Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and good morning to all of your colleagues.
I was asked to say a few words about my work in Ontario at a time when I was a parent of a young child. I was a young woman, and I was the youngest person in the Ontario legislature. While my name is no longer synonymous with the word “young,” I am grateful for the opportunity to speak about the work I did a decade ago to make our legislature in Ontario more family friendly.
As I said then, and I am going to repeat it today, you shouldn't have to choose between being a good parent and a good parliamentarian. Let me speak from the heart and from experience as I explain that.
When I was first elected in a by-election 10 years ago—in fact, just this past Sunday was my 10-year anniversary of being sworn in—I had eight days to move my family to Toronto, find an apartment, open two offices, begin work as a parliamentarian, and understand what I had fully gotten myself into. This was all done, of course, with the support of my family and a very dedicated staff. When it came to my unique needs as a young mother and an MPP, travelling five hours to and from Toronto, the legislative assembly really offered no support and no resources for finding what the other two speakers talked about, which is adequate child care, despite the urgency and despite my being a newcomer to Toronto with virtually no transition time. I found I was on my own.
To be truthful, for a period of two and a half years my office became a makeshift nursery to accommodate my growing baby and my demanding career, and I continued to search for child care. In the end, it was only with the support of my dedicated husband that I was able to find adequate care. My husband decided to sacrifice his career and stay at home to raise our daughter. Each week, usually late Sunday afternoon, the four of us—my husband, my daughter, our dog, and I—piled into our car in Ottawa and drove to Toronto for the entire week. This went on for the first few years of my daughter's life, until we started her in school at home in Ottawa and my husband was able to resume his career on Parliament Hill.
I look back at those days, and I am still worn out thinking of them. It is with semi-humour—because it is in part quite funny, and in other parts quite astonishing—that I say I'm not sure who took longer to get used to whom: the legislature to me, because it is an institution that has been in existence for over 250 years, since 1792, or me, the 31-year-old mother who showed up with a baby, to that institution, which is 250 years old.
I think we have to talk about some of the systemic barriers that women and young parents in general face. Obviously, we enjoy a parliamentary system that has endured the ages. It has produced good governments and great leaders. It has produced sound policies and often rigorous debate, but that doesn't mean our parliamentary system doesn't need a fine-tuning every once in a while to reflect the changes in our society.
In Ontario, making the legislature more family friendly did not mean we overhauled our parliamentary system or disrupted over 200 years of parliamentary tradition. Nor did it mean eroding government accountability tools, which are vital for good governance and effective opposition. Rather, it was more about refining and modernizing the way we conducted business in the assembly to better reflect our society and the real demands of being a good parliamentarian and a good parent.
Overall, improving the way the institution functions makes parliamentarians effective representatives and better policy-makers. In our case, the Ontario legislature would routinely begin at one o'clock in the afternoon and sit until 9:30 at night or even midnight, Monday through Thursday. We often would debate closure motions in the evenings for about three hours. A simple change to the standing orders, which was not actually that simple to make, required that we shift our hours to nine to six with evening sittings only by unanimous consent or in the last two weeks of the session. That ensured we had more reasonable work hours. I think it became abundantly clear that those measures made for a better balance in this assembly.
At the same time, and this is key, it did not compromise our debate time on actual legislation, committee work, or private members' business. This is absolutely fundamental, and I urge any changes that might be made to the House of Commons in this pursuit to respect the role of Parliament and the duties of all of its members, government and opposition.
Other common-sense initiatives we brought in at the time, which seem simple but weren't then, were changing tables and high chairs so that we would be more welcoming.
The one initiative our government of the day brought in that I did not agree with, and I still do not to this day, is moving question period into the morning. I urge the House of Commons against this for three reasons. I've noticed a decrease in the public attendance in the gallery throughout the years, making the legislature less transparent and accountable to the public. We must take into consideration our political staff and parliamentary staff who will be affected, and they will be. Finally, there is less preparation time for members of the opposition to respond to daily issues. I have never sat in government, but I imagine it's the same for the government members.
While making Parliament more family friendly is not only a women's issue, I think it is important that our assemblies respond to the reality that, now more than ever, women—young women and women with children—are making the decision to stand for public office.
We're winning in greater numbers and we're now a better reflection of our broader society. As I often say, it is not solely about getting more women elected, it is also about keeping us here.
I want to congratulate this committee for your thoughtful consideration of initiatives toward a family-friendly House of Commons. In 2016, we do not judge our ability or our electability by our last names, our genders, or our pay scales. But if there's one thing we can take away from trailblazers like Sheila Copps, Pat Carney, the Orange Crush, gender parity, and Rona Ambrose, is that women with families aren't slowing down in politics, we're just getting started.
I'm happy to take any questions you may have.