Hon. Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu: Madam Speaker, like my colleagues, I want to congratulate you and say that there’s no better choice than you for Speaker of the Senate. Congratulations.

Honourable senators, this week, we are marking the seventeenth annual Victims and Survivors of Crime Week. In June, it will be eight years since the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights was adopted.

To mark these two accomplishments by the previous Conservative government, last Saturday I went to Winnipeg to the Canadian Museum for Human Rights with my colleague, the member from the region, Raquel Dancho, to give the director of the museum a copy of the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights to have it displayed there with all the other charters adopted by Canada and elsewhere in the world.

We took the opportunity to meet with victims and the families of victims of violent crime. Listening to them made me realize, sadly, just how much their rights have eroded in our justice system since the change in government. All these families had lost confidence in our justice system, and to them, adopting the bill of rights meant that they might, at long last, have rights equal to those of criminals — rights they had been hoping for for decades.

We talked to a family whose loved one’s murderer was never brought to justice. We talked to a victim of intimate partner violence whose abuser threatened them repeatedly without ever facing legal consequences. We talked to a mother who was never told that her son’s murderer had been released not far from her home.

How can there be so many stories, so many injustices here in Canada?

For Ms. Dancho, the museum CEO and me, it was a deeply emotional and very enlightening encounter. When victims’ families see the degree to which our justice system prioritizes respect for offenders’ rights, it is obvious to them that their own rights get very short shrift in comparison. They still feel they’re not being treated fairly, they still lack confidence in the system and they’re still being revictimized by a system that should protect and respect them above all else.

Is this why the government has been downplaying this awareness week for so many years?

Honourable colleagues, during this Victims and Survivors of Crime Week, words alone will no longer be enough to restore victims’ and their families’ confidence in our justice system.

We must take action and stand by them by taking concrete measures the likes of which have been rare indeed in Canada over the past eight years.

This week, in solidarity with all victims of crime and their families, and in memory of all victims whose lives were tragically taken, I’m going to introduce an important bill that will strengthen the enforcement and broaden the scope of the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights.

Honourable senators, I know this matters to you, and I sincerely hope that, together, we can seize the opportunity to do something meaningful for victims by supporting this important bill for them. Thank you.