Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you for being here.
Partisan questions sometimes come up.
Ms. Shen, I had a strong reaction to what you said regarding services for members with young children. I have a little girl who will be four years old. So she was born during my first term as member of Parliament. We formed a group of four members and fought for at least a family room to breastfeed and for all Parliament washrooms—both women's and men's—to be equipped with a changing table. It took a long time, but we have finally managed to get it done.
That said, there are still barriers that make things difficult for women with young children. The parliamentary daycare gives priority to members' children, but it does not accept children under the age of 18 months. In addition, we don't have access to it if we do not pay for five days of daycare per week. However, those of us who do not live in the Ottawa-Gatineau region are often here only three days a week.
Christine Moore and I have created a nanny service. It is pretty nice to be able to have our child in the House of Commons. That is quite tolerated in the case of children under the age of two, but this was not the case when we had our children in 2014 or 2015.
Something else made me react in Bill C-76, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act, which talks about the “treatment of candidates' expenses”. This is an improvement, but it is still stated that those are expenses for the care of a person with an incapacity or a dependent. I cannot believe that, in the reimbursement of expenses, having a child is considered a handicap for the mother or father who would like to run for office.
In short, progress has been made, and I hope things will continue to move in that direction. I may have misunderstood, but I also hope the notion of handicap could be changed.
The two witness panels—especially the Status of Women Canada representatives—talked a lot about initiatives taken for the advancement of women. Can you tell us a bit more about unconscious biases? Is relevant training planned on the Hill? You have mostly talked about the situation within the federal government. People talk about intellectual self-defence. Could intellectual self-defence courses be provided for women?
Women have been consulted through programs aimed at encouraging them to run for office. They said they did not know how to respond to degrading comments, both by women and by men. When they hear those kinds of comments, they freeze up and don't know how to respond. That has happened in committee. It is also because we are young women—at least I am. We have not received training or information on that, and I think that is a failure.
Another issue is that the media do not show female models. That is a problem because people are under the impression that no women are interested in politics, but some are, although there is still a long way to go. Is any funding set aside for interviews with women in politics to show that it is done, that it is positive, enjoyable and useful?