Mr. Speaker, as a society, we have made appreciable progress over decades, and going back even centuries, in developing greater awareness, understanding, and acceptance of the inherent value and dignity of the individual human being, and of the individual's right to be free in mind and spirit, and to enjoy physical security and independence. However, despite this slow yet nonetheless remarkable progress, and notwithstanding our progress to an extent in addressing the age-old and stubborn imbalance of power and economic status between men and women, violence against women remains a scourge that we must work relentlessly to eliminate through an intelligent and effective combination of criminal sanction, law enforcement, and education.
In regards to this still yet to be fully addressed and resolved gender economic imbalance in Canadian society, I must lament the actions that the Conservative government has taken in the recent past to slow this progress within federal institutions, within its constitutional jurisdiction.
As we know, in 2009, the Conservatives tabled Bill C-10, an omnibus budget implementation bill. The bill contained an act entitled, “Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act”. The act altered the federal pay equity regime so that it would no longer exist under the Canadian Human Rights Act as well as removing the Canadian Human Rights Commission as the forum for adjudicating equal pay complaints.
The motion we are debating today, if adopted, would instruct the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women to undertake a study on a limited but nonetheless valuable number of aspects of the problem of violence against women. Specifically, the motion calls on the committee to study best practices in education and social programs, and we just added the word “policy”, in Canada aimed at preventing violence against women.
However, before I move into the substance of my speech, I would like to draw attention to the excellent work being done in my region, namely in the western part of the Island of Montreal, by the West Island Women's Shelter. The shelter is a beacon of hope, a veritable life raft for women who sometimes urgently need a place of protection to escape violence in the home or in another context. The shelter is well supported by the community, including financially through an umbrella charitable organization known as West Island Community Shares.
By way of information, each year in Canada violence and abuse drive over 100,000 women and children out of their homes and into shelters. Furthermore, according to a study by the Department of Justice, violence against women costs Canadian society $7.4 billion each year. The study further states that, based on 2009 figures, the cost to victims directly of violence against women is $6 billion annually, including $21 million in hospitalization, visits to doctors, and emergency rooms, as well as $180 million in related mental health costs.
While the economic costs of violence against women are great and unacceptable, the very real incalculable cost is to victims' health, physical and mental, and to their human dignity. I have not even mentioned the impacts on the outlook of the children who must witness abusive behaviour against their mother.
The inherent value and benefit of federalism is that it allows different parts of the system, namely different jurisdictions, in this case our provinces, to develop unique approaches to solving common problems, social, economic, or other, that reflect different and unique regional perspectives, historical experiences, and accumulated collective wisdom. We know that situations of physical violence, in this case against women, are addressed day-to-day on the ground by local police forces, courts, social workers, and shelters.
All of these in many ways are far removed from federal jurisdiction. However, criminal law, a federal responsibility, is directly relevant when it comes to combatting violence against women. Criminal law, in turn, needs to continually evolve to take account of and adapt to the new realities and challenges that develop over time in daily life in communities across this country. There is great relevance in having education, social programs and policies aimed at ending violence against women studied at the federal level by a committee of the House of Commons.
Also, violence against women is obviously a national concern. It offends the national sensibility and its incidence is national, sparing no region or locality.
It cuts across boundaries, culture, religious membership, and socio-economic status, and it impacts aboriginal communities, for which the federal government has a special constitutional responsibility, including for the women who live in these communities or who, living outside of these communities, are nonetheless profoundly tied to them.
Nowhere is the intersection of local policing, federal jurisdiction over criminal law, and the national nature of the issue of violence against women cast into higher relief than through the troubling question of our aboriginal missing and murdered women, an issue I will discuss in more detail in a moment.
However, allow me to say that while this motion is welcome, it falls short by the mere fact of limiting the scope of the study the committee would undertake should the motion pass in this House. I understand that the motion has been amended. I am not certain what the actual implications will be of adding the word “policy”, but I hope to learn more about that as time goes on.
Liberals have consistently asked for a more comprehensive approach to studying this urgent problem of violence against women and acting to eliminate it. We have consistently demanded a national action plan to combat violence against women, not to mention a national inquiry into missing and murdered aboriginal women.
In the fall of 2013, the Liberal status of women critic and member for Etobicoke North tabled a motion at the status of women committee calling on the committee to study violence against women. The committee has yet to accept this motion, and I am left to wonder if the motion we are debating today, which is more limited in scope but nonetheless desirable, will be used as an attempt to pre-empt a larger study, as requested by my Liberal colleague. I hope not, and I know that the sponsor's intentions are sincere in this regard and that he is approaching this not as a way of pre-empting the Liberal motion but because of his obvious interest and concern about this issue.
In addition, our Liberal critic tabled Motion No. M-470 in the house itself, asking that the government create and implement a national action plan to end violence against women.
For her part, the Liberal member for St. Paul's, the Liberal aboriginal affairs critic, has been working diligently and tirelessly in an attempt to have the government establish a national public inquiry into missing and murdered aboriginal women.
As we know, and I believe it has been mentioned, aboriginal women are three-and-a-half times more likely than non-aboriginal women to be victims of violence.
In 2010, the Native Women's Association of Canada estimated the number of missing and murdered aboriginal women and girls over the last 30 years at 582. The report acknowledges the limitations of record-keeping, as there is no national missing persons database, and police records do not always indicate aboriginal status.
The initiative led by the group Sisters in Spirit, which was de-funded by the government in 2010, found that many victims are targeted simply because they are aboriginal and their attackers assume they will not fight back.
A 2014 report from the RCMP put the number of missing and murdered aboriginal women at 1,181.
Finally, half of all murder cases involving first nations, Métis, or Inuit women and girls remain unsolved, and more than half of the murdered and missing women and girls were under the age of 31.
Despite the motion we are debating today, which is welcome, the government must act more broadly and more effectively to eliminate violence against women in Canada.