Mr. Speaker, it was exactly 29 years ago that Quebec was plunged into a darkness that will never leave us completely. I think that each one of us can remember where we were and what we were doing on December 6, 1989. I was watching television. The program was interrupted and I saw pictures of ambulances and the flashing lights of cruisers. I wondered in what country this horror was unfolding. In that moment, Quebec and I realized that we are not immune to such atrocities, and that hate can leash out here in Canada as it does elsewhere.
On December 6, 1989, 14 women lost their lives and 10 others were hospitalized. They were murdered simply because they were women. They were separated from the men, and one man killed them just because they were women and because they might have been feminists, they might have called for gender equality, they might have dared to believe themselves to be persons in their own right.
We must never forget the names of these victims. I, too, am going to read their names: Geneviève Bergeron, Hélène Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviernick, Maryse Laganière, Maryse Leclair, Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, Michèle Richard, Annie St-Arneault, Annie Turcotte and Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz.
These women will not have died in vain if we continue to remember them and remember the day on which violence against women changed the face of Quebec forever.
We must remember their names every year, on December 6, to inspire discussion on the progress we are making towards equality and towards combatting violence against women. Although not everyone will be the victim of a dramatic hate crime like the victims of École Polytechnique in Montreal, many women still experience abuse in many forms.
#MeToo is no doubt the most important political and social movement in recent years. It has shown us that our experiences with abuse are not as uncommon as we think they are. Many of us know what it is like to see fear come to permeate our lives, most often at the hands of men we trust. There are more of us than we knew. In 2014, in Quebec alone, law enforcement reported nearly 16,000 domestic abuse crimes against women.
Young people are not spared this violence. One in five female high school students has been the victim of at least one act of sexual violence at the hands of a partner. The reporting rate for attacks jumped nearly 60% in the wake of the #MeToo movement. However, we must continue to take our place, stand up for our rights, remain united, and speak out against abuse. The names of the women of École Polytechnique must serve as a reminder that there is still a lot of work to be done here at home.
There is still a lot of work to be done here at home, particularly on behalf of indigenous women. Governments need to do more so that our first nations and Inuit sisters have the resources they need to feel safe and to seek refuge when they are the victims of violence.
Ending violence is everyone's responsibility, both men and women, but we women need to find strength in numbers in order to change things. The names of the women who were killed at the École Polytechnique should spur us to action. That is why as long as women do not feel as safe as men, as long as women are disproportionately victims of violence at the hands of men, and as long as women cannot objectively state that they are in every way equal to men, we will remember the women who were killed on December 6. We will do so until each of their names becomes a symbol of the progress we have made.