On August 15, 1984, for the first time there was a televised debate on women's issues among the leaders of the three major political parties during the campaign leading up to the Sept. 4 Canadian federal election

Canadian federal election, 1984

The Canadian federal election of 1984 was held on September 4 of that year to elect members of the Canadian House of Commons of the 33rd Parliament of Canada...

. During the same election campaign, there had been two previous television debates in July on general campaign issues.

Format of the debate

The two-hour bilingual debate, organized by the National Action Committee on the Status of Women

National Action Committee on the Status of Women

The National Action Committee on the Status of Women is a Canadian feminist activist organization. NAC was founded in 1971 as a pressure group to lobby for the implementation of the 167 recommendations made in the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada's 1970 report on matters such as...

 (NAC), took place at the Royal York Hotel

Fairmont Royal York

The Fairmont Royal York Hotel, formerly the Royal York Hotel and still often so called, is a large and historic hotel in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada, at 100 Front Street West. Opened on June 11, 1929, the Royal York was designed by Ross and Macdonald and built by the Canadian Pacific Railway...

 in Toronto

Toronto

Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...

 among Prime Minister John Turner

John Turner

John Napier Wyndham Turner, PC, CC, QC is an English Canadian lawyer and retired politician, who served as the 17th Prime Minister of Canada from June 30 to September 17, 1984....

 (Liberal party

Liberal Party of Canada

The Liberal Party of Canada , colloquially known as the Grits, is the oldest federally registered party in Canada. In the conventional political spectrum, the party sits between the centre and the centre-left. Historically the Liberal Party has positioned itself to the left of the Conservative...

), Conservative party

Conservative Party of Canada

The Conservative Party of Canada , is a political party in Canada which was formed by the merger of the Canadian Alliance and the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada in 2003. It is positioned on the right of the Canadian political spectrum...

 leader Brian Mulroney

Brian Mulroney

Martin Brian Mulroney, was the 18th Prime Minister of Canada from September 17, 1984, to June 25, 1993 and was leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada from 1983 to 1993. His tenure as Prime Minister was marked by the introduction of major economic reforms, such as the Canada-U.S...

, and Edward Broadbent

Ed Broadbent

John Edward "Ed" Broadbent, is a Canadian social democratic politician and political scientist. He was leader of the federal New Democratic Party from 1975 to 1989. In the 2004 federal election, he returned to Parliament for one additional term as the Member of Parliament for Ottawa Centre.-Life...

 of the New Democratic Party

New Democratic Party

The New Democratic Party , commonly referred to as the NDP, is a federal social-democratic political party in Canada. The interim leader of the NDP is Nycole Turmel who was appointed to the position due to the illness of Jack Layton, who died on August 22, 2011. The provincial wings of the NDP in...

. Panelists were Eleanor Wachtel

Eleanor Wachtel

Eleanor Wachtel, CM is a Canadian writer and broadcaster. She is the host of the flagship literary show Writers and Company on CBC Radio One, which celebrated its twentieth anniversary in October 2010...

, a Vancouver

Vancouver

Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...

 freelance writer, Kay Sigurjonsson, an NAC founding member and director of the Federation of Women Teachers' Associations of Ontario

Federation of Women Teachers' Associations of Ontario

The Federation of Women Teachers' Associations of Ontario was an association founded in 1918 to promote the interests of women elementary school teachers in Ontario, and continued to represent women teachers until merging in 1998 with the Ontario Public School Teachers' Federation to form the...

, Francine Harel-Giasson, a professor at the University of Montreal business school

HEC Montréal

HEC Montréal , is the independent affiliated business school of the Université de Montréal, and the oldest management School in Canada. It holds accreditations from AACSB, EQUIS and AMBA, one of three schools in North America to hold triple accreditation in management education...

, and Renée Rowan, columnist for Le Devoir

Le Devoir

Le Devoir is a French-language newspaper published in Montreal and distributed in Quebec and the rest of Canada. It was founded by journalist, politician, and nationalist Henri Bourassa in 1910....

, and the moderator of the debate was Caroline Andrew, chairman of the political science department at the University of Ottawa

University of Ottawa

The University of Ottawa is a bilingual, research-intensive, non-denominational, international university in Ottawa, Ontario. It is one of the oldest universities in Canada. It was originally established as the College of Bytown in 1848 by the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate...

.
The debate was jointly broadcast by four TV networks: CBC

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly known as CBC and officially as CBC/Radio-Canada, is a Canadian crown corporation that serves as the national public radio and television broadcaster...

, Radio-Canada

Télévision de Radio-Canada

Télévision de Radio-Canada is a Canadian French language television network. It is owned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, known in French as Société Radio-Canada. Headquarters are at Maison Radio-Canada in Montreal, which is also home to the network's flagship station, CBFT-DT...

, CTV

CTV television network

CTV Television Network is a Canadian English language television network and is owned by Bell Media. It is Canada's largest privately-owned network, and has consistently placed as Canada's top-rated network in total viewers and in key demographics since 2002, after several years trailing the rival...

 and Global

Global Television Network

Global Television Network is an English language privately owned television network in Canada, owned by Calgary-based Shaw Communications, as part of its Shaw Media division...

.

The debate consisted of separate confrontations involving only two leaders at a time, therefore not all candidates were asked to address every issue. The leaders made opening statements in French and closing statements in English. The first 30 minutes were almost entirely in French.

Inequality

All three leaders expressed commitment to improving the equality of women in social and economic spheres. All three promised action with regard to pensions for women outside the labour force and equal pay for work of equal value, mainly by better enforcement of existing rules. Mulroney promised pensions for homemakers, a plan which Turner criticized and claimed would cost as much as $900 million a year. Broadbent promised $50 million for shelters for battered wives. Turner promised $9.7 million in the following year for women to take training courses.

Turner and Broadbent battled over whether the federal government could or should enforce equal pay for work of equal value in businesses regulated by the provinces. Turner promised mandatory affirmative-action programs in the public and private sector under federal jurisdiction. Mulroney and Broadbent both said they would force companies doing business with the federal government to institute equal pay.

Broadbent asked Mulroney whether he would require banks to set aside specific amounts of money for loans to women for small businesses. Mulroney said he would rely on persuasion.

Day care

A non-partisan group had proposed a day-care plan that would cost $300 million in the first year, a proposal which was accepted by Broadbent. Turner proposed an increase in the maximum deduction for child care from $8000 to $12,000, which "shocked" the lobby group because the party's earlier written reply to their questinnaire had said that such tax deductions are of the greatest value to high income groups, and often remain unclaimed by those eligible. Mulroney promised to study the day-care question. Broadbent criticized the liberal party for taking refuge in the fact that child care is a provincial jurisdiction, saying that this is the same argument that was used in the 60's about a universal health care insurance system.

The arms race

Peace was considered to be a women's issue.
Prime Minister Turner had been continuing the peace initiative started by former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau by writing to world leaders, among them Soviet Communist Party leader Konstantin Chernenko and United Nations Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar.

Abortion

Broadbent appeared to go further than the other leaders in advocating freedom of choice. Turner stated that there were two irreconcilable points of view on the abortion issue, and that while the contemporary law didn't satisfy everyone, there was no viable alternative to it. Turner argued that provincial governments should make legal abortions equally available to all women, and was said by an abortion activist to be the first Prime Minister to promise equal access to abortion across the country. Mulroney was not asked to discuss this issue during this debate.

Trust

The last question in the debate, posed by Kay Sigurjonsson, was "Why should we trust you now?" Turner criticized the conservative party, citing a poll at a 1982 policy conference as showing 74 percent opposing increased funding for day-care and 75 percent opposed to affirmative action programs. Time ran out before the leaders could finish answering this question.

Reaction to the debate

Chaviva Hosek, president of the NAC, said the debate was "a large step forward in political terms for women's issues". She said that the three leaders were more aware of the issues than they had been previously and that women would not forget their promises. "It was a victory in the sense that two hours of prime time television talking about women's questions is really important," said Caroline Andrew, moderator of the debate.

Outside the room where the debate was being held, about 45 members of REAL Women

REAL Women of Canada

REAL Women of Canada is a socially conservative lobby group in Canada. The organization was founded in 1983.REAL stands for "Realistic, Equal, Active, for Life". The group believes that the nuclear family is the most important unit in Canadian society, and that the fragmentation of the Canadian...

demonstrated, saying that the NAC does not represent them or the majority of women in Canada.

An article in Maclean's states that Broadbent was widely judged to be the winner of the debate for his handling of the issues, and he was applauded during the debate, Le premier ministre libéral John Turner et le leader de l'opposition, Brian Mulroney ont tous deux été hués par les membres de l'auditoire. (Translation: It was he [Broadbent] who was the most warmly applauded during the two hours of debate. Liberal Prime Minister John Turner and the leader of the Opposition, Brian Mulroney, were both booed by the members of the audience.) |language=French}} was supported by a strong majority of a group of 400 women who gathered at Algonquin College to watch the debate on television, and was said to have come out a clear winner by Doris Anderson, past president of the NAC. However, only Turner and Mulroney were believed to have a reasonable chance of winning the election, and between those two, the article in Maclean's stated that Turner came out ahead, by making more specific promises, some mentioning specific amounts of money. According to Florence Irvine, past president of the Federation of Women Teachers' Associations of Ontario, Mulroney came out on top. The presidents of two major women's groups in Quebec chose Broadbent and Mulroney as winners.