- Member of Parliament
- Member of the Joint Interparliamentary Council
Whip of the New Democratic Party
Member of the panel of chairs for the legislative committees
- NDP
- Edmonton Strathcona
- Alberta
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $141,604.97
- Government Page
- Feb/29/24 1:58:22 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I just want to take a moment to once again thank the member for Winnipeg Centre for the incredible work that she has done on this legislation. The fact that we have this child care bill before us goes, in a large part, to the work that the member for Winnipeg Centre has done. I am so grateful for all that she has done.
However, I will say that when she asks about a workforce strategy, one of the ways we make legislation good in this place is we listen to experts, we listen to people who are experts in those fields. Child care workers have been asking for this, labour leaders have been asking for this. Those are the people we should be listening to. A truly feminist government would listen to those experts in the child care sector.
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- Oct/25/23 2:22:45 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the world is a dangerous place for women. In the DRC, women are facing the world's highest rates of sexual and gender-based violence. MSF reports that sexual violence now is a public health emergency in the Central African Republic. In Afghanistan and Iran, women's rights are non-existent.
In Canada, women who speak up are attacked, not just in politics but also in journalism, on social media and in their communities. I am alarmed by the exclusion of Muslim and Jewish women's voices from critical conversations on Israel and Palestine. Canada claims to have a feminist foreign policy, but where are the investments? As Sudan's Hala Al-Karib said recently, only paying lip service to the women, peace and security agenda without insisting on women's rights and women's meaningful participation in peace and political processes is not enough.
Canada must do better.
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- Jun/14/23 2:16:57 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the international development sector in Canada is led by incredible women like Lauren Ravon and her team at Oxfam Canada, who shared their work on how to improve the lives of paid and unpaid care workers in Canada and around the world; Anna Vogt and the international program representatives from the Mennonite Central Committee, who are in Ottawa to share MCC's work building peace globally; and Janice Hamilton, who heads the Fund for Innovation and Transformation alongside the folks at the ICN who are testing innovative solutions for gender equality in the global south.
These leaders are changing the world, but they need the government to support their efforts. They need the government to reverse the 15% cut to official development assistance and to finally deliver the promised feminist foreign policy.
When we make women and girls the centre of our efforts, ensuring women at are the table for peace talks; acting on climate change, which disproportionately affects women and girls; and empowering women and girls to determine their own health and education priorities, we make a real difference for everyone.
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Mr. Speaker, it is 2023 and we are in the House again debating something that should not be up for debate: Bill C-311.
While the member for Yorkton—Melville claims that this bill is about protecting women from violence, no organizations that actually work to support and protect women from violence are endorsing this bill. Why is that? It is because the people who care about violence being perpetrated against women understand what is needed to protect and support women. Those are the things that my fellow New Democrats and I have been fighting for in this House for years and the very things that the member and the Conservative Party have refused to support.
They are things like implementing the calls for justice from the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. They are things like legislation that would limit assault-style weapons. They are things like a whole range of economic measures that would support women, including dental care, child care and pay equity. They are things like adequately and comprehensively supporting the full range of reproductive rights and health care in all regions of Canada, particularly in northern and remote regions.
They are things like listening to experts like Julia Anderson, the CEO of CanWaCH, who told the foreign affairs committee just weeks ago, “a 12% average decline in access to modern contraception would result in an additional 734,000 unintended pregnancies.” She also indicated, “A 23% shift from safe to unsafe abortions will lead to an additional 491,000 unsafe abortions.” Acting to provide more access to birth control, abortion and maternal health care would save lives.
They are things like ensuring that Canada adheres to the feminist international assistance program and lives up to the commitments it has made to support sexual and reproductive health rights for women and girls throughout the world by funding health care services like abortion. In fact, this bill, Bill C-311, would do nothing to protect women or to support them. It is nothing more than an attempt to undermine women's rights in Canada, including the right to a safe and accessible abortion. It would take away health care services from women, because abortion is health care. Taking away access to safe abortions does not stop abortions from happening. It stops safe abortions from happening and it costs women their lives.
The right to control our reproductive health is fundamental to our rights as women. This is not the first time the member for Yorkton—Melville has attempted to undermine the right to an abortion and other women's rights. However, I think this may be the first time that we have seen this kind of violence washing: using violence against women as an excuse and a disguise for chipping away at women's rights.
This bill pretends that judges do not already have the discretion to apply greater penalties for aggravating circumstances. This is completely false, and there is no valid justification for this legislation. Our legal system is already more than capable of ensuring that women are protected. Judges already have the ability to add additional punishment.
In fact, there is only one reason for this bill to exist. It is designed to create a legal recognition for the fetus. I will quote the member for Yorkton—Melville's own words: “Canada has no abortion law. The legal void is so extreme that we do not even recognize preborn children when they are victims of violent crimes.”
It is my sincere hope that when members table bills for consideration, they do so truthfully and honestly and they legitimately believe in what they say about their bills. This bill is a blatant attempt to mislead this House and Canadians. There is no need for this bill. There is no rationale for this bill. In fact, this bill is dangerous to women. It is dangerous to women in Canada and it is dangerous to women around the world. It is actually harmful, because we know that at least 40,000 women are dying annually around the world because of unsafe abortions. I want to say it one more time: When we criminalize abortion, we do not stop abortion and we do not stop women accessing abortion; we stop safe abortion and women die.
Limiting access to abortions and reproductive health care does not stop abortions. I cannot say that more clearly. Whenever a woman is denied the power to make her own decisions about whether and how often to become pregnant, her internationally recognized human rights are violated, and her health and life are at risk. The best way to protect women and girls is to provide health care, provide support and not limit women's access to those things.
I have said this in the House before: I have a daughter. I will fight to my dying breath to ensure that she can access every health care support that she wants in her lifetime and that she will always have the right to choose when she has children, if she has children and how she has children. I would be a horrible person if I could stand in this place and want that for my daughter, and not want that for every woman and girl in this world.
I will continue to stand and protect women's rights, and no matter how many times the member brings backdoor bills forward and tries to take away the rights of women, New Democrats will not support it.
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- Apr/25/23 11:45:02 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, first of all, one thing that is key, which I meant to mention in my speech and am really grateful to the member for bringing up, is that women need to be at all of the tables when we are talking about resolution and peacekeeping. That is fundamental. We know that peacekeeping only happens when women are at the table. That is a fundamental thing. If we have a feminist foreign policy and a feminist international assistance policy, women's voices need to be at the forefront.
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- Feb/10/23 11:28:24 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, Afghan women and girls cannot go to school. They cannot see a doctor. They are prisoners in their own country. For 18 months, these women and girls should have been getting help from Canadian organizations. Instead, Canada's so-called “feminist government” continues to fail Afghans by delaying a humanitarian carve-out.
How much longer will the Minister of Public Safety make women and girls in Afghanistan wait? How many more women and girls in Afghanistan will die before he acts?
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- Feb/8/23 2:16:11 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to take an opportunity to thank Canada's international development sector for its fantastic work, particularly its efforts to build a better world for women and girls.
As we know, women and girls are particularly vulnerable to humanitarian crises, climate change and conflict, and while Canadian organizations continue to play a vital role around the world, the federal government has not lived up to its obligations.
Canada must be ambitious. The government must commit to strategic, predictable and significant increases in funding and remove barriers that prevent Canadian organizations from doing their vitally important work, barriers such as what we are seeing in Afghanistan, where we have no carve-out for humanitarian organizations.
Finally, Canada needs to ensure that we have a strong public foreign policy, a feminist foreign policy that puts women and girls at the forefront of all of Canada's foreign policy decisions. Canadians are doing their part. It is time for the Canadian government to its.
I wish members a happy International Development Week.
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague's intervention was very interesting. I noticed that she is wearing a sustainable development goals pin. One of the things that I find most frustrating is that we have a government that claims to have a feminist international assistance policy. We have a government that speaks about being a feminist government that will perhaps, one day, provide a feminist foreign policy, yet we know the impacts on women and girls from climate change around the world are deeply disparate.
Can my colleague talk a little about those impacts and ways in which Canada and the Canadian government could do more to protect those who are most vulnerable, women and girls around the world?
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- Oct/24/22 8:10:44 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I absolutely can. Something I reflect on a great deal is how Canada can play a better role, how we can play a bigger role as a country that is respected around the world, and as a country that is seen as a champion of human rights. There are many ways we can do that. One is we can have a bigger role geopolitically.
We really, for the most part, have abandoned our obligations to be a peacekeeping nation, to have peacekeepers in the field. We have never reached the obligations we promised under the Pearson Commission to reach 0.7% of ODA. We have repeatedly spoken about having a feminist government, yet we do not have a feminist foreign policy. There are many ways Canada can play an increasingly important role in the world. We just need the focus, the bravery and political will to do so.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for bringing forward this important legislation. I know she has stood in this place time and time again, advocating for the rights of those less fortunate, advocating for the rights of people who are victimized, and advocating for the rights of women and girls.
I have to say that I am proud to be a Canadian, because we have a feminist foreign policy that looks at the way we can support women and girls around the world. Looking at Canada's role here in Canada and also around the world, can the member tell us about other ways we could be protecting women and girls outside of our borders, outside of Canada?
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- Apr/5/22 12:21:43 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, of course, I agree 100% with my colleague from the Bloc Québécois. Of course, we should be implementing those so that we can help recruit women. We also need to bring forth the feminist foreign policy. The government has promised this for some time and has not brought forward our feminist foreign policy. We need to do everything we can to make sure that our military is a welcoming space for women who want to contribute and who want to represent Canada. I thank her for her advocacy on this issue.
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