INCLUSIVE, ACCESSIBLE, ACCOUNTABLE AND STRONG PARLIAMENTS
GENDER EQUALITY IN CANADA’S PARLIAMENTS AND LEGISLATURES: THE WORK OF THE CWP CANADIAN REGION Created in 2005, the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians (CWP) Canadian Region is composed of women Parliamentarians from Canada’s Provincial and Territorial Legislatures and its Federal Parliament. As the Chair of the CWP Canadian Region and the Canadian representative on the CWP International Steering Committee, I am pleased to provide an overview of the history of women’s representation in the Parliament of Canada and in the Canadian Provincial and Territorial Legislatures, along with a brief discussion of the CWP Canadian Region and its upcoming activities. The Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians (CWP) is the network of women Members of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association’s 180 Parliaments and Legislatures. The CWP network provides a means of building the capacity of women elected to Parliament to be more effective in their roles, improving the awareness and ability of all Parliamentarians, male and female, and encouraging them to include a gender perspective in all aspects of their role - legislation, oversight and representation and helping Parliaments to become gender-sensitive institutions. Recognising the need of increasing women’s representation in political institutions, the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians (CWP) was founded by women delegates at the 1989 plenary CPA Conference so women at future conferences could discuss ways to increase female representation in Parliament and work towards the mainstreaming of gender considerations in all CPA activities and programmes. In 2004, the group was formally recognised in the CPA Constitution and its elected CWP Chairperson became part of the CPA Executive Committee. The history of women’s representation in the Parliament of Canada and Canada’s Provincial and Territorial Legislatures There is a long history of women’s involvement in Canadian politics. From 1917, when the first woman was elected to office in Canada, the number of women Parliamentarians has, broadly
speaking, grown at the Federal, Provincial and Territorial level. Women’s representation in the Canadian House of Commons exceeded the 20% threshold for the first time in 1997 and reached over 30% in the 2021 federal election.1 In the Senate of Canada, as of January 2022, 45 of the 92 appointed Senators (48.9%) were women. However, progress remains slow, as of 1 May 2022, Canada ranked 59th in the world for the percentage of women in national Parliaments. A. The Parliament of Canada Numerous women have served in the Federal Parliament in Canada, as is explained on the CWP Canadian Region website: In 1921, Agnes Macphail became the first woman elected to the Canadian House of Commons and the only woman to serve in the 14th Parliament of Canada.2 In the Senate of Canada, Cairine Wilson was sworn in as Canada’s first female Senator in 1930, and the Senate’s first female Speaker, Hon. Muriel McQueen Fergusson, was appointed in 1972. Several years later, in 1980, Rt Hon. Jeanne Sauvé became the first female Speaker of the House of Commons. She also became Canada’s first female Governor-General in 1983. In a Canadian first, the Prime Minister, Rt Hon. Justin Trudeau MP appointed equal numbers of men and women to the federal cabinet in 2015, a practice he continued following the 2019 and 2021 elections.3 Further, Canada has also had one woman Federal Prime Minister, Rt Hon. Kim Campbell, who served from 25 June 1993 to 4 November 1993. B. Provincial and Territorial Legislatures Women have also served as elected officials and leaders in Provincial and Territorial Legislatures across Canada. As highlighted on the CWP Canadian Region website: In 1917, Louise Crummy McKinney and Roberta Catherine MacAdams Price were the first two women to be elected to a Legislature in Canada, and in the British Empire, when they were elected to the Alberta Legislative
20 | The Parliamentarian | 2022: Issue Two | 65th Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference