those who mark this day towards the making of connections between more obvious forms and causes of violence against women and those that aren’t as easily recognizable.

This year, B.C. women have much to mourn, including the loss of our social services at the hands of our own government and the devastating effects that loss is having and will continue to have on women.

Loss of Innocence

I came of age politically in a northern Ontario town during the first term of Tory tyrant Mike Harris. Naïve, idealistic and caught up in the heady rush of mass province-wide resistance, I remember believing at first that it was only a matter of time before the provincial government would be forced to reverse the cuts.

When the next election arrived I wasn’t even worried. I couldn’t imagine anyone still voting for the Conservatives after what they had done. I was shocked when Harris was re-elected.

I had just enough hope left to idealize B.C. when I moved here in 1997. Like so many bright-eyed young migrants before me, the West Coast seemed like a utopia of progressive open-mindedness. “Wow!” I thought, “People walk down the street smoking pot here; it’s summer all year round; there are no mosquitoes; and they actually still have a social safety net! It’s paradise.”

Things have changed.

Gordon Campbell’s Liberals have been in power for a year and a half, and I feel like I have a bad case of déjà vu. By the time the first round of cuts were announced on January 17, I already felt defeated and tired. It was to be a three-year program, they announced, that will see a reduction in public spending of over $3 billion and a thirty per cent reduction in public sector employees — that’s about 12,000 jobs. It was like years of Harris conveniently packaged into one devastating day.

Loss of Women’s Services

The Ministry of Women’s Services has already been drastically reduced. Funding for women’s centres is slated to be cut in 2004 and over a million dollars has been cut from sexual assault help centres, with several centres having their funding cut altogether. The Liberals have promised to leave transition houses alone, and so far they have, but it’s hard to believe it will last with their history of broken promises.

In 1993, Statistics Canada found that B.C. had the highest provincial rate of violence against women. And anyone who has worked in the anti-violence movement can tell you, violence against women increases during times of economic hardship. Women are most affected by other cuts, too, such as those to health care, social assistance, childcare, the Human Rights Commission, housing, legal aid, education and disability benefits (all cuts Campbell has instituted or announced.)

When I called the Status of Women Action Group, a Victoria women’s centre, to interview them for this piece, staff were too busy helping women affected by the cuts to talk. The woman I spoke with was overwhelmed by the plights of women who had lost their welfare cheques and childcare grants, women who were facing eviction and feeling suicidal.

Where will these women turn when these services are gone?

The Costs of the Cuts

In the realm of violence alone, the cuts will be devastating. Women will be less able to leave abusive situations because they will have reduced access to support, information and advocacy. Cuts such as those to social assistance will make women more economically dependent on abusive partners or parents. Cuts to legal aid, court closures, laid-off victims’-services workers and the decision to divert rather than prosecute domestic violence cases will make it harder for women who experience violence to access the justice system. Women who are sexually assaulted or battered will be even less likely to report, and if they do prosecution is far less likely.

These are well-worn arguments for those who’ve fought cuts to women’s services before, but they bear repeating. Women are particularly affected by the cuts because we are more likely to experience poverty, violence and other human rights abuses. We are also more likely to depend on social programs, have dependents and work in the public sector. Women act as “shock absorbers,” taking on most of the work downloaded by the state into the realm of unpaid labour. (Not enough nurses? Mom will do it.) Poor, immigrant, non-English-speaking, First Nations, visible minority, young, elderly, lesbian or disabled women are often affected even more intensely.

So far in B.C. we’ve just seen the short-term effects of the cuts. But we can cast our eyes eastward for a preview of what we have to look forward to. A year ago, in Sudbury, Ontario, Kimberly Rogers (eight months pregnant) died during a heat wave. Although the inquest into the precise cause of her death is ongoing, the circumstances in which it took place are clear: Rogers was under house arrest on a charge of welfare fraud for neglecting to declare a student loan. In a recent workshop I attended, a woman pointed out that the most frightening thing about this tragedy was that everyone in the system did their job, and yet she still died. Or was murdered. Depending on how you look at it.

Political Choices and Meaningless Consolations

Those of us who have a steady paycheque guarding us from the fate of Kimberly Rogers are encouraged to believe that good ’ol Gordon Campbell and all our friendly neighbourhood Liberal MLAs are just looking out for us. Sure we have to tighten our belts for a while, but, in the long run, we’ll have more jobs and a more prosperous economy. And in the meantime, we get the ultimate consolation prize: tax cuts.

One of those tax cuts this year came with a message from Premier Campbell offering that tax payers could return the refund and direct how it should be spent. Michelle Kinney, a single mother and student activist at the University of Victoria, took Campbell up on his offer. She returned her $12.25 and asked that it be used to fund post-secondary education and women’s services, noting that she would only be able to return the money this once, because her childcare grant had been reduced in order to balance out her “increased income” due to the tax cut.

Rumblings of Discontent

Let’s be clear: the cuts are not happening because there isn’t enough money to go around, but because of political priorities. And while B.C.’s Minister for Women’s Equality, Lynn Stephens, believes that women should respond by “making more money,” most people are not taking it all so lightly.

If politics can make it happen, politics can make it go away. The B.C. Coalition of Women’s Centres and eleven other NGOs believe the cuts are a violation of basic human rights and so, on February 13 of this year, they made a submission to the U.N. Committee on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights. And perhaps the most visible objections have come in the form of mass protests, like on the Day of Defiance.

Although we will grieve today for all our losses, our sadness is outweighed by a growing outrage toward the cuts and their effects. If this anger is channelled effectively, who knows what will happen. I for one can’t wait to find out.

I just hope this isn’t an ending I’ve seen before.