Status of Women committee  Thank you. My name is Jenelle Saskiw and I've been actively involved in politics and municipal government for over 20 years. Politics has always been in my blood. A fond memory for me was when I was 16 years old, attending the Forum for Young Albertans, sitting in the legislatur

Status of Women committee  I do. It's important for us not only to educate our young girls, but to educate everyone. I'm very proud of the fact that during my 14 years, and part of it was because I do have a young family and I wanted them to be very involved in what I did, I actually went and volunteered

Status of Women committee  It's difficult. We're natural moms. I know that I could have stayed in that position but it was an instance when I was leaving for Montreal, for a conference, when my little girl stood at the doorway, crying, and said, “Mom, I don't want you to go.” There was another instance wh

Status of Women committee  I was, absolutely.

Status of Women committee  Absolutely.

Status of Women committee  In terms of being publicly shamed, no, but you always did get the comments about what you were wearing, what you ate at a certain function. Sometimes I'd get so angry because I'd feel like we had a really confident meeting or a confident presentation and somebody would make a com

Status of Women committee  There are really so many benefits. I've often told people that my kids can learn how to cook from a cookbook. They can't read a piece of paper and learn how to be a leader. They're following me. They're watching me. I think that I have raised four very well-rounded children who h

Status of Women committee  I can comment on that. I'm from a very small village in Alberta of 600 people. When I first got elected.... My last baby was born on a Friday and she came to Monday night's council meeting with me. I've been there. I've done it. My kids have coloured underneath meeting room table

Status of Women committee  Because of our geographical location, public transit is difficult. When you have communities that are spread 20 or 30 minutes apart, it's really hard to be able to establish a system that would be reliable and be used by a lot of people.

Status of Women committee  Yes, expensive. That's exactly it. My little village has a hard time paying for broken sidewalks. We never could think about having a transit system in our community. That's our reality.

Status of Women committee  I have to agree with Karen. As she said, it's the non-partisan aspect.

Status of Women committee  I think we can look at it two ways. It's how we choose to empower social media. Right now there is a very negative connotation with social media, with negative remarks, comments, the visible bullying that goes on right now. What can we do? How do we educate our public so that we

Status of Women committee  I actually think that the networking opportunities in rural Canada are very different for men versus women. By choice, my husband golfs. He curls. He's the one who takes the boys to hockey practice. He has that social networking. I'm at home. I think we need to somehow increase t

Status of Women committee  I did touch on that when we talked about the lack of interaction when somebody isn't successful for the nomination and what we do at the next election cycle. We do have that three- or four-year gap where we aren't utilizing our time wisely.

Status of Women committee  To give you some insight, I was brand new to our community. We had lived in Marwayne for only eight months, I was 29 years old, and I was pregnant. That really was not the norm in rural Marwayne, Alberta, so when I ran, my intention was actually just to meet people in the communi