Industry committee  In the regulations...?

Industry committee  What I was saying was that it was not in the legislation itself.

Industry committee  We know that when it comes to visible minorities and indigenous women, they are not at 29%. In fact they are below the representation that you would like to have in most of the industries. We didn't do a specific look. We will be looking at indigenous women when we look at women entrepreneurs and the innovation questions, but we did not do a specific deep look.

Industry committee  I'm on the advisory committee.

Industry committee  I don't have the report in front of me, because I don't speak on behalf of the diversity council, but when you look at the statistics on the number of visible minorities—they weren't segregated by women or men—the percentage of visible minorities on boards has been dropping as opposed to rising.

Industry committee  Absolutely. One should not assume that if you create gender parity, you will necessarily get parity of all the representative groups. I think it applies for both men and women. I think there's an under-representation of visible minority and indigenous men and women. When we're looking at women, absolutely you have to take a slice down through and not assume that all women are equally represented when you add women to a board or when you're increasing the participation of women in senior executive positions in government.

Industry committee  Right. If the bill is put forward as trying to increase gender diversity, sending a signal in the legislation would be very important.

Industry committee  Absolutely not. Diversity should be given a broad definition. However, if you want to send a signal that you want to increase women's participation to 30% or 50%, you must make it clear that this is what your goal is, because you can have diversity on a board, or you can say that you have a diverse board, and yet you will not have the gender parity or the gender representation you want.

Industry committee  Absolutely.

Industry committee  I think you also want to look at.... When you're looking at industry, you also want representation from regions and representation that differs based on age and background. When you add more women, for example, you will bring diversity, but you also have to be mindful of the other subgroups within women or men that may not equally share in that.

Industry committee  Thank you. I will be very brief on this. I'm coming at this from a totally different part of the bill and from a totally different perspective as I was asked to do. Just to let you know, the centre works on advancing women's leadership in all sectors through research programs for advancing women, looking at barriers and opportunities, and creating awareness and partnerships.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I think one of the things that is important is that women need role models, particularly young women. It's important that they see members of Parliament who are women, see what they're doing, and see that they can behave authentically with who they are, and that they don't necessarily have to act like men.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That's good.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  You can have a spirited debate without necessarily having heckling, and you see that in a lot of spheres. Lawyers do a good job of doing this by being respectful in the courtroom but still having a very significant debate with their esteemed colleague across the table. I think spirited debate is great and everyone wants to see that and to see that passion.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Without reference to specific rules, I think the status quo around the culture of combativeness will continue to discourage younger women and women in general, and people from some of the different cultural backgrounds in which that is not the way they operate and not the way they're accustomed to operating.