Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for her compliment. Clearly, the Bloc Quebecois, particularly our leader, is greatly concerned about women's participation. He struck a committee to recruit the greatest possible number of women to represent the Bloc Quebecois in the next federal election. The hon. member for Terrebonne—Blainville in this House is co-chairing this committee along with the hon. member for Longueuil.
How will proportional representation ensure that there is better participation by women? In terms of Quebec, we focused in particular on the National Assembly, which currently has 125 members. What if 75 were elected based on revised ridings where traditional rules apply, and the other 50 members were elected based on proportional representation, with regionalization being another factor. The political parties would then be responsible for establishing priority lists of candidates. Should a party not provide a list with a sufficient number of women candidates, including key positions for women, the public would see just how committed that party was to ensuring greater participation by women in the National Assembly.
The same goes for ethno-cultural communities. I think that we are working extremely hard, and it is not easy to ensure equitable representation in this regard. We are experiencing objective difficulties.
in a system based on proportional representation, each party would be responsible for presenting its list of candidates. Consequently, this would be an indication of each party's commitment. If, for example, the top ten candidates included two women, in ninth and tenth place, it would be clear that these women have only been included for electoral and opportunistic considerations, since the two often go hand in hand.
If, however, the top five candidates, including the number one spot, included one woman and some young people or groups traditionally at a disadvantage in a first past the post system, this would show how important this is to that party. Furthermore, this would enable political parties to become true arenas of political involvement for these groups.
This is true for women, but also for other groups, in particular young people and so forth, who do not believe that the current structure of political parties allows them to be elected or to elect candidates that better represent who they are or what they believe in.