Mr. Speaker, first of all, the member knows full well that when immigrants arrive in Canada, they do learn about their rights. Issues around harmful traditional cultural practices, including female genital mutilation and honour crimes, are very clearly articulated in our citizenship guide. It is very well spelled out and articulated that in Canada those kinds of harmful cultural practices are not to be tolerated and that men and women are equal under the law.
I have been to citizenship ceremonies, as I am sure have many of my fellow MPs, and they have heard exactly that from the citizenship judges. Immigrants do learn what their rights are.
However, most importantly, this is the government that invested in programs to reach out to young girls in the South Asian community, where we know honour-based violence occurs, to help them feel comfortable coming forward if they are feeling any level of oppression. We are now also funding shelters with resources in multiple languages so that those girls who may have any sort of a challenge in understanding English will have resources available to them. We are also providing training across the country to women's shelters that did not traditionally deal with other ethnic and cultural practices so that they can learn about the challenges that some of these young girls are facing.
At the end of the day, not only do we have to support these young women but also send a very clear, unambiguous message that barbaric cultural and harmful practices will never be tolerated here. We are going to shut the door on the opportunity to use this as a defence.