A meeting on violence against women turned into a political battle across party lines.
Last week, The Standing Committee on the Status of Women, chaired by local Hastings-Lennox & Addington MP Shelby Kramp-Neuman, welcomed witnesses to discuss domestic violence, physical and sexual abuse.
Kramp-Neuman says recent Statistics Canada data shows alarming increases.
The following data was shared by Kramp-Neuman to Quinte News
Since 2015:
– Total sexual assaults (all three levels) up 74.83%
– Total sexual violations against children up 118.85% (slight decrease from last year), forcible confinement or kidnapping up 10.63%, indecent/harassing communications up 86.41%
– Non-consensual distribution of intimate images up 801.17% (this offence just came into force in 2014, so understandable that it would escalate, but still a big number).
– Trafficking in persons up 83.68%
Witnesses spoke at the beginning of the meeting, however, Liberal MP Anita Vandenbeld put forward a motion to change the discussion to abortion rights, a motion which passed.
VANDENBELD: “There are very important issues that we have said, we’ve adjourned debate”WITNESS: (overlapping) “Violence against women is the most important issue we can address.”VANDENBELD: “And the motion reads, that The Standing Committee of the Status of Women report to the House (of Commons) thatA: Access and availability to reproductive health services, no matter where one lives in Canada, including safe and legal abortion, is a Charter right and is assured under the Canada Health Act andB: The decision to have an abortion made by women, transgender, and non-binary individuals, for any reason is their freedom of choice and theirs alone.”
Witnesses stormed out of the meeting after a long debate and comments by all parties on the motion change.
Peterborough-Kawartha Conservative MP Michelle Ferreri called it disgraceful.
“And if we are collegial, I just think if we are focusing on women here, they’ve actually turned their back and they’ve left. They were here to represent all women, which is what this committee is for.”
Conservatives say New Democrats and Liberals shut out witnesses’ testimony, while the Liberal and NDP members accused the Conservatives of calling the meeting too quickly.
NDP Member Leah Gazan, MP for Winnipeg Centre, says she was not invited to call witnesses to the rare summer meeting.
“Not one Indigenous woman, not one trans woman was asked. It was not done in a thoughtful way. It’s a way of silencing voices.”
Conservative Anna Roberts is the MP for King-Vaughan and says politics got in the way.
“I’m really disgusted in this whole day. I want to apologize to the two witnesses for coming all this distance, to help us solve a problem, that women in this country are being killed and the other parties don’t care. I’m disgusted.”
Witnesses are demanding an apology for how they say they were treated by the committee members.
Quinte News asked Kramp-Neuman to comment, however, she said as chair, she was not in a position to do so.
The full meeting can be seen by CLICKING HERE.
