Madam Speaker, I want to dedicate this speech to all women who have come forward as part of the #MeToo and Time's Up movement. I want to thank them for their courage and strength. I also want to express my extreme, deep frustration that it continues to take women laying themselves bare for the public in order to agitate for change. We need to do better.
Today, I hope I am passing through the House one small part of their voices, voices that have reached out to me on social media, sending emails, and who have been thankful for those of us who are sitting in the House agitating for this change.
Women in our country are raising their voices in unison around this issue in a way we have not seen for a very long time. I am reminded of what my colleague for Nanaimo—Ladysmith mentioned of the 338 women who sat in the House in March 2017, of the power and passion they brought, of their deep desire and hope for a political career in the House someday, which extends beyond just our seats here. It extends to everyone who works to support us in the House, right down to our pages who help support us every day. I want more than anything for all of them to be free to pursue this career and to pursue this life free of harassment. I want them to see that day come. I do not want them to have to be worried about bracing themselves to face the toxic workplace they are reading about, watching and learning about.
I came from the labour movement. I worked in an auto manufacturing facility. I was one of 15% of women in that workplace. However, being part of a union environment, having the protections, policies, and clear and very defined definitions of harassment in the workplace, went miles to ensure that everyone in that workplace understood their responsibility in doing better.
I commend those in the labour movement. They have done an incredible amount of work to eradicate this behaviour. We are not going to have to look too far for policies that work in the public, labour, and our communities because they exist. We simply need to ensure they exist here as well.
The behaviour we are talking about is not new, as has been raised by a lot my colleagues today. However, it can and must change. It is going to take all of us. To start with, there can be no more whisper campaigns in the House. There can be no more women who are warning other women about who to stay away from or who not to be alone with. That is unacceptable. It is a very deep part of our culture here. Women have been trying to protect women through these very subversive campaigns. No more to that. It has to come out to the light of day. We have to shine a light on it. We have to challenge that behaviour each and every time we see it, not just the women in the House. Every man sitting in the House has to challenge it from other men on a constant basis. Only then will we strive to create a workplace that is safe, without these hiding places and excuses for this behaviour. It is the excuses that have allowed it to continue to breed.
Earlier a colleague mentioned that some had training here throughout the years. Well, clearly it has not worked. However, I recognize this work is ongoing and will take all of us working through our lifetimes to continue to improve it, I hope, at a better pace than we have had. However, it is clear that we can and we must do better.
For people who have sat and listened to a colleague say something inappropriate and let it go by, that day is done. We can no longer do that in this place. We must challenge it. On behalf of the hundreds of thousands of people we represent from our ridings and on behalf of Canadians, we cannot allow this place to become a mockery or a toxic pool that is to be avoided at all costs. We are losing the best and brightest in the next generation by not showing them better. We all hope those young people will some day take over our seats, as those young women did on International Women's Day.
We have to commit not just to the legislation, which is very important. I am so happy that everyone in the House provided consensus on the motion by the MP for Berthier—Maskinongé, which she brought up earlier, in getting the bill to committee as quickly as possible. It is critical that we get to the committee level and start this very difficult work, and that we do it with our blinders off and we do it honestly. We cannot bring to the committee the excuses, the hiding places, the reasons people think this is just the way it is here. We have to throw all of that to the side and really work to challenge the structures that have existed for 150 years in this place, but certainly beyond that, as one colleague mentioned earlier, for millennia, from the beginning of time.
We have to challenge it at the smallest root, the smallest comment that goes by that we might portray as harmless and that it is just what men say in a locker room or to other men. These are not harmless. This is the beginning of harm. This is the beginning of letting these things slide by until it affects one individual so badly that his or her life is forever altered. We see that happening with women in Canada right now. We see women who are being attacked on social media because they have come forward. That is unacceptable and if anyone in the House is aware of people being attacked, we also have a responsibility to speak out and say that attacking women who come forward is not acceptable. There is due process within the laws and there is due process hopefully within our workplace with this legislation going forward, but that in no way excuses us for not speaking up when we see it. We have to take that seriously.
I know there are men here, whom I work with every day, who do not support this culture, who think it is wrong, who do not behave this way, who do not condone it, and who do not teach their sons or daughters that this is okay. It is time for those men to start speaking out. Although this is impacting women, it impacts men too. We know that this is not a gender issue. This is not for the women to fix. This is for all of us to fix together.
I would like to dig into the bill that we have before us, but before I do that I want to say that an example of how women in the House are struggling to come forward, struggling within our own parties, within this structure, to be able to call this behaviour out, is the fact that we had a Canadian Press survey done for female MPs. It was anonymous and passed through all of our whips' offices in December and we had very low participation in the survey. It was extremely low. I believe it was below 40% participation of women MPs. Because we exist in a structure where we have parties that we have loyalties to, women in this place are afraid to call this out, but women need to be brave and we need to embolden the men that we sit with as our colleagues every day to be brave as well.
The bill is an important first step, but we have to go far beyond where the bill is going and that will involve the work at committee. That will mean things like a definition. We have had some conversation about a definition today, whether the definition should be in the bill itself, or whether the definition should be part of the regulatory piece that goes along with this legislation. Defining what harassment is allows us to challenge it. Without that very basis of understanding, how can we educate people in the House as to what it is? This is the very core of the work that we should be doing in the House.
I implore the government to please look at all the amendments that come forward, by taking that partisan hat off at the door, because this is work that we are doing for the future of the House. On International Women's Day last year when 338 women sat in the House, that was more women than have actually ever sat here elected. We are doing a poor job in Canada of attracting young women and this is one of the many reasons why. We need to do better.
I ask for commitment from all of my colleagues to look at the amendments on the basis of the amendments, to put their partisanship aside, and to let us do the hard work that is necessary to change the House to a zero tolerance workplace.
