Mr. Speaker, the Margaret Atwood novel The Handmaid's Tale has been adapted for television. It depicts a dystopian society in which birth rates have plummeted for unknown reasons. A fascist, theocratic state has assumed power, and fertile women are conscripted into sexual slavery and forced to breed children for the wealthy and powerful. What happens to the women in The Handmaid's Tale is horrific. Women are treated as property, and those who dare speak out are permanently maimed.
I raise this in the House today because what is fictional in Canada is reality in many parts of the world. Saudi Arabia is a gender-segregationist theocracy where women are regularly harassed by religious police. That is why I was shocked and appalled by the election of Saudi Arabia to the UN's women's rights commission.
Margaret Atwood's horrific vision does not exist only in our imaginations; it exists right now, today, and it is a shame that the government is so unwilling to confront it.