Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today I wish to speak about women’s achievements in various fields, especially in politics and sports. Mr. Speaker, yesterday in one of the meetings in the back room, one of my male colleagues suggested that I should stop being so anti-male. Obviously this is a highly offensive statement, but I am used to that in the world of politics. But it did get me to start dreaming about what it would be like if the Cabinet across the floor were made up of all women instead of all men. I am sure all of my questions and objections to what they are doing or not doing would not be considered as being anti-male.

Of course, if there were nine women and two men on this side of the floor, I wondered how one of them would feel if accused of being anti-female for simply doing his job. Mr. Speaker, this speaks to a much larger issue of the ever-decreasing rate of women’s representation in Canadian legislatures. In fact, with the recent federal election, once a leader, Canada now ranks 46th in the world, behind the even newly elected Legislature of Afghanistan. Of course, right here at home, we continue to have two women out of 19 Members and we have the dubious distinction of owning the only Cabinet in Canada without women.

On a hopeful note, Mr. Speaker, everywhere I go in the North, I see strong and able women leaders doing fantastic jobs in all communities and it is my fervent hope that more of them will join us in this House in the near future.

Mr. Speaker, it is also comforting to know that this is not par for the course in the outside world. When I was at Dalhousie Law School, between 1994 and 1997, my second year was the first time where there were more women law students than men and we definitely see women taking up a larger space of lawyers' and doctors' offices, and engineering, and many other fields in our community.

What about our women Olympians, Mr. Speaker? Not only do we have our very own Sharon and Shirley Firth of Guts to Glory to celebrate, but our newest women Olympians brought us two-thirds of all the medals won. They brought us a gold medal the first day and the last day, the most medals won by any Canadian Olympian of all times and the only hockey goal of the games, Mr. Speaker.

Hear! Hear!

Sandy Lee

Range Lake

Mr. Speaker, what this shows me is if we can just work through the manmade barriers, women will always achieve in spectacular fashion for the entire country and mankind.

---Applause