Speaking of citizen participation, I see we're past the time when we're supposed to have begun that portion of the evening. I'll be quite brief, so that we can get to that, because that's the most important part of what we're doing here today.
I have one quick question for each of our witnesses. Then I'll give away any time I have remaining, so we can get to the people.
Professor Tremblay, one of the recommendations that you make in your brief that we have here in front of us is that each party be required to ensure equal representation of men and women who run for office. Certainly that's a wonderful goal. It's certainly one that all parties should be doing more to encourage women to run for nominations within their party.
Of course, one of the challenges with saying that each party is required to ensure equal representation from each gender is the fact that all parties.... I know my party and I believe all parties obviously have nomination processes where it's open for anyone that wants to run. Often these nomination processes can be some of the most contentious parts of our democracy, and the most subject to complaints about fairness and these kinds of things.
How does that get put into practice? If there are 338 seats, that would mean we would require each party to have 169 men and 169 women on the ballot in an election. Let's say we've now elected the candidates for 318 of them and there's already 169 women that have been chosen to be candidates for one of the parties. Then you're telling the last 20 ridings to nominate someone and they all must be men.
I would assume there might be a woman somewhere in one of those ridings who was really intent on running and who's going to be a bit upset that she doesn't have that opportunity now. How would you suggest that be put into practice so the parties could do that fairly?
I'm honestly trying to see how it would work in practice. It's a great goal and one we should do everything we can to encourage, but I'm at a loss to see how that would work in practice when it comes to a party nomination.
Do you have any thoughts on that?