Those are some of the statistics that we are all up against collectively in this room and elsewhere. We really appreciate the fact that the status of women committee is doing this kind of work to look very strategically at where women fare overall in Canada.
At the political level, the good news is that in the last election more women ran for office than they had in any other federal election in Canada's history. Between 28% and 29% of the candidates in the last federal election were women. That's good news, and it demonstrates that women are very keen to be involved.
One of the things that Equal Voice tries to challenge is the notion that women don't want to get involved in politics. In fact, the contrary is true. Because of who women are and who they care about and what they care about and how they live in their communities and how they live in their families, they are compelled to get involved. However, the ways in which they get involved and the kinds of doors they bang into or ceilings they may hit obviously make their own intentions and the translation of their interest into formal representation more difficult. Equal Voice has been employing three strategies to date to in fact increase the numbers and to encourage more women to feel equipped to run and also to win.
One of our more interesting projects of late is Experiences. I don't know if all of you know about Experiences. It is a federally funded project. In 2009 it was launched. It's a three-year project that is intended to encourage more women to get involved in the political process. The age range for Experiences is from about 13 to 24 years. What we encourage younger women to do is to hear from women leaders in their high schools and at the post-secondary level. We also encourage young women to sign up for a mentor. Many of you may have been approached to be a mentor so that you can share your experience and insight as someone who is living and breathing politics every day.
The Experiences program is intended to reach women from across the country and to get many of those who may be inclined to think about politics and those who don't to really engage in a more systematic fashion. We're very pleased to have the Experiences program. In my view, it is simply a drop in the bucket. There is so much to be done, but it's a really good start.
Another thing Equal Voice has done is launched the Canada Challenge. Some of you in this room were involved in the Canada Challenge. We've had two, one in 2006 and then another in 2008. The Canada Challenges are designed to invite federal leaders to demonstrate their political leadership so that in anticipation of a federal election they actually commit to working hard to improve the numbers within their own parties in terms of the numbers of women nominees.
We've successfully invited all federal party leaders to do that twice. Once was in 2006. Of course there was lots of anticipation about a federal election then, which ended up being in 2008. We did it again last year, in 2009, in anticipation of a federal election. And all the federal party leaders are now on record saying they want to work hard to improve the numbers of nominees within their own parties.
Finally, in a more recent development, Equal Voice has done a very soft launch of a campaign called “Be Her or Support Her”. That campaign is designed to reach out to the general public and to women in general to either consider running or to support another woman running.
We can talk more about those in the questions and answers.