Roundup: A century of women in the House

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The CBC has a look back at 100 years since the first woman was elected to Parliament, and as with the present-day discourse, it’s largely about how other women’s voice were excluded, be they Indigenous, racialized, or otherwise. Yes, early feminists and women who were elected to public office were problematic—the Famous Five were very racist and proponents of eugenics. (So was the founder of the NDP, Tommy Douglas, for that matter, but he is rarely called out as being problematic as early white women in officer were, but that’s a whole other topic altogether).

So while we have a lot more diverse women in Parliament these days, we absolutely do need to do better, and much of that relies on the parties themselves. I would normally say that the grassroots riding associations should have a big role to play in recruiting more diverse women to run for them, but my enthusiasm for grassroots politics is currently being held in check by the fact that overly powerful leaders’ offices have been essentially bigfooting those processes, and so many nominations are being run centrally, if not using outright appointments over the past few cycles, after there was a big push toward “open nominations” for one or two election cycles. And the worst part is that some of this is explicitly about nominating more women to run for office, but in an effort to say that they have more women running, most of the parties will simply run them in unwinnable ridings so that they can say they had them running, but not jeopardise their chances in that riding by running someone who doesn’t fit the popular conception, which perpetuates the problem. And before you say “But the NDP!” I have watched them time and again monkey with their own rules around nominations to run a straight white male in ridings with hugely diverse populations if they think they can win. (Think Robert Chisholm or Joe Cressy). The parties have a big role to play in getting more diverse women to run, and the Liberals were really good about this for an election cycle or two with a sound recruitment strategy, but I’m not sure it’s carried forward as well in the last election cycle.

Meanwhile, I also find myself frustrated by the notion that hybrid sittings are some kind of panacea to women running for office, because it’s based on a few bad assumptions. One of those is the fact that hybrid sittings are demonstrably bad – they are more toxic, and they have a human cost on the interpreters, and using the excuse that this allows more women to run for office should not be contingent upon interpreters needing to injure themselves in order to make it happen. The other is that it simply perpetuates the notion that women must be the primary childcare providers. There are a lot of accommodations for MPs who have small children, and they can develop more as time goes by (and seriously, they need to get over this notion that they can’t hire nannies), but some accommodations—like hybrid sittings—exact a cost that is too high for the benefit. There have to be better ways.

Good reads:

  • Mark Miller is talking about giving land back to Indigenous people, but there are many questions as to what that looks like, and there are lots of different ideas.
  • Here is a reminder that a national vaccine mandate would be largely impossible as it falls under provincial jurisdiction, and using emergency powers is a powder keg.
  • Advocates are hoping that the housing and mental health ministers can get together to help solve mutual problems in an aligned way.
  • The Canadian military has found cracks in the tails of 19 of its 23 Cyclone helicopters, because they haven’t had enough trouble with them as it is.
  • The Veterans’ Ombud complains that her recommendations aren’t being followed up on fast enough, while the department says they’re working on it.
  • The Star delves into how the Biden administration has a very funny way of showing that they are friends of Canada as they slight us at every opportunity.
  • The Finance Committee will be meeting today for the first time to start examining the latest pandemic support bill.
  • Liberal MP Randeep Sarai has won the lottery for the coveted first spot on the order of precedence for private members’ business.
  • Here is a look at how Erin O’Toole is fighting to maintain his leadership within his party, in the face of many opponents quietly operating in the shadows.
  • Supriya Dwivedi remarks on the Groundhog Day-esque situation we find ourselves in with the omicron variant because people still won’t take proper measures.
  • Heather Scoffield delves into rising housing prices, and the fact that it is being complicated by simplistic political narratives that make the situation worse.
  • Chantal Hébert was encouraged at the cooperation on the conversion therapy bill and now hopes that Erin O’Toole will rein in Pierre Poilievre. (Good luck with that).
  • Althia Raj notes that MPs left it up to the Senate to deal with the actual scrutiny of the conversion therapy bill and any of its potential drafting issues.
  • Colby Cosh suggests that if the arguments about lowering the voting age to 16 hold, they should also apply to things like cutting off the Young Offenders’ Act at 16.

Odds and ends:

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