Thank you, Madam Chair.
First, I would like to apologize to everyone for being late. I was listening to Thomas Mulcair's speech, since today is his last day. He was a great leader, and was my leader for several years, so I wanted to say goodbye in person.
So here I am. I missed all of your presentations, but I am trying to catch up on what I missed through my colleagues' questions.
I wish I could say that women and men are treated fairly and equally in politics and that women do not need much help, but the fact is that women hold just 27% of the seats in the House of Commons in 2018, and just over 30% at the municipal level. You provided a few figures about their representation provincially. In reality, women do not necessarily come forward as candidates of their own imitative. It has also been shown that ads do not provide enough positive female role models.
Ms. Mailloux, I would like to hear your thoughts about female role models. Are there enough of them?
From what I heard, you spoke about mentoring. In 2017, at the municipal level, there were various groups that trained women to encourage them to run for office.
Do you think this kind of tool should be better organized and made available to women? In my own case, I did not make the decision myself to run for office. I did it because a friend convinced me. In the end, I thought why not. I am sure there are many other women in this situation. Finally, it is an exceptionally stimulating experience. If no one had pushed me to become a candidate, however, I would never have thought of doing it myself.
You talked about quotas. Not everyone around the table agrees with that, and that is fine. In Rwanda, for instance, 60% of the people who ran for office were women. It does seem, however, that the quotas imposed in various countries have had a major impact.
Can you give us your thoughts on this?