Women in The 40th Canadian Parliament | Women 40th Canadian Parliament

Women In The 40th Canadian Parliament

The 40th Canadian Parliament contained a record number of female Members of Parliament, with 69 women elected to the House of Commons in the 2008 federal election. However, this represented just 22 per cent of the 308 total MPs, and only a modest gain over the 65 women in the 39th Canadian Parliament.

With 23 women elected to the House for the first time, the 2008 election also increased the number of female MPs who have sat in the Canadian House of Commons since Confederation to 216, from 193 at the end of the 39th Parliament. Nine incumbent women MPs did not stand for re-election in 2008, and ten incumbent women were defeated on election night.

In total, 445 women ran in the 2008 election. The record for female participation in a federal election continues to be held by the 1993 election, in which 476 women ran as candidates, but the 2008 election had the second largest slate of female candidates in Canadian history.

By contrast, the United States House of Representatives has elected only a marginally larger number of women despite having 127 more seats. The 2008 Congressional elections saw 74 women elected to the House of Representatives, for an all-time total of 229.

At the dissolution of the 40th Parliament, the number of women sitting as federal MPs stood at 67, as two women elected in 2008 subsequently resigned from the House: Dawn Black on April 13, 2009 and Judy Wasylycia-Leis on April 30, 2010. Women did not win any of the by-elections to the 40th Canadian Parliament.

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“At the ramparts on the cliff near the old Parliament House I counted twenty-four thirty-two-pounders in a row, pointed over the harbor, with their balls piled pyramid-wise between them,—there are said to be in all about one hundred and eighty guns mounted at Quebec,—all which were faithfully kept dusted by officials, in accordance with the motto, “In time of peace prepare for war”; but I saw no preparations for peace: she was plainly an uninvited guest.”
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