Evidence of meeting #110 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 elections.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Executive Director, Policy and Public Affairs, Elections Canada
If you personally fund those expenses, it will not contribute to your contribution limit, so there's an advantage there, but if you choose to pay for them out of the campaign funds, then it would eat into your—
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
Child care is expensive, and maybe you were living at home taking care of your children beforehand. If you use the campaign funds to do it, you would, in effect, be prevented from spending the campaign maximum on things like advertising and signs and that sort of thing. Is that right?
Executive Director, Policy and Public Affairs, Elections Canada
I'll let Jeff answer that.
Director, Regulatory Affairs and Systems, Elections Canada
No, personal expenses are not subject to the election expenses limit. There's no ceiling on them. You can spend as much as you want in those areas.
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
Okay, but if you use your campaign funds for those personal expenses, would that contribute to your campaign expenses exceeding the maximum allowable expenditures?
Director, Regulatory Affairs and Systems, Elections Canada
That's correct. Bill C-76 goes a bit further as well. If you do have those expenses, they're reimbursed at 90%, and there's a requirement that those funds have to go back to the candidate, so it's direct payment back to the candidate as well.
Liberal
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
That's great.
Shifting gears to FCM, we've heard a number of different witnesses describe municipal politics as a great stepping stone to different levels of politics. We've heard a lot of reasons anecdotally from some of our witnesses for choosing municipal politics, such as living close to home, having hours that aren't necessarily as demanding, and being able to have some predictability in the schedule. There's a whole host of reasons, but for the women who do use municipal politics as a springboard to a different level of government, does FCM track some of the people who have made that leap?
Executive Director, Policy and Public Affairs, Federation of Canadian Municipalities
That's a good question. We don't do any formal tracking by gender. We are very conscious of who in our provincial or federal counterparts has a municipal background. It would be interesting to look at that gender stat, so we'd be happy to do that in our work.
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
We're not necessarily empowered as a committee to tell FCM what to do—
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
—but is there something we can tell the Government of Canada to do that would help identify women who have made the leap to provincial or federal politics so we can figure out whether it is anecdotal or whether it is empirically proven that women who served as municipal councillors are more likely to run to be a member of a legislative assembly or a member of Parliament?
Executive Director, Policy and Public Affairs, Federation of Canadian Municipalities
We'll take that question and get back to you. I'm not sure what the most efficient way of getting that answer is, but we'll identify it and happily get back to you.
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
That's great.
Coming back to Elections Canada, in terms of the ability to run public education campaigns post-Bill C-76, how could we best support Elections Canada's work to ensure that programming you're delivering is not just a general “Get out and vote” but also specifically encourages women to run, or perhaps, given some of the evidence in the last panel, encourages young women to get involved in politics from the beginning? What can we do as a government to ensure these social outcomes are being worked on, given the ability of Elections Canada to run education campaigns?
Executive Director, Policy and Public Affairs, Elections Canada
That's a great question.
We have spent quite a bit of energy removing barriers to the voting process. It's really been a question of capacity for Elections Canada in terms of where we could have the greatest impact as well, so really it's around capacity and perhaps investing a little more in this area. It is an area we believe we could integrate into some of our current programming, but it's a capacity issue.
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
My final question, if I have time, is for the representative from Sioux Lookout. Very quickly, we've heard a lot of evidence that sort of put the burden, in my opinion, on the individual woman or the individual person in the community to support the woman who is thinking about running, which is great, and when people take that initiative, as you have, and go with the vigour you've described, it is amazing, but from the government's perspective, I don't like the idea of just saying, “Women who are interested, go and run.”
What can we do to have more people who are thinking about it actually take the plunge, as you have?
Third Vice-President and Councillor, Municipality of Sioux Lookout, Federation of Canadian Municipalities
Great. Thank you very much. That's a great question.
It is about structurally making sure that there is an obvious process to which all women have access, beginning from the education perspective from as early as childhood to make sure education articulates that leadership is diverse and that women bring with them needed capacities to be integrated into leadership.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Karen Vecchio
Excellent. Thank you so much.
We're now going to move over to Stephanie Kusie for her seven minutes.
Conservative
Stephanie Kusie Conservative Calgary Midnapore, AB
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Yolaine, I was very moved by your testimony. It is incredible what you've managed to achieve, and I want to provide you an opportunity to express any further ideas that you didn't have the opportunity to do previously.
Third Vice-President and Councillor, Municipality of Sioux Lookout, Federation of Canadian Municipalities
Sure. Thank you very much for that, Stephanie.
I really want to say that as women, we are not acculturated in this notion that running is for us and that running and winning are for us. It's something we need to do better, as a society and as governments, to make sure we articulate that and change the culture, the norm that politics is a male domain or that politics, being a public sphere, is only for a certain group. We really need to break that down, demystify it, and allow more conversation to be developed around it.
If we can encourage that piece, we'll see more individuals, diverse women from many backgrounds, more urban/rural candidates from different places taking on that role and stepping forward, as I have.
I want to see more Canadian women and girls believing they can. I personally do, and I know that for years that option never occurred, but it occurred once I had supports in my community saying “You're a leader. You're involved in so many ways. You inspire. I see the passion and the love you have for your community.”
Oftentimes we talk about leaders being in many ways shifty politicians. I don't like that. There are lots of great people who are in roles of leadership who also acknowledge that they can collaborate and are capable of going across the board and bridging gaps. Those skill sets are fundamentally important in true leadership.
Making sure the awareness piece is out there is one way to break down that barrier for women initially, and then it's to create a wider conversation about engagement.
Clergy in my community were very supportive of giving me opportunities to develop my speaking capacity, so perhaps collaborating with different clubs and organizations to engage women is another way, and it's usually cost-effective. These organizations are engaged in their communities, and they reach out to a wider group of young people, whether through Scouts or through leadership training, making sure those are available as well.
Women and girls need to hear they inherently have real value as people, and that value can then be added into different contexts and different phases throughout their seasons of life.
I remember going into the municipal office. I had a four-month-old baby and two six-year-olds at home, and I said, “But we're doing it”, and that was just it. I had a great partner who is a physician, but he understood the context of my capacity to add to my community, and he said, “I'm with you, babe”, so thank you to my husband for being a real trouper. I know that in many other contexts women have partners who are supporting them too, so we have to give credit to the men and women who support their partners who are taking this leap.
Thank you very much.