Mr. Speaker, today, the House of Commons started sitting at 11 a.m., as it does every Monday. Every Monday at 11 a.m., the Speaker of the House leaves his office and walks in a solemn parade to open the House so we can start the week's work. It is currently 3:30 p.m. The House has been open for four and a half hours now. That is not very long, but it was enough time for the Conservatives to paralyze the work of the House a little bit longer, for oral question period and for a ministerial statement. In this short amount of time, four and a half hours, 28 women were killed by a loved one, a partner or a family member. Somewhere in the world, 28 women have been killed since we started sitting at 11 o'clock this morning. It is like this all the time: an endless tally of murdered women.
That is civilization in 2024.
We are talking about flights to Mars, artificial intelligence and self-driving cars, and yet we cannot put an end to violence. Women are being bombed to death in Mariupol and Gaza. They are being killed on the streets of Bucha, raped, tortured and murdered on kibbutzim or taken hostage. These women are the spoils of war, the primary civilian victims of the atrocities committed during these international conflicts.
Is that what civilization looks like in 2024? Is that humanity?
Today, on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, we can only conclude that, sadly, we are still a long way from our goal of ending femicide and all forms of violence against women. Female circumcision still occurs here in Canada. Sophia Koukoui's report on female genital mutilation and cutting in Canada speaks for itself. Her report includes the account of a 37-year-old woman who said:
There are also people who want to practice [female genital mutilation and cutting] here in Canada. It's something we don't talk about, but that's the reality.... One woman told me “you know, my husband sent the daughters to Africa. They were circumcised.” We don't talk about it, but a lot of girls here aren't protected.
In Quebec, in 2023, La Presse ran a story about a young girl in day care who was the victim of circumcision, and there is every reason to believe that this was not an isolated incident. No one talks about it. No one talks about honour-based violence or forced marriage, and no one talks about human trafficking in this country or about forced prostitution. Silence is more comfortable. This issue is being swept under the rug.
We have a collective responsibility to stop gender-based violence. I repeat: It is a collective responsibility. This is not a battle that women should have to fight alone. It has to be everyone's responsibility. We are not fighting separate battles. Women need men. Men need women. It has to be a vast global effort.
If we can send people into space and compose new Beatles songs using AI, then we should be able to work together to put a stop to violence.
In order to accomplish that, we have to be able to talk to each other. Here at home, we are seeing a rise in masculinists, so-called alpha males. The number of men who think like Andrew Tate is growing, and our young men, even our young boys, are being radicalized. We cannot stop that if we do not communicate.
Rather than judge each other, we need to talk to each other, listen to each other, and engage in dialogue. We need to explain our points of view. In an egalitarian society like ours, there is nothing normal about reverting to male domination and female submission. We need to fix this, but we have to do so in good faith.
It can start here. Can members stop accusing everyone who wants tighter gun control of going after hunters? We all know that it is nonsense, but once again, partisanship takes precedence over the common good. We have to stop that. We need to talk to each other and genuinely look for ways to end all forms of violence against women, because while the parties here stubbornly argue and play partisan politics, the death toll keeps rising.
I cannot help but think about the fact that, during my brief speech, a woman just died somewhere in the world at the hands of a loved one.