Everyone has spoken so far. So I will exercise my right to raise this point of order to denounce what happened at the Standing Committee on the Status of Women today.
I recently criticized, in a newspaper article, the fact that the party in power and the opposition are slinging mud at each other. I told journalists that I have seen various committees become political instead of advancing the causes they should be supporting.
I replaced someone on the Standing Committee on Health; that committee has become political. I replaced someone on the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security; that committee has become political. I replaced someone on the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development; that committee has become political. In the name of partisanship, we are no longer moving forward. Today, the Standing Committee on the Status of Women has done the same thing.
You have all fallen into the trap of politicizing the issue of violence against women. It's absolutely disappointing. Witnesses have left here crying. I've been here since I was elected in 2019, and I've never seen this before.
The Standing Committee on the Status of Women called an urgent meeting in 2020 to study the disproportionate effects of the pandemic on women. I came to work. I participated in those emergency meetings in 2020. I came back in 2022, in the middle of the summer, as the committee was meeting to study the situation of women in sport. Despite those hot issues, we managed to make progress.
I travelled to Ottawa today, and witnesses were crying as they left. I've never seen that, and I've never seen the committee operate in this way either.
I am extremely disappointed. The Standing Committee on the Status of Women used to boast that it was productive and that it did not play the partisan game or engage in mud-slinging. Until recently, I kept my fingers crossed and believed that my committee didn't do that.
Women must not be used as political pawns. But that is what is happening. So I wanted to denounce that and express myself, since everyone has done so. That's my point of order. I must denounce what happened today. There will be no winners today. Unfortunately, the big losers are all women who are victims of violence.