Electoral Reform committee  It means that in places like Sweden, where we know they've been able to elect a gender-equal parliament, it's because you had parties that voluntarily zippered their lists and alternated between women and men. In the Canadian context, I identify that most of the informal barrier

Electoral Reform committee  The only thing I'll say is that electoral reform in New Zealand did not remove the informal barriers that keep women from achieving representational parity. That's the point. I think that gets lost in a lot of the discussion about PR being good for women.

Electoral Reform committee  In the context of what I think about preferential ballots, I would have said that a preferential ballot on a district magnitude of one—i.e., just changing the ballot structure—for me is a change that's not really worth doing. I would be more supportive of a preferential ballot if

Electoral Reform committee  I think money matters most for women at the nomination stage. This is one of the things you talked about. Regulating how much people can spend on nominations does a lot for historically under-represented groups. Something that should be noted for the record is that networks mat

Electoral Reform committee  Yes. The general truism is that every electoral system manufactures a majority somehow, so this is the thing: we need to think about how we want to best manufacture our majorities when it comes to electoral systems. The one that concerns me most in terms of informal barriers fo

Electoral Reform committee  Thank you very much. I appreciate that. As I'm sure you have heard, New Zealand switched to mixed member proportional in 1996. They also had dedicated seats for their indigenous population. For Canada, I think New Zealand's experience will be much more useful as a road map than

Electoral Reform committee  Thank you for your question. This was a study that was done in the nineties by two Americans, Richard Matland and Donley Studlar, comparing Norway and Canadian provinces to see whether or not small parties that introduce a greater number of women in their candidate lists or as p

Electoral Reform committee  My understanding is that even if there were a referendum, any change would have to be legislative, which means.... It strikes me as a bit silly to suggest that Parliament can't do it, because Parliament certainly can. Parliament has the legislative power to do what it would like

Electoral Reform committee  I like the New Zealand model in which the initial reform gave voters more than a yes/no option. I like that. What I like more about New Zealand is that they followed it up with several other referenda to see if people actually like the change now that they've used it. In New Ze

Electoral Reform committee  As Canadians we had already decided, coming out of the 1995 referendum, that 50% plus one was something that we didn't endorse in some contexts, so we can't have our cake and eat it too, right? This is the thing: the thresholds required for referenda are going to be political a

Electoral Reform committee  My position remains that we have a map outlined from several provincial governments, British Columbia and Ontario being the notable standouts, where citizens have been actively involved in the process. I would expect that anything dealing this closely with a democratic institutio

Electoral Reform committee  Not as it proceeded in British Columbia and Ontario. I liked the citizens' assembly part of those procedures, but there were problems with those referenda. I don't see the point of subjecting the Canadian public to a referendum when the rules would be stacked against it to fail.

Electoral Reform committee  In that sense, I'm not going to sit here and endorse referendum versus not. I'm going to be honest about what I thought about those processes, and in both those cases I thought the citizens' assembly and that kind of engagement process was great and exactly what I would like to s

Electoral Reform committee  There is some, but it's not necessarily in the direction that people assume that it is. The first thing I would say is that the snapping crocodiles—I like phrasing it that way—may or may not keep women out of politics. I've never seen that as a particularly gendered thing. The

Electoral Reform committee  Sorry. Some people just like the cut and thrust of politics and are prepared to deal with that context, whereas other people are more more likely to say, “I'm doing important work here and I don't necessarily want to.” What bothers women more now—and this comes up routinely in