Madam Chair, certainly one of the most profound things we do in the House sometimes is to speak in these take-note debates. Tonight, of course, is no different in terms of the incredible speeches and passion that we are hearing.

Certainly we all have a shared responsibility to protect our mothers, daughters and sisters across this country. Women, girls and members of the LGBTQ+ community continue to face violence or harassment in their homes, schools, workplaces, online and in the streets. Of course, that is just unacceptable.

I grew up in a household where I always say my dad was a feminist before his time. He had four daughters. I was very fortunate and perhaps naive. It was only when I headed into the nursing profession that I started to realize the scope and challenges of the problem of violence against women and domestic violence. As a young nurse working in rural and indigenous communities, my first time with a rape victim was when she had been found unconscious, lying nude in a ball diamond down the street. Then there was the first time someone came in who had been stabbed by a partner in the evening, and the first time I saw bruises on a person I knew from the community. She was wearing a turtleneck to cover-up the bruises from the abuse, in the middle of summer, and too ashamed to talk about it. I started to realize the profound scope of the issue we are facing. Certainly it continues.

I was looking at statistics before this debate. It is a little bit hard to say whether the situation is actually getting any better or worse. Going through the statistics, it is really hard to compare apples with apples, but we do know that COVID is really making things more challenging.

I believe I mentioned this at the start, but I am splitting my time with the member for Yorkton—Melville.

Marylène Levesque died in 2020 right before COVID struck. In this case, someone out on probation was told to take care of his needs and murdered her as part of doing that. How can we have someone going out on probation with that sort of opportunity and those sorts of instructions?

We do know that this problem is not new, but we also know that with COVID, we certainly have a new crisis and a new sense of urgency. Maybe what we need to do is to have a special focus right now. It is a global problem, but we really need to talk about having a special something happening right now for those with intimate partners who are trapped in their homes with their abusers. The abusers are using COVID to further control and isolate people from friends and families. Again, the statistics are all very different, but one in three women will experience physical or sexual harassment and violence in their lifetime, so we have a problem in Canada. I heard one of our colleagues earlier talk about 2.5 women are killed every week by intimate partners.

I think we have talked about the negatives, and so I do want to spend a bit of time talking about some of the things that it has been my privilege to be a part of. Who has not been part of a take back the night march and had the opportunity to see incredible power? Who has not put on a white ribbon as we look at that campaign for women? Moose Hide is a really important campaign.

One campaign that people might not have heard of is the Angel Street campaign, which started in Iqaluit. It was a project to name streets after women. I had the honour to be part of a march in one of the indigenous communities in my area. Lesós is the Secwepemc word for “angel”. We marched and renamed the street. What was most powerful about the march was—

Cathy McLeod

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