Status of Women Committee on Dec. 8th, 2025

[Soukaina Boutiyeb]

We need to keep in mind that GBA Plus has been discussed since 1995 and that Canada signed its ratification. GBA Plus seeks to ensure that public policies or projects are implemented in a way that adequately addresses all potential population identity factors. In that context, it's also important to establish a public policy or provide funding that adequately meets the needs of women who belong to Canada's francophonie.

Unfortunately, that's not the reality. Although we're told that a GBA Plus has been done, francophone women in Canada are often, if not always, forgotten or disregarded when it comes to specific needs on the ground. That's why one of our recommendations is to conduct a comprehensive GBA Plus that takes account of language minorities, and to make the analysis available. Indeed, we would be delighted to understand how a flagrant need like the situation facing women belonging to Canada's francophonie was overlooked to begin with.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Ms. Enayeh, I see you nodding. If you want to add anything, feel free.

[Nour Enayeh]

As Ms. Boutiyeb said, when we talk about GBA Plus and services, we're talking about things that should already have happened in 2025. We're still talking about things that should be automatic. When federal action plans make no mention of francophone women in official language minority communities, that's very concerning. We can see the impact on the ground directly.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

We also heard from Marie‑Eve Carignan and David Morin, researchers from the Université de Sherbrooke, who are doing a lot of work on rising extremes. They say that we lack data and research on antifeminist ideology. We already talked about GBA Plus. We talked about support for minority francophone women. Why is more research needed? Why do we need these figures and better documentation?

[Soukaina Boutiyeb]

Research is what allows us to articulate what we experience on the ground. Unfortunately, we may experience situations that already exist. The situation involving the package that we told you about is a concrete example. We experienced that in May 2020, five years ago.

Unfortunately, there is no concrete data on the issues women face, much less data specific to minority francophone communities. The reason? There's not enough funding allocated to specific projects and research on this topic. That makes it important to ensure that we have concrete data reflecting realities on the ground if we want to address population needs as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Thank you.

We will continue with Mrs. Vien for five minutes.

[Dominique Vien, Conservative, Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Thank you all for coming and making yourselves available this afternoon.

Dr. Kanojia, you give us reason to hope when you tell us that many young people are finding alternatives to these somewhat toxic networks, leading them down negative paths. You're saying that they've found other alternatives. Since you're in contact with many young people, could you tell us about an actual case of a young person who realized they were not on the right path?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

If you look at a lot of podcasts—there's a term, “podcast bro”, and I don't know whether you have heard this term—a lot of men are interested in self-development. There are toxic communities of self-development and self-help, and then there are helpful communities. Part of the reason I'm standing here today, and part of the work the Healthy Gamer Foundation does, is that I'm a psychiatrist but I also make YouTube videos. I livestream on Twitch and on YouTube, and about 10 million to 15 million people—about 7 million to 12 million men—tune in to me every month to hear healthy alternatives.

There absolutely are positive communities, several podcasts and those kinds of adjacent followings. There are several social media and content-creator types of people who will do this work. Then, there are more local things, like Big Brother and Big Sister programs, peer-support programs that can provide healthy alternatives.

[Dominique Vien, Conservative, Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC]

Thank you very much.

Could you give us an overview of how this radicalization is affecting young men in North America? We're going to include the United States, unless you have specific statistics for Canada. What are your observations on that?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Are you asking what percentage of young men are becoming radicalized?

[Dominique Vien, Conservative, Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC]

Yes.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Remember that it's a continuum. There are people who are at the early phase of radicalization, and that can grow all the way to very severe radicalization.

There aren't very good statistics in North America or elsewhere, but I think if you look at related conditions like the rise of pornography addiction and things like video game addiction, these are oftentimes comorbid. When you have someone who is addicted to pornography, the likelihood that they're engaged in anti-feminist ideology is high.

What we're basically seeing is probably somewhere between 6% and 15%. That would be my guess, depending on the study.

[Dominique Vien, Conservative, Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC]

Thank you very much.

Teenagers go through a tsunami of emotions, their body is changing, everything is changing. You said that loneliness is a really important risk factor. A teenager is a teenager. They're going through a tough time. How could we improve their adolescence and alleviate this loneliness? Is it worse today than it was 20 or 30 years ago?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Absolutely. I think you touched on the main thing. Teenagers have always been teenagers, but the world they live in now and the world they grow up in now is different. I think we are seeing all kinds of changes; the world is changing.

A couple of things we have to understand is that technology offers us alternatives. When I was growing up, I was also bullied and I was very socially isolated, but I had no choice but to socially rehabilitate myself. When I went to university, there was a lot of forced social interaction. That essentially allows us to become socially rehabilitated.

That's no longer the case today. When someone is socially isolated now, if you think about a 25-year-old man or even a 15-year-old, you don't have to leave the house anymore. You can get food delivered and you can work from home, and you never have to socialize with anyone. That's why we need more programs to help teenagers train in certain skills that we never needed social training in.

We have an event on our Discord server where we practise asking people out on dates, and 200 people will show up and practise that. We train social skills. We train emotional regulation skills. These were things that people would basically acquire before, but now the way that our society is structured, no one is forced into social acquisition skills.

I'm sure the members of the committee can think about times in their lives when they didn't feel like doing something socially, and they learned how to do it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Thank you.

[Dominique Vien, Conservative, Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC]

Thank you.

It's over already, but I had some questions for the ladies.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

I'm sorry, but your time is up.

I needed that training when I was younger, but I don't need it now.

Now we're going to Mr. Chen for five minutes.

[Shaun Chen, Liberal, Scarborough North, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Dr. Kanojia, you said the world is changing. We know that anti-feminist ideology has long existed, but now young men and boys are more connected than ever in this technological world.

Are there positive examples that you can share of how gaming platforms, streaming sites and social media have addressed the ways they have been used to disseminate anti-feminist messaging or have tried to address it?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

Your question is whether there are success stories of platforms trying to protect against anti-feminist messaging. Is that correct?

[Shaun Chen, Liberal, Scarborough North, ON]

Yes.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

I think this is happening slowly but surely, in a very inconsistent way. There are, for example, certain gaming platforms that will implement a system where a user will be given the right to communicate or to be unable to communicate via voice chat. If I am someone on voice chat, and I speak in a toxic or harmful way, the game will recognize that by using certain voice modulation analysis.

I don't know if this makes sense, but right now I'm speaking and I'm not upset, whereas if I start using expletives and start yelling at people, we actually have the technology to recognize when someone is being toxic. Then there will be certain kinds of auto-mute functions or mute functionality against particular things.

I worked with one game studio to try to develop a more positive cycle of social community. We built something around more timely feedback. I don't know if this make sense, but if you think about how we police human behaviour, if your child says something inappropriate, if you're a parent, you tell them right away. One of the big problems that platforms have is that when they punish someone, the person is not given a reason. Oftentimes, there is a lag between the behaviour and the punishment. If I say something and then a week later I get banned from a platform, there's no way of my knowing what I did wrong or what the right corrective action is.

There absolutely are platforms that are moving in this directions.

[Shaun Chen, Liberal, Scarborough North, ON]

Thank you.

When you talked about the shared suffering that some of these young men and boys are experiencing that compelled them to join in this shared community where they're united by their common social deprivation, the trauma they might have experienced, their unmet mental health and other needs, when I hear that list, I also think about those who are oppressed, the young women and girls who are on the other end of this anti-feminist ideology.

What do you think is possible in terms of creating empathy that allows these young men and boys to understand that what they perpetuate is exactly the harm that is experienced by those who are on the other side of the issue?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

It's a beautiful question.

These problems have gotten a lot worse as we have become isolated and radicalized. I think the most important thing is to move in the opposite direction to try to create situations where people can have greater exposure to different people's lives.

We find that one of the biggest problems with some of these incel communities is that, literally, when they open their mouths in the public space, everyone wants to kick them out, which is an understandable reaction because they'll oftentimes have hateful rhetoric and have overly generalized views of what women are like and will say that all women are a particular way.

I think there's a certain amount of being able to tolerate that and then educate these people and give them a better perspective. There's a lot of research that shows that mentorship and older peers are very important for that. It's something that's really missing in these communities.

[Shaun Chen, Liberal, Scarborough North, ON]

From your clinical and research experience, what emotional or developmental factors make young men, at this point, particularly vulnerable to the types of anti-feminist narratives we are seeing?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia]

The most important thing that I think is underaddressed is something called “normative male alexithymia”. Alexithymia is being colour-blind to your internal emotional state.

Most men do not understand what they are feeling, through a combination of biology and social conditioning. If you take an incel, they don't understand that they feel ashamed or fearful; they just think the world is out to get them. They're not aware of their internal emotional state.

The reason that we call—