Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for inviting me to appear before the procedure and House affairs committee today to speak about the review of the members of the House of Commons workplace harassment and violence prevention policy.
I apologize in advance if my voice shakes today. It will shake, but it will not be silenced. I will not be bullied. I will not be intimidated. I will continue to represent my constituents to the best of my ability.
Mr. Chair, I want to begin by acknowledging the brave woman sitting beside me on this panel, MP Pam Damoff, who has done so much to bring the issue of harassment and threats to members of Parliament, particularly women, to the forefront of the conversation that is so critically important to speak about right now. It's important because it is literally the core value of our democracy here as Canadians.
Are we able to disagree without being disagreeable? Are we going to save what democracy looks like for our younger generations coming forward?
If we are not able to stop the harassment of each other in the name of partisan politics, we are not going to survive as a democracy. Our next generation is going to be completely disengaged, disenfranchised and will have no trust in democratic institutions at all. I think this is very vital for us to recognize.
I had a class of constituents up in the gallery two weeks ago. They watched question period. When I met with them after they had experienced that, the first question that one of the young girls asked me was if it was always that violent in there. She asked how I could do it and why I do it.
My answer to her was that it's because somebody needs to. We need to make sure that we are having positive, constructive discourse with one another, so that we can represent and support Canadians as they deserve. We are elected, all 338 of us, in our ridings by the people and the communities that live there. We represent them.
Mr. Chair, I am embarrassed by how our conduct is deteriorating the very values that we stand for. I do have a few examples for you today, Mr. Chair.
Have you ever been called a racial slur for just doing your job? Have you been called a terrorist casually, as if it were your name? Have you ever been spat on before?
I have.
Somebody once said to me, "I want to fuck you gently with a chainsaw". Imagine the violence of even the thought of it—to utter those thoughts, make it public and put it on record. How do people feel that they have the entitlement to do that?
Harassment for me has not been new. I've been elected as a Member of Parliament for nine years and it has been from day one.
I will highlight a few of the incidents specific to this topic of MPs harassing each other and creating, for me in particular, life-threatening situations.
In 2017, I had tabled Motion No. 103 in the House. It was a motion to combat all types of systemic racism and religious discrimination, including Islamophobia, in our country. It was an attempt to build bridges between communities.
Unfortunately, a Conservative leadership race was ongoing at the time and the members of that leadership race started to, through the use of alt-right media, first off, legitimize the concept that I was bringing sharia law into the country, and that this was not a non-binding motion, but a first step—a bill. This was quite wrong. It very false and maliciously false.
These emails were circulated across the country. They were used to raise fundraising dollars for Conservative candidates in that Conservative leadership race.
All of that happened because conservative MPs running for leadership felt that this was a plug. The politics of agitation is not helpful to how we conduct ourselves as Canadians and as parliamentarians. We need to put Canadians first and foremost.
As I said, I've received, other than the verbal abuse, death threats, including from a gentleman inviting me to become acquainted with his rifle, and another who told me that I would be hanged, another who released my address on a radio talk show to say, “Go kill her. I would happily film it if you go kill her.”
When MPs target each other on social media, when the politics of agitation gets pushed by right-wing media, we are doing indirectly what we cannot do directly, according to the House of Commons rules. We are bullying and intimidating each other for partisan politics, and that is not fair to Canadians at all. We embarrass ourselves in front of Canadians. We can dance around the antics of social media posts all we want, but the intent of these social media posts, of sending letters like my colleague MP Pam Damoff received in her riding, is harassment, and we need to do something about it.
As I said, many Conservative members—not all of them—including the current Leader of the Opposition, have done similar things to target individual members of Parliament, to bully, to harass and to silence, and that has divided communities, now more than ever, and some communities more than others.
There are real-world consequences when members of Parliament decide to fundraise and to get clicks by dehumanizing others with insults and with attacks, and I am not the only target. Just this past week, we heard from the Sergeant-at-Arms who testified at PROC that the harassment of MPs, especially online, has increased by about 700% to 800%. This is not new, and this should not be normalized.
Mr. Chair and members of the committee, there must be room in Canada for people to legitimately criticize their elected representatives, their policies and their positions to further the productive democratic discourse in this country. There must also be room for members of Parliament to engage in discourse, for the opposition to do its job and for the government to do theirs. What we are seeing, however, is the boundaries being blurred with intimidation, harassment and outright threats and violence layered with misogyny against us as parliamentarians, to prevent us from fulfilling our duties to our constituents.
There must be a clear distinction and boundary between legitimate criticism and outright harassment that is made clear in your forthcoming study and report in the House of Commons workplace harassment and violence prevention policy, specifically between members of Parliament, and specifically when it comes to women and our unique experiences.
Let me say, Mr. Chair, that people are watching. Canadians are watching us, and we need to do better. We need to make sure that there is respect in this place because if we don't respect each other, how can we expect Canadians to respect each other? How can we continue to build bridges amongst each other, and how can we stand for a democracy that is built on respect?
Thank you.