Thank you, Minister, for being here today.
I'm glad you started by talking about the Daughters of the Vote. I thought it was a particularly striking sight to sit there in the gallery yesterday and see the young lady who was taking up my seat and the other women from across this country in all 338 seats in Parliament yesterday. I had the opportunity to really get to know my Daughter of the Vote in the months working up to yesterday, and we had the opportunity to sit and have lunch yesterday as well. Her name is Meghan Bottomley. She's a fourth year political science student from McGill. She's a very intelligent and politically driven young lady.
As you know, despite Parliament's having done very well this past election by electing some more women, we're still very far from gender parity. Also, as you know, I sat on the electoral reform committee, and this discussion came up quite a bit there. I wasn't, however, always convinced that that alone was going to get us closer to having gender parity without other particular mechanisms in place and other things that need to be done to modernize Parliament.
What are you, as the Minister of Democratic Institutions, doing to make sure that we increase the chances of women who would like to run for politics? We know they succeed and do very well once they are here, but it's the decision to run that troubles so many and that is difficult to make. What suggestions do you have in mind?