100 YEARS FROM SOLITUDE
years ago on Dec. 6, Agnes Macphail made history as the first female elected to the House of Commons, and served 19 years as an MP. After that, the former teacher was one of the first two women elected to the Ontario Legislature in 1943, and won a second term as an MPP in 1948. A founding member of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (later the NDP), she fought tirelessly for prison reform, founded the Elizabeth Fry Society and championed equal pay for equal work. In 2017, on Canada’s 150th anniversary, Macphail was the first woman to be featured on a commemorative $10 bill. But, for a moment this fall, the trail she blazed toward gender parity in Parliament was looking like it
hit a roadblock. Prime Minister
Justin Trudeau, who formed Canada’s first gender-balanced cabinet “because it’s 2015,” was struggling after a series of setbacks. After Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould and Health Minister Jane Philpott resigned from cabinet in 2019, Trudeau removed them from the Liberal caucus. The same year, Trudeau lost Whitby, Ont., MP Celina CaesarChavannes, who served as parliamentary secretary to both the prime minister and the minister of international development, when she resigned from the Liberal caucus, citing tokenism. During the 2021 pandemic
election, three female cabinet ministers lost their seats: Maryam Mosef (women and gender equality and rural economic development), Bernadette Jordan (fisheries, oceans, and the Canadian Coast Guard) and Deb Schulte (seniors).
Trudeau managed to regain gender balance in an October cabinet shuffle, naming brand-new Toronto MP Marci Ien minister of women, gender equality and youth; replacing Marc Garneau, the minister of foreign affairs, with Mélanie Joly; and moving Anita Anand to National Defence, a portfolio that has been mired in controversy over accusations of sexual misconduct involving high-ranking men. New faces include Kamal Khera, minister of seniors, and Helena Jaczek, the new minister responsible for the federal economic development agency for southern Ontario.
Here’s hoping the minister of “Sunny Ways” will keep fulfilling Macphail’s vision. A century later, her words are worth repeating. “I do not want to be the angel of any home: I want for myself what I want for other women, absolute equality.”