Madam Chair, I appreciate the opportunity this evening, even if it is just a very few minutes, to express my heartfelt sympathies and concern for the families of those who have lost their lives in these past months, specifically as they relate to this conversation and this take-note debate tonight.
These are heinous crimes and deserve the full weight of the law applied to them. We truly do mourn every woman who was lost. Over 160 women have been lost in the last year alone to femicide in Canada. It is very disturbing to consider that this is happening in our country, of all places, yet we cannot help but ask ourselves what the underlying cause is of this type of behaviour.
We heard tonight of different circumstances where I think we are not really doing what is best in our society to develop our young boys into men, who then become husbands and fathers. We hear about the after-effects a lot of times of the lives of people facing circumstances when maybe they were not taught properly about the values they needed.
When I went to the YWCA in Saskatoon to talk with the people there about their programs, they talked about how a lot of the young boys who come into their facility are very rough around the edges. We ask ourselves what is causing this. We want to just set that aside when really one of the things, as we talked about that day, is having easy access to pornography at a very young age.
On the Hill, we had an opportunity to see a film done about a wholesome family. The children were home-schooled, sitting at the table doing their homework, and this little boy, at a young age, clicked on a button that said he had to be 18 years old to click on the button but did not stop him from clicking on it. Over time, this young boy began to really act out and treat his mother and sister with an incredible level of disrespect. This was happening very quickly, in the midst of doing homework at the kitchen table while his mom was preparing a meal.
These are things in our society that are impacting the quality of our young men as they are growing up. In fairness, it is not just young men. We have to look at the deeper-rooted issues around violence in games. We hear all the time that we cannot deal with that, but these are things impacting future husbands and fathers, and it all starts at that level within a family.
I also want to make the point that we want to be developing solid relationships among people. We spend an incredible amount of time on our careers, or on getting Ph.D.s, or on things such as maybe developing a very strong ability to ski, but how much time do we spend developing ourselves into the people we would want other people to enjoy being with, and choosing to be the kinds of people other people would choose to marry?
I said once when I was giving a talk that, as a young woman, I had my picture of what I would want in a man. Yes, it was strong masculinity, but not toxic masculinity. It was someone who appreciated and valued me as an individual. There are all of these types of things we want to see in those we are looking for, but we have to remember those people are also looking for that in the person they are looking to have long-term relationships with as well.
This level of violence in relationships, where a partner is killed or controlled, does not happen in the later times. It happens over the time of preparing an individual to have character in life. Churches, gurdwaras and all of our religious institutions play a significant role in building into young people what those relationships should look like and what kind of people they want to be, as well as having character and values, choosing to tell the truth and being caring and compassionate.
These are all character traits that people need to have in their lives, so where—