Saskatchewan NDP MLA Vicki Mowat took to Twitter on Monday to raise awareness about the kinds of calls women in politics get.
She said she recently received a call telling her to shut up and go back to teaching.
While it’s not uncommon for politicians to get angry calls from constituents, Mowat said the message had “a condescending tone.”
“He perceived me as attacking what he called a ‘grown man’ and he said ‘grown man’ a couple of times,” she told CBC’s Saskatoon Morning. “So it really felt like a message that a male politician would not have received.”
Mowat is the MLA for Saskatoon Fairview and the NDP’s health critic. She said it’s not her first encounter of this kind. She said she has “grown a thick skin.”
She’s worked in male-dominated fields before, she said, most notably in the military. Mowat is a retired member of the Canadian Armed Forces.
This week, an older gentleman left me a disparaging anonymous voicemail telling me to “shut up, mind my own business, go back to my little teaching job, and resign.” <a href=”https://t.co/WofUDWIWOg”>pic.twitter.com/WofUDWIWOg</a>
Mowat said speaking about this type of treatment is “a good way to raise awareness that it’s still happening.”
She said she gets asked questions that her male colleagues do not, such as how old she is and what her marital status is.
“There really is still this perception about women in politics that we need to be actively fighting against,” Mowat said.
Researcher says women’s qualifications often questioned
Erin Pilipow is a researcher at the University of Saskatchewan who is examining how members of Trudeau’s cabinet — made up of half men and half women — are treated.
Pillipow said she was inspired to choose this topic for her thesis when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced his gender-balanced cabinet in 2015.
“I was super excited for such a strong stance on diverse representation by the prime minister of Canada,” she told CBC’s Saskatoon Morning.
“But then in my classes … I was really frustrated by the focus on the idea that these women who were being appointed were automatically lacking merit.”
Pillipow said her research found that society has a “very narrow” idea about what experiences are valid for going into politics.
“You basically have to be a lawyer or a businessperson or a previous politician to not have your qualifications questioned,” she said. “Those are all experiences that men are more likely to have.”
Pillipow said caregiving and being a parent are not considered good experiences, and in fact can be a detriment to a woman’s career in politics.
“They’re explicitly talked about in a negative way, like it’s going to take away from your ability to represent the country or your constituencies.”
OTTAWA – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the NDP is caving to political pressure from Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre when it comes to their stance on the consumer carbon price.
Trudeau says he believes Jagmeet Singh and the NDP care about the environment, but it’s “increasingly obvious” that they have “no idea” what to do about climate change.
On Thursday, Singh said the NDP is working on a plan that wouldn’t put the burden of fighting climate change on the backs of workers, but wouldn’t say if that plan would include a consumer carbon price.
Singh’s noncommittal position comes as the NDP tries to frame itself as a credible alternative to the Conservatives in the next federal election.
Poilievre responded to that by releasing a video, pointing out that the NDP has voted time and again in favour of the Liberals’ carbon price.
British Columbia Premier David Eby also changed his tune on Thursday, promising that a re-elected NDP government would scrap the long-standing carbon tax and shift the burden to “big polluters,” if the federal government dropped its requirements.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
Simon Jolin-Barrette, minister responsible for consumer protection, has tabled a bill to force merchants to calculate tips based on the price before tax.
That means on a restaurant bill of $100, suggested tips would be calculated based on $100, not on $114.98 after provincial and federal sales taxes are added.
The bill would also increase the rebate offered to consumers when the price of an item at the cash register is higher than the shelf price, to $15 from $10.
And it would force grocery stores offering a discounted price for several items to clearly list the unit price as well.
Businesses would also have to indicate whether taxes will be added to the price of food products.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
Quebec legislature member Youri Chassin has announced he’s leaving the Coalition Avenir Québec government to sit as an Independent.
He announced the decision shortly after writing an open letter criticizing Premier François Legault’s government for abandoning its principles of smaller government.
In the letter published in Le Journal de Montréal and Le Journal de Québec, Chassin accused the party of falling back on what he called the old formula of throwing money at problems instead of looking to do things differently.
Chassin says public services are more fragile than ever, despite rising spending that pushed the province to a record $11-billion deficit projected in the last budget.
He is the second CAQ member to leave the party in a little more than one week, after economy and energy minister Pierre Fitzgibbon announced Sept. 4 he would leave because he lost motivation to do his job.
Chassin says he has no intention of joining another party and will instead sit as an Independent until the end of his term.
He has represented the Saint-Jérôme riding since the CAQ rose to power in 2018, but has not served in cabinet.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
