Nicole Demers

[April 30th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague. The answer to his question is self-evident.

[April 30th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I would have a very hard time with that. As you know, the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms is, once again, far superior to Canada's. What can I say? We do things right in Quebec.

The other provinces have serious problems. I think my colleague mentioned one of them. That is why the court challenges program must be reinstated. Thousands of people, thousands of women and thousands of organizations are waiting for us to do this because in some situations, this is a matter of life and death, a matter of survival.

I know of organizations that have had to close their doors because they could no longer keep them open. That is terrible. By silencing society's neediest, we are silencing a huge number of people who have much to gain by exploring their potential in the public arena and by telling us what we, as legislators, should do.

[April 30th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am especially pleased to participate in this debate today. As a matter of fact, we moved a motion in the Standing Committee on Status of Women that was reported here last week by the chair, and which also called for the court challenges program to be restored. We had several reasons for doing so.

This afternoon, I would like to dedicate my speech to a new Conservative candidate from the Drummondville area, Mr. Komlosy, to show him the importance of being familiar with the cuts his party has made, and also the importance of the consultations we do to understand the needs of the public. I dedicate this speech to him.

We know that the court challenges program, as our Conservative colleague said, dates back to 1978. It has made a remarkable contribution to the development of constitutional law and to the rights of Canadians and Quebeckers over the last 28 years, but more work remains to be done. This program is fully accountable to the Government of Canada. It provides quarterly reports on its activities to the government and publishes an annual report with statistics on the number and types of cases that it has funded. The annual reports are public documents and are available on the court challenges program’s website. This is not some small, ad hoc program. The program was very well laid out and respected.

The court challenges program was subject to full and independent evaluations of its activities every five years. Since 1994, the program has been evaluated three times. On each occasion the evaluators found that the court challenges program was meeting the objectives set by the government in a cost-effective manner, and made unqualified recommendations that the court challenges program should continue to carry out its mandate.

This program was very important to the Fédération des femmes du Québec because it was crucial to financing precedent-setting legal action brought by groups and individuals to dispute federal policies and legislation that violated their constitutional right to equality. With the support of the court challenges program, women's organizations and other groups fighting for equality were able to access the legal system and introduce progressive interpretations of the legislation. Thanks to this program, women, gays and lesbians, people with physical disabilities and other disadvantaged groups now enjoy greater equality.

This is not the first time a Conservative government has abolished the court challenges program. The first time was in 1992. The public protested so vociferously that the government was forced to back down. During the 1993 elections, all of the federal parties said that if they were elected, they would reinstate the court challenges program for good, which is what the Liberal Party did in 1994.

When they take action without knowing the root causes of a problem, ignorance is a plausible excuse, but when they take action knowing full well the consequences of cutting a program like this one, they have to be acting in very bad faith if they would have us believe that their cuts have no impact on people's rights, on the rights of women and the disabled. They have to be acting in very bad faith.

The court challenges program subsidized the women's legal education and action fund in a case that challenged the use of sexist myths in rape trials. LEAF took the Ewanchuk case—in which the accused alleged that the way a woman dressed for a job interview could indicate her willingness to have sex with a potential employer—to the Supreme Court of Canada. Fortunately, the Supreme Court agreed with LEAF's arguments and rejected the defendant's sexist arguments.

The United Nations has repeatedly recognized the vital role that the court challenges program played in the respect and promotion of human rights in Canada. In January 2003, the CEDAW committee acknowledged the importance of the CCP in the struggle to end all forms of discrimination against women. Furthermore, in May 2006, the U.N. Committee for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights recommended that the court challenges program be expanded, not eliminated, to fund test case litigation against provincial laws and policies that violate constitutional equality rights.

I have here an article written by Mr. Batiste Foisy on November 2, 2006:

Cancelled in September by the Conservative government in its efforts to “cut the fat” and “eliminate wasteful programs”, the court challenges program (CCP) was, for many minority groups, the ultimate tool to ensure the respect of their constitutional rights. It was a Heritage Canada agency that provided funding to individuals and organizations challenging the constitutionality of legislation before the courts or taking action against a government for failing to meet its constitutional obligations. Most cases supported by the CCP dealt with the rights of linguistic minorities, equality of women, or the rights of minorities such as homosexuals, aboriginals or immigrants. The court challenges programs cost the Canadian government 18 cents per person per year.

It cost only 18 cents a year for each Canadian and Quebecker. Eighteen cents. They eliminated a program that worked, that was internationally recognized as a program that helped people maintain and assert their rights, for only 18 cents per person per year.

Naturally some organizations were pleased. You will not be surprised to hear that Real Women of Canada was one of the organizations that said that the program had financed only left-wing organizations which, with taxpayers' money, led to social restructuring through the courts and that eliminating the program promotes the advancement of democracy in Canada. We should remember that Real Women of Canada is a group of women opposed to same-sex marriage, abortion and divorce.

Mr. Roger Lepage has defended and won a number of cases—particularly with regard to access to French-language education in western Canada—with the help of the court challenges program. My father and his family moved to western Canada in 1920, when he was two years old. On Sundays, his mother was forced to hide and to take the children to the barn to teach them their first language so they would not forget it. That was in Dollard, Saskatchewan. She ran the risk of being arrested if discovered.

Progress has been made since then. We have obtained the right, even in the western provinces, to speak French and to be educated in French. Why? How? Thanks to the court challenges program which has served many causes. Members may recall the story of Montfort Hospital, which was almost forced to close its doors even though it was the only French-language hospital in the region. The people wanted to keep and protect it. They were very afraid of losing their hospital because then they would not have had access to services in their mother tongue. This program was very effective and served many good and noble causes.

Mr. Roger Lepage said that a minority is not in a position to exercise democratic power because it does not have demographic weight. We must remember this: a minority does not have demographic weight. Since they cannot count on parliamentarians, who speak on behalf of the majority, minorities must turn to the judiciary when their rights are violated. It is clear that the rights of a minority are not very popular with the majority. By cutting the funding available to minorities, the Conservative Party is attempting to return to a primitive democracy where the strict majority dominates.

He has experienced this primitive democracy. Like so many other Franco-Saskatchewaners of his generation, he knew a time when he had to hide his books on the way to school because French education was prohibited.

The Fédération des associations de juristes d'expression française intends to take legal action against the government to overturn this decision. In a letter addressed to the Prime Minister on October 4, 2006, the coalition called on the government to overturn its decision. Lawyers Nathalie DesRosiers and Wayne McKay wrote the following on behalf of the coalition:

Canadian law is not perfect. Those who criticize the imperfections in order to live in equality with others deserve to be heard. By cancelling the court challenges program, your government has indicated that those people will not be heard and do not deserve to be.

The Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action, known as FAFIA, believes that eliminating the program will slow down the promotion of Canadians and Quebeckers and be a setback for real equality. The co-chair of FAFIA, Shelagh Day said:

This program has provided Canadian women with their only access to the use of their constitutional equality rights.

That word, equality, has been dropped from the Conservative Party's vocabulary. Ms. Day continues:

Equal rights have no meaning in Canada if women, and other Canadians who face discrimination, cannot use them.

It is all well and good for the government to say that this was a good decision, that it was trimming fat, but it was actually trimming right to the bone. When the government wants to trim fat, it will cut things like military aircraft that cost billions of dollars but do not provide our soldiers with the necessary support. When the government wants to trim fat, it will cut things that will make a huge difference in people's lives.

Bonnie Morton of the Charter Committee on Poverty Issues said, “The cancellation of the court challenges program is an attack on the charter itself and the human rights of everyone in Canada”. I would add, “and everyone in Quebec”. The organizations affected are not little groups out in the backwoods somewhere. They are organizations across Canada and Quebec, serious organizations with a solid track record, credible organizations.

Yvonne Peters of the Council of Canadians with Disabilities also said:

When a country like Canada enacts constitutional rights, it takes for granted that residents, when they believe the government is violating their rights, can and will challenge any offending law or policy. If residents cannot ensure respect of their rights because of financial barriers, Canada’s constitutional democracy is hollow. We turn the Charter into a paper guarantee, with no real meaning.

Without the Court Challenges Program, Canada’s constitutional rights are real only for the wealthy. This offends basic fairness. And it does not comply with the rule of law, which is a fundamental principle of our Constitution.

Avvy Go of the Metro Toronto Chinese and South Asian Legal Clinic said:

Stephen Harper recognized this during the last election campaign, and he said then that if elected a Conservative government would “articulate Canada’s core values on the world stage”, including “the rule of law”, “human rights” and “compassion for the less fortunate”. The cancellation of the court challenges program belies this promise.

The Bloc Québécois has always supported causes that affect minorities, women, children and seniors. This cause affects them directly. When we can no longer defend our rights, when we no longer have access to a process that enables us to assert our rights, we become even poorer. There is enough poverty here, there is enough in Canada and there is enough in Quebec.

Poverty exists and we must fight it with any available means. The impoverishment of human rights is an even more important issue. It makes me even angrier because it leaves individuals without any resources and without any support; then they give up. Does this government want its citizens to be so subjugated that they no longer have the desire to live, to fight, to stand up for themselves? That seems to be the case. I am sorry to have to say it but that does seem to be the case. It could be said that this government wants to ensure that individuals will no longer have the ability to defend themselves.

The Bloc Québécois will not accept this. We will go on. That is why Mr. Komlosy can rest assured that, in Drummondville, we will continue to consult the public, to meet with the people, to meet with women, groups and individuals interested in the problems caused by the Conservative government cuts. I can rhyme off all these cuts, but I will focus on the slashing of the court challenges program.

In conclusion, I will refer to the Conservatives' argument that they thought it was useless to have a program that challenges the merits of federal legislation when the government makes good laws. But everyone can make mistakes. We may well be legislators, we may well want to make correct, fair and equitable legislation, but sometimes we make mistakes. A law is one of our tools, and we must re-examine it from time to time to ensure that it still reflects reality and to ensure that we still have reason to want to use it. There are times when a law is no longer valid. It has lost its relevance because it no longer meets the needs of the people, the public. There are times when it is unjust to certain parts of the population or certain segments of the population.

By abolishing the court challenges program, the Conservative government also wanted to silence the opposition voices. The Bloc Québécois knows something about civil opposition.

At the same time, the eligibility criteria for the women's program were changed so as to exclude rights and lobby groups. Mr. Komlosy, if you are listening, this is about women's rights. Women's rights groups and women's lobby groups no longer have access to the women's program. I want this to be clear. It is on the record and it must be the truth.

Once again, by cutting this program, by making cuts to other programs, the government is trying to silence the voices of women, the disabled and minorities. This is what the Bloc Québécois will continue to condemn.

[Status of Women, April 27th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, until 1992, thousands of women used to come to Canada from the Philippines to work as nurses. In 1993, the government changed the criteria, forcing such women to come and work as live-in caregivers to seniors, children and people with disabilities. They have become low-cost housekeepers, forced to live in their employer's home, regardless of the abuse they endure.

If women are so important to the Minister for the Status of Women, how can she allow her government to condone this injustice?

[Community Involvement Award, April 27th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, Laval's Chamber of Commerce and Industry held its 26th Dunamis gala on March 22. During the awards ceremony, Jean-Guy Girard, the founding president of Fondation La Belle-Aide, received the community involvement award.

This organization, which he has been leading for 14 years, improves quality of life for people in assisted living environments. Mr. Girard has done outstanding work through fundraising campaigns to offer special activities, such as concerts, lectures, summer camps and cultural outings, and purchase special equipment for people who are ill.

Initially, the foundation worked mostly with the Chomedey residence. Since then, it has worked with the Idola St-Jean and Ste-Dorothée CHSLDs. It looks as though all Laval area CHSLDs will be able to take advantage of the foundation's programs within a few years.

Congratulations to Mr. Girard, who is a philanthropic role model for the entire community. Thanks to his involvement, many seniors now enjoy a better quality of life.

[The Armenian People, April 24th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, today, we commemorate the 92nd anniversary of the Armenian genocide.

[Member spoke in Armenian as follows:]

High a'zke hin jogho-vourt men est.

Tze'r tratsi shad me ayl joghovourt-ne'r anhe' -da-tse'r e'n, payts Touk verab-radz ek, bahelo'v Tzer lezoon, tzer kire're, tzer'r avan-tou-tiun-ne're.

[Translation]

As a Bloc Québécois member, I made it a duty to learn your history and its tragedies. Over the years, I have developed a friendship with several members of your community, and this has enabled me to get to know your heroes, your poets and your artists. This is why today I have an even greater admiration for your people.

[Member spoke in Armenian as follows:]

Gue'tse high jogho-vourte.

[Committees of the House, April 20th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague made his point very clearly and I am pleased that he took the time to do so because it is also very important to make a distinction between different types of crime.

My colleague told us that when he was younger, his family was poor and lived in a ghetto. I believe him. In those times, I do not know if poor families had television, and if during the shows there were so many advertisements to show them what all the other children had.

This does not mean that in wealthy communities there is less crime. It only means that there is perhaps a little more idleness, disinterest and perhaps a little less involvement. I think that as adults, we have a responsibility to look out for all children, regardless of whether they are from rich, poor or multicultural communities. We have the responsibility to ensure that there is prevention. This is very true.

My grandparents used to always say, “The devil finds work for idle hands”. We were taught how to knit so that our hands were always busy. We were taught how to crochet and all sorts of other things that I loathed. I am left-handed and I really disliked all of that. The results were always terrible but we were taught to always keep busy.

I think that today we have a society where everything goes very fast, where everything is very fast. My colleague spoke earlier about television violence. There is violence on television and also in video games where you can die 20 times and then come back to life in the next second. That makes our young people think that they are immortal. When I was 14, 15 or 16 years old, I believed that I was immortal and invincible. Today, at the age of 57, I know for certain that I will die one day and that I am not invincible. It took me many years to figure that out. Until we are confronted by the realities of life that make us aware of such things, we continue to believe that we are invincible and immortal.

Video games can make us believe it for many years. Young people who are 30 or 35 play them every day and may still believe that they are immortal. Furthermore, when there are television programs such as Weeds, which sings the praises of marijuana and endorses its use, our youth will want to continue down that road.

We must realize that the most important news media for youth today are not newspapers but the Internet and television. We must take action to ensure that if we wish to have television without censorship, it must be television that is appropriate for our youth. We must be sure that our young people are learning things of importance when they watch television and not just values associated with crime.

[Committees of the House, April 20th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I did not have the opportunity to sit on the committee that produced this report. However, I have the privilege of coming from a family that has traditionally been open to cultural communities. I can remember that, from early in my childhood, my father would bring home people from various backgrounds to allow us to learn from their music, culture, theatre and writing. We always were very open to having people from wherever visit, and being enriched by them; it was an opportunity to get to know them better and to share their culture.

When we talk about crime in cultural communities and the desire of these communities to see their children, teenagers, young men and women, get out of crime, we talk about communities which have been consistently striving to fit in with society, in Quebec and Canada, and to really work together with police and other institutions.

On the subject of crime, there are things we do not talk about. What I would have liked the government to do is give the reasons for crime, instead of going on and on about cultural communities getting together in committees to discuss the terrorist potential of some of their own. I would rather discuss what causes crime to exist in cultural communities, because it is caused by extreme poverty. There is no social housing and no employment.

Today, in Quebec and Canada, those least likely to find employment are people from the cultural communities, particularly visible minority cultural communities.

The vast majority of women in these communities cannot find jobs because they are unable to cope with today's very demanding labour market, and also because employers are not doing what they are supposed to do; they do not have non-discriminatory hiring policies in place.

If these problems are not addressed and members of Parliament and legislators do not deal with poverty issues, as is their duty, crime will never be stopped. Try as they may, without help in doing what they have to do, cultural communities will never succeed in stopping crime.

Not one child born to a mother from Haiti or from countries in Africa or Latin America sat in Santa's lap and said that he wanted to become a gang member when he grew up. Not one.

The reason why some of these children are on the street today and chose to join a street gang is because they wanted to feel valued. Obviously this is not the right way to achieve that. It is not what we wish for our children. That is often what happens when a society abandons its children and does not ensure that they have everything they need to grow and blossom in a fair and equitable environment. Instead of demanding more measures to fight crime or more prisons, we should be demanding measures to help people find a way out. We need more social housing, more jobs and more people who really have the good of their community at heart.

There are glaring examples. In Winnipeg, children and families living in poverty formed a cooperative so they could buy a house. Poor people cannot afford to buy houses. They do not have RRSPs and they cannot benefit from the home buyers' plan. Home ownership is just not accessible to them.

These people used to live in a place where graffiti, crime and vandalism were a daily occurrence. When these people were finally able to buy a house, when these children could finally be proud to have parents who owned their own house, there was a drop in crime.

There was a noticeable decrease in crime, even an end to crime altogether. Graffiti is no longer seen on the houses. The houses are no longer covered in graffiti because the people and children living there are proud. This is what we must keep in mind. Cultural communities can try to do everything in their power to stamp out crime, but if they are not given the tools they need, they will never succeed.

And by tools, I do not mean additional prison sentences or the imprisonment of 12-year-old children. I do not mean jailing people who commit misdeeds because they want to impress their young peers. That is not what I am talking about. Instead, I am talking about measures to help cultural communities keep their outreach workers in the street, such as the Maison d'Haïti mentioned earlier by my colleague. Communities need to have outreach workers who work on a daily basis with young people in the streets, to try to convince them to become involved in something other than crime. These youth need role models. And it is not until people get out of poverty that they can become role models. Once these mothers and fathers have decent jobs, they can get out of poverty, their children will be able to go to school and on to post-secondary, and these children will stop being marginalized because they do not have what everyone else has. This is how we should talk about reducing crime.

Unless we reduce poverty in Canada, we will never be able to reduce crime. For years now, we have been saying that we want to reduce poverty, but we still have one million children living in poverty. Given 1.5 or 1.6 children per family, that means that at least 700,000 people are living in abject poverty. That creates fertile ground for criminal activity and for children who have nothing and want what other people have. That is to be expected.

We live in a consumer society where everything we see on television, on the Internet and all around us tells us that we have to have the nicest clothes, the best cars and the best weapons. In the United States, despite last week's tragedy, the National Rifle Association and the Gun Owners of America are suggesting that all students should be armed to go to school. Just imagine. And they would have us think that such policies do not promote criminal activity. They are trivializing the use of guns, trivializing the fact that a gun does not have to be registered, trivializing the fact that women want the gun registry so that police officers can continue to track down people who might be inclined to misuse them.

There are many things we can do to fight crime other than build prisons and hire people to figure out whether a private prison would be better than a public one. That was done in the United States, where the incarceration rate is seven times that of Canada.

I am privileged to have many ethnic communities in my riding. Everywhere I go, those communities have community centres to help their young people. The centres encourage the youth to help older people and participate in choirs and basketball, baseball and soccer clubs. Even though they do not have the financial means to do it, they dig deep and do as much as they can to help their youth.

As my colleague said earlier, to fight crime, we have to give ethnic communities the necessary tools. By tools, I also mean money, because it is always about money.

I would like to add that youth from ethnic communities are not the only ones falling prey to increasing criminal activity. Because of the media, young Quebeckers, both anglophone and francophone, also seek the notoriety achieved through criminal activity.

One way to combat youth crime might be to prohibit the media from talking about it, because whenever they run stories about young people from cultural communities, it is because they have done something wrong. The media never report on young people from cultural communities who have done something noteworthy for their community, but do talk about them when they do something wrong, as all young people are likely to do.

A person does not have to come from a cultural community to want to assert his or her identity at 14, 15 or 16. Unfortunately, however, young people sometimes choose the wrong crowd. But if there is no one in the community to help them when this happens, I am afraid our young people will do things they will regret later. We must do everything we can as members of Parliament and legislators to give cultural communities all the tools they need and try to create more culturally diverse police forces. Only by initiating a dialogue involving institutions, communities and children can we stop the rise in violence and crime.

As I said earlier, young people do not aspire to be criminals when they get older, just as they do not necessarily aspire to be members of Parliament. They think about being happy and enjoying their childhood. But a child who, at 12, 13 or 14, already has a weapon is no longer a child, at least mentally, if not physically or emotionally. And that is even more serious, because children whose childhood is taken away from them lose their ability to wonder and to laugh for no reason. Is there anything more beautiful than an innocent child's laughter? Is there anything more beautiful to hear as a mother and grandmother? Sometimes, I stop and listen to my grandchildren laugh. Children's laughter gives us the warmest feeling we as parents and grandparents can have, because it means that our children perhaps do not have to prove to others that they are men or women. When they laugh, it is because our children perhaps do not have to prove to themselves that they can escape the abject misery they live in.

Have you ever been to Ville Saint-Michel or to Montréal-Nord, Mr. Speaker? Have you ever been to Verdun in areas where some apartment buildings are real slums, with mould on walls, with broken windows and without heat because landlords do not maintain them? Do you know what it means for a child to grow up in such a slum? No. We have the good fortune and the privilege of coming from rather well-to-do families, or if it was not the case, at least we did not live in that kind of abject poverty. We did not live in ghettos.

Now a lot of cultural communities are ghettoized. And they are ghettoized even more when we hear statements like the one made earlier by my colleague from the Conservative Party who said that these people who live here but who are from a different culture are just thinking about committing suicide, as was the case in England, that these children want to commit suicide by killing other people.

I do not think so. We must have more respect for cultural communities. We must meet them and get to know them better to make sure that when we say things about them, we say the right things.

Again, I hope the government will understand how important it is not to use crime to put in place measures that are totally inappropriate to deal with the problem that we are facing.

I hope the hon. members will be wise enough, as the hon. member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine is asking, to recognize the contribution of the cultural communities and to recognize their efforts in dealing with the difficulties experienced by their children and adolescents. We must also recognize that without these cultural communities, our social fabric would not be as vibrant.

I am married to someone from Africa, from the Congo more specifically, and today it is a great pleasure and privilege for my grandchildren to talk about their ancestors and where they are from.

As long as we welcome people from other countries, our lives will be enriched. We experience the best of those who come here: their food, music, dance and literature. The freedom of spirit they have taught us, the ability to break out of our shells and exceed our limitations, has put us on the world stage. We have succeeded in doing this, in Quebec in particular, where we have a number of world renowned artists, because of the contribution from all the cultural communities that live here now and that we have come to know. Thanks to these cultural communities, we have a sense of our own worth, we recognize our own values, and we have established very enriching dialogues with the communities.

I hope the government will very seriously consider adopting measures for decreasing poverty, increasing the stock of social housing, cutting unemployment and reducing incarceration. I hope there will be more measures for finally giving people in the cultural communities the right, the legitimacy, and the freedom to live here and prosper. That is the right of every individual under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which was celebrated this week and of which all Canadians are so proud. It is not through repressive measures that we will succeed in tackling crime, but with our hearts, our hands and our open minds. We have to listen to the communities and do what we can so they can better help their children and loved ones to find success.

[Status of Women, April 20th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, since 1993, thousands of female nurses from the Philippines have come to Canada under the live-in caregiver program to take care of seniors, disabled persons and children.

These women have very few nursing tasks. They have become cheap domestic helpers for people who have the financial wherewithal, and they are losing their qualifications.

How can the Minister of Canadian Heritage and Status of Women allow her own government to perpetuate this injustice towards thousands of women, if women are so important to her?

[Status of Women, April 17th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, we have reason to be pleased today, since the action taken by the Equal Voice organization encourages us to address the issue of women's participation in politics. This is unfortunately the only reason to be pleased, when it comes to addressing this issue.

The lack of women in politics is particularly worrisome and we cannot, as a democratic society, merely stand by and observe this phenomenon. We all have an obligation to act, and we must act immediately.

The statement made by the Minister of Canadian Heritage and Status of Women smacks of cynicism. While we listen to the party congratulate itself, only a little over 10% of its candidates, specifically 38 out of 308, during the last election were women, which demonstrates how little importance it places on women's participation in politics. This party does not stop at merely discouraging women from entering politics. It now muzzles women, preventing them from defending their rights and expressing their discontent with this backward-thinking government. This party, with only 11.2% female elected representatives, is inhibiting the progression of the House of Commons towards equality.

While progressive countries such as Sweden and Norway have reached female representation levels of 45.3% and 37.9%, Canada, because of the Conservatives, has slipped to 48th place, with barely 20%.

The Bloc Québécois, whose caucus is 33% women, had the highest number of elected female members of any federal party in Quebec in the last election. But this is not enough. Our party is actively working to increase the number of female members and will run more female candidates in the next election. This is the commitment we are making today.

The multi-partisan organization, Equal Voice, reminds us that, “Political parties can be catalysts for change. All that is required is political will on the part of party leaders to make a difference.”

The only political will the Conservatives have shown was to muzzle women by abolishing the court challenges program and by changing the eligibility criteria for the women's program. If they want to take on the Equal Voice challenge, and we strongly encourage them to do so, they must reinstate these two programs, as they were when the Conservatives came to power. We will then see how serious their political will is. The Bloc Québécois has that political will, and we are committed to making a difference and encouraging more than ever the vital participation of women in political life, by maintaining this objective of parity, which may seem bold, but really, is only natural.