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Ms. Hervieux-Payette said she will do no such thing, pressing ahead with proposed legislation, which is currently before the banking committee she deputy-chairs, that would require corporate boards to comprise at least 40% of each sex or else face losing the documentation they require to do business.

“[Ms. Frum] is not a rookie herself,” Ms. Hervieux-Payette said of the Conservative senator’s generation observation. “I will continue my preaching around the country to women’s groups and I will continue talking to the younger generation about how the glass ceiling is still there.”

Her private member’s bill is unlikely to pass the Conservative-controlled Senate, let alone the Conservative-controlled House, but the discussion on Parliament Hill is part of a much larger debate about legislating equity that is already brewing on the ground.

When Kathleen Wynne is sworn in as Ontario’s premier on Feb. 11, Canada will boast six female premiers. Days after Ms. Wynne won the Ontario Liberal leadership last Saturday, Kim Campbell, the country’s only female Prime Minister, opined that our federal electoral system should be re-jigged so that each Canadian votes for, and is represented by, one male MP and one female MP.

“It would be an example to the rest of the world — an ingenious way, without quotas or affirmative action, to address the gender balance,” she wrote in The Globe and Mail.

When Nunavut was being carved out of the Northwest Territories in 1997, citizens there voted down a referendum that would have implemented exactly Ms. Campbell’s plan in the territory.