Thank you for the question.
I think fundamentally we need to encourage more women to run. My experience, especially when talking to young women and women from my area here in B.C., is that it's incredibly hard to convince them. You have to be honest with them that your commute is a minimum of 10 hours door to door, oftentimes much longer, and on top of that is the time that you have to spend away from a young infant for the demands of this job. It is a challenge.
If we can make Parliament more family friendly, we know it will increase women's participation. The Library of Parliament did a study. The report said that there are seven key factors that contribute to barriers that women face, and one of those key factors was the absence of family-friendly and gender-sensitive workplaces. It's vital that we address this for our future parliamentarians for representation and for equity.
A lot of the time I think we also miss the conversation around people with disabilities. This technology opens up the possibility for many people with disabilities to run and to be a member of Parliament, even though maybe their health or their disability might have disallowed that in the past.
I think it's critical that we look at this and really look at how we make Parliament more equitable and more accessible.