Canada’s anti-father policies and the suicide of the founder of a men’s shelter

A friend of mine committed suicide just last Friday. I believe his story shows a serious failing of federal government social and health policy.
I first met Earl Silverman in 1995 in Edmonton at a men’s issues conference. He lived in Calgary and had been a victim of physical abuse by his wife. Earl had looked for help with this problem but existing domestic violence (DV) services told him that he was the abuser, that it was his fault and disbelieved his story, because he was a man. These organizations, funded by governments, refused to help him. Instead, they supported his abuser. Earl became an advocate for DV services for men, eventually opening a men’s shelter in Calgary, and funding it himself, when governments refused to allow access to the funding that women’s shelters get. After struggling heroically, he finally was forced to sell his house and close the shelter this March.
It is too late for Earl Silverman, but it is not too late for the tens of thousands of Canadian men and boys who are abused each year, and who are denied support, counseling and shelter simply because they are the “wrong” gender, and governments fund only the other gender.
Each year about 3600 people commit suicide in Canada, and 80% of those are men. Many suicides of men are related to relationship loss and abuse and I believe that most of these could be prevented if men had access to the support services that governments fund for women. I estimate that at least 1000 male deaths could be prevented with equitable funding. These preventable tragedies are not just abused men, but also fathers who through divorce have lost their children, their assets, their income and their confidence in the fairness of the Canadian judicial system.
Just as Earl’s shelter for men was bullied out of existence by government-funded opposition to equitable services for men, so too are divorced men bullied by a sexist family court system, women-only sole custody funding, women-only shelter services, and a sexist tax system which gives preference to female parents.
Funding of DV shelters for women makes sense: studies show that it reduces the deaths of men, too. But funding advocacy against men’s shelters costs taxpayers millions, while leading to the deaths of thousands of men, costing the Canadian economy billions of dollars. This is also a violation of the Charter of Rights, Canada Health Act and numerous UN Conventions that Canada has signed. It is, I believe, a deep moral failing of Canada, of governments and of politicians.
In 2003, the government of Canada listed on the federal government website, by name, advocates for equality of services for men and boys, demanding funding to harass and bully those individual advocates, to block them from government services and monitor their “discourse.” A 2005 government conference stated that the purpose of gender policy was to “marginalize men.” The federal government has paid a known gender extremist to come to Canada and say, “get men killed or get them jailed.” The government should not be funding gender warfare.
The Canadian Equal Parenting Council is asking supporters to write to the Minister of Justice and ask that Divorce law be changed so that the courts be restrained from removing children from male parents (and female parents, too) without a finding of unfitness. I also ask that you write to the Minister of Health (and Public Health) and ask that funding for domestic violence services be equitable. I further ask that you write to the Prime Minister and ask that he block all direct and indirect advocacy funding to organizations which oppose equitable services for men.
I ask that you do this if you believe in equality, in fairness and to honour the memory of a man who tried for 20 years to get equality and fairness in services and funding, and paid with his life.