BARRED FROM SEATS

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 126, 30 May 1928, Page 9

BARRED FROM SEATS

DECISION AGAINST WOMEN THE CANADIAN SENATE tFrom "The Post's" Representative.) VANCOUVER, 2nd May. "The iron has entered the souls of tho women of Canada," declared Mrs. Mary Ellen Smith, president of tho Liberal Women's Association of Canada, on learning that tho Supremo Court had decided that . women were not "qualified persons" within tho meaning of the British North America Act, and were therefore ineligible for admission to tho Senate. The Federal Government is disappointed at the judgment, and is considering whether an appeal will bo taken' to the Privy Council or whether an amendment will be made in the B.N.A. Act, the constitution of Con- . federated Canada, to admit women to the Senate. Tho Act may be amended on an address to the British Parliament from bbth Houses at Ottawa, but it is not likely that tho Senate will support such a resolution. However, tho 'Mackenzie King Government is determined that women shall be admitted, and is happy in the precedent recently created in Great Britain in giving women extended political rights, through lowering the voting age to twenty-one years. Tho judgment of tho Supremo Court is an involved one, ro much so that a well-known lawyer observed, on reading it, that it' could bo utilised as a- judgment admitting women to tlic_Senate, 1 as well as barring them out. It is based on tho fact that the Office of Senator -vas a now office created by the B.N.A. Act, and that "by the common law of England (aa also, speaking generally, iy.the civil and canon law), women were under legal incapacity to hold fmblic office. '