Mr. Speaker, I would like to commend opposition for allowing us to bring this issue forward quickly. It is one the Liberals want action on, and we support the call for a national inquiry.
When I was contemplating remarks today, I went for a walk. I have the enormous privilege of having an office that is across the street from the Supreme Court. As I walked around the grounds of the Supreme Court, I noticed the two statues that adorn the entranceway, Truth and Justice, two statutes of women.
It struck me as profoundly important in terms of what that symbolizes and who we entrust with ensuring that truth and justice are in fact symbols not just of our country but of our justice system.
Having listened to the member for Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou and the story that was presented to the House, the story of the women in his life, tell us why truth and justice are so critically important and why, when it eludes us, the need for action is paramount.
What puzzles me in the response from the government side is why we cannot study an issue and act at the same time. Why does it have to be one or the other? Why does it have to be study first and act after? Why can the government not study and act simultaneously, especially with the body of work on this issue?
It scares me, quite frankly. I would not like to see those two women also go missing in this debate, those notions of truth and justice.
We know, and the facts are so abundantly and horrifically clear, that while comprising only 4% of our population, one in four homicide victims are women from aboriginal, first nations, indigenous communities.
When we turn our attention to what happens when a single child goes missing in the country, with the Amber Alerts, the news programming, the fear and panic that is unleashed and the commitment that is made to finding a single child and contrast that with the near silence on the uncalculated absence of close to 1,200 women, it breaks my heart. Action of course is needed.
We know we do not fully understand the dynamics which have given cause to this issue rising to the number it has risen to. We know that because even as we read all the reports, when the RCMP reports, suddenly the numbers double. If that does not tell us the action being taken is simply not working, nothing else will.
As I listened to the member for Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, I also heard about missing services. If members go through the reports, it is glaring as the missing members of people's families in our country. The missing services are remarkable.
As part of the research on this, I read the reports. There are 41 shelters in 600-plus reserve and aboriginal communities in our country. That is just 41 shelters for more than 600 different communities spread across the entire geography. How does that work? If a woman seeking safety cannot find a safe place, where does she find that safety?
These services are missing in hundreds of communities, yet when we listen to the action plan that is presented, what we see is there not a new dime, let alone a new dollar put into the program.
I represent a downtown riding in Toronto, Trinity—Spadina. There are more ridings in the House of Commons named with words from indigenous and first nations communities than there are shelters in first nations communities. There are 40 shelters, but close to 60 ridings, like mine of Trinity—Spadina from the Ojibwa word, ishpadinaa. It just boggles the mind that the government cannot see that there is a shortage of services.
Yes, we can go back and read the studies to find that out, but what we do not see from the government is action on this. Yes, study this problem, and that is what this motion asks and compels us to do, and act. It is the lack of action that makes this issue so urgent.
I also have to say that I represent an urban area on Spadina, where the native centre is, where we have a library for indigenous and first nations languages and a seniors residence. There is a shelter in my riding that gets virtually no support from the government, or, in fact, from any government. This shelter has never had, year-in, year-out, support to deal with indigenous women seeking shelter, whether they are from a reserve or whether they are from the streets. It does not matter where it is. The challenge we see here is that the program is not being extended into the areas where these women live.
The other issue with the missing services is that when the announcement is made, it is a cobbling together of existing services, and the Conservatives pretend it is new money. They tell us that they have read the reports and have done the studying, but their action does not produce results. The status quo is putting people in harm's way. How can we tolerate that condition?
Let me tell the House about the images that are striking and that are affecting us in ways that are even more profoundly disturbing than the number 1,200. They are the photographs now appearing on social media of young women asking, “Am I next?” The fear that creates in all of our hearts and the sadness it creates in the communities where those women come from is more profound than we can possibly describe.
We heard a member talk about personal circumstances. It compels us to act, and it compels us all to support the motion here today.
I remember as a journalist doing a story about a young man who did not lose his last name through residential school but lost his family. For him, the missing woman in his life was not murdered or disappeared; he had disappeared. I remember the story he told about how he found his mother. He was travelling west. He stopped at a native friendship centre in Winnipeg and passed his name on a slip, to ask for room and board for the night, across to a women he had never seen before, or thought he had never seen before. When the woman saw the name, she broke into tears. She had found her son.
That is also what defines this issue. It is not just the women who have disappeared and have been murdered. That is a horror on its own. It is the women who have been taken out of people's lives. I have yet to find a report anywhere that talks about that hole, that missing woman, and a program that reconnects those people to those individuals. We will not get it with the DNA bank, looking for victims, because the victims are walking among us.
When we talk about and think about how we would address this issue, we get repeatedly told, and the quote that comes up that scares us most, I think, is the one the Prime Minister delivered, that these are just single acts of crime and that this is not a sociological problem.
It is entirely a sociological problem. It is entirely present in every corner of our society. When we do not address it sociologically, when we do not understand that when people leave the reserve and head into town for safety, or head into town for a job, and they are disconnected from their community and disconnected from their way of life, and when they move and are not charted as to where they are moving, they start to disappear, even if they have not met with a violent fate.
Our ability to reconnect these families, to reconnect these women to their lives and the lives of their families to these women, is what we are trying to address. It is the connection that will create safety, not studying it, and acting now.
However, we do not know how to act if we do not talk to the people who have been impacted. If we do not sit down and study and think and consult simultaneously with our action, we will be doing what generations before us have done in this country, which is assume that we are acting in the best interests of people. However, we will not be delivering the results we want, the results other people need, the results our friends, our neighbours, our aboriginal co-Canadians, our aboriginal partners are looking to us to deliver a solution on.
I started this conversation by talking about the women who are on statues outside the Supreme Court. There is another word we need to deliver, and we can deliver it by supporting the motion, and that word is “hope”. Ironically, hope, in the same pantheon of gods in Roman symbolism, is also a woman. The goddess of hope is the missing statue in this conversation.
We can chart the problem. We can study the problem, and we can promise to act on the problem. However, at the end of the day, if all we have talked about are truth and justice, and we have not delivered hope to the families, and more importantly, to the mothers, the sisters, the daughters, the nieces, and the granddaughters, through the actions we have taken in Parliament, we will not have solved this problem.
I do not want be part of a country that allows truth, justice, and hope to go missing any more than I want to be part of a country that tolerates and turns a blind eye to the 1,200 missing indigenous aboriginal and first nations women. That is why I will be supporting this motion. That is why my party supports this motion. That is why I implore the government side to please listen to the voices being raised around the country now asking, “Am I next?”
Give them the hope that truth and justice will prevail.
