Madam Speaker, the last time we addressed this issue, we were talking about the New Democrats' hope that the government would implement a national action plan to end violence against women. This week there was a major push by women's organizations for a national action plan to end violence against women. The same front-line women's organizations in Canada have been leading the way on gender equality.

Here are a couple of updates for the House. This week, in the Vancouver Sun, Janice Abbott, the CEO of Atira Women's Resource Society, a women's anti-violence organization, said:

If Canada has a role to play, globally and locally, in the protection and improvement of women's rights, it is this: We need, as noted in Amnesty International's 2017 Human Rights Agenda, for Canada to develop a “comprehensive, coordinated, well-resourced national action plan on violence against women, with specific measures to end violence against indigenous women and girls.”

This week, Oxfam issued a report card, a feminist scorecard 2017, and it noted, “What is now needed is a comprehensive national action plan to end violence against women”. Oxfam noted, “Much to the disappointment of women's organizations across the country, the Liberal government has not committed to developing a national action plan on violence against women”.

The absence of a national action plan is making responses largely fragmented, often inaccessible, and inconsistent across our country.

The Oxfam report card went on to say that this government's decision to go with a narrower strategy is a “disappointment to women's organizations across the country. This strategy will only apply to federal institutions and therefore lacks the depth and scope of a national action plan, which would have responded to the need for women to have access to comparable levels of services and protection across the country”.

This falls again on Canada's commitment to the United Nations around a national action plan to end violence against women. The United Nations called in 1995 and again in 2008. Canada signed on to that commitment to have a national action plan by the year 2015. Last year, in November, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women turned its attention to the government's track record. The UN CEDAW said this government is failing to act on “The continued high prevalence of gender-based violence against women...particularly against indigenous women and girls;...the lack of a national action plan, bearing in mind that the strategy will only apply at the federal level;...the lack of shelters, support services and other protective measures for women victims of gender-based violence, which...prevents them from leaving their violent partners”.

The year before, in 2015, a network of dozens of organizations across the country submitted a blueprint for Canada's national action plan on violence against women and girls.

The government has all the tools, all the commitments, and all the incentives, given its stated platform to take leadership, but that leadership is missing. Why will the government not adopt a national plan? Why such a narrow federal plan to end violence against women?

Sheila Malcolmson

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Adjournment Proceedings

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