Mr. Speaker, I thank all my colleagues in the House of Commons, because it is a great honour to rise today.
The members who have spoken today are women. I want to thank our minister, as well as the member for Hastings—Lennox and Addington, the member for Shefford and the member for Winnipeg Centre.
It is an honour to work in this place with members who are also feminists and who always stand up for women's rights, but also boys' and men's rights.
We as a society are recognizing that violence, and hatred that breeds violence, has no place in our society, yet it is taking root in ways we could not have imagined.
Today is the day for the elimination of violence, but it is the first of the 16 days of activism against gender-based violence, which run from November 25 to December 10.
It may be coincidental, but the anniversary of the terrible tragedy at École Polytechnique also falls within those days.
December 6 falls in the midst of 16 days of activism, which is a global movement to act together against violence against women. We know, as we stand every year to condemn violence against women, that not a single party or partisan in this place would not agree that we must end violence against women. I know everyone in this place stands together on that. We have very strong recommendations from the Mass Casualty Commission on the biggest single mass murder in this country, which took place in Portapique, Nova Scotia, and its environs. It called out intimate partner violence as one of the roots of the violence that spread to kill many others who had nothing to do in an intimate way with the killer, except that he ended their lives. Intimate partner violence is on the rise and we see it.
We also see the recommendations and calls for justice for missing and murdered indigenous women and girls and the two-spirit plus community. The recommendations of that inquiry are not yet implemented. We see it every single day. In the time since August 15, 2021, we have seen the Government of Afghanistan, the Taliban, shift to declaring war on its own women. They run in fear, not allowed to go to school, not allowed to show themselves, not allowed to serve as members of Parliament.
I want to thank the hon. member for Winnipeg Centre for particularly mentioning the violence against trans women, the increased hate, and the online social media algorithms that spike rage-farming against women, trans women and indigenous women. We end up feeling less safe now than we were 15 to 20 years ago. We now feel more victimized, more targeted than ever before. It is not political; it is a cultural and global phenomenon. We saw it in the U.S. election. We must not see it take root in Canada.
I thank my colleagues, particularly colleagues in the Conservative Party, for giving me unanimous consent. I was not sure I would have it until the moment I stood. I thank them from the bottom of my heart, because we need to stand unanimously in this place without partisanship to say we stand together and act together. We need to see better training in our police forces. We need to see more action to follow through on all the calls for justice for indigenous women and girls. That means immediate help after a violent assault, immediate support for victims of sexual violence and immediate support for the bill before us now to end the coercive control of women and girls in their own homes. We are united.
Today we all stand together, as women, as members of Parliament, as Canadian men and women, to protect the rights of women, the rights of our daughters and granddaughters.
I thank all my colleagues.