Mr. Speaker, I do not speak as I do because I wish to make the hon. member or any other person feel guilty. I speak as I do to make all of us together feel responsible for changing the way things are.
I do not single out white men or middle aged men or men with blond hair or any other subcategory of the population. What I am suggesting is that we must face the facts. Violence in all of its forms against anyone is unacceptable. However sometimes violence against particular groups in society is so predominant, so widespread, so ingrained in the culture that it has to be identified for particular action.
Let me tell members why I say that. In November 1993, Statistics Canada published a survey which was unique in all the world. It surveyed a huge segment of the population about violence. All members of the population surveyed were women.
They found, among other things, that over half of the women surveyed had been the victims of an act of violence committed by a man against them during their adult life. That is extraordinary.
What am I? I am a middle aged white Anglo-Saxon male. If members went out and surveyed the middle class, white, middle aged Anglo-Saxon males you would not find anything like that kind of statistic in terms of victimization of violence. Why do we not face the facts? We have a problem here. We have a problem.
The man who walked into l'École polytechnique with the Ruger Mini-14 five years ago today said something when he pulled the trigger. He said bring on the women. I want to get the women. He killed 14 of them and injured another 13. It was at random. He was not after white, middle class Anglo-Saxon lawyers. He was after women, so let us deal with the reality.
It is everywhere. May I ask the hon. member if he has seen the television programs recently, the rock videos on MTV or the commercials that peddle products? What is implicit in them is the victimization of women which is deplorable. Let's stop it. I am not doing that to make anybody feel guilty.
Of course I support the family. That is where we must begin. We must teach children from the beginning to treat other people as human beings first, not on the basis of gender.
In so far as gun control is concerned, yes, I strongly believe that those measures will help address, among other things, domestic violence. Do I say that such violence will never occur with these changes? Of course not, because we cannot make it a perfect world. But I firmly believe that they will help to make things better.
I urge the hon. member in closing to not feel guilty because it is not anyone's intention to make him feel guilty for what others have done, rather to join us in feeling responsible. Together as members of this legislature we can do something to make it a somewhat a better world.