As part of a discussion on Power & Politicsyesterday on barriers women face in politics, there were a few well-worn tropes thrown out there, but I wanted to poke into a couple of the items discussed (much of which I’ve already written about in my book, but a refresher course never hurts):

1. This needs to be an issue addressed by the parties at the grassroots level and shouldn’t be legislated top-down. Parties are already too centrally controlled, and if you want empowered MPs that are women and those who are from diverse communities, they need to participate from the ground-up rather than be appointed top-down.
2. The side-effect of quotas, be they de facto or de jure, tends to be that women and minorities are nominated in “no-hope” ridings. We’ve seen this time and again, even from the NDP, who have their “no nomination can be run unless the riding association has exhausted the possibility for an equity-seeking candidate” rule. That rule is often conveniently broken if they think they have a winnable straight, white male candidate, and 2011 is a perfect example of how they loaded a lot of women and racialized candidates in “no hope” Quebec ridings that got swept up in the “orange wave.” Most were not good MPs, and some had never been to their ridings before winning, which is the opposite of how nominations should be run.
3. The voting system is not the problem – it’s entrenched barriers in the nomination system where not enough encouragement is given to women to run (i.e. until this last electoral cycle, they didn’t recognize that women need to be asked several times before they will consider running, and they may have things like childcare issues that need to be sorted when running). A PR system usually creates some manner of list MPs, where your women and minority MPs come from lists rather than having had to run and win ridings, which creates two-tiers of MPs. This also manifests itself in countries with quotas, and women MPs in places like Rwanda have seats but little power as a result.
4. We can’t do much more to make our parliament more “family friendly” without hollowing it out even more than it has been. While there are issues with childcare, MPs are not without resources to address it (like hiring nannies) rather than forcing the institution to hire precariously-employed childcare workers for part of the year with no sense of numbers on a daily basis. While 60-day parental leave is not objectionable, remote voting and Skyping into committee meetings is very much a problem that we should not encourage in any way.

Good reads:

• Justin Trudeau was asked about that 18-year-old groping allegation again and gave the same response.
• Here’s a look at Trudeau’s Canada Day travels to Leamington, Regina, and Dawson City, thanking Canadians for standing up for each other in the face of tariffs.
• Trudeau also spoke with Mexico’s new president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, and we could see further uncertainty in NAFTA talks going forward.
• Stephen Harper met with Trump’s economics advisor, but doesn’t appear to have met with national security advisor John Bolton as originally indicated.
• Harper was also criticized for attending a “Free Iran” conference in Paris over the weekend that is run by a group his own government listed as a terrorist organization.
• Andrew Scheer thinks there’s a place for Conservatives to engage in Washington. (I’m not sure that anyone is suggesting otherwise).
• Donald Trump says he’s not doing anything with NAFTA talks until after the mid-term elections. Of course, that could change tomorrow.
• Here’s a look at how the government and the IRB are trying to ramp up their processes to better deal with irregular border crossers, but it’s slow going.
• Health ministers met in Winnipeg to talk pharmacare, but there are still questions about how broad it should be, and who will pay for it.
• A lawyer from the MMIW Inquiry has resigned, citing that the government’s refusal to give it a two-year extension amounts to interference.
• Some provinces are planning to hire teenagers to be mystery shoppers at cannabis retailers to ensure that they’re checking IDs properly.
• Parties are locking in their candidates and campaign teams this summer (well, the NDP are still floundering) because fixed election dates.
• Stephanie Carvin looks at what Trump’s actions mean for Canada’s foreign policy.

Odds and ends:

Major life insurance companies are moving cannabis use out of the same high-risk behaviour category as smoking.

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