I think you have to be realistic about the world. My daughter turned 29 last week, and this place was very welcoming to her 29 years ago.
I remember the day I brought her in. She spit up all over John Fraser, the Speaker and it was about five minutes to two. She was like the rock star because she was the first child born. It was a huge, positive thing. John Fraser invited me to bring her over to the Chambers just before question period. Then, as babies do, she had a big blast of white crap. She shot him, and he didn't have any baby towels on. It was two minutes to two and all of a sudden his black robe was covered in white baby sputum, so he ran and changed it.
The bottom line is that it's a difficult life. For most of her early years I was a single parent. I didn't have a spouse. I remarried when she was about seven, and that was absolutely fantastic because then you have the support system.
It would be remiss to leave the public with the impression that this is not a family-friendly place, because it's a lot more family friendly than working at the steel company, for example, or a lot of other work places. I think I'm trying to direct the conversation toward the whole parliamentary precinct, because as members of Parliament we can choose our hours to a great degree. We can't choose the committee hours per se, but committees can also be responsive.
I think the biggest challenge for a family-friendly environment is for the employees of members of Parliament, not for the members of Parliament themselves, because we are the boss and we can make accommodations.
Like Christine said, you end up.... For the first year and a half I had a crib in my office, so I made accommodations. There were times that Pat Carney.... I remember one time. In those days we had the circular revolving doors, and we were all rushing out of a vote. It had been a long vote, and my daughter wasn't feeling well. You could extend the hours of the child care to maybe 7 p.m. or 7:30 p.m.
It was a six o'clock vote, and she had a fever. There was no baby stuff, so I gave her this grape juice. All that was in the anteroom was coffee, or cola, or stuff like that. I gave her grape juice. When we were coming out of the revolving door, right in the door, whoop, she had a giant grape juice explosion in the middle of the revolving door as everybody's rushing out from the vote. Barbie McDougall who was a minister at the time—I think she was foreign minister—ran and got her driver. She brought some water. She sat down with me and we cleaned the vomit up off the floor. People are willing to pitch in.
I go back to the fact that as a 29-year-old, she's very flexible now because she lived a life where she learned to sleep like a carney. She can sleep in a drawer. She sleeps like a baby anywhere now, so there are some positive aspects too.
Structurally you do need to look at child care hours, in particular child care for infants, and also the family-friendly policy as it applies to employees. Is there an overlay, and is there somebody you can go to if you feel your family hours are being disrupted because of your employment?