Within less than two years, the equality rights provisions of the Charter of Rights will be the law of the land. At that point, all laws in every province which violate the equality provisions based on gender will be vulnerable to legal action and of course to political pressure. In the next two years we would be well-advised to audit our provincial laws to identify those which must be changed. We should enter 1985 knowing where and what the vulnerable laws are, prepared both to lobby for change, and prepared to use the legal system to get it. The Charter offers a new and crucial instrument for social change, and certainly for doing away with laws which discriminate against women. However, to work with the legal system this way requires a somewhat different style of operation. We will need to deploy our feminist lawyers on much of the technical task. We will need to become more knowledgeable about these legal matters ourselves, and we will need to raise significant amounts of money for legal research and the costs of taking issues to court, based on the Charter.

Here let me say that this question of funding is vexed and also crucial: the growth in the numbers of women a willing to identify with other women's lives and concerns makes it possible for us to support our own institutions more directly. We have to start putting more of our money where our hearts are. We have to increase our dollar contributions to the women's movement. We have to give to services such as transition houses for battered women and women's shelters. We have to support the women's institutions in our community. And, we have to give a larger share of our financial support to organizations fighting for change in the status of women in Canada: to organizations like NAC, NAWL, CRIAW, NACSW so that they will not be so much dependent on funding by governments; and to legal funds working on Charter of Rights issues. The women's movement in Canada is developed enough for us to fund more of our activities ourselves, so that we will be less vulnerable to changing funding priorities of governments, and more able to set our own priorities and goals for action.

And finally, the next federal election: I predict that there will be a significant increase in the numbers of women candidates seeking nominations for all the parties in the next federal election. It remains to be seen how many will be helped by their party hierarchies to get nominations in winnable ridings. Feminist action is not marked only by a wish to get women into male-dominated institutions, but even more, by a commitment to transform those institutions in line with our vision of the equality and full humanity of women and men. Yes, we must elect more women, send more women to parliament. We need to get inside male-dominated institutions to make our voices heard and our vision shared. But we must continue to have a double strategy - we need also to work outside the formal political institutions and offer a view their of flaws and blindness, their limitations and narrowness. In order to have impact on the political system in the next election and after it, we must put women's issues on agenda of all the parties, and in particular, we must demand of all the parties comprehensive strategy for changing the terrible economic facts of life for most women. We should insist that they tell us now, before we cast our ballots. Just what they propose to do to improve women's economic lives. And if they tell us it's a matter of changing "attitudes" should remind them that attitudes don't buy bread or children's shoes. Our double strategy should continue working on the formal political system and in the extra parliamentary institutions. Because it is it relationship between inside at side that change will happen.