As many of you may be aware—through history rather than your own knowledge—in the 1960s, when contraception became available and prevalent, there was a transformation in gender equity in our society. We were seeing a huge increase in the number of women, who now had control of their fertility, enrolling in colleges and universities, entering the job market and contributing to civil society and governments. The ability to decide whether and when to become pregnant for a pregnancy-capable person—a woman or a person with a uterus of any gender—is fundamental to being able to achieve their own goals and have control of their life.
Studies across Canada have shown that the number one access is cost; it's the affordability of contraception. If we fail to make contraception accessible for people, we are leaving people in situations with intersecting barriers where their income and education do not have the chance to improve across their generation and in subsequent generations because they are unable to control their fertility. They are left to have unintended pregnancies, raise unplanned children and be in an ever down-spiralling cycle regarding family income and family education. That's often accompanied by intimate partner violence as the situation becomes worse.
MP Thompson, thank you for the question. I'm not sure if I've addressed what you were looking for.