It is ironic to say the least.

The federal government has announced that Canada will be making international maternal and child health a top priority at June's G8 meeting.

The fact that the summit will cost Canadians $1 billion for security is ironic enough. This money could have been far better spent on maternal and child health.

What is also ironic is that we are making a commitment to improve international maternal and child health when we could be doing so much more here in Canada.

Yes we have to do more throughout the world. We also have to question why it is only women and children in the developing world that will benefit from the federal government's newfound interest in gender, poverty and health.

Notwithstanding this new international commitment, the federal government has worked tirelessly since its election to remove gender equality from domestic programs. It has done everything in its power to stop women's organizations from conducting research and advocacy on inequality.

The double standard does not end there. Canada is among the wealthiest nations in the world, yet there are many preschool-age children that live in homes where there is not always enough food. There are many mothers in Canada who live in inadequate housing. Infant mortality rates in Canada are higher than in many other industrialized countries with mortality rates in low-income neighborhoods almost double those in other ones.

The federal government is saying that the international solutions to maternal and child health problems are "not intrinsically expensive." This holds true for Canadian women and children as well: Providing safe drinking water, addressing the affordable housing crisis, and funding organizations that support women and children are all relatively inexpensive compared to the health and social costs of poverty in Canada, which are estimated at more than $20 billion per year.

Despite these realities, we have made little progress on poverty reduction for women and children since the unanimous passage of the 1989 House of Commons resolution to end child poverty in Canada by the year 2000. Aboriginal women and children are especially left out of our government's priorities, with one in four First Nations children growing up in poverty.

To put the full consequences of this indifference into perspective, imagine a city the size of Winnipeg full of children: That is the number of our kids who live in poverty in Canada today.

As a country, we have the ability to take decisive action to end this cycle of marginalization,

The 2009 budget was a lost opportunity to make a difference for women and children living in poverty. It included no improved child benefit, no spending on childcare, no plan for affordable housing, no funding to tackle violence against women and no expanded access to EI for non-traditional workers.

It is time we made a difference for women and children here at home in Canada.