The announcement of the federal cabinet was somewhat overshadowed by an issue of newly minted Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s making: a decision to ensure that the cabinet was represented by men and women equally.
That announcement ruffled some feathers, with some people arguing the picks should be entirely based on merit. The National Post’s Andrew Coyne opined that people’s ethnicity, regional background or gender should matter less than their abilities, writing, “So far as we are putting representationalism before ability, we are also asking the country’s interest to take a back seat.”
This is plainly stupid. Surely it is important to most Albertans that they have a cabinet minister there to represent their interests at the cabinet table. After all, “the West wants in,” we all know, and those people from the west will surely have their own unique needs and visions for the future of its country. Bringing in people of diverse backgrounds is not just representationalism for the sake of it, but a way to ensure different viewpoints are heard.
Choosing between a woman and a smart, capable person is not a mutually exclusive decision, and any suggestion that one might negate or trump the other is simplistic and wrong.
Moreover, this is still the same world where a sportscaster asks a female tennis star to do a little twirl to show off her outfit rather than asking her about her game or play. This is still the world where journalists asked a group of six Russian female would-be astronauts how they would cope without men or makeup for eight days. And, in Canada, this is still a country where gender inequality exists on a very real, quantifiable scale, with Canadian women making about $8,000 less a year than men doing the same job.
Yes, as Trudeau pointed out, it’s 2015. Let’s get with the times.
