Madam Speaker, I want to remind Canadians that not everyone has a safe place to call home this holiday season.
A recent article by Jillian Follert highlighted the grave situation facing Durham region's women's shelters. Over a thousand women have been turned away from our shelters because they were already operating at overcapacity this year. In one year, Durham's four shelters housed 608 women and 320 children, fielding over 5,000 calls on its crisis line. Our region has also seen three domestic homicides in 2017. These trends are extremely alarming.
Therefore, as we prepare for the holidays, I ask residents in my community to keep these women and children fleeing violence in their minds by showing their support for local organizations. One initiative, the “Mitten Tree”, at Pickering Public Library, is collecting mittens, hats, gloves, scarves, and toiletries for Herizon House women's shelter.
If we are to stop this trend, we need men and women to become leaders in ending violence against women.