The old boys’ club that once was the Council of the Federation is no more — women now run the show because they rule the biggest provinces.

When Canada’s provincial and territorial leaders gather for their annual conference this week in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., they will make some political history.

More than 87 per cent of Canadians are governed by female premiers — in Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia, Alberta, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Nunavut.

“It makes it historic and I’m aware of that,” Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne told the Star on Tuesday.

“I’d like to think we can do a great job because of who’s sitting around the table,” she said, with a laugh.

“But I don’t have a point of comparison, because when there were 13 men around the table, I wasn’t there. So I can’t really judge the quality of the discussion or the approaches.”

Wynne, as chair of the council, is hosting the meeting that gets under way Wednesday when the premiers gather with First Nations leaders to discuss education and other issues.

“I would hope that we’d find that there is an even increased ability to have a collaborative and frank discussion although I understand that these discussions have always been collegial and they are pretty open,” she said.

“My hope would be that we’ll have some real conversations about how we can work together. That’s certainly the tone of the discussions that I’ve had one-on-one with my colleagues.”

With topics as disparate as skills training, infrastructure investment, trade policy, energy strategy, health care, Senate reform, affordable housing, and cyber-bullying on the agenda, it promises to be a wide-ranging meeting.

Wynne, a former mediator, wants to keep things running smoothly and avoid the premiers’ traditional “laundry list” of demands made of the federal government.

“That’s my approach. For me, that’s the point of having a meeting like this. We can find lots of things to disagree on — what’s the challenge is to find the places where we can agree and make a difference in people’s lives.”

Since last year’s conference in Halifax, Wynne has succeeded Dalton McGuinty and Quebec Premier Pauline Marois has replaced Jean Charest.

That means 30.5 million of the nation’s 34.9 million people — or seven out of eight Canadians — live in provinces and territories run by women.

In a wink to that fact, conference organizers have included postcards in delegates’ welcome packages that show six purple women’s bicycles lined up in front of seven blue men’s models in Jackson-Triggs’ Niagara-on-the-Lake vineyard.

A second postcard — also shot at the winery — depicts six glasses with white wine and seven with red.

Another intriguing dynamic at play is that, for the first time in a decade, Quebec’s representative at a premiers’ conference will be a separatist instead of a federalist.

In the days of former Parti Québécois premiers Bernard Landry, Lucien Bouchard, and Jacques Parizeau that could led to sabre-rattling posturing for domestic Quebec media consumption.

But Wynne isn’t worried about that.

“I can’t control how Madame Marois is going to interact with the media from her province. What I can control is my own reaction,” she said.

“As the chair I can kind of guide the conversation to those places where we have common cause and where we can begin to talk with one voice on some subjects where we maybe haven’t before.”

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Wynne also hopes to be productive in terms of the rhetoric aimed at Ottawa, with hopes Prime Minister Stephen Harper will eventually host another first ministers’ meeting with all premiers.

“There isn’t anyone in this country who’s leading a province or territory, who doesn’t have infrastructure concerns. Having an ad hoc response to infrastructure investment by the federal government I believe doesn’t serve anybody,” she said.

“If we can narrow the message to a few things then we’re in a better position vis-a-vis the federal government. That’s the goal.”

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