Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by thanking my colleague, the member for Laval, for her initiative in introducing this motion.
This very important discussion that we are having began on February 26. It is based on a status of women report pertaining to the very serious situation of violence against women in Canada today.
An NDP colleague of mine, a former member for Vancouver East rose in the House I think some 15 years ago to comment on domestic violence and that one in every seven women in our society was facing assault in the home. At that time that news was greeted with guffaws, chuckles and joking in this chamber. It was a national disgrace.
I am not suggesting that we have not moved beyond that. In fact, we learned a great deal from that reaction to such an important statistic. However, I am here to say that for every initiative that is taken, for every step forward we seem to be taking two steps back.
On this very day that we talk about violence against women it is absolutely unacceptable and reprehensible that we have a government in place that is in rolling back the clock on women's equality. This is the very time that Parliament should be standing at the head of the line pushing as hard as possible for equality in every aspect of political, economic, social and cultural life in this country. It is rather disheartening to rise in the House today to talk about violence against women and hope that the government will respond to our concerns when it has simply rolled back the clock on equal pay for work of equal value.
Some would suggest that violence can be defined broadly. It is not simply physical violence against women; it is psychological, it is social, it is emotional. I think the women of this country will say in unison that the government has imposed psychological and emotional violence against women by way of its backwards, negative and regrettable step of denying pay equity in this country. We know we have a serious problem on our hands when we have a government that can actually introduce legislation when it has the Liberals over a barrel, that denies the right of women to take a pay equity case to the Human Rights Commission. We do not have a government that actually listens to the needs of women and pursues without bias and ideological impediment the full equality of women.
The situation is more serious than ever when it comes to violence against women. This week, March 9 to 13, has been declared Sexual Exploitation Awareness Week. The week has been set aside because of the increasing incidence of sexual exploitation among children, teenagers and adults across the country. It comes at a time when there are more cases than ever of missing children. Child Find Manitoba will testify to that; in fact, it will remind us of the number of cases especially where there still are no leads, no clear indication of where these children have gone and what has happened to them, who took advantage of them.
In fact right now in Manitoba, there are 11 long-term cases of missing young people. Of those cases, eight are aboriginal children, including Sunshine Wood, who has been missing for five years as of February 2009. Over the past six months, there have been five new cases that are considered long term.
The situation is not getting any better. Parliament needs to think about what role it has when it comes to violence as it pertains to young children, teenagers and women in Canada.
Child Find is doing its job by trying to point out the connection between exploitation of children and the root causes of the horrible incidence in our society. Child Find issued a poster not too long ago that uses a very graphic description. The poster is part of the Stop Sex with Kids campaign. It reads, “Dear diary, last night I was so hungry that guy did what he wanted with me... I needed to eat”. Then it has a description over the face of a woman which reads, “Why doesn't anyone see me?”
Today we are trying to make these cases less invisible. We are trying to confront the realities of so many children, teenagers, and women in our society today. In Winnipeg, Manitoba there is a very active group of citizens, women in particular. They are working day in and day out trying to organize to stop the incidence of sexual exploitation among children.
I want to acknowledge the hard work of the Sexually Exploited Youth Coalition in Winnipeg. It has a large membership which meets regularly. Day in and day out it works with the provincial and federal governments, the police, the city, other social organizations, and the non-profit community to try to find solutions to the high incidence of sexual exploitation among our children.
It is time for the government to take seriously the recommendations of so many different organizations and make the problem visible, face it directly and deal with it.
Today I want to remind everyone about the problem of sexual exploitation. In this week which is Sexual Exploitation Awareness Week, let us set aside some time to think about the high incidence of sexual exploitation among children. Let us rededicate ourselves to doing something about it.
Another anniversary just passed. Sunday was International Women's Day, a day when we are supposed to celebrate the contributions of women and the progress women have made. This year there was no celebration. Everywhere across this country women took to the streets to decry the lack of action in many areas. It was propelled by the recent news that the government had rolled back the clock on pay equity, the fundamental concept of equal pay for work of equal value. Women rose up to say that is a human right that we fought for.
The government can try to take it away from us, but we will rise up and continue fighting until such time as that right is fully entrenched in every aspect of society, in the laws of this land, so that women everywhere have the right to take a complaint based on human rights to the Canadian Human Rights Commission, which was founded on the fundamental freedoms outlined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The rising up in the streets on International Women's Day did not just focus on pay equity. It became a symbol for everything that is wrong with the government and why women have to remember that we have a huge fight on our hands. We have to organize politically and in the grassroots to speak out against the government and its disastrous and destructive programs and initiatives that hurt women.
The rising up in the streets on March 9 was also about violence against women. Women in Winnipeg sent a clear message to the federal government that they want it to invest in all areas pertaining to violence against women, especially women's shelters. They sported hard hats and construction vests and carried cardboard hammers. They gathered at the future site of the Canadian museum for human rights. They wanted to make the point that if we are going to build a place that respects human rights and remembers the many struggles our citizens have had to endure just to get to the point where human rights are recognized, then we have to gather there to send a message that our rights are being denied as we speak and so much more needs to be done.
I want to mention especially the work of the young women at the West Central Women's Resource Centre, the young women at the University of Winnipeg Women's Centre, the young women at the University of Manitoba, all young women, and thank God there are young women who are prepared to take up the flag and the challenges from those of us who have worked so hard over the last 30 years and sometimes wonder how we are ever going to leave a lasting legacy for our children and our children's children.
These young women gathered and spoke about the fact that domestic abuse does rise when there is stress and when people are losing their jobs. They made the connection between the economic recession we are now faced with and the rising incidents of violence. They talked about the fact that women are less likely to have a place to go if they are being abused at home and that it is more likely to happen now. It is a real concern. They signed messages on a board of bricks calling for an end to violence against women.
They especially referenced the case of Claudette Osborne, a woman who has been missing for six months. There is no sign of her whereabouts. They pledged to continue their quest to find Claudette Osborne and to work on behalf of all missing and murdered women whose numbers are growing. They number some 500, at least, across this country. There are probably more. We know of 500, but many others may not have been identified. These are women who have been kidnapped, taken from their communities, taken off the streets, abused and perhaps murdered.
We all know about the Pickton farm in British Columbia. We know about the Claudette Osbornes in the world. We need to rededicate ourselves to find a way to make those women more visible, to stop treating them as invisible persons, as secondary citizens.
The whole pursuit of the Sisters In Spirit campaign has been about missing and murdered women, about finding a way to ensure that their cases are not treated as less significant than others.
I want to reference in particular an article written by Constance Backhouse which appeared in The Ottawa Citizen a few days ago, just before International Women's Day. The title is, “Forgotten sisters”. In the article Constance talks about some cases that occurred long ago. She talks about the case of Rose Roper, who was brutally abused and murdered in 1967. She talks about a case that we know well in Manitoba, the case of Helen Betty Osborne, a 19-year-old Cree woman who was sexually accosted, stabbed to death and abandoned in the snow in The Pas, Manitoba.
She goes on to say it is not just those high-profile cases that we have to worry about. There is a whole group of women who do not have names, who do not have identities, who do not have anyone pursuing them in terms of seeking justice and answers for their situations. She talks about an award-winning doctoral thesis by Professor Tracey Lindberg from the University of Ottawa, who listed a shockingly high number of missing aboriginal women lost between 1975 and 2007.
As I mentioned, the Sisters In Spirit campaign, which has been in effect for the last four or five years, released a public information campaign showing that more than 500 aboriginal women have been missing in the past three decades, many of them suspected murder victims.
To quote Constance Backhouse, “So many have been lost along Highway 16 between Prince Rupert and Prince George that it has been nicknamed 'the Highway of Tears'". She also says:
...nowhere does it seem that anyone is prepared to tackle the root causes that give rise to these appalling acts: hatred of women and long-standing injustice toward aboriginal communities.
Amnesty International has lambasted our government for complacency and inaction.
She ends with the question, “When will Canadians wake up? When will we finally take action to dismantle the legacy of misogyny and racism that runs through the heart of Canadian history and haunts us unceasingly today?”
This discussion is all about that. The Status of Women committee report on violence against women was all about that. It recognizes that there are missing and murdered women who do not seem to count and for which we have not put a lot of resources, effort and attention into solving cases.
Many of them are aboriginal women. My colleague from Nanaimo—Cowichan has been on her feet in the House many times talking about the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women noted with regret that aboriginal women in Canada continued to live in impoverished conditions, which include high rates of poverty, poor health, inadequate housing, lack of access to clean water, low school completion rates and high rates of violence.
She asked this question. Could the government tell us what it sees as a priority that should have been included in the throne speech and then in the budget that would deal with first nations, Métis, Inuit and other desperate economic conditions? A very important question for which we have not received a serious answer.
Just today the British Columbia group dealing with the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, B.C., CEDAW, called a public inquiry on missing and murdered aboriginal women. They called on the government to do that now. I read from its press release dated today:
Setting up a full public inquiry into the ongoing issue of murdered and missing Aboriginal women and girls is the only right thing to do and the time is now...
This group goes on to say that:
At the United Nations in Geneva in October 2008 when Canada's human rights performance under the Convention on the elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, (CEDAW), was reviewed, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination expressed concern about the hundreds of cases involving Aboriginal women who have gone missing or been murdered in the past two decades. The Committee urged Canadian governments to examine the reasons for the failures of the justice system to deal with these cases and give them priority attention.
That is an embarrassment. Canada has a deplorable record on the international front made even worse by the recent decision to cancel pay equity and nullify it as a program at the national level, in fact, to the point where the government had to face a call for an investigation at the United Nations about the deplorable record pertaining to women at the United Nations this past week.
It used to be that we were at the top of the list when it came to human development and equality for women. Now we are getting close to the bottom of the list. That is the result of inaction on the part of consecutive Liberal and Conservative governments. If we do anything today, it would be for the government to come forward with a statement saying that it recognizes the problems, that it will do more, that it will come up with a plan of action and work on a consensus basis to ensure that this happens.
Let me add a couple of words about the work that is being done in Winnipeg, which keeps us all going. At a recent event marking the disappearance of missing and murdered women, a woman by the name of Sheila Hillier wrote a very important piece. I want to read from it as I conclude my remarks. It is called “Remember Me”. It says:
They are the Silent Witnesses and we are their voice...
She asks us to remember the unique gifts and talents she brought to us all....
She asks us to look beyond her pain and her ways of coping with her life experiences and to see that she is a woman struggling to live life in the best way she knows how....
She asks us to forgive her, to know that she may not have shared everything that she was going through and she did so because of guilt and shame...
She asks us to walk with integrity and be proud in who we are.
She asks us to walk in compassion and without prejudice....
She asks us to enforce the laws that are in place.
She asks the men in our community to take their place in speaking out against violence and to be positive role models in the community.
She asks us to be there to provide hope and a way for women and children to live free of violence...
She asks us to be strong, to not give up hope, but to continue in our efforts, to press forward and to speak out when we have the opportunity.