Thanks. You've definitely opened the conversation up, and I'm going to take a piece of that opportunity, but not a whole chunk of it.
I did think about what we would want the federal government to do. I want to reiterate the point that it's critical to be clear about what is or isn't a gender equity measure. To loosely categorize legislation that essentially isn't really about gender equity as responding to a gender equity concern is, as I said before, dangerous because it obfuscates the fact that something that substantively makes a real difference isn't being done. Framing this as a bill that somehow addresses issues around gender equity in the current cabinet composition is a mistake, and it's a mistake of significant ideological character. I want to make that point clear.
In terms of what the government can be doing, there are lots of things governments can do. I'm going to narrow it specifically on the issue of women and leadership, and women in cabinet positions. One of the ways the government can show leadership in a substantive way is to talk more fully about what gender equity is. I have to say, to respond to a question about women in the cabinet by saying simply “because it's 2015” loses a key leadership moment to articulate and shape opinion about what it means to actually have women in positions of equality, in positions of leadership and power.
The framing of this legislation I think is, at minimum, a lost opportunity to do some important public education and show some leadership on substantive measures such as thinking about whether you want to have a kind of quota system, a formal commitment every time in some way the government binds itself through some form of policy statement—or even a bill like this—to equal representation of gender, or thinking about the range of particular cabinet positions that are being given to women, or about the placement, for example, of the ministry for Status of Women in the hierarchy.
This bill doesn't remove categories; there isn't now just one type of minister. If you parse this bill in light of other pieces of legislation with which it interacts, you have three differently constituted or statutorily defined categories. To engage more fully with the positions that women are occupying and have that conversation more explicitly is an important piece of dealing with gender inequity in leadership. To prioritize pay equity for women more broadly across Canadian society and not simply in terms of women in the cabinet, to move that up on the legislative agenda, would show the kind of commitment that some of the rhetoric around this legislation professes to adhere to.
Really, there's no gender substance, no equity substance on the basis of gender equality, to this legislation. It's important not to talk about it as if that's what it's about, and to talk about where the decision points are, in terms of changing the profile of women's participation in leadership.