End evening house sittings: Biggar
P.E.I. status of women minister says it’s time to make the legislature more accessible
The minister responsible for the status of women in P.E.I. wants to see evening sittings of the legislature eliminated to encourage greater diversity and remove barriers to women from entering public office. Paula Biggar has tabled a motion in the P.E.I. legislature calling for an adjustment to the sitting hours and to move the two weekly evening sittings to the mornings.
This would not lessen the number hours MLAs spend in the house, but rather would make the legislature hours more accessible, Biggar said. She noted women’s advocacy groups, including the P.E.I. Coalition for Women in Government, have identified the evening sessions as a barrier to women’s participation in politics.
Such a change would also open up the playing field for other Island demographics who are currently underrepresented in the P.E.I. legislature, Biggar said.
“It promotes an opportunity for younger members to participate in the legislature and also it promotes a life balance for families who are involved in politics,” she said.
“We can’t be all talk here. We have to have some small incremental change to open up more opportunities for other people to come forward in the next election process and I think this is a small way to do that.”
In her motion, Biggar points out the four hours of evening house meetings are not televised, as the afternoon sessions are. Also, the evening sessions generally see smaller numbers of visitors to the public gallery.
As a result, eliminating evening hours and moving the legislative day to begin earlier in the daytime would make house deliberations more accessible to the public overall, she said.
She also pointed out P.E.I. and Quebec are the only provincial legislatures that sit past 7 p.m.
Calls for this change have been made for a number of years. When she first took office in 2007, Biggar says the request came to the legislative rules committee to make the change. But at that time, it didn’t get past the committee stage. That’s why she has now tabled a motion to be debated in the legislature.