Thank you so much to each and every one of you for being here.
Deb, I'm going to start with you. You won your first by-election in 1989, and then, of course, you served faithfully until 2004. That's quite the career. Then, of course, as you mentioned, you set some history along the way. Notably, you were the first female leader of the official opposition. I want to congratulate you on that and thank you for making an incredible path forward for those of us who get to follow in your footsteps.
In your opening remarks, you talked about quotas. One of the conversations that I've had with women, or one of the things that I've been told by them, is that when they get to the boardroom table, let's say, just to pick that as a scenario, the men don't wonder why they got there. They got there because of merit. The women around the table, however, wonder whether they got there because there was a quota put in place that allowed them to be there because of their gender or whether they got there based on merit. The quota actually breeds insecurity among the women at the table.
Further to this, the men are able to use this as an opportunity to attack the women or to question their credentials or why they are at the table. They're able to say to their female colleagues, “You're here because you're a woman. What do you actually know?”
There are these types of comments and festering that takes place, if you will. Can you comment further on why you believe quotas are actually to the disadvantage of women?