Evidence of meeting #108 for Status of Women in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was nomination.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
Eva Nassif Liberal Vimy, QC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I want to thank the witnesses for their presentations.
My first question is for Ms. Childs.
I took a look at your research and your areas of interest. Your biography says that your research criticizes the idea put forward by academics and politicians that the identify of elected representatives is not important.
If I understand you correctly, you believe the opposite. You think it is important, but they do not. Can you please summarize your point of view?
5:15 p.m.
Prof. Sarah Childs
I'm sorry; with the translation of that, it was rather difficult to get the core of the question.
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
Eva Nassif Liberal Vimy, QC
You think the identify of elected representatives is important. I read in your biography, however, that academics and politicians maintain that the identify of elected officials is not important.
What are your thoughts on that? Please explain your point of view.
5:20 p.m.
Prof. Sarah Childs
When you ask politicians publicly whether they think the House of Commons should be more diverse, there is increasing acceptance of that claim. What I was querying, if I understood you correctly, is that often that doesn't translate into the efforts within political parties that would be necessary to actually increase women's participation throughout the party.
It's very easy to stand up and say we want more women and it's very easy to put on training for women, but really it's about whether political parties fundamentally address the barriers to women's political participation.
It's very important for political parties to engage in recruitment rhetoric and recruitment drives, but they need to change their parties. In very similar ways to what Bill Cross was saying in his opening statement, parties need to change how women participate within the political parties so that they are ready and able to participate when a selection comes up.
5:20 p.m.
Prof. Rosie Campbell
Was that a question for me? Yes.
I really do agree. I think what Sarah was saying is that it's very easy to be rhetorically committed to increasing diversity, and parties often say they care about having different people represented, but then don't do anything about it. I think what she was saying is that it's often skin deep.
5:20 p.m.
Liberal
Eva Nassif Liberal Vimy, QC
My next question is for you again, Ms. Campbell.
I was reading about your areas of interest. You said that the public finds certain politicians in the new political class disconnected. Recent evidence suggests that politicians are primarily from the same social class, the privileged class, despite major efforts to increase the diversity of elected representatives.
Are you saying that, despite a record of electing more diverse representatives or MPs, their economic status is a key factor that determines the public perception of them?
Could you elaborate on that?
5:20 p.m.
Prof. Rosie Campbell
It's really important to note that populist arguments often hinge on the idea that there is an elite that's disconnected from the people, and it's easier to make that argument if there is an elite that looks very different from the average voter. For example, in the U.K., at least in the post-war period, more working-class people entered politics through trade unions than they do now. These days it's very difficult to be elected as a politician in Britain if you don't have a university degree and if you haven't come from a relatively privileged background, and that creates a disconnect.
It's really important to combine measures to improve the representation of women and ethnic minorities with measures to think about how we make parliaments more accessible to people who don't come from privileged backgrounds.
5:20 p.m.
Liberal
Eva Nassif Liberal Vimy, QC
Would you go so far as to say that, in striving for diversity among candidates, we should strongly consider those from a less privileged background, from the working class, in other words? As you just said, in the past, we used to elect people from the working class.
Is that just an observation or do you really think that is something we need to do?
5:20 p.m.
Prof. Rosie Campbell
Absolutely. I don't think it's a zero-sum game. Clearly there are a lot of working-class women, so we should be doing these things at the same time. At least in Britain, it's also about a lot of people accessing politics by doing things like free internships. Some of the routes into politics and the amount of money or time spent to get selected mean that the pool is narrow. People often give up paid employment even just to get selected, let alone for their campaign.
All those things inhibit who can stand. We ought to think about measures to actually make money less important in terms of who stands and who can participate.
5:25 p.m.
Liberal
Eva Nassif Liberal Vimy, QC
Ms. Thomas, what changes to our democratic institutions do you think are needed to increase the number of women candidates?
5:25 p.m.
Prof. Melanee Thomas
I would echo everything that has been said by my colleagues about political parties. I know we're running out of time for my answer, but one thing that would probably be very effective for all of those electoral district associations that required a search committee and then didn't form one would be some kind of mandatory reporting and disclosure that would require people who are doing this kind of work to actually say what they did. That could then be made publicly available, because the public can judge it as it sees fit, in any direction it wants.
That's a really effective thing for things like corporate boards as well. In Parliament, if you just tell us what you did and why you did it, people will then be able to form their own judgments on that. Social desirability will nudge people in a direction that will make it more open and more diverse.
5:25 p.m.
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Pam Damoff
Thank you.
Given our time, I think that's it for our questions. I have a couple of things to go over just before we finish.
Thank you to all the witnesses, both via video conference and for being here today to share your knowledge and testimony with us. It will be most helpful as we move forward.
Committee, our next meeting is on Thursday, June 14. We're continuing our study on the barriers facing women in politics. Ms. Malcolmson will be chairing the first hour, and I'll be chairing the second hour. Our chair won't be here on Thursday.
I would remind you to think about the email and a letter received from the chairman of the House Committee on Women in Parliament of the National Assembly, Nigeria, so that we can make a decision at the next meeting under committee business.
Do you want me to go through all the witnesses? For the next meeting, our witnesses are the Honourable Deborah Grey, a former MP. We have two witnesses from the Groupe Femmes, Politique et Démocratie, Madame Esther Lapointe and Madame Thérèse Mailloux; the Honourable Joanne Bernard, former minister from Nova Scotia; Jenelle Saskiw, former councillor and mayor of Marwayne, Alberta; and Karen Sorensen, the mayor of Banff.
With that, we are adjourned.