Status of Women committee  Only that if you don't have your family backing you, it becomes a near-impossible task to successfully run and stay in office, and want to be in that job.

Status of Women committee  I can't underestimate the importance of having a leader set the direction for the entire party. That isn't a symbolic thing. It means, for example, that if a riding association is asking to hold its nomination race, the leader asks for an account of the work that's been done, the

Status of Women committee  I would say that possibly they have felt that it wasn't their place to be involved, and that definitely needs to be pushed back on hard. It needs to be a message that, again, gets communicated right from the top to the bottom of the party, starting at the leader.

Status of Women committee  I think you're absolutely right in that the message that's sent by the leader telegraphs right through the party about what is or is not a priority for that organization. Is a leader mentioning recruiting more women candidates frequently, all the time? I will say, Jason Kenney ha

Status of Women committee  I think you're absolutely right. I cannot recall the last time a news article mentioned what a male politician was wearing or how their hair had changed.

Status of Women committee  That's true. You're absolutely right. I think the other thing, too, is that for a lot of people who don't follow politics closely, the entire process from “I think I might want to be an elected official” to becoming one is opaque. You just don't know it. You don't know that you

Status of Women committee  Certainly when I talk to people who run, the only issue I ever say is to make sure that this is the job they actually want to have. There's nothing worse than winning and discovering that this wasn't what they imagined the job was going to be. I think the important thing is to

Status of Women committee  I think there are a couple of angles to this. When I worked at a political party, one of the things was about making sure that we weren't doing things intentionally or unintentionally that sent the message that we were really only looking for male candidates. I do remember on

Status of Women committee  I would say that there are a lot of things that we can all do, but it's about being mindful and asking, “Is this sending a message?” Are you holding an event a place that women would want to go or is it in a place that has been traditionally a place where men meet? If they're wal

Status of Women committee  In looking at third parties, it's quite common for anybody who has looked at American politics to see that third parties play a huge role in their elections. It hasn't been the case as much up here, although it is changing. Certainly the legislation that gets passed by government

Status of Women committee  My experience is that it's never been difficult to find men to run for public office. That was never a problem that we had in politics. I find that in recruiting women, generally they have a lot more questions about how it would work, what elected life is like. I think Professor

Status of Women committee  We may not agree on the solution, but I will say that I also think we have to make some changes to the Elections Act. In this case, there has been a trend to really clamp down on third party involvement. I think some of that is certainly responsible, for example to prevent money

Status of Women committee  There are already rules that govern what a third party can and cannot do. Certainly, they are required to disclose, for example, how their money is spent and who donates their money. In the case of Equal Voice, because they're multipartisan, I don't think they're going to have th

Status of Women committee  My understanding is that groups like that already exist and are involving themselves. Again, I believe they are multipartisan. They're not specifically focused on any one group. They're focused on every elected official and every political party. For me, it's about getting over t

Status of Women committee  It's a great question, and it has to be taken seriously by everybody, because ultimately, as the professor noted in her comments, there are an awful lot of elected officials who are men and who are involved in politics. If they're not participating in trying to make this situatio