Procedure and House Affairs committee  I would agree with that.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I think you're very capable parliamentarians, and I think with some work you could marry the two, if you will. I think it's the toll of 28-hour commutes that is particularly objectionable. If there's a way to cluster more riding time, apart from summers, obviously an extended per

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I come from a very emotional and animated Newfoundland family of the Peckford ilk. I know all about emotion in debates and I appreciate some of your sentiments. Where I think it's problematic for us—and I know you know this, but just to have it on the record—is when it looks lik

Procedure and House Affairs committee  There was an interesting study commissioned by the Manning conference, in fact, undertaken by André Turcotte, a well-known, widely respected pollster. He interviewed a small subset of leading businesswomen, many of whom said they were less concerned about work-life balance issues

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Maybe I'll ask Grace, who's on the line. She's just finished a 15-country study, where she interviewed 90 female elected representatives from countries the world over. She could speak to some of the insights that elected representatives gave her in terms of the deterrent effect a

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you so much for being here today. It's a pleasure to see so many of you around the table. As you likely know, Equal Voice Canada is the only national multipartisan organization dedicated to the election of more women. We communicate with tens of thousands of Canadians on a

Status of Women committee  Equal Voice is entirely funded by the private sector, except for the Experiences program, which is a specific initiative for which we receive Status of Women Canada funding. There have been some conversations within Equal Voice about whether or not the public funding mechanism

Status of Women committee  It would be a good reason to maintain it and potentially increase it.

Status of Women committee  Giovanna and I will both answer this. I remain very concerned that media representations of women politicians are such that younger women are entirely turned off from the political process. I think we have to really examine how the media in Canada represents gutsy younger women w

Status of Women committee  I'm going to allow Giovanna to answer this one.

Status of Women committee  I would say, in addition, that I think there are some systemic barriers that women are up against, and I think you have all lived those. I think we have to have an honest conversation about what those are at the nomination level in terms of media representation, in terms of acces

Status of Women committee  I think it's obvious, given where you work, and where we are, that we have far from arrived. I think until all of our legislatures have a minimum of 50% of women in them, we cannot say that equality is here. I think it's incumbent upon all of us to recognize that these institutio

Status of Women committee  There have in fact been positive changes in the system. As well, a lot of research is being done in the Scandinavian countries. What we know is that once there is a critical mass, that is, over 30%, public policy outcomes and the focus of debate in legislatures changes. It's

Status of Women committee  Okay. Well, in fact I would say that Giovanna has been working very hard on what we've called the “Be Her or Support Her” campaign. It's a campaign that we intend to roll out nationally and more formally in the coming months, but it is really designed to encourage women not only

Status of Women committee  Those are some of the statistics that we are all up against collectively in this room and elsewhere. We really appreciate the fact that the status of women committee is doing this kind of work to look very strategically at where women fare overall in Canada. At the political lev