- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- NDP
- Hamilton Centre
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 65%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $131,250.15
- Government Page
- Dec/7/22 10:26:29 p.m.
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Madam Chair, we heard today the government side, unfortunately, frame this about hope, about these communities demanding hope. However, I do not recall there being 231 demands for hope. There were 231 demands for justice, demands for action.
I would love for the hon. member, in her closing remarks, to explore why it is important that we do not just sit here with platitudes, offering talking points about hope, but that this government takes responsibility for taking clear and targeted steps towards action.
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- Dec/7/22 10:14:27 p.m.
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Madam Chair, the hon. member quite rightly identified the need for targeted interventions. I know of her tireless work and her advocacy on the deplorable conditions of northern housing. I would like her to have the opportunity to reflect on how having the stability of dignified, safe housing for people in her community might help prevent some of the preconditions that lead to the atrocities committed against women, including Inuit women in her communities.
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- Dec/7/22 9:51:27 p.m.
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Madam Chair, there are a lot of people watching. There are a lot of people who are dealing with the trauma, both at a distance from past events, but also for the people who were here this evening, the family members.
A comment was made by the member for Calgary Nose Hill. I do not want to attribute malice to what was said, but in her closing remarks, she said that when people look at a garbage can, they should think of the family. I did not want to have this take-note debate and just allow that comment to pass. My hope is that, at the appropriate time, the member or a member from her party would perhaps retract that statement. When it goes into Hansard, it stays there forever.
I want to make sure that in those remarks, when we are talking about the dignity and sanctity of life, we do not ever refer to it as a reminder when people are passing by landfills or trash cans.
This is not a question. It is a comment. I am not sure if the hon. minister wants to respond to it or not. It was not directed at the hon. minister. It was directed at the previous speaker, the member for Calgary Nose Hill.
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- Dec/7/22 9:06:18 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise today first to acknowledge the humility and the insight of the member for Peterborough—Kawartha, who, it is very clear, in preparing for tonight's take-note debate, has taken the learnings, perhaps from her committee or from her community's proximity to other indigenous communities.
I want to provide the hon. member with the opportunity to expand on some of the learnings from the committee work that she has done.
She referenced education and, I think, to the best of her ability, tried to perhaps help her colleague in presenting what was a very non-partisan and cross-party effort to address the connection between resource extraction and the violence against missing and murdered indigenous women and girls.
For the benefit of this take-note debate and perhaps even for her Conservative caucus, given her insight and her humility, I wonder if she could reflect on some of the key learnings of that committee, things that perhaps she did not know about going into it and which may have helped aid her in providing the insights that she has so eloquently provided this evening.
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- Dec/7/22 8:28:58 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, words do matter, and I want the hon. member to have the opportunity to clarify whether or not she believes, based on the study that just happened at the status of women committee, that proximity to resource extraction, in particular the oil and gas sector, has a higher propensity of violence against indigenous women.
These are not opinions. These are facts that have been borne through the House of Commons time and time again, so I want the hon. member to stand to clarify whether she agrees that resource extraction, oil and gas, being in proximity to northern indigenous communities, leads to a higher propensity for missing and murdered indigenous women.
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- Dec/7/22 8:25:14 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, settler colonialism, land displacement, genocide, missing and murdered indigenous women and the ongoing processes of resource extraction are all along a continuum. They are all linked. I think that the hon. member for Fort McMurray—Cold Lake raised the connection between her proximity to “man camps” and the frequency of violence against indigenous women.
I want to give the hon. member the opportunity to reflect on ways in which we can reduce this gender-based violence, this ongoing genocide, against indigenous women and the ways in which it remains inextricably linked to resource extraction in the country.
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- Dec/7/22 7:04:52 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I am heartened to hear the non-partisan approach of tonight's take-note debate. I want to thank the hon. member for Winnipeg Centre for being a champion and voice for this. I had the privilege of standing alongside her, the families and the many community leaders who came to this place to advocate, including the incredibly inspiring and strong children.
There is a lot of talk about complexity on this issue. We heard in the previous answer that we need to perhaps revisit this. The truth is this is something that has been studied. This is something that has been captured in the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
In fact, families, advocates and indigenous leaders, including Chief Kyra Wilson of the Long Plain First Nation, have highlighted the need for immediate federal funding to build and operate more low-barrier shelters for women fleeing violence. I know the hon. member for Winnipeg Centre championed 24-hour safe spaces in Winnipeg.
Does the member agree we need to expedite federal funding for the building of new safe spaces, including through the government's $724.1-million violence prevention strategy, which today, to our disgrace in this House, sits mostly unspent?
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Mr. Speaker, this is an important reference to the Jay Treaty, which is a historical reference to the sovereign nationalism that is embedded in the treaties that allow indigenous first nations people who are a part of the Jay Treaty to travel freely, unencumbered, back and forth across the border. It is an integral part of our historical treaty rights, which need to be respected.
This is a very important point brought up by the hon. member from the Bloc. I suggest that given the recommendations, we invite experts on the Jay Treaty to come here. Part of the understanding of cultural competency and having not just moral duties but a legal duty to understand the implications of treaties and treaty-based systems nation to nation would include the CBSA having a full and clear training process on the Jay Treaty. Then when people who have inherent rights arrive at the border, they will not be criminalized, vilified or pulled into secondary to explain what their rights and constitutional protections are under the Jay Treaty.
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Mr. Speaker, I really appreciate the hon. member for allowing me to expand on that, given my proximity to the Haudenosaunee territory, where the Six Nations of the Grand River are actively involved in their own policing.
If we acknowledge that we are in nation-to-nation relationships, then we have to grant sovereignty, ultimately, over all decisions within those territories, which would absolutely include policing. We only have to look at the pipeline to prison, which starts, as we know, with policing in schools and ends up with the disgusting and abhorrent overrepresentation of indigenous people within our prison systems. That is absolutely an indictment on the ways we have failed to provide fair and adequate access to the legal system.
What we need to do is work toward having a justice system in this country. We cannot have a justice system until we address the ongoing colonialism that is expressed through the state's monopoly on violence as it relates to policing within indigenous communities.
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- May/4/22 10:28:46 p.m.
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Madam Chair, we have heard the laundry list of investments, and by my calculation, there should be $33 million going out to every province and territory. I am going to give the hon. member the opportunity to stand today and talk with specificity. Within the $33-million envelope that should be going to Nova Scotia, what is being invested in missing and murdered indigenous women?
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- May/4/22 10:18:34 p.m.
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Madam Chair, the hon. member mentioned that this evening provided an opportunity for us to have open dialogue, and yet if it were not for the hon. member for Winnipeg Centre calling for this take-note debate, we would not be in this space and this would not be a priority of the government.
Would the hon. member not finally concede that absent a push from the opposition side, the government would not be able to centre this particular conversation and critical issue in this moment?
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- May/4/22 10:08:05 p.m.
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Madam Chair, the hon. member raised a very important point in the context of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls, and that is the culpability of men. He talked about the need for greater attention to young boys and the perpetration of toxic masculinity. I would like the hon. member to have the opportunity to expand on what he feels we could be doing better as a society to end the talks of masculinity that results in the violence against missing and murdered indigenous women and girls.
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- May/4/22 10:04:07 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I do appreciate that the hon. member made reference to the horrors and atrocities of residential schools, and he did it in the framework of the sanctity of the family, but I do not recall hearing him talk about the atrocities of the murdered children who are being recovered from these institutions, which were often led by faith groups, including church organizations.
I wonder if the member would reflect on those atrocities given the context of the continued genocide within this country and offer any comments that he might have on the communities that are actively in the process of recovering those children today.
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- May/4/22 7:51:21 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, I could not idly sit by when I heard the previous speaker suggest that it is only through their employment that people find self-worth.
I will give the hon. member the opportunity, given the context of the debate that is before us today, to rise in this House and suggest ways in which he would be willing to support the basic dignity around housing, income supports and health care that go beyond settler-colonial resource extraction, which, quite frankly, is often at the heart of this continued perpetuation of genocide against indigenous women and girls.
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- Mar/25/22 11:14:30 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, 10,028 children were casualties of a brutal and protracted war. It was a genocide waged over generations against the first nations of these lands. These kidnapped children, laid to rest in the unmarked graves uncovered at just the first 11 out of 128 institutions, were only recently repatriated to their families and first nations after decades of pain and generations of trauma.
May these children and their families and communities finally find peace in their final return home, and may those still searching find their own peace in the same. May the survivors, their families and communities find justice: First nations leaders are preparing to meet with Pope Francis next week to seek a formal apology for the Catholic Church's role in residential schools, as well as immediate actions including returning land properties to first nations and investing in healing initiatives to ensure support for survivors and their descendants.
Finally, may we in the House take our own responsibilities, given the legacies of these atrocities, and fully consider the same.
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- Jan/31/22 4:40:45 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would also like to congratulate the hon. member for her maiden speech in the House. We heard her speak at length about when Canada is at its best. We have watched a kind of disproportionate response: the coddling of white nationalists on the footsteps of Parliament juxtaposed with the kind of violence that has been unleashed against indigenous people across these lands fighting for their freedoms.
In these upcoming weeks and months, as we debate these critical issues in the House to ensure true reconciliation, and the reckoning of the thousands of bodies of children who have been recovered at residential schools and the ongoing police violence used against indigenous peoples of these lands, what will the hon. member be doing to move toward the place that she talks about when Canada is at its best?
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- Dec/2/21 5:05:03 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate the hon. member for rising. In the past session, he was a bulwark of the party's truth and reconciliation process, through which the government is engaging in the atrocities that have been uncovered in our residential schools across the country.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has denounced the doctrine of discovery. Four of the commission's calls to action, calls to action 45, 46, 47 and 49, urge the government to publicly disavow the racist and white supremacist notion of the doctrine of discovery. The Supreme Court of Canada has repeatedly stated that the heart of reconciliation is to reconcile the pre-existing rights of indigenous peoples with the assertion of Crown sovereignty. The phrase “assertion of Crown sovereignty” is a Canadian euphemism for the doctrine of discovery.
The Mohawk Institute Residential School, which is near my riding, is beginning its painful process of recovering bodies. As we know, close to 7,000 children have been recovered across the country so far. Given its correlation with the deaths of over 7,000 indigenous children, would the hon. member repudiate the doctrine of discovery?
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