Mr. Speaker, I am very shaken by the events of today. I have spent most of my adult life fighting against violence against women, and fighting against violence in general. I saw the Prime Minister, someone in this honoured House that we all fought to sit in, stride across the aisle toward us with such purpose. As he entered the small circle of us who were standing there, he swore. He said, “Get the [bleep] out of the way.” He pushed his way into the circle we were standing in. He grabbed the opposition House leader and dragged him out, and in so doing elbowed my colleague quite viciously. She was physically hurt. I do not want any member of this House to stand and say that she was not, as no member of this House can judge what she felt.
Also, what we are talking about here is a choice. The Prime Minister stood up and made a choice to walk across that aisle and walk toward those members. In doing so, he chose that.
We are talking about intent versus impact. When we talk about violence, we talk about the impact. The impact is that my colleague's parliamentary privilege was violated and she had to leave this House and missed a vote, not to mention the physical impact that she endured.
We all have to ask ourselves if this was our mother, our wife, our sister, our daughter, would we be having this conversation in this House? All of us have a duty to not accept violence. When we walk through those doors we wear that duty and burden more heavily. Today, we should take this very seriously and say that we do not accept violence in this House.
Will the member opposite stand and say that we will not accept violence in this House, regardless of the intent, when it has an impact on another member that is not acceptable?