A federal election is coming in 1997 and the now-ruling Liberals are getting a lot of press over their plan to appoint female candidates in a number of ridings across the country.
They did this in the 1993 election, after all, when prime minister ChrŽtien appointed a dozen women (and a couple of men, including former Toronto mayor Art Eggleton).
It is not surprising that they would do it again. Obviously, the powers in the party think it worked the last time.
It didn’t, not really, and the proposal is meeting mixed reaction this time around.
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Some of those appointed in 1993 faced questions, even in their own ridings, of their legitimacy as candidates. For those elected, the stigma, if one can call it that, of illegitimacy remains.
If you can’t win a nomination in the normal way, at least one argument runs, do you deserve to represent a party in a campaign or in the House of Commons?
The reason given for appointing female candidates is to ensure that women comprise at least 25 percent of the Liberal candidates in the upcoming eleciton. It is to give them a leg up in the process, to ensure that some nasty male doesn’t beat them out at a duly called nominating meeting. There is nothing wrong with the 25-percent goal; it’s the method of reaching it that is questionable.
In 1993, I was offered the chance of an appointment in the Kindersley-Lloydminster riding. There are some who, to this day, cannot understand why I turned it down. I did so because, while it is the custom where I live on the farm to use the back door on a regular basis, I didn’t see it as right or fitting to use the back door to get a political nomination.
It may be old fashioned, but I believe deeply and passionately in the democratic process and in the right of the people to decide who should represent them, whether it be in Parliament or around the municipal council table.
I do not like “elections” where candidates win by acclamation or where candidates are appointed on my behalf.
Moreover, I am offended by the assumption that a woman cannot win a nomination in a fair fight.
In the event, I did not run and that was the end of my political career. I have no regrets. I would make the same decision were I asked today and I would hope that other females – and males – would do the same. To do otherwise is surely to subvert the political process.
