Honourable senators, I had just finished explaining the definition of “designated groups” for purposes of Bill S-283.

Now let me describe how the bill implements the recommendations with respect to demographic data.

The Chief Electoral Officer is required to collect demographic information from electoral participants, including nomination contestants, candidates and leadership contestants, by way of a voluntary, confidential, self-identification questionnaire. Collected information may be used for the purpose of public reporting by the Chief Electoral Officer on general elections, by‑elections and leadership contests. Reporting must be done on an anonymized basis. These provisions address accuracy and privacy considerations.

The Chief Electoral Officer has full discretion as to the content and format of the questionnaire, provided that it must include at least the measures related to the designated groups as I have mentioned, and the format for collection of the data must support disaggregation and analysis of intersecting variables. Upon receipt of these reports on the demographic data, the Speaker of the House of Commons must submit them to the house without delay.

These provisions will come into force on Royal Assent.

Now let me describe how the bill implements the recommendations for improved public reporting on action plans with respect to candidate selection. Let me provide some context.

The road to the House of Commons for any Canadian is overwhelmingly through political parties competing in federal elections as governed by the Canada Elections Act. The Samara Centre for Democracy estimated in a 2019 study that:

More than 99% of the Members of Parliament . . . elected to Canada’s Parliament over the last 30 years were elected as representatives of a political party.

The Lortie commission described national political parties as “. . . gatekeepers of access to candidacy . . . .”

Let me shift for one moment. As you may know, public corporations subject to the Canada Business Corporations Act are required to report on how they are advancing diversity on boards of directors and for senior management. The provisions in Bill S-283 address public reporting by political parties on their action plans related to diversity by drawing on this framework. I will review the bill’s reporting requirements for political parties first and then speak to why I believe this framework is the best choice.

To the extent that any party wishes to compete in federal elections and hold leadership contests, it is subject to the Canada Elections Act in carrying out those functions. If parties wish to be eligible for direct public benefits under the act, including identification on the ballot with their candidate’s name and financing for election expenses, they can apply to the Chief Electoral Officer to be registered.

Let’s remember that taxpayers in Canada also support registered political parties indirectly through revenue foregone in relation to the federal political contribution tax credit.

Currently, there are 16 registered political parties that vary in electoral participation and success. The Canada Elections Act requires certain registered parties to file quarterly financial statements. This same threshold has been adopted in this bill to require that the following registered political parties must report on diversity in candidate selection. That is, those parties:

. . . whose candidates for the most recent general election received at that election at least 2% of the number of valid votes cast, or at least 5% of the number of valid votes cast in the electoral districts in which the registered party endorsed a candidate.

These parties, with this threshold, are already required to report. This would add another reporting requirement for them.

The five parties currently represented in the House of Commons are the only parties that currently meet this threshold. It is clear from the constitutions of each of these parties, which are published on their websites, that nomination rules are set and controlled at the national level of the party as opposed to the electoral district association or riding level.

The bill makes these parties directly accountable to Canadians by requiring that they publish their nomination rules on their site. Currently, three of the five parties do so. Further, they are required to publish on their internet sites their policies, plans and implementation measures, including whether the party requires formal search committees “. . . for the purpose of achieving greater diversity in the selection of candidates.”

Indeed, research shows that formal search committees are important for recruiting diverse candidates, since they involve going beyond the established networks from which women and others may be excluded. The parties are required to report on cumulative progress on achieving greater diversity in candidate selection, overall and by group. Where a party has not taken any or all these initiatives, it must tell Canadians why it has chosen to go that route.

The bill provides that the Chief Electoral Officer has the same powers of enforcement for non-compliance with these reporting requirements as is the case for omitting to perform other statutory obligations. These provisions come into effect two years after Royal Assent, giving the registered parties to which they apply sufficient time to prepare to report.

As I have mentioned, the reporting provisions for political parties draw directly upon what is called the “Disclosure Relating to Diversity” transparency requirements under the Canada Business Corporations Act.

Since 2020, federally incorporated public companies must tell their shareholders annually what they are doing to increase diversity of their boards and senior management teams. The federal approach to disclosure on diversity draws on provincial securities rules which have been in place since December of 2014.

You may have heard these federal and provincial regimes described as what is called “comply or explain.” This is the terminology they use to describe, characterize and capture these regimes. Companies have the option to state how they are complying with the required disclosure or to explain why they are not choosing to comply. Companies design the policies, plans and timetables that suit them best, and shareholders hold them accountable as they see fit.

Colleagues, I have drawn upon the corporate disclosure regime because it is working. A January 22, 2024, editorial in The Globe and Mail said of this “comply or explain” approach, “It’s a basic first step: Quantifying where you’re at is key. Disclosure rules have helped propel progress . . . .”

We have nine years of information with respect to representation of women, and three years with respect to the representation of visible minorities, Indigenous peoples and persons with a disability. The respected Osler report Diversity Disclosure Practices speaks of progress in a number of these areas even over a three-year period. “Comply or explain” is producing results.

It is also working in another important way as well. “Comply or explain” in the corporation business sector has changed the conversation. It has moved the dial. It has turned up the heat on the lack of diversity in boardrooms and C-suites. It has raised the bar for what is considered acceptable performance so that there is no going back; there is only going forward. That is precisely what we need to have happen with diversity in candidate selection.

Let me give you an example of this phenomenon of raising the bar. I offer this example in memory of former prime minister Brian Mulroney. Prime Minister Mulroney appointed six women to his first cabinet in 1984. By doing so, he went well beyond the token one or two women appointed by his predecessors to their cabinets, and he raised the bar for future prime ministers. There was no going back from what he did, and that is the phenomenon we are talking about when we talk about this process.

I now come to the provisions of the bill implementing the second recommendation from the standing committee, which deals with goal setting for women candidates. In Recommendation 9, the standing committee’s report explicitly calls on parties “. . . to set goals and publicly report on their efforts to nominate more female candidates . . . .”

Some context-setting will be helpful here. What exactly explains the gender gap in representation? First, we know the gender gap cannot be blamed on voters. There is little or no voter bias against women. People vote for parties. If a candidate for the favoured party is a woman, you are no less likely to vote for a woman than a man.

A study of more than 21,000 candidates since women first began running for the Canadian Parliament in 1921 shows that female election candidates receive just as many votes as their male counterparts, after controlling for those important factors. So, it’s not the voters. We can’t blame them.

Some people blame the under-representation of women on our particular electoral system, but extensive comparative country research conclusively shows that all electoral systems, even those based on proportional representation, require intentional measures to improve women’s legislative representation.

The gender gap also cannot be blamed on women for not stepping forward — and I hear this a lot. The Library of Parliament data shows, for instance, that 762 women — 38% of all candidates — ran in the 2021 federal election. That is enough women to fill the House of Commons twice over with just women. That is how many women ran. That is a lot of women running. There is no shortage of women who are willing to step forward. I think we have to understand that fact.

In the 2021 election, 44% of the candidates of the five registered parties currently in the House of Commons were women. I do want to acknowledge and I do want to note that Canada’s political parties have been increasing the overall number of women candidates over recent elections, so there has been some progress on that front, and this is good.

Yet, although 44% of the candidates of the five parties were women, they won only 30.5% of the seats. Opening the lens, the big question is why.

Political scientist Dr. Jeanette Ashe put it succinctly in her testimony to the House committee:

Party selection processes are the main cause of women’s under-representation. . . . Women do come forward in sufficient numbers, but party selectors and officials disproportionately select men.

Data-based evidence tells us two important things about the sources of inequality in candidate selection. First, party selectors disproportionately choose men to run in so-called stronghold ridings, ridings in which their party has a very good chance to win. Women are more likely to be candidates in ridings where their party is less competitive. Melanee Thomas and Marc André Bodet have stated, in a leading Canadian study:

In the aggregate, we find evidence that women are disproportionately nominated in districts they cannot win . . . .

If the same number of women was nominated as candidates, but the distribution of women candidates across district competitiveness matched that of men’s, the gender balance in the Canadian Parliament would change considerably. . . .

That’s the first factor.

Second, where the party is the incumbent in a district, the chosen candidate will tend to be a man whether the same candidate is running again or the party is choosing a new candidate to run in a district it held in the last election.

So, how women are treated in districts where parties judge that they have an electoral advantage is one of the keys to narrowing the gender gap. This bill applies this knowledge. Parties must report whether they have any rules in place that relate to the nomination of women as candidates in stronghold districts, which are defined to be districts in which the party’s candidate came within a margin of 10% or less of the votes cast for the winning candidate in the last election or by-election.

Parties must also report whether they have any rules in place that relate to the nomination of women in districts which the party held in the last election or by-election, that is, where the party is the incumbent, but the incumbent candidate for that party is not running again.

Colleagues, these are the main provisions of Bill S-283. To summarize, this bill implements recommendations from Canada’s Chief Electoral Officer with respect to measuring diversity, and from the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women in its April 2019 report with respect to improving diverse women’s representation in electoral politics. It draws upon extensive Canadian experience in the use of action plans to promote diversity in the workplace and on corporate boards and management, and it draws upon decades of research on women in politics.

This bill does not prescribe mandatory structural changes to either the electoral system or political parties, apart from those which political parties choose to make themselves. While 93 countries around the world have established quotas for women in elected politics, according to the United Nations, which measures this, this bill takes a different approach. It does not set goals or timetables for political parties. It asks parties to report on their goals, timetables and plans. The bill is built on data collection and reporting.

Bill S-283, I believe, will improve transparency, public accountability and trust in our political parties by enhancing information about their candidates and their candidate selection processes. The bill respects and challenges the leadership of our major political parties to ensure that the House of Commons is representative of the country, and it leaves plenty of room for parties to lead and to innovate.

Honourable senators, I seek your support for this bill at second reading. Thank you very much.

Will the honourable senator accept a question from Senator Omidvar?

Yes.

Thank you, Senator Dasko, for this proposal and your deconstruction of it. It speaks to your two key strengths. I’ve known you for a very long time, and ever since I’ve known you, you’ve been about women in politics and about evidence. It brings those two key strengths together.

I have a couple of questions about the use of the data. Your proposal will enable the Chief Electoral Officer to gather data at a national level and report it out. Could that data be disaggregated at the riding level?

Thank you for your question, Senator Omidvar. The data can be disaggregated to the extent that it doesn’t violate confidentiality and anonymity. That’s really a question about analysis and the extent to which the interactive aspects of the data analysis will be possible. It will be analyzed on an intersectional basis to the extent that anonymity and confidentiality are not violated.

The Chief Electoral Officer thinks these are very important aspects of the data — that it be confidential and anonymized because he wants to make sure that this will work. He feels that it will work if the data is treated that way, so that candidates will be able to provide the data and be confident that it is not going to be revealed at the individual level.

Honourable senators, it is now six o’clock and pursuant to rule 3-3(1), I am obliged to leave the chair until eight o’clock, when we will resume, unless it is your wish, honourable senators, to not see the clock.

Is it agreed to not see the clock?

Hon. Senators: Agreed.

I’m going to ask the question again. Is it agreed to not see the clock?

So ordered. Senator Dasko.

Thank you, Your Honour. That is the way the anonymity and confidentiality of the questions will be guaranteed in the analysis. That’s the bottom line. Thank you.

I have a brief second question. Senator Dasko, in your remarks you referred a number of times to the Employment Equity Act designated groups, as they affect Bill S-283. It’s remarkable how similar the bill I spoke to on charity governance is to your bill, so I’ll ask you a question that has preoccupied me as well.

The government is planning to change the language in the Employment Equity Act to expand the definitions of “designated groups.” How will these changes, which may come after — hopefully — your bill is passed, affect the legislation?

Thank you for the question, senator. Of course, using the designated groups in the Employment Equity Act is a really good way to characterize this and to measure the groups. We have experience measuring this from the Employment Equity Act. We have experience from the Canada Business Corporations Act. Your bill, as you mentioned, has those categories in it.

A review of the Employment Equity Act is currently under way, and changes are starting to be proposed. It is the intention of this bill that those changes will flow through from those efforts to this effort. That can happen either through what are called consequential amendments or, depending on which bill would pass first, amendments to one bill or the other to take these into account. The intention is definitely for changes to flow through.

We know that the number of categories of designated groups may be increasing. We know that some of the definitions may even be increasing. We’ve seen that from the review undertaken by the review committee.

The hope and intention is that those changes will flow through to this bill; it was drafted that way. Thank you.

I asked the question twice. Senators need to raise their voice or even stand up, or wait until everyone has finished saying yes or no to express their disagreement. So, we will move on.