I wasn't given explicit directions about precisely what you wanted me to talk about, other than gender parity and gender representation on cultural and arts boards, so I'm going to talk very briefly about the sorts of things that I'm happy to take questions on.
First, I think it's clearly important to be concerned with diverse representation on these boards, particularly as recipients of federal government funding. The nature of accountability that the government needs to provide to the representativeness and the fairness of both the process, but also the outcome, of board membership, is critical really. A number of countries around the world are moving towards gender quotas, to gender targets, specifically. Indeed, one of the commentators has called it a kind of quota fever around the world. We see quotas being used in terms of electoral systems, and also increasingly in terms of corporate boards. So we have a measure in Canada, introduced in Canada, but Norway is really the leader in this having introduced the requirement of 40% women across all kinds of public and private boards in addition to electoral representation.
There are, of course, a number of studies about the process of these placements and increases of women and what they're able to say about changes in perceptions of women in leadership roles, and also with respect to the kinds of decision-making that happen at a particular institution. We could talk a bit more about that.
My primary expertise is in constitutional law, in equality law and theory. Of course, there's always great concern about whether the idea of some kind of external structuring of the number of women on boards raises equality problems, as opposed to being a response to equality issues. I think it's clear from our equality law that there is much support constitutionally for a notion of equality that is substantive and understands different kinds of treatments in the name of equality, and supports affirmative action measures as features of equality.
Maybe I'll just end there and take questions. I would argue that it's very clear that it's sustainable to have some kind of government regulation of board membership under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and some people would go further and argue that there may be an affirmative obligation on the government to take positive measures, in light of its international human rights obligations for full participation of women in public life, to ensure that we see higher representation of women, and other under-represented groups, other equity groups, in these kinds of institutions, on these sorts of boards.