Liberals insist not interfering in House committee chair selections, despite lack of secret ballots | hilltimes.com

While we do not yet have the full list of Committee chairs (will know by end week), we do know that women are under-represented (21.2 percent) and visible minorities are represented close to the proportion who are Canadian citizens (14.6 percent compared to 15 percent):

As for the gender breakdown on committees—due to there only being 26 per cent women in the House, and the Liberals appointing 26 of their 50 female MPs to either Cabinet or as a parliamentary secretary—only one of the House committees has more than four of 10 members that are female, and that’s Status of Women, which has nine women on the committee. There are also two committees—Access to Information, Privacy, and Ethics, and Industry, Science, and Technology—that have no women at all.

When questioned about this on Feb. 3, Liberal Whip Andrew Leslie (Orleans, Ont.) said, “we’ve literally run out.”

This predicament could be further complicated as a result of a successful NDP motion in the House to create a special committee to study pay equity and propose a plan to adopt a “proactive federal pay equity regime.” Party whips have been given until Feb. 17 to name members of this committee. It is possible this committee will determine that more female MPs will have to double up on committee duty, which is already happening in some instances.

Source: Liberals insist not interfering in House committee chair selections, despite lack of secret ballots | hilltimes.com