This is Lisa MacLeod. MacLeod is a 34-year-old Canadian politician. She recently testified against Ottowa Mayor Larry O'Brien in his recent hig-profile, influence-peddling trial. Her testimony was deemed unreliable by the judge presiding over the case, Douglass Cunningham, 69, who said that because MacLeod commuted every day to her job, leaving her four-year-old daughter at home with her husband, that "the defence was able to demonstrate that there were a number of rather significant things going on in her life when she gave her statement to the police," implying MacLeod was too distracted to give an accurate statement.
MacLeod has called the ruling, "pathetic" and "surreal." One member of Parliament agrees. So do I.
According to Equal Voice, a Canadian organization that promotes women in public office, Canada ranks "46th out of 189 countries in the number of women elected to national parliament. Women make up 52 per cent of the population, but only 22 per cent of MPs are women and 21 per cent of representatives elected to municipal and provincial office are women." This clearly says something about the way gender roles have played out, or rather, what some Canadians consider acceptable.
Though I understand it is difficult for some men of Cunningham's era to make a distinction between what they were raised to believe–that women's roles were in the home as mothers–and what is actually now the case–that family identities are changing and different on an individual basic–someone in Cunningham's position should be aware of what is cultually acceptable. It seems to me that Cunningham was out of touch enough, even from a self preservation standpoint, to make this statement. Perhaps it's his reliability that needs evaluation, and not MacLeod's.
