Hedy Fry

[Gender-Based Violence, March 26th, 2021]

Madam Chair, I want to echo some of the things the hon. member for Vancouver East spoke about. I know that women in the sex trade have been given help by our government, by helping them with all of the things they could do.

WISH has an overnight shelter now. It is not just a shelter, but a place where women in the sex trade can come. During COVID, women in the sex trade had no single means of support. That was when they talked to me, and we went to bat and worked very hard to support them in many ways.

It is really important that we pick this up and run with it, and that we recognize that if we are going to talk about women and about violence against women, we need to empower women. Women in the sex trade should not be looked down upon by most of us. There should not be this stigma and fear. Pickton was able to do what he did because they were hiding in all of these places where the police and no one—

[Gender-Based Violence, March 26th, 2021]

Madam Chair, absolutely. The Supreme Court ruled on it. With regard to the three areas that we have to decriminalize, we just have to do it.

I speak to sex trade workers very regularly, about 50 of them, on Zoom. They really need to get help to find safe places to work, to live and to be protected.

[Gender-Based Violence, March 26th, 2021]

Madam Chair, I fully agree with the member. When we talk about intersectionality, we want to talk about all of the different types of women who are more susceptible, and seniors are susceptible.

Financial violence against seniors by dependants, by their children or by someone they are sharing their home with, also disempowers them. It treats them with that kind of psychological violence that we talk about where they are frightened and unable to make decisions on their own or to have any money to go out and buy something for themselves. That is a huge piece, but we have to talk about that under the intersectionality rubric: the different types of violence that women face based on who they are and the group they belong to.

[Gender-Based Violence, March 25th, 2021]

Madam Chair, I think we could do that by providing shelters and places that are safe, such as safe houses, where women can go and be free from violence. Here I mean all women, not just women who suffer from domestic violence. I think that is the first thing we can do. However, as I said before, that is a band-aid.

We need to now look at how we can deal with it, and I think we need to teach our children, our boys, to value women. We need to teach it in schools. We need to work with provinces and create a pan-Canadian plan, because provinces are responsible for education. The value of women should be taught in schools.

There are so many things we can do, such as in our institutions, including training our judges, training our police and MPs, because sometimes without knowing it, what we tend to do in the House when a woman speaks with a high voice and says “Oh, excuse me”, is to titter and laugh at her. This is part of being—

[Gender-Based Violence, March 25th, 2021]

Madam Chair, no, I did not. I am sorry. I would like to say that I am sharing my time with the hon. member for Vancouver East. She is a champion for the cause of gender equality as well, so I am pleased to share my time with her.

However, I wanted to say that it is the psychology that starts it all. For instance, when we sit around a boardroom table with male colleagues and say something, they pretend we did not speak or put it down or make it sound silly. When women are threatened with rape, the death of their children and those types of things, they do not have to come to pass, but it is part of that act of putting women back into their places, of demeaning and threatening them. We see it everywhere. We see it specifically in the language in pornography and social media, the language that shames women, makes them feel like less than they are and devalues everything they do. It happens in the workplace and it happens at home. When carelessly we say something to our daughter or we say something to a female partner and it is putting down something that she just said, that again gives a strong message. We see it in film. We hear it in jokes.

What is more important is that we see it in parliaments around the world. I want to point to Ocasio-Cortez in the United States, who was berated, shamed and had vile language used against her by members in her own Congress.

This is the kind of thing we need to talk about. We need to talk about all those root causes.

We need to talk about intersectionality. Women are not one large group of people. Women of a visible minority, women who are LGBTQ+ or indigenous or suffer with mental illness or disabilities are put down and demeaned and experience violence, whether it is physical or verbal or comes in other ways.

I want to quickly touch on what we need to do about it.

We have shelters, and right now my government is responding to the emergency of it all by putting millions of dollars into shelters and helping women get food, find stability and be safe. That is all good, but that is a band-aid, as far as I am concerned. We need to deal with the root causes. We need to change the institutions—the police, the judiciary, parliaments and all of the institutions that continue to foster systemic violence against women in the way they behave and the way they treat them, and the way that moves forward.

I want to talk about one institution—

[Gender-Based Violence, March 25th, 2021]

Madam Chair, I am so glad we are having this debate tonight. I think it has long been overdue.

I heard a lot of people speak. All of them were passionate and really cared about what they were saying, but I want to make a statement: COVID did not cause violence against women. It exacerbated it and exposed it, but violence against women is pervasive. It has been rooted in history, tradition and culture for millennia.

In history and culture, women were possessions. They were chattels. It is only a little over 100 years ago that women in this country stopped being chattel and had the right to vote. They began that long march to being treated equally.

The idea of toxic masculinity, while it sounds horrible, is very real. It is real because, as women are becoming more equal and are moving forward toward equality, we find that some men who are still rooted in that history, tradition and culture do not like it, especially as women like MPs or judges begin to make decisions in influential places. These are the women who are being focused on. We need to think about that and recognize it.

Also, violence against women is intergenerational. We know that 43% of boys who grow up in an abusive home become abusers themselves and that 35% of girls who grow up in an abusive home marry, live with or find a partner who is also abusive. I think we need to talk about the fact that this is a reaction. What we have seen today is an absolute reaction by toxic masculinity against women moving forward.

When we look at violence against the women we love, we get upset and react if they are raped or murdered, but that is not the only form of violence against women. Women experience psychological violence every day. They are being threatened. Social media have increased the ability for people to speak out against women. Social media have been threatening to women. They can be threatened anonymously on social media, and those threats are part of the violence. They do not even have to happen. Just the fact that they are being threatened with language that demeans women to make them feel less valuable and feel badly about themselves—

[Violence against Women, March 24th, 2021]

Mr. Speaker, I want to bring to the attention of this House that COVID-19 is not a gender-neutral crisis. It has exposed an alarming rise in domestic and societal violence against women, especially ethnic, racial, and LGBTQ2+ minorities, nowhere more so than on social media platforms and nowhere more so than against women politicians and journalists.

Globally, 41% of women MPs, and 52% in Europe, have been the target of abusive, sexual or violent contact online, which often threatens death, rape or violence against their families. Online threats have real consequences, such as the assassination of U.K. MP Jo Cox in 2016. In 2019, this event caused 18 women in the U.K. alone to quit as MPs or not run again for Parliament.

It is urgent that parliaments join together with information and communications-based technologies to eradicate online violence and ensure gender safety on the Internet before it undermines democracy and good governance. The time to act is now.

[Public Safety, February 17th, 2021]

Mr. Speaker, as a family physician, I know that gun violence is a public health issue that affects cities and small towns across Canada. Last month alone, there were three fatal gang shootings over three nights in Vancouver. We must end the gun violence and criminal activity. In 2019, we passed a bill expanding background checks for prospective gun buyers. Last year, we banned arms that were made for soldiers in war. Will the Prime Minister tell the House what next steps the government is taking to end this violence and death?

[Regional Economic Development, February 4th, 2021]

Mr. Speaker, B.C. is the western maritime province with strong links to the Asia-Pacific. We also have a unique, diverse and vibrant economy. Therefore, I welcome our government’s proposal to create the specific B.C. regional development agency.

Could the Minister of Economic Development and Official Languages tell the House more about our plan to implement this new B.C. regional development agency?

[Peter Jepson-Young, December 1st, 2020]

Mr. Speaker, on World AIDS Day, I honour a Canadian hero, who, 30 years ago, turned tragedy into hope.

During the AIDS pandemic, Dr. Peter Jepson-Young, a young Vancouver physician, contracted AIDS. Instead of submitting to fear, he chose to shed a light on the deadly disease through a CBC series, the Dr. Peter Diaries.

From 1990 until his death in 1992, for 111 episodes, Canadians glued to our TVs shared Dr. Peter's pain, watched the disease devastate his body and listened as he explained every stage in clear detail with candour and humour.

Nominated for an Academy Award, the Dr. Peter Diaries fought stereotypes and broke down the social taboos around HIV/AIDS, shaping how Canadians perceived and understood the disease and those who suffered it.

Dr. Peter's legacy lives on in the work of the Dr. Peter Centre in Vancouver, one of the world's most progressive care facilities for persons with HIV-AIDS.