“An Inclusive Parliament?”: A Few Thoughts

This entry is part 4 of 11 in the series Vol 48 No. 4 (Winter)
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“An Inclusive Parliament?”: A Few Thoughts

Invited to offer opening remarks at the Canadian Study of Parliament Group’s 2025 conference on “Inclusive Parliaments,” in this article the author offers a revised version of her introductory remarks by reflecting on three other questions: What is meant by “inclusive”? Are parliaments, including the Parliament of Canada, inclusive? If not, how can we achieve more inclusive parliaments? She concludes by suggesting that in an age when illiberalism is growing globally, proposals designed to increase inclusivity of certain marginalized populations may face increasing headwinds both in Canada and abroad.

Manon Tremblay

Manon Tremblay is Professor Emeritus in the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa.

When asked by historian Bibia Pavard about how her lesbianism affected her career in the Upper Chamber of the French Parliament, Corinne Bouchoux, Senator (Europe Écologie Les Verts) for Maine-et-Loire from 2011 to 2017, replied: “It’s an Assembly of white men over the age of 64, somewhat paunchy, and it’s heteroland.”1 [translation] This statement suggests that Parliament, intended as a space to represent the people, is not representative in that its elected members comprise a somewhat limited range of the various forms of diversity that make up French society. From this standpoint, the seminar “An Inclusive Parliament?”, held in Ottawa in April 2025 and organized by the Canadian Study of Parliament Group, proved both relevant and eminently bold in this era of illiberalism. I opted to respond to this invitation to reflect on the theme “An Inclusive Parliament?” through three questions: (1) What is meant by “inclusive”?; (2) Are parliaments, including the Parliament of Canada, inclusive? If not, (3) How can we achieve more inclusive parliaments?

What is meant by “inclusive”?

The theoretical backdrop underlying the idea of an inclusive Parliament is what is known as descriptive representation: Parliament should reflect the population it represents.2 In this sense, Parliament should be a “mirror,” a microcosm of society. Consequently, with respect to sex and gender, 51 per cent of elected members should be women (and diverse women) and around five per cent3 should be identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer and other identities (LGBTQ+), again representing every letter in the acronym. Of course, this interpretation of political representation has been widely criticized, especially because it is virtually impossible to implement through elections (a random draw would be more appropriate in this case), but above all because it raises the question of the criteria or traits that provide access to political representation: Why does being a woman or an LGBTQ+ person qualify someone for representation, but having blue eyes does not?

In this article, I will focus mainly on the concept of an “inclusive Parliament” as it relates to sex and gender minorities. A number of feminist and queer theorists4 have examined the principles underlying descriptive representation, in particular, the principle of sex and gender minorities. A key idea that emerges from these insights is that a trait associated with oppression qualifies as a basis for parliamentary representation in its descriptive sense. The primary indices developed for measuring the degree of equality between women and men (such as the Gender Development Index) show that women experience less desirable living conditions than men, whether it sociocultural, economical or political.5 The same finding applies to sex and gender minorities.6

If the oppression experienced by women and LGBTQ+ people provides grounds for arguing in favour of their representation in Parliament, this raises another question: What is the intent of inclusion? In other words, when a woman or an LGBTQ+ person is elected to office, what aspect is included in Parliament? To put it another way, if the make-up of Parliament is half women and approximately 5 per cent LGBTQ+ people, is that enough to say it is inclusive “of women” and “of LGBTQ+ people”? Certainly not, since the women and LGBTQ+ individuals who are elected do not in any way represent diversity among women and LGBTQ+ people themselves; in fact, these women and LGBTQ+ elected officials may only represent the more privileged segments of their identity group. This is why some female authors, including Dovi,7 draw on an intersectional approach to argue for the election of women (and LGBTQ+ people, by extension, for the purposes of this discussion) who maintain strong reciprocal ties with the most disadvantaged and vulnerable women (ideally, these politicians themselves being among them). According to Celis and Childs, including these more marginalized women (and LGBTQ+ people) within Parliament helps ensure that claims made on behalf of women (and LGBTQ+ people) better reflect the heterogeneous interests8 of women (and LGBTQ+ people)—rather than just those of the segments with thriving cultural, socioeconomic and political capital. Celis and Childs view the inclusion of these precarious bodies and voices as an imperative for equality: “voices should receive equal respect and consideration.”9 In short, an inclusive Parliament requires acknowledging that society is not homogeneous, but is woven from multiple forms of diversity that, in a constitutional state, enjoy ontological equality and, I would add, must be able to rely on procedural fairness because equality before the law, while essential, presents a danger when understood and implemented in terms of identical treatment: the danger of reproducing inequality under the misleading appearance of equality. An inclusive Parliament calls for recognizing the equality/equity of societal diversities and implies that these heterogeneous bodies and voices participate not only in public decisions that affect them, but also in those that more broadly shape our cohesive society.

Are parliaments inclusive?

This is undoubtedly the easiest question to answer. Even a cursory review of the bodies that make up parliaments is sufficient to conclude that, from a descriptive perspective of political representation, they reflect societal diversities poorly and are therefore hardly inclusive. In fact, Parliament is an eminently gendered space of power, as demonstrated by the numerical over-representation of men10 and cisgender heterosexual individuals11 among its members. But this is also evident in the male exclusivity that pervades legislative assemblies and relegates women to the status of strangers, even intruders.12 The Canadian parliamentary system as a whole,13 and its legislative branch more specifically,14 are not exempt from this finding of heteronormativity and cisgenderism.

Why is this the case, especially since the right to stand for election – the initial threshold in the electoral process leading to legislative representation – is highly inclusive? In fact, the Parliament of Canada made several decisions in the 20th century to extend the right to run for federal office to as many people as possible. The most significant of these, in terms of the number of people impacted, was the response to suffragist movements, which extended this right to most women in 1919.15 What, then, happens between the start of the electoral race, where the right to stand for election is today highly inclusive (at least in theory) and the finish line, where the Parliament of Canada lacks diversity and is therefore far from inclusive? While a lot of complex factors are at play that cannot be adequately addressed in this short paper, it is important to highlight the role of political parties: countless studies point to political parties as the primary actors responsible for the low representation of women16 and LGBTQ+ people17 in Canada’s House of Commons. Political parties are the architects of legislative representation: they decide who will seek votes under their respective banners and therefore, indirectly, which bodies (and voices) will sit in the Lower House of the Parliament of Canada. Since parties bear much of the responsibility for the lack of inclusion in the House of Commons as far as the diversities that shape Canadian society, Parliament’s capacity to be more inclusive and show a more convincing commitment to equality also depends on them. As Williams points out, “treating people as equals means only that their group traits must not be used to deny them the legal rights enjoyed by others,”18 including the right to represent. Would a Parliament lacking inclusivity reflect the parties’ casual approach to equality?

This raises another question: What form of representation is available to those who are excluded; that is, people who do not match the “neutral representative” politico-phantasmic model, which is apparently free of any identity markers, particularly those related to sex or gender (but who, in practice, are more often than not male and cisgender)? This reopened the debate between universalism and descriptive (or identity-based) representation, which was brilliantly led in France in the 1990s as part of general activism for gender parity in politics: Why should Parliament be a reflection of the population? Or, from another perspective, why not trust those sitting in Parliament to represent those who are absent, which raises the question of the role of resemblance in political representation. Young provided a simple answer to this complex question: “To the extent that what distinguishes social groups is structural relations, particularly structural relations of privilege and disadvantage, and to the extent that persons are positioned similarly in those structures, then they have similar perspectives both on their own situation and on other positions in the society.”19 Additionally, Williams rounds out the debate by asserting that resemblance promotes the trust that is essential to representation: “the capacity of citizens from marginalized groups to trust their representatives is greater when those representatives are also group members.”20 Women and LGBTQ+ individuals must be included in Parliament on the grounds that their life trajectories are marked by privileges and oppressions that shape their respective groups’ perspectives and interests, and that they are best suited to feel, express, advocate for and promote representation. The body is anything but neutral: a close examination reveals the privileges that refine it and the oppressions that scar it – marks that permeate ideas. Nonetheless, resemblance does not guarantee representation: many female politicians and LGBTQ+ elected officials have little interest in representing women and LGBTQ+ people. Hence the imperative put forward by Dovi21 and outlined above: female politicians and LGBTQ+ elected officials must have close contacts and bonds of trust with the most vulnerable segments of women and LGBTQ+ people. In short, the marginalized must be included in Parliament because they are the best qualified to represent the living conditions of their identity group, as defined by sex and gender. But how does one breach the representation “fortress”?

How can more inclusive parliaments be achieved?

Research to date has identified some ad hoc strategies for overcoming the challenges that stand in the way of diversified and inclusive representation. Broadly speaking, these strategies can be divided into two groups: those aimed at taking concrete action for people belonging to groups that are underrepresented in Parliament and those that seek to transform the political process.

The first category of strategies is grounded in the theory that people who are not included in Parliament are (at least partly) responsible for this exclusion because they do not seek election. In The Political Role of Women, one of the first studies on women in politics, published in 1955, Maurice Duverger, a leading figure in French political science, wrote: “few women are elected because few women stand for election.”22 Consequently, strategies are needed in order to stimulate the supply (to adopt the jargon of the economic model used to discuss the parliamentarian recruitment process) of female candidates (and, for the purposes of this paper, of LGBTQ+ candidates). Here are a few examples of such strategies: female politicians and LGBTQ+ elected officials take to public forums (in the form of podcasts, public speaking or interviews with journalists, for example) to share their experiences and show that it is possible for a woman or an LGBTQ+ person to be elected to political office (two biographies serve as examples: Pauline Marois: Au-delà du pouvoir and Svend Robinson: A Life in Politics); civil society groups (or even political parties) set up training sessions designed to spark women’s and LGBTQ+ people’s political ambitions and “train” them (for instance, teaching them how to manage their public persona, talk to the media or respond proactively to everyday (hetero)sexism in politics; examples include the Fonds Fondation Femmes, Politique et Démocratie in Quebec, and ProudPolitics across Canada); funds are made available to cover child care costs (parties on the left such as the New Democratic Party and Québec Solidaire sometimes offer this option); and youth mentorship programs with female politicians or LGBTQ+ elected officials have been set up (at the federal level, some openly LGBQ MPs have said they mentor young members of the LGBTQ+ community).23 These strategies are intended to help people from groups that are underrepresented in Parliament adapt to the political process; however, their training does not encompass calling these rules into question.

The second type of strategy is based instead on the theory that underrepresentation in Parliament cannot be attributed to the groups affected (i.e., women and LGBTQ+ people), but rather to the political system and its operating rules—in other words, the problem is systemic. Strategies in this category are therefore intended to change the political process. Following are two examples. The first is to adopt electoral gender quotas24 aimed at candidacies (although the New Democratic Party of Canada does not refer to quotas, it has set itself a “target” of 50 per cent female candidates, as well as a more vague and informal objective for LGBTQ+ candidacies)25 or, more rarely, elected officials in the form of protected seats, as in Tanzania, where the Constitution states that women must represent no fewer than 30 per cent of members of the Lower House of Parliament.26 While the scenario of reserved seats cannot be considered in Canada, Bill C-237, the Candidate Gender Equity Act, sponsored by Member of Parliament Kenneth Stewart, flirted with the notion of applying electoral gender quotas to candidacies by making reimbursement of a given party’s electoral expenses conditional on the proportion of candidates (both female and male) fielded by that party in an election.27 Unsurprisingly, this private member’s bill was defeated at second reading. The lukewarm support28 for quotas in Canada is regrettable because (1) this strategy has been used—and was successful—in more than a hundred countries; (2) at first glance, it is fully compatible with the Canadian Charter (i.e., s. 15.2); and finally, (3) it provides a conventional but very real framework for the formation of the most sacred structure in the Westminster model: Cabinet.

The other example of systemic strategies pertains to the voting system—the narrow method used to translate ballots cast into seats in Parliament. As a rule, proportional and mixed voting systems perform better than their first-past-the-post counterparts in generating an inclusive Parliament, including with respect to sex and gender minorities.29 Canada uses a first-past-the-post voting system, which is often cited as the reason for the low proportion of women and LGBTQ+ elected officials.30 And yet, despite the representative injustice of sex and gender minorities under the first-past-the-post voting system, discussions on electoral reform in Canada, carried out mainly from the late 1990s onward by both the federal and provincial governments,31 have been decidedly disappointing in terms of their objective to increase the number of women in Parliament.32

I would like to close this discussion on the question of “How can we achieve more inclusive parliaments?” on a positive note. In 1995, the Nunavut Implementation Commission proposed the implementation of dual member balanced-ticket ridings. Under this proposal, each of the territory’s 11 ridings would have been represented by two parliamentarians—one woman and one man. In other words, the Legislative Assembly of Nunavut, elected in a first-past-the-post system but with dual-member representation, would have been composed of 11 women and 11 men .33 Although this proposal was defeated in a May 1997 referendum, two Innu communities in Quebec amended their electoral code to include the principle of gender parity: Ekuanitshit in the early 2000s and Unamen Shipu in 2013.34 People who resist adopting electoral gender quotas on the grounds that they are not compatible with the first-past-the-post system are now obliged to acknowledge that the Nunavut proposal can lead to an inclusive Parliament. Unfortunately, other forces continue to hinder the emergence of a diversity-rich Parliament.

“An Inclusive Parliament?”

Starting from the observation that equality before the law (for example, the right to stand for election) does not translate into a Parliament whose composition reflects the diversity of civil society, the goal of an inclusive Parliament requires the promotion of equity. The Government of Canada defines equity as “The principle of considering people’s unique experiences and differing situations, and ensuring they have access to the resources and opportunities that are necessary for them to attain just outcomes. [It] aims to eliminate disparities and disproportions that are rooted in historical and contemporary injustices and oppression.”35 In the face of entities that are tangibly unequal (because they do not have the same resources, for example), equity uses strategies (such as intersectional analyses and affirmative action measures) to achieve equality of outcomes. Yet inclusion, along with its partners diversity and equity, are the prime targets of a wave of illiberalism that has been sweeping across the Western world in recent years.

According to Laruelle,36 illiberalism, which at times flirts with populism and even authoritarianism, is both a critique of liberal democracies for their (alleged) excesses in valuing individual freedoms, economic globalization and tolerance of societal pluralism, as well as an argument in favour of autonomous nation-states, each governed by an omnipotent leader at the head of a strong executive that favours traditional hierarchies on the basis of biology/birth, social class, race/ethnicity and, of course, sex/gender, among others. In social terms, aside from its rejection of the principles of inclusion, diversity and equality/equity, illiberalism disparages ideas and movements (such as feminism, queer analyses or antispeciesism and ecological determinism) which have recently been described by the umbrella term “woke.” In contrast, toxic masculinity, and even muscular virilism (it takes muscle to wield a chainsaw) are indicative of this survival of the fittest mentality. Illiberalism disregards measures to redress inequalities such as electoral gender quotas or a voting system designed to reflect societal diversities.

Although comprehensive illiberalism may seem far removed from Canada (in Argentina under Javier Gerardo Milei, Hungary under Viktor Orbán, India under Narendra Modi, Italy under Giorgia Meloni or Russia under Vladimir Putin and, of course, the United States under Donald Trump), elements of this ideology have appeared here as well—albeit less aggressively than elsewhere to date. For instance, the first Carney cabinet did not include a department responsible specifically for women and gender equality, and although the federal cabinet formed after the 2025 elections reinstated this portfolio, the funding it was allocated for the coming years was drastically reduced to a point where the Department of Women and Gender Equality could justifiably be described as an empty shell. Several provinces (including Alberta, New Brunswick and Saskatchewan) have implemented policies or laws which restrict transgender youth from accessing gender-affirming health care or using a first name or pronouns at school that apparently do not correspond to the sex they were assigned at birth. The Quebec government has gone even further by prohibiting its civil servants from using inclusive writing in their communications—so goodbye celleux, eil, toustes and hello once again to the primacy of the masculine form, according to which “the masculine takes precedence over the feminine”! Is this grammar of exclusion a precursor of an (even more) exclusive Parliament? Only time will tell.

Notes

  1. Pavard, Bibia. “Je suis une anomalie statistique.” Entretien avec Corinne Bouchoux, Europe Écologie Les Verts,” Parlement[s], Revue d’histoire politique, 19, 1, 2013: p. 132. [DOI 10.3917/parl.019.0125]
  2. Pitkin, Hanna Fenichel. The Concept of Representation, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1967, pp. 60-91.
  3. Percentage according to Statistics Canada, “A statistical portrait of Canada’s diverse LGBTQ2+ communities,” 2021. [https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/210615/dq210615a-eng.htm]
  4. See: Dovi, Suzanne. “Preferable Descriptive Representatives: Will Just Any Woman, Black, or Latino Do?,” American Political Science Review, 96, 4, 2002: pp. 729–743; Mansbridge, Jane. “Rethinking Representation,” American Political Science Review, 97, 4, 2003; Phillips, A. The Politics of Presence: The Political Representation of Gender, Ethnicity and Race. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1995; Tremblay, Manon. “Representation: The Case of LGBTQ People” in Manon Tremblay (ed.), Queering Representation: LGBTQ People and Electoral Politics in Canada, Vancouver, UBC Press, 2019: pp. 220–239, Urbinati, Nadia, Representative Democracy: Principles and Genealogy, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2006; Williams, Melissa S. Voice, Trust, and Memory. Marginalized Groups and the Failings of Liberal Representation, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1998; Young, Iris Marion, Inclusion and Democracy, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000.
  5. UNDP, Gender Development Index (GDI). [https://hdr. undp.org/gender-development-index#/indicies/GDI]
  6. ILGA World et al. State-Sponsored Homophobia 2020: Global Legislation Overview Update, Geneva, ILGA, 2020.
  7. Dovi, 2002.
  8. Feminist researchers and activists have not reached a consensus on the concept of “women’s interests,” but space restrictions do not allow for any examination of this issue in this article.
  9. Celis, Karen and Sarah Childs. Feminist Democratic Representation, New York, Oxford University Press, 2020, p. 89.
  10. Inter-Parliamentary Union. “IPU Parline: Global and regional averages of women in national parliaments,” 2025. [//data.ipu.org/women-averages/?date_ month=09&date_year=2025]
  11. Reynolds, Andrew. The Children of Harvey Milk: How LGBTQ Politicians Changed the World, New York, Oxford University Press, 2019: p. 283)
  12. Gardey, Delphine. Le linge du Palais-Bourbon. Corps, matérialité et genre du politique à l’ère démocratique, Lormont, Le bord de l’eau. 2015; Korte, Kate, “Jackets, ties, and comparable attire: Maintaining gender norms through legislative assembly dress codes,” Canadian Parliamentary Review, 45, 3, 2022, pp. 2-8; Puwar, Nirmal. Space Invaders: Race, Gender and Bodies Out of Place, Oxford and New York, Berg, 2004.
  13. Tremblay, Manon and Joanna Everitt (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Gender, Sexuality, and Canadian Politics, Cham (Switzerland), Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. [doi. org/10.1007/978-3-030-49240-3]
  14. Raney, Tracey. “Canada’s Legislature: A (Gendered) Parliament for the People,” in Manon Tremblay and Joanna Everitt (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Gender, Sexuality, and Canadian Politics, Cham (Switzerland), Palgrave Macmillan, 2020: pp. 167–186. [doi. org/10.1007/978-3-030-49240-3_9]
  15. This inclusion did not extend to some women, such as First Nations women who were registered as “status Indians.”
  16. Bashevkin, Sylvia B. Women and Party Politics in English-Canada, 2nd edition, Toronto, Oxford University Press, 1993; Cross, William P. and Scott Pruysers, “The Local Determinants of Representation: Party Constituency Associations, Candidate Nomination and Gender,” Canadian Journal of Political Science, 52, 3, 1993: pp. 557-74; Pitre, Sonia. “Women’s Struggle for Legislative Power: The Role of Political Parties,” Atlantis. A Women’s Studies Journal/Journal d’études sur la femme, 27, 2, 2003: pp. 102–109, among others)
  17. Ashe, Jeanette. “Canada’s Political Parties: Gatekeepers to Parliament” in Manon Tremblay and Joanna Everitt (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Gender, Sexuality, and Canadian Politics, Cham, Palgrave Macmillan, 2020: pp. 297–316; Everitt, Joanna and Manon Tremblay, “Are Openly LGBTQ2+ the New Sacrificial Lambs? Campaign Contexts and the Gendered Implications for LGBTQ2+ Candidates,” Canadian Journal of Political Science, 56, 2, 2023: pp. 300–324. [DOI: 10.1017/S0008423923000161]; Lapointe, Valérie, Benjamin Ferland and Luc Turgeon. “Still sacrificial lambs? Yes! Minority groups in Canadian federal elections, 2015–2021,” Electoral Studies, 87, 2024. [article 102717]
  18. Williams, Melissa S. Voice, Trust, and Memory. Marginalized Groups and the Failings of Liberal Representation, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1998, p. 238.
  19. Young, Iris Marion. Inclusion and Democracy, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 143-144.
  20. Williams, p. 9.
  21. Dovi, 2002.
  22. Duverger, p. 84
  23. Tremblay, Manon, LGBQ Legislators in Canadian Politics: Out to Represent, Cham (Switzerland), Palgrave Macmillan, 2022, pp. 166-173.
  24. On quotas, see: Gender Quotas Database, 2025. [https:// www.idea.int/data-tools/data/gender-quotas-database]
  25. Ashe, 2020.
  26. Gender Quotas Database, 2025.
  27. Reimbursement owed to a party was reduced if the gap between the total number of female and male candidates was greater than 10 per cent. A similar practice was adopted in France, for the purpose of achieving gender parity in politics.
  28. See: Canseco, Mario. “Half of Canadians would support gender quotas in Parliament: new poll,” BIV: Business Intelligence for B.C., November 9, 2023. [//www.biv. com/news/commentary/half-canadians-would-gender-quotas-parliament-new-poll-8294053]
  29. See: Norris, Pippa. “The Impact of Electoral Reform on Women’s Representation,” Acta Politica, 41, 2, 2006: pp. 197–213; Profeta, Paola and Eleanor F. Woodhouse, “Electoral Rules, Women’s Representation and the Qualification of Politicians,” Comparative Political Studies, 55, 9, 2022: pp. 1471–1500, Rosenblum, Darren, “Geographically Sexual?: Advancing Gay and Lesbian Interests Through Proportional Representation,” Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, 31, 1996: pp. 119-154; Rule, Wilma. “Electoral systems, contextual factors and women’s opportunity for election to parliament in twenty-three democracies,” Western Political Quarterly, 40, 3, 1987: pp. 477–498. [doi. org/10.1177/106591298704000307]
  30. See: Johnson, Mark. “Women’s Descriptive Representation in Canadian Politics: Impacts of Electoral Reform” Canadian Parliamentary Review, 45, 3, 2022: pp. 24–32; Pilon, Dennis. “Electing LGBT Representatives and the Voting System in Canada” in Manon Tremblay (ed.), Queering Representation: LGBTQ People and Electoral Politics in Canada, Vancouver, UBC Press, 2019, pp. 124–153; Pilon, Dennis. “The Electoral System: The Gendered Politics of Institutions” in Manon Tremblay and Joanna Everitt (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Gender, Sexuality, and Canadian Politics, Cham, Palgrave Macmillan, 2020: pp. 273–295.
  31. For the federal perspective, see: Canada, Special Committee on Electoral Reform. Strengthening Democracy in Canada: Principles, Process and Public Engagement for Electoral Reform, Ottawa, Special Committee on Electoral Reform, 2016. [//www.noscommunes.ca/ Content/Committee/421/ERRE/Reports/RP8655791/ errerp03/errerp03-e.pdf]; Law Commission of Canada. Voting Counts: Electoral Reform for Canada, Ottawa, The Commission, 2004. [https://publications.gc.ca/ collections/Collection/J31-61-2004E.pdf]; for the provinces, see: British Columbia, Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform. Making Every Vote Count: the case for electoral reform in British Columbia, Final Report, [s. l.], [British Columbia Government], December, 2004, [// citizensassembly.arts.ubc.ca/resources/final_report. pdf]; Québec, Assemblée nationale. Bill 39, An Act to establish a new electoral system, Quebec City, Éditeur officiel du Québec, 2019 [//www.assnat.qc.ca/en/ travaux-parlementaires/projets-loi/projet-loi-39-42-1. html], and others.
  32. Tremblay, Manon. “Bilan des réformes électorales au Canada: quelle place pour les femmes?” Canadian Journal of Political Science, 43, 1, 2010: pp. 25-47. To my knowledge, underrepresentation of LGBTQ+ people in Parliament has not prompted any reflection by governments.
  33. Gombay, Nicole. “The politics of culture: Gender parity in the legislative assembly of Nunavut,” Études/Inuit/ Studies, 24, 1, 2000: pp. 125-148; Minor, Tina. “Political Participation of Inuit Women in the Government of Nunavut,” Wicazo Sa Review, 17, 1, 2002: pp. 65–90; Tremblay, Manon and Jackie Steele. “Paradise lost? Gender parity and the Nunavut experience” in Marian Sawer, Manon Tremblay and Linda Trimble (eds.), Representing Women in Parliament. A comparative study, London, Routledge, 2004: pp. 221-235; Young, Lisa. “Gender Equal Legislatures: Evaluating the Proposed Nunavut Electoral System,” Canadian Public Policy, 23, 3, 1997: pp. 306–315.
  34. Maertens, Héloïse. L’implication politique des femmes autochtones au Québec, Master’s thesis, Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue, 2022. [//depositum. uqat.ca/id/eprint/1364/]
  35. Canada, Interdepartmental Terminology Committee on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. Guide on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Terminology, 2022. [https://www. noslangues-ourlanguages.gc.ca/en/publications/equite-diversite-inclusion-equity-diversity-inclusion-eng]
  36. Laruelle, Marlene. “Introduction: Illiberalism Studies as a Field” in Marlene Laruelle (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Illiberalism, New York, Oxford University Press: pp. 1–40. [DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197639108.001.0001]
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