Few women in parliamentary committees not only problem

[Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks during question period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Canada, Jan. 25, 2016. REUTERS/Chris Wattie]

They ran out of women. That’s according to Andrew Leslie, the whip of the federal Liberal caucus, who has been trying to explain why three-quarters of the standing committees in the House of Commons have such a minuscule number of women.

“It’s the straight numbers…we’ve literally run out,” Leslie told Global News. “[I hope] in our next election we can get more wonderful female, lady members of Parliament.”

There are 24 new standing committees comprised of 10 members each in this session of Parliament:

• two committees are all-male.

• seven have just one woman.

• nine have two female members.

The good news? The Committee on the Status of Women has nine women.

“There just aren’t a great number of women in Parliament right now,” Caroline Andrew told Yahoo Canada News.

Andrew, who heads the University of Ottawa’s Centre on Governance, studied female representation in politics and urban diversity for almost 30 years.

Currently, there are only 88 women MPs in the House (26 per cent of the total) and 85 are eligible to sit on a committee. Because Bloc Québécois MPs and Elizabeth May are in parties that don’t have official status, they cannot serve on committees.

“So all these women are stretched out among as many committees [including House of Commons/Senate joint committees] as possible,” notes Andrew.

Indeed, they are. However, each committee must also parallel seat counts in the House, and regional, linguistic and ethnic diversity are all also major considerations.

Who gets called to present?

“Membership is less interesting to me than who gets called to talk to the committee,” points out Andrew. “We don’t want all these female parliamentarians to be just doing committee work, anyways.”

Andrew says diversity and equal representation is important in terms of the people called to present to these committees.

“It’s about who is considered an expert? Look at the Industry committee — hopefully, they will have women entrepreneurs presenting to them,” explains Andrew.

In fact, the committee on Industry, Science and Technology is all male as is the one on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics.

“And when you consider climate change, there’s a lot of issues out there about how that affects women,” she says. “We can’t have presenters to committees only be old, white men any more.”

Andrew also recommends taking away the responsibility for seeking these experts away from committee hands.

“Have a separate group of MPs, representing all parties, draw up a list of experts,” she says.

“They could have the vetting function.”

Another alternative is to draw up a set of guidelines for committees to follow.

“This government has pledged to be representative of Canada in terms of female equality and diversity of people, so they should extend this to who the committees listen to.”

Canada lags in gender equality

Fundamentally, it’s still about numbers — women are under-represented in many areas of government and life in Canada.

Last July, the UN human rights committee issued the country’s first report card on the issue of gender equality in 10 years. Besides blasting Canada for its lack of a national domestic violence policy, it cast a spotlight on the tiny percentage of women in political power.

“Finding women with competence is not a problem,” emphasizes Andrew. “It’s just more difficult to get women into Parliament since they tend to have family [commitments], such as children or they need more support, such as single mothers, in order to be a politician.”

To that end, Andrew says there is a lot of work now being done by different women’s organizations, such as Equal Voice, Centre for Social Justice and Canadian Women’s Foundation, to close the gap politically.

“I have seen ebbs and flows on this issue over the years but I am optimistic considering this government and its promises,” she says in reference to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s assertions that he is a feminist and his much-lauded appointments of female MPs to half of his cabinet.

“I just hope this time we can put this concern into politics and procedures to make that change we need.”