Remarks by Lisa MacLeod, MPP

Friday May 25, 2006

Canadian Association of Family Resource Programs

-Check Against Delivery-

Good morning.  I am pleased to be here today with so many of you who are running family resource programs throughout Ontario and the rest of Canada.

I am fortunate to be here today for a few reasons:  I am a local Member of Provincial Parliament. I represent the provincial riding of Nepean-Carleton which was the historic riding of Canada's first prime minister and founding father, Sir John A. MacDonald, and strangely enough it has one of the highest birthrates in all of Canada. I think that my constituents represent all segments of the great society that is Canada and I am privileged to represent them as their first female MPP.

I am also the Official Opposition critic for Children and Youth Services in John Tory's Progressive Conservative Party Caucus.  I sometimes jokingly suggest I was appointed to the role because I was the only member of caucus with a child under 6 and what's more I can still carry a youth membership in the PC Party.

Finally, I am the youngest member of the Legislature—a woman to boot!; I was elected last year at the age of 31, two weeks after my beautiful daughter Victoria turned one.

I know that each of you in your public sector and not for profit careers have encountered politicians.  At times you have watched us set policies that impact your operations, at others you have been dependent on the funds we allocate in our budgets.  Today I want to provide you with a different view of your politicians.  I want to present to you a political mother.  In a sense, to quote our former Prime Minister’ wife Maureen McTeer, it’s a ‘Warts and All”.

As you can now tell, issues dealing with children and young families are never far from my mind or my heart, so it is in each of my various capacities that I welcome all of you to our nation's capital and that I thank you for the great work that you are doing in communities across our country for families and in particular, children.

I was asked to say a few words today to talk about what family support means to me as a parent of a young child, as a young woman and as the youngest person in the Ontario Legislature.

So it is with semi-humour that I point out that I am not sure who took longer to get used to whom:  the Legislature which, as an institution, has been in existence since 1792 to me or me, the 31 year old mother of a one year old child to the institution which is over 250 years old and that has generally been dominated by middle aged men twice my age throughout those years.

In all seriousness, family support in my job is absolutely critical and making the legislature more family friendly is one very important way to help strengthen that support.  Unfortunately, making political institutions more family friendly is a topic that has been discussed too few times in the last 250 years based on what I see today.

Progress has been slow and unsteady, but that might be about to change.

This is an election year and political parties are trying to recruit effective candidates that they hope will become effective legislators and of course young men and particularly young women who can carry their respective party banners are a much sought after commodity. Making political institutions, in my case Queen's Park, more family friendly, is now a matter of discussion as political parties from across the spectrum and from across Canada try to appeal to younger voters and women in particular to become candidates.

Gone are the days when women, like me, have to accept the line "of course there are challenges to being a young mother in politics but you knew that getting in."

Or "Your marriage will end in divorce if you run for public office—it is the life style."

Or "I won't even go into the fact that she is a young mother."

No, times have changed—perhaps just a bit- but times have changed since March, 2006.  Now too must our legislative bodies.

It is finally acceptable for me and other young women, and other young men for that matter, to challenge that regressive mindset and demand the system be improved so that we can be good caregivers to our children and at the same time be effective legislators for our constituents.

I often say to people trying to recruit more young women to politics, the challenge is not getting us elected anymore, it's keeping us elected- in the sense that the barriers we face as young parents while elected make the whole political process disillusioning to not only us but also our families.

The fact that Sheila Copps, our former Deputy Prime Minister faced the same obstacles twenty years ago, that I am facing today, I think speaks volumes to the need for changes not only in our Parliamentary system, but also in making the institutions that we cherish more inviting to young parents.

I have often said if there were two people I would like to have lunch with it would be Sheila Copps, and NDP MPP Shelley Martel.  Those two women were elected young- the youngest women in each of their respective parties- and still managed to raise kids.  Sheila and Shelley are real women, who in their 20 years of political life managed to be mothers and two of the most effective parliamentarians this country has ever elected.

But still, they succeeded when the legislature and federal parliament could have been far more progressive and responsive to their needs.

To be clear, when I was elected I did not see myself as an advocate for family friendly political institutions.

I do not think making the legislature more family friendly means overhauling the whole institution, or disrespecting over 200 years of parliamentary tradition, rather it is more about refining and modernizing the way we conduct business in the legislature and maximizing the support politicians are able to receive from their families.

Overall, improving the way the institution functions makes legislators better representatives and better policy makers.

I have a few ideas on how we can make our political institutions more family friendly, and therefore more effective for the people we represent.

First, as a level of government whose responsibility it is to ensure quality childcare is available to our citizens, it is imperative that our parliaments do not lag behind the very childcare systems we are establishing in our communities.  Legislatures across Canada and our federal Parliament must provide their members with small children access to some form of child care.

Let me speak from the heart and from experience. When I was first elected in the by-election, I had eight days to move my family to Toronto, find an apartment, open two offices and begin the work as a legislator.  This was all done with the support of my family and a very dedicated staff, but when it came to my unique needs as a young mother and MPP, traveling five hours to and from Toronto, the legislative assembly offered to no support and no options for childcare, despite the urgency and despite me being a newcomer to Toronto with virtually no transition time.

To be truthful, my office became a makeshift nursery to accommodate my growing baby and my demanding career, as I searched for childcare. 

In the end, only with the support of my dedicated husband, was I able to find adequate care.  My husband decided to sacrifice his career and stay at home to raise our daughter.  So now each week, usually late Sunday afternoon the four of us- my husband, daughter, me--- and the dog, pile into our car and drive to Toronto for the week.

It is no small wonder that when a friend in the media recently told me that she had a friend who wanted to be a candidate but that as a single mom she simply couldn’t afford the financial or emotional resources.

We are losing good women because there is no family support, and what support they have would be exhausted unless the legislative system changes.

This brings me to my next point.

Second, legislative institutions must adopt family friendly sitting hours by eliminating evening sittings unless there is a need for an emergency debate.

The Ontario Legislature frequently sits until 9:30 p.m. every sitting day except for Thursday. Yet, in order to attract and retain politicians with young families, particularly women like myself who are primary care givers, it is my view that the sitting hours could be fine tuned to allow for earlier sittings while still affording ample opportunity to debate the relevant issues of the day. I am up early—very early in the morning and there is no reason that the Legislature can not sit earlier in the day and still accomplish what we need to.

This brings me to my third point on my family friendly wishlist:  every moment in our legislative chambers should count so your politicians are dealing more with the relevant issues of the day rather than the process issues that too often take precedence over substantive public policy debate.

Last week in the Ontario legislature is an example.

During a routine closure motion, which effectively ends debate on a piece of legislation, legislators collectively were given 3 hours one night last week to talk about anything- whether it was relevant to the bill or not- simply because we could under what is called the “standing orders”. I agree that it is the rules in democracy that prevent the tyranny of the majority over the minority yet too often the rules have been abused for the sake of an idle rant rather than debating the important public policy issues of the day.

When I first arrived at Queen’s Park a colleague suggested that the only place where your effectiveness in debate is judged based on the time you speak rather than the points you make was in the legislature- makes you think doesn’t it?

I think all political parties need to work together to make the change that's positive for our work in our legislatures and for our constituents who want and demand relevant debate.  Part of keeping current and relevant means making some of those systemic changes and refining the standing orders, or the rules which are in place in our parliaments, so that we are debating things that are important to the people we represent- like child care, like education and like healthcare.

The ideas I have just presented to you are three simple ways that the Ontario provincial government could easily change without going in to the rhetoric of democratic deficit, democratic renewal or democratic reform.

I can tell you that there is a commitment to change by younger and many older members of our legislature who have watched their families grow in the pressurized un-family friendly world of the legislature.

If political parties do want more young members of the legislature and we are going to lament the need for more young women in politics then we need to take a closer look at how we do business to ensure that public service is an attractive idea and life style.