Mr. Speaker, I wish I had four hours to talk about this. This is really about checking our privilege as Canadians.
Women in most places around the world are forced into early marriage. They do not have access to education. They experience malnourishment during pregnancy. They have to undergo things like female genital mutilation or face ostracization by their communities. There is early and forced marriage. They are subject to subjugation under religious practices at the behest of state-run governments that are managed by codification of archaic religious practices. Around the world, women are not equal. Even in Canada, women are not truly equal yet.
On my colleague's point, if the Prime Minister were actually a feminist, why did he vote against the Yazidi genocide motion? Why did it take him months to recognize that Canada, if we were truly welcoming refugees, should be prioritizing women who survived sexual slavery.
I met Nadia Murad. I have met survivors of this slavery, and these are women who we should be helping most. Why? Because she had the courage, after that happened to her, to stand and say, “I am a feminist, and I will stop what is happening to my people and the women around me”. The Prime Minister had the opportunity to stand and help her, and we had to drag him kicking and screaming into that.
It is not just about abroad. As I said earlier, it is about right here at home. In the last Parliament, our feminist Prime Minister stood and voted against matrimonial property rights for first nations women. If we cannot talk about the rights of women internationally with respect to their equality and the Prime Minister will not do it, what is his brand of feminism? Nothing.