POLITICS AND LAWMAKING INDEX

The need for holding government leaders to account is taken for granted by all. Doing so effectively, however, is a difficult problem. Particularly on matters in which biased or uninterested news media fail to fill their supposed watchdog role, the need for alternative means to expose injustice is great. Even with all its flaws, the Internet now provides an effective way for ordinary people to inform other ordinary people about how they are all being governed. The general discussions (labels beginning with A) and individual accounts (labels beginning with B) below are meant to reveal problems of gender bias in the political arena, in hopes of spurring needed reforms.

This document, distributed as a flyer by MERGE while a bill authorizing restraining orders for spousal abuse was before the Alberta legislature, expressed our grave reservations about the proposed law. Because much opposition was aired in the media, and because it was not initially a government bill, the government dropped its support and the bill was defeated.

This document, distributed to members of the Alberta legislature while they were rushing a second restraining-order bill through, had little chance for impact. This time, there was no opportunity for public opposition to the bill to galvanize--it was substituted at the last minute for a fairly reasonable bill on the subject which the government had been presenting to the public for discussion. The "opposition" parties in the legislature, having long since sold their souls to an unjust brand of feminism, were not about to oppose violation of basic rights if men would be overwhelmingly the ones harmed. And the Edmonton Journal, which had failed to print any facts about the bill's unjust provisions, also refused to publish this piece as a letter to the editor. Small changes were ultimately made, seemingly as the result of this letter. But, as will be revealed in numerous personal stories here, this law is a source of injustice in Alberta of serious proportions.

At least since the Charter of Rights came into effect in the mid-1980's, the most serious single kind of gender discrimination in Canada has been that against fathers in divorce and separation. This article was written in early 1999 to oppose anti-father publicity by sexist feminists in Canada's government, and to reveal that the existing divorce laws violate fundamental human rights.