Madam Speaker, I want to thank you, the House and especially the member for Mississauga East—Cooksville for his flexibility and assistance with this. I appreciate the opportunity to continue the remarks that I was making.
Bill C-3 prescribes a mechanism by which judges would be expected to go through a process of education when it comes to sexual assault law and social context. Additionally, it requires judges to provide written reasons in these cases. That will provide greater clarity about the way in which decisions have been made.
At second reading I spoke about that. I spoke about my support for the bill and I spoke about the importance of understanding the value, but also the limitations, of education, recognizing that education is not the whole solution. As C.S. Lewis pointed out once, education without character might simply serve to create more clever devils. When we think about how to create a society without sexual violence, or at least with substantially less sexual violence, we need to pay attention to those strategies that encourage the development of empathy, understanding, goodwill and self-control. These things, in addition to education and the provision of information, are sort of combined effects that work together to achieve the desired result. When individuals fully absorb the importance of justice and self-control, the way that they treat others will reflect that empathy. We will find that education of judges is not the only thing we need to do, and it is not the full and complete picture. That came through well in all of the remarks that different members were making.
This is an important step forward nonetheless for us to collectively underline the importance of awareness about sexual assault law and the social context for all of those who are going on to the bench. That is the general thrust of the remarks I have made in the past about this bill.
As I was thinking about the particular things I wanted to say here at third reading, the idea that jumped out at me, in terms of the importance of what we are doing with this piece of legislation, is the issue of confidence. It is the issue that when people have something terrible happen in their lives, they make a decision about whether or not to come forward to others and seek support in that situation. Whether they do so stems from the expectation they have about how they will be treated when they come forward. People need to have confidence in our justice system. They need to have confidence in our health system. They need to have confidence in our police. They need to have confidence in our legal professionals. If people do not have confidence in vital social institutions, they will be much less likely to come forward to share and seek assistance in the context of the challenges they are facing.
What we are trying to do with the bill is to make sure that judges are aware, and that we do not have the kinds of things happening to women and others in the court system that have happened in the past. Critically, the fact that we are doing this through legislation recognizes the importance of speaking and acting collectively to try to restore and strengthen confidence among people who are victims in the justice system.
Many of the things that we are doing through the bill could have been done without legislation. There could have been directives given, and I think the government has said that it is putting forward the importance of training in every case with an appointment being made. That is valuable. Given the time that has elapsed, it is valuable that the government is taking the steps that it can in the meantime. The value of acting in legislation in particular is that it is an opportunity for us to collectively communicate an awareness of these problems and a desire to resolve them.
It is to try to restore what has been, I think for a long time, a lack of confidence, and to try to create the conditions in which, if someone experiences horrific acts of sexual violence, they feel intuitively that if they bring those issues forward to the police and judges, they will be heard and responded to in a way that is empathetic, that treats them with justice and that seeks to treat the perpetrator with justice as well. We need to not only fix the problems that have existed, but we need to be seen to have fixed the problems that existed and thus restore a sense of confidence in the system.
Other members have cited these statistics before, but it is important to underline them again. The vast majority of sexual assaults in Canada, over 80%, do not get reported to police. We know that one in three women has been a victim. Many men have been victims as well, and the vast majority of victims do not come forward. I suspect that in many cases it is because of a lack of confidence in the kind of response that they will receive. This is something that we need to change not only by passing this bill, but also by speaking about these issues, by participating in this education and seeking to communicate the messages about the challenges and the need for change, as we are doing in the House today.
What I have seen as well in the last few years is the #MeToo movement. The willingness of people to speak out about their experiences has helped to contribute to a willingness on the part of others to speak about it. It has helped to build this sense of confidence. When people speak out and tell their stories and see that others are listening to them, it builds confidence and makes it easier for others to come forward.
Conversely, if people speak out and are not heard, if there are instances where complaints are made and there is not a proper process or is not meaningful accountability, that detracts from people's confidence. We have seen a lot of these issues play out in real time and it speaks to the importance of people being held accountable in every case, including, and perhaps especially, in very public cases. Not that there is not due process, but the processes are engaged in seriously, victims are treated with respect and justice is sought and achieved in an equal way that applies in every case.
About nine years ago, I was on the board of a local organization in my community called Saffron, which did and continues to do incredible work on education dealing with sexual assault and other forms of violence and bullying. It offers education to young people and parents about these issues. It also provides counselling to victims. The social context has changed a bit in the time since I was on the board for about four years prior to getting elected and now.
At the time, we would discuss as a board how we could raise awareness in the community about these issues, and maybe sensed that there was a real need for greater awareness. Today, there is much more awareness, and that has concrete impacts for organizations such as Saffron in my community that are doing this work. What it means is that more people are coming forward and seeking help.
Right after the #MeToo movement started, what I heard from people who were still involved with this organization in my community was that so many more people were coming forward and seeking counselling and support for events that had happened long in the past. In some cases these were decades and decades ago. People speaking out, being heard and listened to, gave others the confidence to seek counselling, seek support and try to work through and understand things that had happened to them that they maybe had not spoken with anyone about before.
When we do things like debate and pass this legislation, and when people speak out about their experiences, that can have a positive ripple effect of giving others confidence to come forward, to seek counselling, to make complaints and so forth. We can work toward ensuring that a greater proportion of victims of sexual violence is coming forward and that there is meaningful accountability. Ultimately, the result of more people coming forward will be a reduced sense of impunity and less victimization going forward.
It is important for us to acknowledge, in the context of this debate, that our justice system will never be perfect, that we work toward improvements and that we have the end goal in mind, which is ending all violence against women and against all people in general. However, we do not give people the false sense that we are ever going to pass one, or two or three bills and then have a perfect justice system that will respond perfectly in every case.
We should be impatient in our pursuit of reform and improvement, but we should also recognize that this work will never be completely finished, that those of us as members of Parliament, the people who work on these issues throughout the system, will continue to be engaged and work on these things for a long time going forward.
I always think it is important to underline, as we talk about combatting sexual violence, the fact that more and more young people, especially young boys, are accessing very violent sexual images on the Internet. Our country needs to have measures in place, things like meaningful age verification online, to address this issue. When we have very young boys learning about sexuality in a context which is very violent and absorbing images that shape their sense of what is normal, this has major implications with respect to subsequent acts they may commit and acts they may perceive as being normal.
I hope to see government action on that issue as well, that we will see greater exploration of the negative health effects that come from early exposure to violent sexual images online and appropriate legislative responses to that.
I know there was a motion from my colleague, the member for Peace River—Westlock, in the last Parliament for a study on this issue at the health committee. I understand he may be speaking later on this evening. That motion received unanimous consent, but the health committee could have gone further. It ultimately comes down to the government needing to act on these issues.
We need to think about the kind of socialization that contributes to what many people have called “rape culture”. Some of that response has to include addressing this issue online.
In the remaining time I have, I want to speak a little about the international dimension. I have the honour of serving in our opposition shadow cabinet as the shadow minister for international development and human rights. For a long time, a big part of Canada's engagement internationally has been seeking to advance the rights of women and girls.
Members have spoken about Rona Ambrose's involvement in putting forward this bill in the last Parliament. She was also a big part of working with former Prime Minister Harper and others on advancing the rights of women and girls internationally as part of our development assistance. That approach got a bit of a name change under the Liberal government.
Frankly speaking, although not in every area, there has been a great deal of continuity in terms of initiatives that were started under Stephen Harper and have continued, with some modifications but not that many in the scheme of things, under the current government.
Part of our engagement internationally on the rights of women and girls should be promoting reforms to justice systems, helping to facilitate the development and strengthening of justice systems around the world. The quality of justice systems, the protection of young women from violence is a key part of achieving larger development objectives in countries that are struggling around the world.
There may be cases where parents are reluctant for their daughters to go to school if they feel they are not safe on the way to and from school or if they are not safe at school. These are the kinds of issues that are linked to questions of education and access to health care, if justice systems and safety are in place for women around the word.
I also am regularly contacted by people in Canada who are concerned about cases of sexual violence involving abduction of women from minority communities also associated with forced conversion. There have been a number of prominent cases of this in Pakistan recently where women from the Christian community have been abducted and there have been instances of forced conversions as well as forced marriages.
We see these cases in a number of different contexts and require a strong response, recognizing the linkages that exist between violations of religious freedom and the rights of minorities as well as sexual violence. Often, we see cases where women specifically from minority communities are targeted in countries that have relatively weak justice systems.
Canada's engagement in understanding the linkage between different human rights issues around the world is important. That is part of why I was a champion for leaving in place the Office of Religious Freedom. It was working in this space, recognizing the linkages that exist, for instance, between violence against women and violence targeting minority communities.
Also, we need to do more in Canada to recognize how online sexual exploitation is a growing problem in certain countries around the world, how the sexual exploitation of people, often of children, happens in a way that is linked to the demand for that kind of material in other countries, perhaps in Canada. It is so important for us in Canada to be willing to work with justice systems in other countries, building capacity to work together to combat online sexual exploitation where the perpetrators may be here—
