Exactly as the speakers in the previous session mentioned, some of the biggest challenges we're seeing right now are with the most fragile or perhaps regressive democracies. I believe they call them shallow. They are the ones who have taken steps at an architectural level very quickly and have either not had the cultural change underpinning them or been genuinely inclusive. There is a quick-fix option that I think we're seeing that is not resulting in sustainable results.
What does that mean for women's representation, women's inclusion and its connection to this issue? Specifically to your question, if there were to be an institution set up, I would, number one, want to ensure that it's not very narrowly defined as being only, for example, political party strengthening or candidate strengthening. I think it has to be, as many other speakers have referenced, broadly inclusive of civil society. It would also be crucial that staff there understand, and the programming reflect, a really sophisticated understanding of different contexts and different ways and different responses for supporting women, i.e., when they are appropriate and when they are not.
A great deal of study and scholarship experience has been gathered on, for example, saying that different types of quotas are more likely to work in different contexts. We need to make sure we understand that. We need to understand the different types of support that women's civil society networks are more likely to need to receive than either mixed or primarily male-dominated civil society networks. We need to have a level of sophistication and understanding about how to do this embedded in any institution.
I think Canada's far better placed to do this than almost any other country I have worked with. I mean, we have members of the Canadian Armed Forces who know how to do gender-based analysis plus. The national action plan was generated through your committee, overseen through this committee, and done with massive consultation across the country. There are people who have the expertise on this and who can do more than say that women's rights are important and we must protect those as a means of ensuring inclusion. I'd say there should be a real depth of expertise and a professionalization of that service within any future institution or set of institutions.