Calls for more family-friendly assemblies, specifically those able to accommodate representatives who are pregnant, postpartum or have young children, have become urgent in the last decade, as a mini-baby boom in the federal parliament and the provinces has called the inclusivity of legislatures into question. Drawing on interviews with legislative clerks, this article asks two questions: 1) Are Canadian legislatures family-friendly? And 2) what approaches to family-friendly legislatures emerge from policies and discussions within these legislatures? It identifies patterns both in the types of changes that are proposed and those which are actioned, finding that changes have leaned heavily on the least consequential improvements. Many calls for change continue to run up against structural challenges that have been, thus far, ignored. Although legislatures are more family-friendly than in previous decades, this article argues that the future of inclusive parliaments hinges on a broad rethinking of the parliamentary role.

This article offers an examination of the discursive significance of the “victim” in the Conservative Party of Canada through a critical discourse analysis of two key pieces of legislation (Bill C-10 and Bill C-36) tabled by the Harper Conservative government. The central argument contends that while all populist arguments may be a form of victim argument, not all conservative victim arguments are populist—particularly ones directed at issues related to women and gender equality. The article finds that, perhaps due to the reactive nature of conservative ideology, conservative politicians in Canada adopt an “ambidextrous” approach to victims—mobilizing two distinct and, at times, contrasting sets of arguments. The article concludes by proposing two possible explanations for this ambidexterity, one stemming from the literature on organizational management and the other from theorizations of the reactive nature of conservative ideology.