Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for raising that question this evening.
We are committed to promoting gender parity in our public institutions and all aspects of civic life, and I am very pleased to talk about this issue.
Our government made a firm commitment to promoting gender parity in public life. That commitment is reflected in our gender-balanced cabinet and the mandate letters that call on ministers to promote parity within the federal government.
Gender parity is our goal, but my colleague's proposal to legislate quotas is not the way to achieve that goal. There are three reasons for that.
First, while the government supports the goal of gender parity in Canadian politics, the mandatory quota in this bill is problematic on several fronts with respect to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the most significant of which is how it would affect the smallest of our political parties.
Under this bill, a party that has just one male candidate or one female candidate will necessarily have 100% disparity between the sexes, resulting in a 22.5% reduction in reimbursement. The major political parties have the resources to adapt to that, but the parties that run just a few candidates and would be eligible for a reimbursement would be disadvantaged.
What is more, this bill creates political and financial reasons to refuse to nominate qualified candidates because of their gender. Accordingly, the bill limits independent candidates on the one hand, and independent parties on the other hand.
They are limited not only in their choice of candidates, but also in their position on gender equality. For example, if a party composed only of women were created to increase women's participation in our democratic system, those women would be penalized by this bill.
A second concern I have with this bill relates to transgendered candidates, as there is no mention of non-binary candidates in the bill. The government has taken a strong stance on gender identity and expression and has introduced legislation that would explicitly protect the rights of non-binary Canadians. In this vein, it would be inconsistent to support a bill that fails to recognize the transgendered community. This bill would reaffirm the notion of binary gender identity and in doing so it would exclude transgendered people. It would ignore transgendered people altogether, and we do not do that in Canada.
Last, in addition to these concerns, I believe it is simply premature to adopt a gender parity measure designed for the first past the post system. Our government has committed to reforming our current electoral system. As the voting system for the next election is still unknown, it is not logical to impose a legislated gender quota for a first past the post voting system. In a first past the post system, gender parity among party candidates does not ensure gender parity in the House of Commons if women candidates are not run in winnable ridings.