Madam Speaker, I want to thank Cystic Fibrosis Canada for giving us all these beautiful yellow roses to wear today. They are still all over the House at this hour. We are thinking of the victims, survivors, and their families.
I am here tonight to follow up on a conversation I was having with the Minister of Status of Women about Canada's response to violence against women.
In 1995, Canada was ranked number one on the United Nations gender equality index. Today, Canada ranks 25th. As the Feminist Alliance for International Action notes, in the past 20 years, Canadian women have gone backward. A big part of that are the levels of violence that women and girls continue to face in Canada. Statistics Canada says that rates of violence against women remain largely unchanged over those two decades.
Here are some terrible numbers. One million women report having experienced sexual or domestic violence in the past five years. Women are 11 times more likely than men to be a target of sexual violence. Sexual violence experienced by indigenous women is more than three times that of non-indigenous women. Women living with disabilities experience violence two to three times more than women without disability. Sexual and domestic violence costs our economy over $12 billion a year.
I know the government and New Democrats agree that this cannot stand. I really hope that the minister's representative will not, again tonight, just restate his commitment to changing things and his recognition of the problem, but that we talk about what we are going to do.
Almost a year ago, the former minister of status of women started a federal strategy to address gender-based violence. A year later, we still do not have a plan, and the government has been largely silent on the progress it has made on that plan.
The need for this is clear. Responses to violence against women across the provinces and territories are fragmented. Services are often inaccessible and inconsistent across Canada. The status of women committee heard this very clearly from dozens of witnesses last year. This has been a critique of the federal government for decades, including from the United Nations, Oxfam, and the coalition of more than 180 organizations that urged the previous government and this one to endorse the blueprint for Canada's national action plan on violence against women and girls. This government has failed to do that.
The government keeps announcing that the strategy will be released “in the coming weeks”. It said that on February 1, February 7, March 6, March 8, March 17, and March 23. On April 12, the Minister of Status of Women made a low-key announcement saying more in-depth details will be announced “in the coming weeks” as the strategy takes form. Again, it is in the coming weeks. It keeps being said, but it has been months, almost a year. The government is asking women to wait again, and that is not fair to victims. It is not what victims and survivors need or want. We need clarity from the government.
Will the government stop asking women to wait for weeks to come, and finally release its plan that will actually deliver safety to women in danger, and immediately act to make Canada safer for women and girls?