Status of Women Committee on Feb. 10th, 2026

[Connie Cody, Conservative, Cambridge, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair, and through you, I want to thank all the witnesses for coming today.

There's a lot to discuss. I'll start with Monsieur Dorais, if I may.

You said you wanted to focus on prevention, so I'm going to ask you some questions around that.

In your letter, you stated, “One person's rights do not detract from another's.” With that logic, should a credible prevention strategy also acknowledge and address generalized male bashing directed at boys and men, including from antagonistic female online influencers, when that messaging contributes to resentment and withdrawal among young men? Could that be the catalyst pushing some boys to these extreme spaces?

[Michel Dorais]

Can you repeat the question? The interpretation isn't working.

[Connie Cody, Conservative, Cambridge, ON]

It was based on your letter about—

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Can we suspend the meeting? There are technical difficulties.

[Michel Dorais]

It's just the last sentence I didn't hear.

[Connie Cody, Conservative, Cambridge, ON]

Okay.

Would you say that antagonistic female online influencers contribute to resentment and withdrawal among young men and boys? Could that be the catalyst that's pushing them to extreme spaces?

[Michel Dorais]

As I said earlier, nature abhors a vacuum. It needs to be filled. Boys are looking for role models and seeking discussions about the male condition, and much of what they hear comes from influencers and is often negative. As mentioned earlier, it even comes from political figures, who receive a lot of attention and are closely followed.

When I talk about prevention, I talk about a counter narrative. Boys need to develop critical thinking and understand that feminism is good for everyone because it's about gender equality and everyone benefits from gender equality. Until we do that, until we do it more, I'll be very worried. I'm a man, as you can see, but I'm just as worried as the women who are here. I have a son. He's a grown-up now, as you can tell from my age, but I might have grandchildren one day. I'm very worried about the impact this is having. This reactionary men's movement is having many negative effects. That's why we need to be everywhere. That's why I mentioned interdepartmental committees earlier. In Ottawa, you deal with justice, but you also deal somewhat with health, and you fund things.

[Connie Cody, Conservative, Cambridge, ON]

There's a lot of male bashing going on online as well. There's the possibility that boys perceive that messaging as presuming that all of them are aggressors. Fairness in messaging is crucial to keeping them engaged.

Should government support initiatives that explicitly reject harmful narratives that are targeting boys and men as well, just as they reject misogyny, to prevent this alienation?

[Michel Dorais]

Boys must be protected from themselves. That's what I would say. I think my colleagues mentioned it earlier. This discourse is so negative. Since there's no alternative discourse, the boys jump right in. There's nothing else. We talk a lot about protecting women, but we need to protect young men from themselves.

I'm not sure I fully understood your question, but I believe it was along those lines.

[Connie Cody, Conservative, Cambridge, ON]

That's okay. I'll continue with Ms. Chan.

According to a 2025 Public Health Agency of Canada report, 54% of girls in grades 9 and 10 are on social media almost all the time throughout the day, as compared with 39% of boys. Based on that difference in usage, would you observe that girls and boys experience different or disproportionate patterns of online harm?

[Esli Chan]

I want to add to the previous point as well. I think with online and working with young boys, the difference is confronting toxic masculinity and not masculinity in itself. There are many ways to express very healthy masculinities. The root of the issue really is this toxic nature, this warped understanding of how to express masculinity and what that constructs around visions of feminism.

On the second point, about what girls experience online being different from what boys experience, I think there definitely is a difference. I think algorithmic tendencies push different content to different demographics. I think about the social expectations of women and young girls online to look a certain way or to perform a certain way. These things inform how young girls develop and have an impact on their mental health.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Now we'll go to Ms. Nathan for five minutes.

[Juanita Nathan, Liberal, Pickering—Brooklin, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I want to thank each and every one of you for being here. Thank you for being here today and for spending your time answering these questions.

Ms. Graydon, I've been listening to you talk about the politics, where we are in the world and things like that. Do you feel that political leaders play a role in the normalization of this rhetoric? When politicians state that women should be worried about their biological clocks, or that diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives are racism, would you agree that these anti-feminist statements are deterring women from entering this sphere and having that equal space?

[Shari Graydon]

It doesn't help. I don't know that you could blame those statements alone, clearly. However, statements by public officials who have power, who are seen, admired, respected and understood to be wielding power, clearly have a disproportionate impact on attitudes more broadly. With what we're witnessing in the U.S. and the normalization of behaviour that a year ago we would have been shocked and unable to predict, the fact that that is now so normalized and is infecting not just that nation but the rest of the world, those pronouncements by politicians absolutely have an impact, are heard, internalized and then expressed in all sorts of ways by boys, girls, adult men and women.

[Juanita Nathan, Liberal, Pickering—Brooklin, ON]

I want to ask you about the movement #MenGoingTheirOwnWay. This comes out of the online anti-feminist manosphere. In fact, the Leader of the Opposition was caught using these hashtags in the YouTube videos.

Can you explain the origin of these hashtags and what they represent within the manosphere and what it signals when language like this enters mainstream political spaces?

[Shari Graydon]

I can answer the last question. I don't know about the origins of the Men Going Their Own Way movement, or if any of my colleagues do. Maybe as a group, we could start.

[Juanita Nathan, Liberal, Pickering—Brooklin, ON]

Maybe somebody who knows could answer that part of the question.

Yes, go ahead.

[Esli Chan]

I think Men Going Their Own Way is part of this larger manosphere subculture that you had established. Another part of that is incels, involuntary celibates, men's rights activists or pickup artists. There are all these different subcultures that are fundamentally under this category of manosphere.

What we see is that a lot of that language is being normalized within regular everyday conversation. I think of words like “looksmaxxing” that originated from this kind of incel community, but we see it being used by young boys and potentially girls in their everyday parlance. We see that kind of online language that is more associated with these ideologies becoming part of the everyday conversation now.

[Juanita Nathan, Liberal, Pickering—Brooklin, ON]

Thank you, Ms. Chan.

I have a question about AI for you.

Based on your research, how are social media algorithms or recommended systems and influencers and economies actively shaping young Canadians exposed to these anti-feminist ideologies, particularly by normalizing misogyny and pushing users toward increasingly extreme content? How does this play out in AI and how it influences young people?

[Esli Chan]

I think ultimately what algorithms do is push content that is going viral. They often will rank content based on their views, their shares, and push that more towards other individuals to capture their attention. Inherently that often can lead to very misogynistic beliefs being pushed because of this virality. Someone might share it not necessarily because they believe it, but they find that it's an interesting take, is controversial, and so that kind of content will be pushed forward.

It's also an issue of structural design. I think about cases like Reddit where people can upvote and people can be anonymous online. These are different ways that platform design itself, apart from algorithms, can also contribute to harm.

[Juanita Nathan, Liberal, Pickering—Brooklin, ON]

Thank you so much for that answer.

Did you want to add to that, Emmanuelle?

[Emmanuelle Parent]

Absolutely. I'd add something about young boys. I talk to a lot of boys who are into more radical movements on social media.

It's important to understand something: when they're in a school setting and they express masculinist or hateful views, they'll immediately be silenced, from their perspective, by the teachers. Online, they'll be encouraged to open up. They're given words for their feelings. They'll be told things like “You're a teenager, you don't think you're good-looking, you're not getting girls, you don't see yourself in the future, but there are people who are here for you.”

That's why I bring up the fact that young people need this sense of community. Unfortunately, as was explained here, the algorithms will push them toward extreme content rather than inspiring models, as Mr. Dorais has pointed out time and time again.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Thank you.

Ms. Larouche, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Where should I begin? There are so many questions to ask.

I'll turn to you, Mr. Dorais, because I want to note that there's misinformation. Seeking to regulate social media and the online giants isn't about stifling anyone's freedom of expression; it's about drawing a line to indicate how far you can go without it becoming an attack. If I threaten someone in person, it's considered an assault under the Criminal Code. If such a direct attack occurs online, it should also be considered criminal. It's not to stifle freedom of expression.

Once again, the other question is what falls under federal jurisdiction. We're talking about education. We're also talking, for example, about family courts, which are more under Quebec's jurisdiction. Sport'Aide is a great organization in Quebec that I discovered following the sexual assault scandals at Hockey Canada. Those scandals led us, at the Standing Committee on the Status of Women, to conduct a study on toxic masculinity in sports. It was a very revealing study. Moreover, there have been some great initiatives put in place. For example, Léa Clermont‑Dion was able to speak to young players in the major junior hockey league about positive masculinity and the fact that, even as hockey players, they can embody positive masculinity.

I'd like to hear your comments. I think it requires a cultural change in sports in general. The minister Kirsty Duncan passed away recently. I read an article saying that a good way to pay tribute to Kirsty Duncan and her memory was to hold an independent public inquiry to shed light on toxic masculinity in sports. What do you think?

[Michel Dorais]

The problem is that it's very poorly funded. The extraordinary Sport'Aide program Demain un homme is ending in a few weeks because there's no funding. Like Ms. Clermont‑Dion, I've worked in the sports field, especially with hockey people. If Sport Canada, for example, required that 1% of the money spent on our youth….

I can say something, but I won't name anyone. I offered to give, almost for free, a training course that cost $10 per youth. It wasn't that much, but people told me it was way too expensive. I asked them how much it cost when a young person committed a sexual assault. They told me it cost a million dollars or more, so I asked them, “Don't you think $10 per young person is a good investment?” They replied no, because they have insurance and the insurance pays. You see? That's it. It's terrible. We need to change the mentality that money is what drives everything.

The lives of women who are the victims of violence are very important. There are many young men who are stars in their sport—I won't name anyone in particular—and who take advantage of it. These young people are leaders in their community. They're models. We need to intervene there. There should be funding for that. Sports federations should be forced—because I think we have no choice at this point—to say that they will do something and take steps. We need to train young people and train coaches, because the coaches have a lot of power.

I conducted a survey of nearly 500 young people in semi‑professional sports. When asked who has the most power to influence them, they don't say online influencers. They say their coach, so I gave a day-long intensive training course to coaches in one federation. That effort needs to be multiplied, but there's no money. Teams don't want to spend money on that. It's good the government subsidizes it—I'm really happy about that—but I think sports federations and people who own teams, who are often very wealthy, should contribute more as well.