Mr. Speaker, today we remember Geneviève Bergeron, Hélène Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviernick, Maryse Laganière, Maryse Leclair, Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, Michèle Richard, Annie St-Arneault, Annie Turcotte and Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz.
I thank the Chair and all my colleagues for their remarks. I thank the minister for her apt and sombre words. Thirty-five years later, this horrific event remains incomprehensible. I remember the murder of 14 women on December 6, 1989, as if it were yesterday.
We think of them on this day. We also say we know that ending violence is a job for us all. We must speak out against femicide. We must stand with those women still in Afghanistan and help them to survive. We must stand with all indigenous women and girls in Canada. We must say that it is time to end violence against women, violence against each other and the violence we carry in our hearts.
When we remember the horrific events of 35 years ago, we say on this day that these women were killed solely because they were women, but the killer in his note made it clear that these 14 women were killed because he saw them as feminists. They were killed because the misogynist killer saw them as feminists who had wrecked his life. We see this now, as other colleagues have mentioned, growing in things as strange as the incel movement that launched killings on the streets of Toronto. We see it in movements, as my friend from Port Moody—Coquitlam just mentioned, in online social media augmentation of hatred against women.
However, the most important thing is to remember that dark day. We will not forget the women who were killed 35 years ago today. We stand in solidarity with them and with men who identify as feminists. We must work together, always, to end violence.
We must end violence against women. We must move on legislation that deals with intimate partner violence. There are things we can do, such as limiting access to the type of weapon that killed 14 women 35 years ago today. We must never forget them as individuals, and we must work to end violence against women everywhere, all at once and for always.
We are all working together towards the same goal: to end violence.