Thanks for the discussion.
Thanks, Chair.
Listen, I hear all of you. We always have this problem in this committee. There are a million fires to put out. How do you decide which one to put out first?
To Anita's question of why now. It's because people are messaging me. If they are not messaging you, I don't know if we're just getting different emails. However, public safety is in massive chaos in this country.
To Dominique's point, you can't just say, “Okay, this motion was in first.” We are legislators in the House. We have to prioritize which fire to put out first, and we are the status of women committee. If women are being assaulted 72% more and they're the primary subject, that's an emergency.
To Leah's point—whom I work with very well—your red dress alert is critical. You know you have our support on that. Murdered and missing indigenous women and girls is a crisis, but it's already in the budget. We don't need a study on that. I'm saying I would back it up in another way to ask, “How do we put this in without a study?”, because we already know it's critical. You already have our support. Maybe, procedurally, I'm being wrong, but let's do that. Do we have to sign a letter? What do we have to do? Let's put in a red dress alert. It's easy. Let's do that.
This is a study of legislation, of policy, of crime, of chaos and of public safety in our country. Why now? To Andréanne's point—who's very passionate and great at this—it's because coercive control is a horrible and awful issue, and we have dealt with such emotionally exhausting studies in status of women.... Those are deeply systemic, awful problems that we are going to have to solve as a country and as a culture. However, when we look at legislation and we look at more violations yet fewer people charged, we can fix that in Parliament. That is something we can actively, strategically do to fix public safety for people, for our daughters and for women in this country.
That would be my plea to you to put this in priority. I appreciate and respect all of your comments.
Anita, I am not trying to kibosh this committee. This isn't about a social media clip. This is about people writing to me. I see you shaking your head, and that's kind of disrespectful, if I'm going to be honest. If they're not writing to you.... These are the emails we get. These are the stats. This is the data. I am appealing to you guys to listen to that.
I appreciate the time. I appreciate what we've built in this committee. I definitely want to keep fighting for women.
Thank you.