I'm going to add a few additional considerations to supplement Dr. Thomas's remarks about hybridity and core parliamentary functions.
First, I want to speak very briefly about the downstream impacts of a more inclusive Parliament, and then I'd also like to share insights from some new research about MPs' attitudes towards hybridity.
First, I just want to draw out more explicitly why it matters that hybridity can help to make Parliament more inclusive and representative, as Dr. Thomas has just highlighted.
There are lots of good reasons to care whether Parliament is diverse and inclusive, but what I want to emphasize is that diversity in terms of who serves in Parliament has an impact on the substantiative issues that get addressed in politics. Research repeatedly demonstrates that who a representative is and how they experience the world shapes the issues and the positions that they will bring forward in political debate.
My own research confirms that in parliamentary debate in Canada, women MPs are dramatically more likely than men, regardless of party affiliation, to put women's issues on the political agenda and to bring women's perspectives into the parliamentary conversation. Having in place measures that make Parliament more inclusive, such as hybridity, helps to ensure that we're not missing the perspectives of the folks who might otherwise be systematically excluded from participating in Parliament.
The second thing I want to highlight is that there is actually a very high level of support among MPs for the continuation of at least some aspects of the hybrid parliamentary model. As part of a larger research project, looking at the family-friendliness of parliamentary institutions, my colleague at the University of Calgary, Susan Franceschet, and I surveyed MPs this past summer about their attitudes towards various measures that could be implemented to make it easier for parliamentarians to reconcile political and family life.
We're still in the very early stages of this project and we haven't run any kind of detailed analysis or published our results, but there are some top-line findings that I am able to share that I think are important for the conversation we're having here today.
First, there is an overwhelming support among MPs—