Status of Women Committee on June 19th, 2018

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you, Yolaine. I am very fortunate to have an incredible, supportive husband as well.

Ms. Torosian, Bill C-76 lays out party spending limits for future elections. Can you see ways that this potentially could harm women in their attempt to obtain office? I'm thinking that the party will have fewer resources to use in seeking female candidates and promoting these female candidates.

What's your opinion of this piece of legislation with regard to party spending limits?

[Susan Torosian]

Sorry; just for clarification on your question, is it in regard to party spending limits?

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

That's correct.

[Susan Torosian]

Okay. I'm not sure if I have a point of view on that. I'm not quite clear on the question.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Sure. Going forward, political parties will have access to fewer resources in future elections than they have had previously. Is there any way you can see that this will be an impediment to their supporting women in election campaigns?

[Susan Torosian]

I don't really have a point of view on that. I'm sorry.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Okay. My second question is with regard to foreign funding.

Do you feel that women's ambitions for office are negatively affected as a result of foreign funding playing a part in federal elections? Do you think that foreign organizations could be a negative aspect in terms of being used to campaign against women or being used to defeat women? Do you see this legislation, Bill C-76, as a potentially negative aspect as well?

[Susan Torosian]

I think it's an interesting question that I have not thought about. It's an angle I haven't really honestly thought about. I know our CEO has spoken before the procedure and House affairs committee about Bill C-76 and foreign funding. I really wouldn't have any further comment, other than that.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Okay

Despite what we've heard about women being statistically less likely to say they're interested in politics, an analysis of voter turnout during the 2011 federal general election on your website notes that women participated at a higher rate than men.

Can you explain why women seem to vote more than men in elections, despite the fact that they're under-represented in other political activities?

[Susan Torosian]

Thank you for your question. I think it's an interesting question, and I actually asked the same question myself in preparing for coming to this committee.

We don't really have a thorough answer, but if you look at the Statistics Canada studies, you'll see that women tend to live longer than men, and in my speech I did mention that women generally vote at higher rates until they reach the age of 65. Then, between 65 and 75, they tend to be at parity, and then when they're 75 and older, they tend to vote at a lower rate.

The hypothesis would be that as we age, we face mobility disabilities and so forth, so there may be an issue in getting to the voting booth for women as they age, as they live longer. That's really the only explanation we have at this point.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Excellent. Thank you so much.

Now we're moving on to Kennedy Stewart for seven minutes.

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby South, BC]

Thanks very much. If you can indulge me for a second, the great political philosopher John Rawls uses the metaphor of a veil of ignorance and talks about how we should design our rules so that we actually don't know our own characteristics.

Unfortunately, the way we design our rules is that we do know our characteristics, and people design rules to favour themselves and people who are like themselves. We're in this situation with the Canada Elections Act. We're talking a lot about how if we have only 25% women in the House of Commons and we have only 25% women in local governments, it means there's something wrong with the rules, because there seems to be an equal aptitude to get into these races, and I think we have to embrace that.

I know this committee has been working on these problems for some time, and I do think it's not that women aren't willing to come forward but that the rules, especially within the political parties, are keeping them from achieving 50% or parity in candidacies, and eventually seats.

To Mr. Fraser's point, we don't really know what goes on in party nominations. They do in other countries. In the U.S., you have primaries and you have all the data you need there, but we don't know here. My own academic work has been to get data from parties, which they're very reluctant to give up, but then you find, for example, as we found in British Columbia, that men are six times more likely than women to win a nomination race.

That's what we need to do here. If we can't agree on quotas and we can't agree on other measures, at least we can agree on getting better data. Subsection 476.1(1) of the Canada Elections Act is about the notice of nomination contest. Each party has to report under paragraphs (a), (b), (c), and (d). Paragraph 476.1(1)(c) says you have to have the name and address of each nomination contestant, so you could simply have it ask for name, gender, and other aspects. I think it's entirely appropriate that we talk about intersectionality as well.

I think gender is a long-outstanding issue. Of course in Canada we brag about our multiculturalism, yet our offices are often devoid of any kind of multiculturalism, and it's mostly guys like me, right? That also should be data that's collected so we can deeply understand and explain to people what's going on within nomination contests.

That was a bit of a rant, but if all of you had some comments, that would be fantastic.

Thank you.

[Susan Torosian]

If I could speak for Elections Canada, certainly data makes for better decision-making and informs all of us, so if that were something that Parliament wished to change in the act, certainly Elections Canada would be happy to administer it.

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby South, BC]

Thanks.

Are there any other comments?

[Yolaine Kirlew]

Thank you for your question and your context. I know that FCM is keenly working towards grappling with the data component and making sure that in the next cycle we're intentional about what we're looking for and how we can then extrapolate from the experience of women and use that in a meaningful way.

When I think about what we've done thus far and how we're looking at diversity, we're intentional about making sure that we have the voices that are not at the table from a multiculturalism perspective. We just completed Diverse Voices for Change, which is an initiative to get indigenous, racialized, and immigrant women, who are about 2% of the elected population right now, more engaged at the local level. It's also to make sure they have tools and to make sure that in their communities they're aware that the system structure of politics at the municipal level wants to engage with them, wants to know what the barriers are, wants to know how enabling through tool kits strengthens their capacity to step forward and put themselves out there, so to speak.

We've just gone through two or three years of that iteration, so in the next election this fall we'll be able to see how effective this process was and gather data to see if this is working. and if it's not working, whether we need to tweak an entire system or just components of what we currently have.

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby South, BC]

The tricky thing about collecting data is that we collect lots on winners but we don't collect anything on losers, people who go into the contest and don't win, so then you can't compare the two groups, and that's just basic stats. You need it on both sides, and the more data you could have....

For example, in the studies I've seen, we've looked at 45 different variables. We've looked at networks and we've looked at how many people you sign up and all that kind of stuff, and we find that actually it just comes down to gender. There's a lot of bias within the selection groups, and it's everywhere.

I always think of Elections Canada as one of the best organizations in the world in the elections context. Countries everywhere come to Elections Canada to look at what we do and how we do it, and I think it would provide a great international gesture to say we're pushing others to do this.

Are there any other things you can think of that would help your job and help us to understand how nominations work in Canada?

[Susan Torosian]

I was going to add something, but not so much around the nominations. I did hear this when I attended the campaign school. Granted, this is one school that I've attended. I've not done a lot of these events, but one of the things I did hear was that there was a lot of confusion around the rules and running a campaign. It's very complicated.

One role that's quite important for any candidate is that of the official agent. The official agents are volunteers. It's an unforgiving job. There were some recommendations made by the former CEO to actually provide compensation for official agents, and this would go a long way in supporting candidates, particularly new candidates, women candidates, diverse candidates, people new to the process, because it is a complicated web. It's great to have somebody who's on your team who knows what they're doing and is trained and accredited in that field. I think that could go a long way to levelling the playing field for many candidates.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

You have 30 more seconds.

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby South, BC]

I'll be very quick.

I know Elections British Columbia now collects information on municipal elections. Maybe you could ask other provincial bodies that collect information on local government elections to actually also collect this kind of information. Then we'd all be able to see what happens everywhere else in Canada.

I know I'm reversing roles here and I'm sorry about that, but I do think the more data the better. It'll help us make informed decisions.

Thank you very much for your testimony.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Excellent.

We're now going to move over to Bernadette Jordan for seven minutes.

[Bernadette Jordan, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Thank you, Chair.

Before I get to our witnesses, I would just like to thank Kennedy Stewart from this side of the table. We don't necessarily always agree on things, but to me, anyone who puts their name forward deserves our thanks, and I know this is his last day today. Thank you for representing your community. We really appreciate it.

[Some hon. members]

Hear, hear!

[Bernadette Jordan, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Now I'm going to go to our witnesses.

First, to our two representatives from FCM, do you have the percentage of women who are elected municipally in the country? Not just mayors, but...?

[Yolaine Kirlew]

Right now it's at 26% in terms of 2015, I would say, in the data collection that we have. Then 16% are mayors and 28% are councillors. Further to that—