With yesterday being Persons Day in Canada – the anniversary of women being declared legal Persons by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in the UK, then the highest court of appeal, thus allowing women to serve as senators – NDP MP Kennedy Stewart made an impassioned plea to MPs to support his private member’s bill on encouraging gender parity among parties. The theory is that by providing a financial incentive to parties – namely reducing their election rebates – if they don’t nominate at least 45 percent women candidates, that we’ll magically get more women in to Parliament, and everything will be better. And then to make everyone feel bad, they provide a list of all of these other countries that have more women in their parliaments as proof that we’re terribly behind on the issue without any kind of qualitative analysis to know if women in those parliaments have any actual power, or if they’re just filling out quotas or party lists and have little actual agency or authority.

There’s a problem with Stewart’s bill, which is that it’s largely a gimmick. The way to get more women involved in politics is for parties to make a more concerted effort in the nomination process, and to remove barriers at that stage that prevent women from running. The Liberals figured out that trick before the last election, and looked at the research that said that women need to be asked to run an average of five times before they’ll accept (unlike men, who will accept usually on the first try), and so that’s what the Liberals did, and lo, they dramatically boosted their nomination rate with a lot of women of diverse backgrounds, and they did it without needing a gimmicky incentive. The NDP often like to tout their “affirmative action” nomination rules that require that someone from an “equity-seeking group” be part of the nomination race, but historically it means they have largely nominated the bulk of their women candidates in unwinnable ridings, with the exception of the 41^st Parliament, they have tended to be a very, very white party, which means that their affirmative action plan only worked when they accidentally elected a swath of MPs in a sentimental wave. (They also have a habit of acclaiming white male candidates in ridings they think they can win under special loopholes, claiming that they couldn’t find a woman or minority candidate in ridings like Dartmouth Cole Harbour or Trinity Spadina. No, seriously). And that’s really the danger of a gimmick like the one that Stewart is proposing – that parties will stack a bunch of women candidates in ridings they have little or no hope in, just to get their rebate (and yes, all parties have a habit of nominating or selecting a number of paper candidates for the sole purpose of padding their roster in order to get the maximum allowable spending limit), and this just incentivizes them to tweak those nominations without putting in the effort on the ground that it takes to get more women involved.

“Oh, but it works in Ireland!” Stewart and his defenders will say. Sure, but they have a different voting system, and possibly a different nomination system. That doesn’t mean it will translate here very well, and I remain unconvinced that it does the hard work of changing the party culture rather than simply imposing a quota. Maryam Monsef has said that she’s not voting for the bill, citing that it doesn’t help women win, which most of her party’s backbenchers will take as a signal. The Conservatives won’t vote for it, citing meritocracy. And Steward vows to blame men if it dies – because that’ll help change the party cultures.

Good reads:

• The provincial and federal health ministers did not come to an accord. Surprise!
• Bill C-16 on trans rights passed second reading on a vote of 248 to 40, which is a pretty high number of Conservatives (including several leadership candidates).
• More one-year-later report cards on the Liberal government, with a list of promises kept and broken.
• The Mental Health Commission says we need to tailor mental health services to new immigrants for face higher costs down the road.
• The opposition is complaining that the government is being too secretive around the mission in Iraq.
• The Canadian Forces are helping to test those armoured vehicles going to Saudi Arabia.
• Brad Wall laid out his climate plan, which includes a demand that the government “redeploy” funds for developing countries that are hardest hit by climate change.
• Economic experts dispute Brad Wall’s claims that any carbon pricing will affect his province’s competitiveness.
• The Crown wants to fine Bruce Carson $50,000 for his illegal lobbying, but Carson’s lawyer says he’s broke.
• Michael Chong made privatizing CMHC a policy position, while Brad Trost whined that he was being muzzled from speaking on C-16 as a leadership candidate.
• Here’s a good explanation of subjectivity and accountability in the selection of Supreme Court justices.
• Wesley Wark offers a national security assessment of the Liberals one-year post-election.
• Susan Delacourt weighs Trudeau’s relationship with the provinces.
• My Loonie Politics column looks at the increasingly crowded Conservative leadership field and wonders what anyone is really offering.

Odds and ends:

Apparently listening devices both were and were not found at the old Nortel campus that DND is moving to occupy.