Michelle Friesen says, “I’ve never been too busy or felt like I couldn’t do my job.
A Whitehorse city councillor says she feels pressured to stop bringing her baby to council meetings. She says this came as a surprise and raises questions about how inclusive politics are.
But the mayor says that the city is trying to come up with a solution that works for everyone.
Theo, the son of Councillor Michelle Friesen, was born in July 2022. Since then, he has sometimes joined her at meetings and other events in the community. Friesen said she thought that was going well until Mayor Laura Cabott called her at the end of last month.
Friesen told CBC News on Monday, “Some staff and some of my council colleagues had asked her to get in touch with me and tell me not to bring him to meetings anymore.”
“So, I was pretty surprised by that, because up until then, I had only heard positive things about the situation.”
Cabott told Friesen that some people had said that it was hard to hear or stay focused when Theo was in the room and that they were also worried that Friesen would miss out on important information if she had to leave the room to do something like change a diaper.
Friesen, on the other hand, said that those worries are not valid.
“As a council member, I work very hard, and having my son there has never made me feel distracted or like I couldn’t do my job,” she said.
“And you do know that other people have to get up to use the bathroom and do other things, right? So, I feel like I’m being held to an unfair standard as a mother.”
Friesen added that the phone call with Cabott didn’t seem “malicious,” but she felt “like at the end of the day, the option I was given was that [Theo] wasn’t going to be welcome anymore.”
The mayor calls it a disruption and a distraction
Cabott told CBC News that she had called Freisen to talk about some worries that city staff and councillors had told her about over the past few months, as well as some worries that she herself had.
“Councilwoman Friesen has brought her child to several meetings since he was a young child, and he has always been very, very quiet,” Cabott said.
“But now he’s a young man doing well, and he’s as busy as he should be.” He’s also healthy and interesting, which, as you can imagine, causes trouble and distraction.
Cabot said she never told Friesen to stop bringing her son to meetings. Instead, she said she wants to “try to find a solution that works for everyone.”
“We’re making important decisions for the people, and everyone needs to be able to work in a space where they can fully participate,” she said. “We all need to be able to take in all this information, debate, talk, and learn how to make decisions, including Councillor Friesen.”
“That’s the kind of atmosphere I’m trying to create.”
Friesen says that having kids in the council chambers “reminds us who we’re working for.”
Chi Nguyen, who runs the advocacy group Equal Voice out of Toronto, agrees with this. The non-profit works to get equal numbers of men and women in politics.
“When we make policy decisions, we’re actually making them for our kids and for many generations to come,” Nguyen said. “It’s really powerful to have a live reminder of that in the chambers or on city council floors.”
Nguyen says it has to do with being flexible and making things easier for young parents who want to serve their communities through politics.
“We can make room for someone if they decide they can do the job and still meet the requirements. “We should, for sure, “she told me.
Ashley Hope, who is in charge of research at the Yukon Status of Women Council, where Friesen used to be on the board, says that it’s also a gender issue because women still do most of the unpaid child care.
She also says that Friesen was the first Indigenous person to win a seat on Whitehorse’s city council since the 1990s when she ran for office in 2021.
Hope said, “She’s a younger Indigenous woman, she’s motivated, she’s involved, and she’s shown that she’s really committed to talking about politics, which I think is important for promoting gender equality.”
“I think it really raises the question of what kind of decision-makers we want in politics.”
“This was part of my heritage.
Friesen confirmed that an internal meeting was planned to talk about the problem, but no date has been set yet.
But she said no one had ever asked her before if her son could be a distraction. She also finds the issue frustrating because she is a young Indigenous mother and has worked to make politics more open to everyone.
“It was part of my culture that children were always welcome in the room where decisions were being made. So this is just a way for me to add a little bit of myself and my culture to these places, “Friesen, a member of the Ta’an Kwach’an Council, said.
“It’s just a bummer to have to fight to be able to participate like everyone else, and it feels like another chance to teach others that these systems don’t work for people like me and for equal representation and equal participation.”
Friesen also said that other councillors had sent her private messages of support and that she planned to bring Theo to the meeting on Monday night.
” She said, “This is really hard and tiring for me, but if I can just make the space safer, friendlier, and easier for the next person to come in so they don’t have to have these same conversations, I’ll do it.” So, I guess that’s what I’m trying to do.”