Madam Chair, it is an honour to have a woman presiding this evening.
I rise with a lump in my throat to speak to this deeply tragic and heartbreaking issue: rising rates of femicide.
I will read part of the motion, which, unfortunately, reflects just how sad this situation is: That the House: (a) mourn the lives of the seven women who lost their lives to heinous acts of femicide in Quebec in the past few months; (b) mourn the lives of all women and gender-diverse people across Canada and Quebec who have lost their lives to intimate partner violence and gender-based violence, including over 160 women lost to femicide in the last year alone; (c) continue to support the survivors of gender-based violence; (d) acknowledge the incredibly alarming increase in gender-based violence across the country; (e) condemn gender-based violence in all its forms; (f) work with governments to accelerate investments in shelters and transition housing, and support the advancement of a National Action Plan on Gender-Based Violence; (g) call on all Canadians and Quebeckers to do more to combat and raise awareness of all forms of gender-based violence.
As I mentioned in my speech on March 8, the pandemic has given women and girls quite a few slaps to the face. I am not just talking figuratively, with the increased mental burden, invisible work and frontline work in our health care system. I am especially referring to the literal sense of the word, because far too many women have been killed as a result of the marked increase in domestic violence cases. During the pandemic, 10% of women lived in fear of domestic violence. That number is three times higher among indigenous women.
This evening, I want to let the facts speak for themselves. Sadly, one in three women is a victim of domestic violence. Fully 90% of women who are victims of domestic violence will experience lasting effects ranging from psychological trauma to head trauma caused by hits to the head and concussions.
In a recent interview, Jean-François Landry, a former member of the impulse control support group, described a violent man as follows:
He could be the nicest partner, but then out of the blue, he would fly into a violent rage, shouting and throwing things. That kind of behaviour was normal; that's how he was raised. He never hit anyone, but he vented his anger on the walls, for example. He was also pretty explosive with the kids. He never got mad at work, so he took all his anger out on his family at home. Ironically, the people who knew him just as an acquaintance or a friend would never have guessed he was violent at home.
The point I am trying to make with this example is that it is important to include men in this conversation, in this debate.
Geneviève Guilbault, the Deputy Premier of Quebec and minister of public security stated the following in an interview:
What has been happening this week is tragic. This is extremely upsetting, shocking and entirely unacceptable. We have a responsibility as a government and as a society to stop violence against women. This must be done through prevention and enforcement, but first and foremost through accountability. We must encourage men to seek help when they are violent or at risk of being violent, and obviously, of course, remind women that they can and must ask for help.
It is unacceptable that weeks will go by before men will get any help to prevent domestic violence. The government also needs to make sure that it provides funding to prevention organizations, because the budget, at first administrative, will probably be adapted to include funding to address and prevent violence against women. We must condemn the problem, yes, but that will not solve everything. Society needs to repeat the message and continue to hammer the point home in order to change mindsets.
In addition to those seven femicides over six weeks in Quebec, last year alone, over 300 women were the victims of attempted murder, a chilling statistic. We need to continue to put pressure on the government, but we also must not forget that society as a whole needs to work together to resolve the problem of domestic violence. We need to acknowledge what is happening.
I want to recognize the exercise that was recently carried out in Quebec, where a committee of experts studied violence against women. Beyond the roadmap, the federal government also needs to collaborate by quickly transferring substantial funding to the organizations. As a society, we also need to find the will and continue to put pressure on the government because, in addition to the budget that was tabled today, the Government of Quebec has the will to invest to combat violence against women.
I hope that what some people are describing as a social crisis will help us to understand that the domestic violence issue goes beyond battered women; it is about society's behaviours as a whole. We therefore need to be proactive and understand that psychological violence and coercive control can have consequences and can be precursors of violence. In that regard, I want to point out the work of Myrabelle Poulin, who shares powerful testimonials on this issue on her blog, “Les mots de Myra”, or Myra's words. We also need to help women break the cycle of poverty because, all too often, that is what keeps them vulnerable.
Anouk St-Onge, who is in charge of domestic violence cases at the Montreal police, the SPVM, recently noted that there has been a 12% increase in reported cases of domestic violence in Montreal. She lamented that more than 1,500 cases of domestic violence were reported in 2020 alone, an increase over 2019.
We know that the pandemic has cut victims off from their social support system and isolated them, aggravating the situations of domestic violence. Being trapped 24 hours a day with your attacker is an aggravating factor. At certain times during the pandemic, the drop in the number of complaints was not good news.
A much broader discussion is needed on the fact that domestic violence is more than the battering of women. As I was saying, it also encompasses verbal and psychological abuse, such as snooping through a partner's text messages. Signs of domestic violence are on the rise, but we have seen during the pandemic that there is a shortage of shelters in Quebec.
Of course, the opposition parties at the Quebec National Assembly are calling for new funding to meet the growing needs in addressing domestic violence. For Quebec to effectively combat domestic violence by reinvesting in underfunded domestic violence prevention organizations, such as shelters, there needs to be an increase in transfers, the money must not be held back and the agreements must be reached more quickly.
As recently indicated when considering the estimates at the Standing Committee on the Status of Women, Quebec received its allocated amounts more than five months after the other provinces received theirs. This evening it may also be pertinent to ask if federal health initiatives are aligned with Quebec's priorities, yes or no.
If the past is any indication of the future, there is cause for concern. In 2014, a panel of experts on federal initiatives in the health and social services sectors from 2002 to 2013 presented a very interesting report to the Government of Quebec. I will only mention a few of the report's findings.
The federal government's initiatives in health and social services stem mainly from what is known as the “spending power” [and, in certain cases, I would even call it, unfortunately, the power to withhold spending]. These initiatives may address in part the focus, objectives and priorities of Quebec...however, most of the time, they propose and even impose targets and approaches that are different than the ones already adopted by Quebec authorities.
In general, the federal government is pursuing its own objectives, no doubt influenced by an analysis of the needs of all Canadians and the state of the provincial [including Quebec's] and territorial systems. In some cases, there can be a rather large gap between federal policies, priorities and approaches and Quebec's. A number of the people consulted indicated that, if they could manage the money spent by the federal government themselves, they would not use it in the same way. They would have different priorities and strategies.
Quebec knows its own agencies. “The federal government's funding for health care and social services is woefully inequitable for Quebec”, especially “since the federal funding does not take into account any money a province or territory may have already spent on the same item.”
This is important for programs that are tailored to the different regions in Quebec and Canada. In my speech at the Standing Committee on Status of Women last summer, I spoke about the CALACS I had heard from back home. In Quebec, in the middle of a pandemic, just three out of seven of these sexual assault centres had qualified for a program that directly helped survivors. That is unacceptable.
Organizations need predictability, which is lacking in federal programs. There is no long-term assistance.
One last thing: We need to be careful. If this government is truly a feminist government, it must no longer tolerate violence against indigenous women and it must implement the findings in the report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
The government also needs to take action, after failing to respond to allegations of sexual misconduct in the Canadian Armed Forces for over three years. It must no longer perpetuate this culture of silence. It needs to work to improve the gun control bill. The government should not wait until after the crisis to take action. It needs to do something now.
However, we need to be careful not to politicize this issue because that is not what is needed. To protect the women and girls of Quebec and the provinces and territories, we need to go beyond grim statistics and ensure that those numbers do not increase, because every death is one too many. Let us take action.
