A Woman’s Place is in the House

I don’t have to be liberated — I’ve never been captured.
The Liberals are putting on a special push to convince prominent and successful women to run as candidates in the next federal election.
In a drive to get more women on board, newly selected Grit leader Stephane Dion has appointed lawyer Linda Julien to head up the party’s women candidate search.
Of the candidates in the next election, Mr. Dion wants at least 33 per cent to be women. 
Since Newmarket-Aurora MP Belinda Stronach and Thornhill MP Susan Kadis are among the six local Liberals elected to the House of Commons, York Region has met the 33-per-cent quota.
We need to move the bar, sending at least one more woman from York Region to Ottawa.
Also, we’d better kickstart the old ’60s slogan, A Woman’s Place is in the House.
For years, I blamed the old boys’ club for keeping the Men-Rule doctrine alive in Ottawa.
I believed that, given time, many of life’s injustices would disappear and we’d finally achieve gender balance in our  government. 
After all, life dictates that, at some point, prejudice people get old and die, taking all their discriminatory idealism along with them to the grave.
So, here we are: while women are making major inroads, we’re still not represented equally in government.
Time’s running out.
I can no longer blame the lack of women in government entirely on men.
Despite all that has been done to get women to recognize their own strengths and to take control of their own lives, some are so burdened with low self-esteem, they’re reluctant to put their faith in other women.
I see a flaw in Mr. Dion’s plan.
Why doesn’t the Liberal leader have lawyer Linda Julien join forces with Ms Stronach, the Liberal’s women caucus chairperson, and head up a 50-50 male-female Liberal candidate search?
Stop with this ongoing lip service and go into the game with a one-net approach designed to catch an equal number of talented and, yes, honest men and women candidates.
Of the four national political parties, women make the best gains with the Liberals’ warts and all. 
Last summer, 26 current and former women MPs joined Ms Stronach at an Aurora-based, two-day retreat to focus on women in Canada.
There, they produced the Pink Book, dealing with ways to improve women’s economic security and economic empowerment.
While I don’t like the colour of the Pink Book, I applaud its content. The Pink Book calls for national child care and early learning programs, a system that would be on par with the one the Liberals signed with the provinces before they got turfed out of office last January.
The Liberals deserved to get the boot, but not because of their position on child care.
A few thieves got hold of Liberal reigns. Party officials turned a blind eye.
The result was it tainted, embarrassed and humiliated the party, sending it to the repair shop where it belonged.
Will the Liberal party be fixed before the next election is anyone’s guess. 
Of the four national political parties, the best chance for women to move toward equality remains with the very imperfect Liberals.
While from an ideology standpoint, the New Democrat Party offers women the most respect and the best recognition, the socialist party writes cheques it can’t cash.
The NDP have been in a stalled position for years. A political party can’t deliver unless it’s moving forward.
Instead of sulking, living in the clouds and chasing itself in circles, I dearly wish the New Democrats would grow up, get real and learn how to grow. 
The Conservatives, meanwhile, are OK with women, providing there’s not too many of them.
Women in large numbers make the Tories nervous.
Now, if you give women in large numbers power, Prime Minister Stephen Harper would break out in hives.
Of course, the Bloc’s focus is on taking Quebec out of the country.
There’s no interest, time or energy being spent on little else.
If women are to occupy half of the 308 seats in the House of Commons in my lifetime, I’ll have to live a very long time.