Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to our three witnesses for being here today.
Thank you to the members of the audience for coming out. It's my first time here in St. John's, and what a beautiful city. I wish we could stay a little longer to enjoy it a little more.
First off, Professor Bittner, I am a happy puppy today. That's all I'm going to say, because if you've been following any of my testimony, I've been looking for somebody to explain that the electoral system that we use is not necessarily the reason that women don't run for politics. I think your testimony today nailed it on the head. It's exactly what I've been trying to get out. There are many reasons that women don't get elected, and let's start with recruitment.
You mentioned what kinds of people are getting elected. I think that's a perfect example. It starts with the parties. Who are they recruiting as candidates? Once they've recruited a candidate under the current system, they have one candidate they're putting forward. If they're putting forward as candidates what we heard described in previous testimony as pale, stale males, which I found quite funny, well, guess what? That's what's going to be reflected.
You said that average Canadians looking at Parliament say, “I couldn't do that. Look, it's a whole bunch of older white lawyers who are all in Parliament.” But when they see school teachers and farmers and women and younger men and aboriginals, they say, “You know what? I could do that too.”
That goes to my point of engagement. On engagement, we're not just looking to increase voter turnout: we're looking to increase people's interest in possibly running for office. Can you elaborate a little more? I know my colleague John talked about the fact that it's not necessarily one change in an electoral system that's going to fix our problem. We have a lot of little things that we can be doing. Perhaps you could elaborate a bit, because it seems as though you're going in the right direction.