ON INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY, FORMER PRIME MINSTER KIM CAMPBELL RETURNED TO THE HOUSE OF COMMONS WITH AN INSPIRING SPEECH LOOKING FORWARD TO THE DAY THAT A FEMALE PM IS NO BIG THING.
Show of support as women fill House floor
• The last time Kim Campbell was in the House of Commons was June 16, 1993, a week before she was sworn in as Canada’s first female prime minister.
She stood up that day to reflect on the historic milestone when she won the leadership of the governing Progressive Conservatives. In her speech, Campbell looked back to acknowledge the female trailblazers and male enablers who had helped clear her path.
The House adjourned that afternoon and by late summer the country was in an election campaign and, well, everyone knows how that turned out for Campbell and the PCs. She would never sit in the House of Commons as prime minister.
But on Wednesday, to mark International Women’s Day, Campbell returned to the floor of the House of Commons, this time as a trailblazer, with an inspiring speech that looked forward to a day when a female prime minister would not be such a remarkable thing.
The House is normally empty on Wednesday mornings but on this day it was full, every single one of the seats occupied by a young woman, one aspiring female politician from each of the country’s 338 ridings.
They had arrived in Ottawa as part of the “Daughters Of the Vote” program, an initiative of the group Equal Voice, which works to encourage, support and remove barriers to women who want to run for office.
“It is a glorious sight to see you all here,” Campbell began. “It is so touching and I know that over the coming years, this sight of young women filling the seats is going to become more and more natural.
“We will make room for our male colleagues. We won’t take all of the seats. We’ll share. Women do that. But this is a remarkable and very touching vision for anyone who has served in this chamber.”
While Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made it a point of filling his cabinet with equal numbers of men and women, achieving gender parity in the legislature is more difficult. And while all parties now have programs to encourage women to seek nominations and run for office, just one in four MPs are women — pretty much the same ratio as that after the 2011 election and only a bit better than the 22 per cent after the 2008 election.
As Trudeau himself said when he addressed the Daughters of the Vote group, “We have much work to do.”
In her speech, Campbell reflected on gender gains made since her day.
“I’m doing something right now I never did when I sat in the House of Commons. I am wearing a pantsuit,” she said.
When she was an MP 20 odd years ago, she said, expected “business dress” for women was indeed a dress.
She also touched on a debate still not yet fully resolved for current parliamentarians: Making the House of Commons a “family-friendly” workplace. MPs in the current Parliament have already considered, for instance, trimming the Parliamentary work week by a day so that MPs could have an extra day in their ridings with their families and constituents.
Still, as Campbell noted, changes made since her day — eliminating late-night votes, for example — make it more likely that more women will run.
“It isn’t just women who want a saner life. Men also want to go home to their families. The civilizing quality of life in the House of Commons benefits everybody.”
Campbell closed her speech with a story of how bureaucrats struggled over her French title when she became PM. Every one else who had held the office was le premier ministre — the masculine version of the English “prime minister.”
In France, they stick with the masculine regardless of the gender of the person. So in Paris, female ministers are greeted with, “Bonjour le ministre.” But in Canada, it was decided — at the insistence, Campbell said, of her French teacher — that she would be known as la premiere ministre, the feminine form of prime minister.
“So we had some stationery printed and on the top of that stationery it said Prime Minister/ Premiere Ministre. Now, I wasn’t in office very long so I didn’t get to use all the stationery. And I think that somewhere in the Langevin Block (the building housing the office of the prime minister), perhaps in an old stationery cupboard, there is a box of stationery waiting for somebody.” On all sides of the House, the young women began to clap. “I hope one of you will use it.”