Status of Women Committee on June 19th, 2018

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Okay.

When a nomination is happening, most candidates are asked to go through the EDA president when they have an interest in running. That's not necessarily all of the people who actually run, but the ones who have an interest in running will go through the EDA presidents and let them know about their interest before they go on. Would you be able to get that information from these presidents? What would be the process in order for you to gather that information? I'm not talking about the ones who run for nomination, but about the ones who even express an interest at first.

[Jeff Merrett]

I can only talk to what the requirements are in the Elections Act today, and there is no requirement for EDAs to disclose that type of information to us. That would require a legislative change for additional reporting on nomination contests. Currently they only disclose the names of the people who enter the contest.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Do you have the numbers? I heard them recently, but I think you might have said different numbers. Can you clarify again how many women ran for nominations, and how many women won the nominations?

[Jeff Merrett]

We don't have gender information on nomination contests, just for candidates.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Even though you have names, you haven't necessarily done that—

[Jeff Merrett]

The gender isn't identified on the form. It could be done roughly, but it wouldn't be a perfect science. We'd have to make a gender assignment based on the names, so it would probably give a ballpark, but it wouldn't be precise.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

I know Marc hasn't asked any questions, so would you like some time?

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

Okay. I'll ask along the same lines. I wonder if you have any specific recommendations, because we've heard a lot that the nomination is a party responsibility and that there are a lot of barriers there. Have you made any recommendations? Do you have any studies, any link to how we could improve the transparency of nominations?

[Susan Torosian]

That's a great question. Numerous recommendations and studies have been made in the past, going as far back as the Lortie commission in 1991, which made a number of recommendations around the nomination contest. Many of these recommendations are not in play today. Several of them look as if they would be very relevant, based on the conversations of some of the other witnesses I've heard speak before this committee.

Quite a bit of work has been done in this area already. I know that's dated material, but there are other studies as well, going back to the Special Committee on Electoral Reform. Most recently, a recommendation was made to amend the CEA, the Canada Elections Act, to create financial incentives for political parties to run more women.

I know there are diverse views on quotas and so forth; there are those who are for it and those who are against it. Ultimately, these are decisions for Parliament to make, but there is some literature and documentation around it.

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

Madam Chair, can we have those two documents sent to the clerk for the study?

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Yes, if you could forward those documents to our clerk, it would be very helpful.

We have finalized our last panel for today. Once again I'd like to thank Carole Saab and Yolaine Kirlew from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, and Susan Torosian and Jeff Merrett from Elections Canada.

We are going to suspend for 30 seconds, if you don't mind. I'm going to ask everyone to leave who is not a member of the committee or the one staff person permitted per committee member.

[Proceedings continue in camera]