44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 9, 2023 10:00AM
Madam Speaker, rising this evening to speak to Bill C‑311 is utterly exasperating. The Criminal Code amendment in the bill would force the courts to consider the fact that an assault victim is a pregnant woman an aggravating circumstance for sentencing purposes.
I realize this may seem like a sensitive issue, but, as usual, the Conservatives want to reopen the abortion debate. This bill is the latest in a long line of attempts to grant the fetus legal status in order to undermine women's right to control their own bodies.
I will start by explaining the pernicious effects of this bill. Then I will go over the Conservatives' history of back-door attempts. Lastly, I will remind the House about this difficult struggle for women.
First, without explicitly naming the fetus, this bill seeks to create an aggravating circumstance when the offence of assault is committed against a pregnant woman. If passed, the Conservative proposal could strengthen the premise that the legislator's intent is to grant the fetus implicit legal status. The Bloc Québécois opposes any attempt at such legislation, which would set women's rights back.
It is important to point out that the Criminal Code already enables judges imposing a sentence to consider as an aggravating factor an offence that has a significant impact on the victim, considering their personal circumstances, including their health. The victim's personal circumstances can include pregnancy, and the court can consider that as an aggravating factor under the circumstances.
Femicides against pregnant women have been documented by Canadian police forces since 2005. According to Statistics Canada, in 2005, 12 pregnant women were killed by their intimate partner, and eight pregnant women were killed by someone other than their intimate partner. Let us remember that. Not one more.
In a 2021 ruling, the Court of Quebec examined this issue when sentencing a man who pleaded guilty to assaulting his ex-wife. The judge was unequivocal about the consequences of committing such a crime against a pregnant woman. Her condition makes her more vulnerable to assault and less able to defend herself. The Quebec and Canadian courts are therefore inclined to consider a victim's personal circumstances, namely, a pregnancy, when handing down a sentence.
Our society has a duty to punish violence against women, especially violence against pregnant women, but the mechanisms to do so exist already. While it may have been tabled in good faith, the amendment in the Conservative bill brings nothing new to the table. However, we have strong reason to believe that it may be part of an anti-abortion strategy.
Second, it is important to point out that the Conservative member is continuing her ideological war against women's reproductive health.
During the previous Parliament, she sponsored a bill to criminalize abortions performed on the basis of an unborn child's sex. Despite the Leader of the Opposition's claims about being pro-choice, his caucus is clearly divided on the issue and still includes anti-choice members.
The Bloc Québécois therefore opposes Bill C‑311 given the bill's ulterior motive of securing legal status for fetuses. Bill C‑311 is an anti-abortion bill. The Bloc will make no compromise when it comes to defending women's right to control their own bodies, their right to choose, and supporting free, accessible and safe abortion services.
The Conservatives are trying to do indirectly what they cannot do directly. This bill is nothing less than an attempt to amend Canadian law in favour of their outdated anti‑abortion position, which Quebeckers have rejected. If passed, this legislative amendment could set a dangerous precedent if a Canadian court were to rule on the issue of the right to abortion.
Our elected members have a responsibility to carry out their duties honestly and to state their real intentions when they engage in dialogue on behalf of the constituents they represent. This is necessary for a healthy democracy. Obfuscating the debate for purely ideological purposes undermines the effective functioning of our democracy. These tactics need to be recognized, called out and stopped.
The Bloc Québécois demands that the Leader of the Conservative Party publicly recognize that Bill C-311 is just a partisan strategy to attack abortion, that he call on his members to oppose it and that he rein in the member for Yorkton—Melville. If he does not, if he chooses instead to vote for Bill C‑311, as he announced today, it says a lot about the influence of religious lobby groups on the Conservatives. In Quebec, we believe in secularism, which takes religion out of governance.
The member for Yorkton—Melville has previously presented anti-abortion bills. In 2016, she introduced Bill C-225, the protection of pregnant women and their preborn children act, also known as Cassie and Molly's law, which would have handed out a life sentence to anyone who “directly or indirectly causes the death of [a] preborn child”.
Is it not curious that the member for Yorkton—Melville never openly attacks the right to abortion, but that her efforts are somehow always directed at making this medical act a criminal offence with harsh sentences?
For all these reasons, we recommend that members vote against Bill C‑311.
It is also worth noting that the issue of selective abortion is not new in federal politics. A Conservative member moved a motion to condemn it in 2012, reopening the abortion debate in the process. That motion came after Conservative Stephen Woodworth's motion on the rights of the fetus that called for a parliamentary committee to study at what point a fetus should be considered a human being for the purposes of enforcing Criminal Code provisions.
These tactics, aiming to surreptitiously criminalize abortion, were carried out despite former prime minister Stephen Harper's campaign promise to not reopen the abortion debate.
Third, I would remind members that women's right to access abortion in Canada is intimately connected to Dr. Henry Morgentaler's fight to legalize this medical treatment. Prior to 1969, performing abortions was illegal in Canada. Women died trying to perform their own abortions with knitting needles and coat hangers. Do we really want to go back to that?
In 1969, Parliament made several important amendments to the Criminal Code. The section on abortion, section 273 at the time, specified when an abortion could legally be performed. The section set out criminal sanctions for doctors who did not respect the strict rules.
That same year, Dr. Henry Morgentaler opened his first clinic in Montreal, where he performed abortions after doctors and groups had debated whether or not to approve it. A year later, he was charged with performing illegal abortions. After his appeal was dismissed by the Supreme Court of Canada in 1975, he served a 10-month sentence in prison.
In 1982, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms came into effect. In 1983, Dr. Morgentaler, along with two other doctors, was charged with performing illegal abortions at Dr. Morgentaler's clinic in Toronto. Although complex, the case rests primarily on one specific point of law, namely, whether the abortion provisions of the Criminal Code infringed in an unjustified way a woman's right “to life, liberty and security of the person” as guaranteed by section 7 of the charter.
Although the ruling is also complex, the court concluded that the abortion section of the Criminal Code infringed a woman's right to security of the person, that the process by which the woman was deprived of that right was not in accord with fundamental justice, and that the right to security of the person of a pregnant woman was infringed more than was required to achieve the objective of protecting the fetus, and the means were not reasonable.
In conclusion, over 30 years after abortion was decriminalized in Canada, the Conservatives are pursuing their anti-choice militancy by tabling a bill like this one in Parliament. Their attacks on women's rights are a political manoeuvre to pander to the religious right.
The Bloc Québécois must firmly resist the Conservatives' attacks on the integrity of women and their hard-won right to control their own bodies.
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Madam Speaker, I am not pleased to have to rise today to speak on Bill C-311, another attack on a woman's right to choose, another attack on abortion as health care, another attack on abortion rights as human rights, which is something that women, in particular, led the way to have so that we would not go back to the dark times of what has been mentioned so many times today: back-alley abortions where women died bleeding to death; gruesome. We are talking about violence, and I cannot think of anything more violent than restricting a woman's right to health care, including the right to access a safe abortion.
Bill C-311 would amend the Criminal Code to specify that knowingly assaulting a pregnant woman and that causing physical or emotional harm to a pregnant woman are to be considered aggravating circumstances for sentencing purposes. However, we know, as has been indicated over and over in this debate, that these changes are, in fact, unnecessary as judges already have the ability to apply more significant penalties for aggravating circumstances under section 718.2 of the Criminal Code.
In fact, no anti-violence organization has asked for this legislation. As somebody who has been on the frontline fighting against gender-based violence for many decades, I find it insulting to conflate an attempt to attack women's reproductive rights with true actions to end the ongoing crisis of gender-based violence. The federal government can and should pursue other ways of addressing gender-based violence, including reversing the plan to cut $150 million to women's shelters in September. If we want to protect women, including women who are pregnant, we need to make sure that they have a safe place to go. Let us not talk about the safety of women when that is not what we are really talking about, when we are attacking a woman's right to make a choice about her bodily autonomy.
I call on all members of the House to instead focus their attention on pushing all levels of government to implement the 231 calls for justice from the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and strengthening the national action plan to end gender-based violence by adding timelines and accountability measures. Why are we not discussing that today? Why are we discussing a bill that would threaten a woman's right to health care, which includes a safe abortion? This is disturbing—
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Madam Speaker, I am honoured to stand today in support of Bill C-311, the violence against pregnant women act, because I thought that is what we would be debating tonight. However, what I have been listening to is far from that. The speakers have gone far afield in their discussion of a bill that is squarely before them.
I want to thank the member for Yorkton—Melville for bringing forward this important legislation. It is my honour to second it at this stage of debate. I will speak to this bill, not some other bill or bills, or a history of bills. We are talking about Bill C-311, which would amend the Criminal Code to specify that knowingly assaulting a pregnant woman and causing physical or emotional harm to a pregnant woman would be considered aggravating circumstances for sentencing purposes.
I support this bill because mothers who have faced and are facing violent assaults need to know that they are heard and that the pain and depression caused by harm to their babies are not left unseen by others. I have fought for women's rights all my career as a lawyer, especially during my career as a family lawyer, and now as a politician. This bill is about the rights of pregnant women, no more and no less.
I am the mother of four children who I have been fortunate to raise into adulthood, but I was pregnant five times. My last child, a boy named Mackenzie, or little Mack for short, never got the chance to know his family, work, speak, go to school, play with friends or grow up. His waiting family, which was me, his dad, his brother and three sisters, never got to meet him. We lost little Mack halfway through my pregnancy because of the negligence of an interning doctor who wrongly handled an amniocentesis procedure and suffocated him in utero.
At the time, his loss sent me into a deep situational depression for months. I was off work for the first time in my adult life, and I grieved his passing desperately. I still do many years later. Because of this tragic event in my own life, I know and understand how the deliberate act of a person who knows that someone is pregnant and does harm to them and their baby impacts a mother and her family.
It is well documented that pregnant women in Canada are easy targets for violent assaults, yet the consequences of these offences have not increased. Just this year, the Court of Appeal for Ontario overturned a seven-year sentence for an offender who stabbed the pregnant mother of his unborn child in the neck and left her for dead. The mother lived, but the baby did not. This violent attacker's sentence was upped to 15 years when an appeal judge pointed out that the initial sentence did not address the issue of domestic violence or that the victim was pregnant with his baby. A violent crime against a pregnant woman needs to be treated as the serious crime that it is. Right now, criminal sentences in Canada do not consider harm done to a pregnant woman when an assault is committed.
Nelson Mandela said, “Safety and security don't just happen. They are the result of collective consensus and public investment.” Violence against women, especially pregnant women, is not a private family issue. It is a public safety and security issue, and it needs the urgent attention of this House.
Among Canadian women who have reported being abused by an intimate partner during pregnancy, 40% said that the abuse began during pregnancy. In recent years, there have been more than 70 cases in which pregnant women have been murdered, and the effect of the death of the unborn child was not a factor at sentencing.
The story of Tashina General from Brantford is particularly disheartening. In 2008, a Brantford man strangled Tashina to death. She was his 21-year-old pregnant girlfriend. He then attempted to hide Tashina's body by burying her in a shallow grave. He committed this gruesome and horrific crime against Tashina, as the evidence came out, simply because he did not want to bear the responsibility of being a father, despite Tashina's choice to be a mother.
Only eight years later, this murderer was set free. Tashina's grandmother, Norma General, still wonders what her great-grandson would have looked like and what kind of personality he would have had. She never had the opportunity to hold her first great-grandchild because of the despicable actions of a misogynistic killer.
It is not only intimate partner violence to which pregnant women are vulnerable. Pregnant women are also the target of unprovoked attacks by strangers. Last year on Vancouver Island, a pregnant woman walking down the street with her four-year-old daughter had a brick thrown at her stomach in a random attack. The fact that the victim was pregnant was not seen as an aggravating factor. I will let that sink in.
In another case, a pregnant woman in Surrey was attacked at a bank. An unknown man approached her from behind and violently threw her to the ground. Women who are pregnant are vulnerable, and they should be treated as vulnerable when it comes to sentencing. Offenders will often cite an unplanned pregnancy or the stress caused by having to potentially financially support the baby as excuses for these crimes.
The uncaring government has turned its back on women who choose to have a child. Its members are blinded by differences with the member for Yorkton—Melville on other matters, and that is blinding them to this bill. A vote against this bill is a vote against choice and women, and it would be misogynistic. They say that they are for choice, but only if we agree with that choice, and that is no choice at all.
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