This month, people are feeling shock and alarm at cuts and changes to federal programs in the United States in the wake of a change of government, and, coincidentally, we came across this historical photo in the Advisory Council on the Status of Women archives from 2006, when PEI organizations concerned with gender equality came together to protest budget cuts and funding changes to the federal Status of Women Canada.
In 2006, the federal government led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper cut the budget of Status of Women Canada by 40% and closed 12 of 16 regional offices, including the office in PEI. What affected PEI groups most of all was that the federal government also changed the criteria for the Women’s Program, disallowing funding for any research, advocacy, or lobbying for gender equality. In other blows to gender equality work in Canada, government abolished funding for the Court Challenges Program, which had been used to advance equality and challenge discrimination through the law.
The mandate of the PEI Advisory Council on the Status of Women is provincial, but the Advisory Council is part of a collaborative eco-system of organizations concerned with gender equality, and when partner organizations in the community face challenges, we stand together. 
Some familiar faces in this photo from a news conference of protest: Marilyn Sark from the Aboriginal Women’s Association; Colette Arsenault from the Acadian and Francophone organization that became Actions-Femmes; Kelly Robinson from what is now the PEI Rape and Sexual Assault Centre; Michelle Harris-Genge from Women’s Network PEI; Dianne Porter from PEI’s then-branch of LEAF; Lisa Murphy, Executive Director of the PEI Advisory Council on the Status of Women; and Kirstin Lund from Justice Options for Women and what would become the Coalition for Women’s Leadership — and then also the Chairperson of the Advisory Council on the Status of Women.
Fun fact that Dianne Porter had been a past Chairperson of the Advisory Council on the Status of Women and Kelly Robinson would become our Chairperson about six years later. And Michelle Harris-Genge now is director of the Interministerial Women’s Secretariat that funds the Advisory Council.
It is thanks to the resilience and collaboration in the feminist community in PEI that so many of the organizations that came together to protest the 2006 funding cuts and changes are still active and thriving.
