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Appointing more women and minorities 'produces better government'
Just look at Detroit, Baltimore, all those urban paradises.[CA.NEWS.YAHOO] Jean Augustine recalls looking around the rooms of meetings she used to be in and sometimes realized she was the only minority person present. Augustine was the first African-Canadian woman to be elected to the House of Commons, representing the riding of Etobicoke-Lakeshore from 1993 to 2006. “I just didn’t see the diversity of my own life reflected in the institutions and organizations I had been appointed to,” Augustine told Yahoo Canada News. That’s an issue the Liberal government says it wants to tackle — by boosting the number of women, minorities and aboriginal people in the hundreds of appointments it will make to agencies, boards and Crown corporations (ABCs). Olivier Duchesneau, a spokesman for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, told The Canadian Press recently the process would be “open, transparent and merit-based.” In addition, the party has pledged to create an independent body to make recommendations for positions, including new senators. “It’s who you know and who put your name in the hat,” explains Augustine, who also served as minister of state for multiculturalism and the status of women and was parliamentary secretary to then-prime minister Jean Chretien from 1994 to 1996. Posted by: Fred 2015-12-05 |
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