Mr. Speaker, at the outset, I want to congratulate the member for Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles for her leadership in tabling the bill in this place today.
My colleague who spoke before me has raised a litany of issues on gender parity that have yet to be addressed by either Conservative or Liberal governments in the past. In a couple of years from now, when the New Democrats take control of government, I am looking forward to addressing these matters from the House of Commons. I would point out that given the large proportion of women in the chamber represented by our party, we can have full confidence that the government will also be represented by a lot of women, including in cabinet.
It is important to point out that my colleague has tabled a bill addressing a clear power of the government—that is, its power to make appointments to crown corporations. The bill is very laudatory, because what she is saying is that government should lead by example. In a notation in budget 2012, the government simply encouraged private corporate boards to include more Canadian women, and that was good business sense, but it took no measures itself to increase the number of women on the boards to which it controls appointments.
Of course, the members will remember that the government of the day made great promises for open, transparent, participatory government and tabled its accountability bill. What it has not delivered on, and what it struck down without striking down the payment is its appointments secretariat, which for many years continued to have millions of dollars budgeted when it in fact did no business.
Therefore, there is no clear mechanism whereby members of Parliament can come forward on appointments to make recommendations to encourage more names of women to come forward. The only time members of Parliament can do that is when the speaker refers the matter of appointments to committees and if in the wisdom of the committee it decides that it will address that matter. It is always after the fact. It is after the government has already decided who it is bringing forward as appointments.
Therefore, I fully congratulate my colleague for her very progressive step, which is very clearly based on the information she provided to the House today in keeping with other G8 nations. To represent the interests of all Canadians, we should of course turn to the G8 nations when they are taking more democratic measures.
I think also that the bill is very wise, because it does not recommend that we immediately provide parity on all crown corporations for men and women. There is a very phased increase over time, which is reasonable.
There was opposition by the government member speaking against quotas, saying that somehow women have to have quotas or they will never get appointed, which is an absurd statement. One of the reasons governments turn to quotas is that governments have not voluntarily gone in that direction. We note from past experience, whether it is a private corporate board or a crown corporation, that once someone is appointed to one board, that person is seen as credible and is then appointed to other boards. One merely needs to look at The Globe and Mail each day to see who is being appointed, and then see the long list of boards that the new appointee has been appointed to.
At what point in time can women get an equal foot in the door? At some point in time, the governments have to take certain measures. The measure that my hon. colleague has brought forward is a very reasonable one, and it is in keeping with precedents set by other countries around the world.
Let us look at the record. My colleague was very fair and reasonable in doing an averaging of the number of women appointed to crown corporations. I believe she said it was 27%. I think what the Library of Parliament said was far less than that, less than 20%.
However, let us look at the actual boards. How many women are on the board of Atomic Energy of Canada? The answer is zero. For the National Energy Board, it is 20%. For the Bank of Canada, it is 23% women.
In Canada Post Corporation, we know a lot of posties are women. I think they probably have the direct experience. They could potentially sit on the board. They are good business managers: 18%.
There is the CBC. Both men and women listen to the radio. They can offer sage advice on what would make for good public programming: only 33% for women.
There is the Standards Council of Canada. Women nowadays have all kinds of backgrounds and credentials that they could offer for establishing common standards for the country: a mere 27% are women.
We might be able to defend that there is no necessity for quotas. We might be able to defend that there are so few women on our crown corporations because they are not educated or they do not have the credentials. In my alma mater, the University of Alberta, enrollment in the Alberta School of Business MBA program is 42% women. Maybe that is an indication that there are women of high calibre.
In the University of Alberta faculty of law, the percentage of women enrolled has been a consistent 48% to 51% since the year 2000. I can fully attest that each year the women graduated with the highest percentage of marks from those law schools. Therefore, it is clearly not a matter of women not having the credentials.
Maybe they graduate from university and they do not go on to have any practical experience. I took the time to look at the membership in the law societies across our country. What is the percentage of insured members of the bar in Alberta who are women? It is almost 50%. Almost 2,000 women are registered, practising, insured members of the bar society. In Ontario, almost 7,000 women are practising members of the bar.
Let us look a bit deeper. Maybe they are just new entrants. Maybe this is a new phenomenon that women have decided to enter the professions. Maybe they have the qualifications to actually serve on crown corporations. We look at practising members of the bar in Alberta for 16 to 20 years: 573 women; in Ontario, 2,200 women. Let us look at 26 years and more of women who have practised at the bar: in Alberta, over 700 women; in Ontario, more than 2,400 women.
Therefore, is it a situation where women do not have the qualifications or do not have the experience? One simply raises the question of why the government, in its wisdom, cannot seem to find any qualified women to appoint to its crown corporations.
One of the mechanisms to use, which has been used around the world, is the use of establishing quotas. As my colleague very validly pointed out, around the world various countries have chose mechanisms to make appointments and many of them have chosen specific quotas.
I am deeply troubled in hearing the comment across the way by the member responsible for the Status of Women in suggesting that because my colleague has tabled a bill recommending that there be quotas, that therefore the member does not believe women are qualified. Nothing could be further from the truth. The very reason she has stayed in the House and why she feels it is necessary to bring forward this bill is because there are so many qualified women in the country who are being given short shrift by the government.
In closing, the most important point is the comment made by the government member about the fact that these were stand-alone boards and that the government had nothing to do with them. It is the government that chooses whom to appoint to every federal crown corporation in the country. The members of the government are the ones who make those very choices. In their wisdom, they have decided that they will not look to our chambers of commerce, our places of business, our small businesses, large corporations or to women who are in management to find women who might be able to serve.
It was suggested in a review by the United Nations a few years back that it would serve democracy better around the world if governments would move to ensure greater gender parity in all institutions of government.