Mr. Speaker, we know full well that, each time the issue of status of women is raised, we lose a large part of our audience. It is not that too much time is devoted to this subject in this House. It is just that many people do not want to hear what we have to say and, more than anything else, they refuse to take action.
I will speak on the status of women anyway, and the status of women in the legal profession in particular. In Quebec, you can be a lawyer or a notary.
I will focus on women lawyers because, unfortunately, a committee has yet to be appointed to look specifically into the experience of women notaries in their everyday practice. All our statistics on women lawyers were provided to us by the Quebec bar association.
In the legal profession, women experience basically the same thing women experience in any area in which they work; by "work", I mean work outside of the home, of course.
If there has been such an influx of women on the labour market, outside of the home, we know this is due to a large extent to socioeconomic factors. It became necessary for women to help maintain the family income. This has been a determining factor.
In 1951, women accounted for less than 25 per cent of the Canadian labour force, as compared to 58 per cent of adult women in 1991. By far the biggest increase in the labour force participation rate occurred among women with young children, the majority of whom have full time jobs.
Women who, by necessity or by choice, head for a career in law face many difficulties inherent in this line of work. The dysfunctional relationships with male colleagues, the under-representation on the bench and the limited number of female teachers in our law faculties are but a few of the symptoms of a serious problem which persists in a world which claims to be eliminating injustice and unfairness.
Women are now part of the labour force, but female jurists form a distinct group. In the public's eye, we are perceived as being privileged. Yet, to become a disciple of Themis, a woman must overcome many obstacles which are not related to her status as a jurist, but to her status as a woman.
The Quebec Bar Association's committee on women lawyers, to which I alluded earlier, took a close look at the issues confronting female lawyers. Unfortunately, the chamber of notaries does not have a similar committee. A poll was conducted among women lawyers and the findings were released in
- Those findings are very instructive. They clearly show the obstacles which we must face not just as jurists, but also as women.
In the five years previous to the poll, 71 per cent of female lawyers experienced problems in their vocational practice. It is important to point out that the situation of the majority of these women did not change over that period, whether we are talking about hiring policies, relations with male colleagues, judges and clients, parental obligations, working conditions in general, or career advancement. In short, there is no progress.
Women lawyers practice a profession which was defined by men. Our laws and our precedents are set in a masculine mould. Lynn Smith, the dean of the law faculty at UBC, clearly exposed the problem in an article entitled "A system that's changing". Let me quote and eloquent excerpt: "The roots of the current legal system were planted by men. Developed at a time when women could not vote, be elected, become lawyers or be members of a jury, the law sought to protect the interests deemed important by men, given the realities of their lives as men. When the law did take women into consideration, it was solely from a male standpoint".
The most glaring example of inequity comes from the judiciary. An overwhelming number of judges appointed by the federal government, that is, the provincial superior court judges and the Federal Court judges, are men. Overall, only 134 of the 950 federal judges are women.
By interpreting the law and exerting some moral influence, judges help to shape and develop the fundamental values upon which our society is based. Women have been chronically under-represented among judges. In other words, although they have had the right to practise law for 53 years now, the proportion of women on the bench still remains under 10 per cent of all Quebec judges in the Quebec Court of Appeal, the Superior Court, the Court of Quebec or the municipal courts.
At the Quebec Superior Court, where judges are appointed by the federal justice minister, women represented 11.3 per cent of all judges, accounting for 20 of the 176 judges, as of March 1, 1995.
The situation elsewhere in the country is not much better. Madam Justice McLachlin and Madam Justice L'Heureux-Dubé are the only two women out of the nine judges appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada. They represent 22.2 per cent of these judges, while women account for 52 per cent of the Canadian population.
As of March 1, 1995, women made up only 10.3 per cent of the judges appointed to the Federal Court and the Tax Court of Canada, accounting for 8 out of these 60 judges. I could go on and on with the deplorable data concerning the Canadian women's place in the judiciary, but it would feel like preaching in the wilderness.
It is up to the Minister of Justice to appoint more women judges at the federal level. He is duty bound to review the questionable selection process where potential women candidates must have an impressive number of years of litigation practice, when we know that most women cannot consider that kind of practice because of their parental responsibilities. Such a criterion is not applied at the provincial level. It is hard to imagine how a mother could sit at a trial for three intensive weeks. Yet, it is acceptable for a father to be in the litigation practice and to devote all of his time to his work.
Men's schedules do not change much when they become fathers and have young children. However, this is not the case for women, especially those with preschoolers. Whatever their profession, mothers of toddlers are the most likely to change their work schedules.
For example, 95 per cent of career women, including women judges, work full-time, compared with 68 per cent of women who have preschool children and a similar job. Almost one third of women with preschool children and an irregular work schedule indicated that they had chosen such a schedule mainly to be able to take care of their children.
The selection process used does not reveal how a candidate is chosen and should therefore be abolished. Openness is a necessity, not a luxury.
If the process were more open, the Minister of Justice could no longer hide behind vague excuses like the lack of qualified candidates. If the requirements are the same for men and women, they automatically create inequities since, in general, women do not practise the profession in the same way that men do.
Treating both sexes the same way is creating inequities. The low representation of women among judges is in no way a reflection of their availability since in Quebec they now represent almost a fifth of the Bar membership eligible for the bench, that is, people who have been practising law for at least ten years. Furthermore, with the increased numbers of women who have entered the legal profession since the early eighties we can expect that the number of women eligible for appointment will increase rapidly in the next few years.
I ask the Minister of Justice: Will we see an increase in the number of women appointed to the bench proportionate to their representation among the most experienced members of the legal profession? Time will tell.