Women’s issues are
being woefully ignored in 2015, federal election, distinguished female leaders
tell live-streamed panel discussion at University of Toronto.
By: Donovan Vincent News
reporter, Robin Levinson King Staff Reporter
Women’s issues are being woefully
ignored in the federal election campaign,
distinguished female leaders told a panel
discussion at
the University of Toronto Monday night.
Whether
it’s sexual harassment, missing and murdered aboriginal women, or employment
and pay for women, the election has been largely silent on these issues,
panellists told the Up for Debate event, which was livestreamed in English and
French.
“We
need a broader public debate to really find out what is happening and why (with
missing and murdered aboriginal women),” said aboriginal lawyer Katherine
Hensel, one of the panellists. “I think the Canadian public has made it clear
that it’s important enough to spend the resources (on a national inquiry).”
Liberal
Leader Justin Trudeau, NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair, Green Leader Elizabeth May
and Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe all agreed to be interviewed for the
panel. Conservative Leader Stephen Harper did not.
The participating leaders were asked in advance to comment on a variety of
women’s issues and their videotaped responses were then air and discussed
during Monday’s panel.
For instance: how to make Canada a safer and
better place for women? Start with the “testosterone-flooded” House of Commons,
said May, which prompted gales of laughter in the audience at the U of T.
All leaders spoke about fixing women’s
inequality from inside Parliament first by increasing women’s representation.
Trudeau and May said that getting rid of first-past-the-post would lead to more
women MPs.
Mulcair
promised to introduce a 50-per-cent female quota for the boards of directors of
federal organizations.
“My party president is a woman, the national
director is a woman, our caucus chair is a woman. And if you look at the NDP’s
front bench in the House of Commons ... of the 20 places there, 10 are women,
because that’s a fundamental value,” he said.
In their video clips Trudeau and Mulcair each
called themselves “feminists.”
Trudeau touted his plan to run deficits to pay
for “social infrastructure” including new day care spaces. Mulcair his
$15-a-day care plan and pledge to build more shelters, and May promised a
national strategy to confront violence against women.
Francine Pelletier, the journalist who
interviewed the leaders in advance, said during the panel after the interviews
aired that she was amazed at how both Trudeau and Mulcair are duking it out
over whose child-care strategy is better.
“It does my heart glad to see two leaders trying
to out-compete each other on childcare,” said Kate McInturff, a member of the
panel and an organizer of the event.
May was
especially harsh about what she called a “boys club” in Parliament, scoffing
that “because two men decide they don’t want to participate, the debate doesn’t
happen” — a reference to the organizers’ original proposal ago for a live
women’s issues debate, which fell apart because Mulcair said he wouldn’t
participate if Harper was not there.
May said women’s issues, along with the
environment, are too often shoved to the back burner because political
discourse in this country caters to men.
“What are the issues that appeal to the alpha
males? We still live in a patriarchal society, we still live in a society where
men don’t want to admit they’re sexist, but there is pervasive sexism,” she
said. “I’ve never worked in a workplace as male-dominated and
testosterone-flooded as the House of Commons.”
But there are signs that women’s issues are
coming to the fore of the national debate.
Angela Robertson, executive director of the
Central Toronto Community Health Centres, and one of the panellists, said
there’s enough evidence about the presence of violence against women that
government must take action.
“We become complicit through our silence in not
demanding action,” she said adding the leaders aren’t talking enough about
violence against women.
The panel also called out leaders for being out
of touch with the cause of sexism. Trudeau railed against sexist music lyrics
and pornography, while Duceppe brought up the issue of the niqab, slamming
party leaders who support women’s right to wear them during citizenship
ceremonies.
“I am tired of men in power trying to relieve me
of my clothing,” McInturff scoffed.
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