Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to follow up on a topic that Ms. Bisaro introduced in her statement today with questions to the Premier. There are serious systemic issues that create barriers to women running for political office.
Would the Premier be able to list some of the top barriers that women face and explain how a mock women’s parliament could significantly reduce those barriers? Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Premier, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member has made it very simple, suggesting that there’s a silver bullet that would resolve this complex issue. Suggesting a mock parliament, we were raising the issue to raise dialogue and debate and to help identify the barriers that women face in getting involved in politics. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thanks for that simplistic answer. The lack of women here is a reflection of women’s lack of political power in our society in general. We need to enable women to represent their various perspectives in our day-to-day functioning of society. We need to support women’s organizations that represent their views and environmental assessments, economic decision-making and so on. We offer similar support to Aboriginal organizations and this is a good thing.
Rather than just funding the Premier’s handpicked Status of Women Council for a narrow selection of topics, will the Premier commit to providing similar levels of funding and political access to women’s organizations to enable their meaningful participation in a broad range of topics on the road to fair political representation that would benefit us all? Mahsi.
We should be welcoming any opportunity to focus on women’s participation in politics in a very direct and high profile manner. We’re not trying to shut it down. We need to come together as a society and have a constructive discussion on this issue and what we can do to solve it together, not just trying to score political points, Mr. Speaker.
I don’t recall at all making any comments about shutting anything down. I’m not sure where the Premier is coming from on that.
One practical barrier I’ve heard is that our meeting schedules are very demanding. We compress a year’s worth of meetings and diverse, very intense activity from morning to night, that’s probably especially true for the Premier. It has been shown in other jurisdictions that reasonable meeting schedules are more family friendly and, therefore, encourage more participation by people with families, both women and men.
Would the Premier commit to studying this issue and reporting back on the possibility of a more family-friendly schedule in this Legislature? Mahsi.
That’s something we should all aspire to. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m not sure it’s worth it, but I’ll stand up and speak anyway. I personally was enabled to go into politics by participating in workshops arranged by the non-profit sector on how to run for office. I suppose that may be grounds for the Premier to deny my following suggestion; however, these were very helpful to me.
Would the Premier commit to funding similar workshops across the NWT, aimed at encouraging more people to run for political office, not just enjoying hearing me speak? Thank you.
Thank you. It’s good to know that Mr. Bromley has all the answers on this issue.
We want to encourage women to run for politics. We’ve been trying to work through the Status of Women Council. I don’t think it’s only the purview of the Status of Women Council. I think this Legislative Assembly could do more in that regard. I think other groups in society could do more. To put the tail on the donkey and blame it just on an organization that is doing its best to further the advances of women, I think, is not very helpful. I think we will do whatever we can to do, as we have in the past, to put on campaign schools for women. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Colleagues, before we go on today, I’d like to welcome to the House our Languages Commissioner, Ms. Snookie Catholique, and her assistant, Eleanor Klengenberg. Welcome to the House.
Member for Hay River North, Mr. Bouchard.
