Whitby. Mr. Speaker, I am sorry. I do want to make sure that he is held accountable for heckling during a speech about protecting victims of sexual violence.
The member for Whitby says the majority rules. Well, this is a majority that Canadians did not vote for and that, in the first instance, the Liberals are using to undo collaborative committee work on protecting victims of sexual violence. They want a majority, they say, to move at speeds unseen in generations. They are moving at speeds unseen in generations to dismantle collaborative committee work to protect victims of sexual violence. At the first opportunity they have, that is what they are using their majority to do.
I have to wonder what the member for Nunavut is thinking in all this. Individual members, whatever caucus they sit in, are still personally accountable before their voters, and before whatever other institutions they see themselves as accountable in front of, for the decisions they make in the House and the votes they cast here. When a member sits as part of the NDP and works collaboratively on amendments to strengthen legislation to protect victims of sexual violence, and then that member joins a caucus that is systematically undoing and ignoring the work that was done, it is hard for me to understand the dissonance.
Whether a person just changes all of their opinions at once, or whether some members of the government intend on standing up against the efforts of the minister and the front bench to dismantle this legislation, at the end of the day, every member controls how they vote when the time comes. They will have a chance to vote specifically on the decisions of the minister and the government to undo the work that was done.
This is the real, concrete outworking of the Liberals' seizure of an undemocratic majority. It now gives them, in practice, the ability to ignore what witnesses say, to ignore collaboration and to ignore the work that can be done across parties to analyze an issue from different angles and get to a result, and the Prime Minister can act as a kind of executive and direct all of the affairs that happen in this place. That is not how it should happen. That is not what Canadians voted for in the last election, but it seems that it is what they want, and their first test case for this is undermining protections for victims of sexual violence.
It is shameful, what is happening. It is undemocratic and wrong, and it will have serious negative implications for survivors who are seeking justice in the future.
I want to commend the members of the committee who worked hard on this. I want to commend our shadow minister for defence as well as members of other parties who worked collaboratively on this process but who, sadly, saw all of that work undone when the government decided to move these motions, rejecting these amendments.
In this context, with this undemocratic majority, we will continue to use all of the tools we have to hold the government accountable and fight for what is right. Government members and ministers need to hear demands from their constituents that the government reverse course and stand with victims of sexual violence. I think the member for Nunavut needs to hear from her constituents on this, asking her to stand with the work that she previously did on committee.
I think we need to see a response from the public that holds the government accountable for what it is doing, right away, with this undemocratic majority.
