My name is June MacDonald. I'm one of those rare breeds. I'm in a minority. I was born in Toronto. There are not too many of us.
I'm a retired college teacher of medical microbiology. About 20 years ago, I attended a talk by a woman named Doris Anderson. She said that women in European countries had better policies for women than we did. She said it was because they elected more women, and they elected more women because of proportional representation, or PR. I had never heard that. I had no idea that we voted differently from the majority of other democracies, so I got interested in this issue.
I am pleased that I am able to address you and that you are a committee based on how we voted proportionally. That is really very nice, but you're not proportionally based on demographics. If you were, six of you would be women. I think there are three. We need a few more. This is such an important committee, and it is an important committee for women.
It was mentioned that we're at 26% in Parliament and that the average for PR countries is 25%. I'd just like to point out that that is across almost 200 countries. It ranges from 63% to maybe 6%. It's a straight average. I think what Canadians expect and want is to be in the top 10 or 20 countries. The top 10 countries range from 63% to 41.5%. I think we should be at around 40%, considering the number of women in the workforce, their education, and their ability. We're really not using our human potential by not having at least 40% women in Parliament.