Bill No. 118 - Municipal Government Act and Halifax Regional Municipality Charter - Second Reading
MS. CLAUDIA CHENDER « » : Mr. Speaker, I'm pleased to rise in support of this bill. Our caucus has been focused on policy changes that improve the lives of women in Nova Scotia, that lower the barriers of young people into politics, and we were pleased to introduce a similar amendment twice, in fact, once in the last sitting and once in this one.
We're very pleased to see the work that was done with Meg Hodges and Emily Lutz who have really been leading the way on this. They were here in the gallery in the last sitting supporting this work as well. We recognize that significant barriers continue to exist for women's entering into politics. In our caucus, we have three mothers of young children. I know there are fathers of young children here in the Chamber, but it's probably not by accident that there are fewer mothers of young children. It is more challenging.
We live in a world where we do not have gender parity in almost anything. We don't have it in this Chamber; we don't have it in pay. We don't have it in barriers to the workforce, and so anything we can do to remedy that situation is a good thing. I am happy.
I'll echo the comments of my colleague to see that this also applies to fathers and also to parents of adopted children. I, myself, am not concerned about any kind of double- dipping. I think the reality is, as we looked at this amendment and spoke to councillors and kind of did the due diligence, it became very clear that no municipal councillor is going to take a year off. It's not going to happen. If you take a year off, you're not going to get elected again.
The reality is that people should be able to choose how and when they come back to work after becoming a parent of a child. It doesn't mean they're not going to be doing their work; it means that they don't have to ask their colleagues to vote on whether or not they can miss meetings.
So, we feel like this is one step in lowering barriers to participation. It's a good one. We're happy to see that the UNSM was involved, and we're pleased to support this bill.
Published by Order of the Legislature by Hansard Reporting Services and printed by the Queen's Printer.
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