The Canadian justice system is failing victims and the public at large, something no blame game can justify or resolve. Photo Credit: iStock.
Do Canadians care more about policies and issues than the political games played around them? If so, they found little to celebrate at a contentious meeting of a House committee on the Status of Women, nor the posturing that followed it.
On July 31, the Status of Women committee at the House of Commons met to hear a deputy police chief and two female victims of violence testify that the justice and bail system was failing victims.
Witness Cait Alexander showed graphic photos of abuse at the hands of her ex-boyfriend three years prior.
“My ex was beating me all 6’3”, approximately 250 pounds of him because he couldn’t find his car keys, for hours with his fists, his feet, a wooden rolling pin, door wells, he split my head open in three places, gouged my eyes out with his thumbs, kicked my ribs and tortured me,” she said.
“Your criminal injustice system gave me a peace bond. All eight charges, five in the provincial, three in the federal, were stayed against my ex.”
Alexander moved to California and started the advocacy group End Violence Everywhere.
“This is my passport and I’m damned embarrassed,” she said. “I can’t live in Canada anymore because it’s not safe for me.”
“[Prime Minister Justin] Trudeau doesn’t care, [Premier Doug] Ford doesn’t care. [Justice Minister] Arif [Virani] doesn’t care, and the government doesn’t care.”
Alexander and subsequent witness Megan Walker listed numerous cases of victims whose perpetrators received a light touch, as did Peel Police Deputy Chief Nick Milinovich. In 2023, his service responded to 9,500 cases of family and intimate partner violence and laid 9,050 charges. He listed many instances where Peel criminals were released or on house arrest only to commit further crimes.
Milinovich said there were 874 homicides in Canada in 2022, for which 256 were charged having been out on release. Milinovich said reforms were necessary.
Next, Ottawa West–Nepean Liberal MP Anita Vandenbeld took the floor. She said Liberals cared and took violence against women seriously, and pointed to bills and studies by the government as proof.
But Vandenbeld complained that, contrary to normal practice, only Conservative MPs on the committee had been allowed to call witnesses, and one was announced on one hour’s notice.
“We do not use victims and survivors of trauma to try and score political points in this committee,” Vandenbeld said. Then in a surprise twist, she moved that a discussion on abortion rights set aside in 2022 in the interests of “congeniality” be resumed with an immediate vote on the issue.
Alexander, upset at being ignored, held up photos of her wounds again. Walker said, “This is the problem. Did she listen to anything that was said this morning?”
Conservative MP Michelle Ferreri, commented that in July, Statistics Canada released figures showing that since 2015, 75 per cent increase in sexual assaults, sexual violations against children up 119 per cent.
But NDP MP Leah Gazan accused Conservative committee chair Shelby Kramp-Neuman of failing to give her the floor, nor enabling her to put forward witnesses to represent the indigenous.
As the meeting descended into points of order, Alexander left the room in tears, later followed by Walker. Conservative MP Anna Roberts said she was “disgusted in this whole day,” and apologized to the departed witnesses. Ferreri blasted Vandenbeld at the meeting, as did others on social media following the debacle.
If Vandenbeld had any contrition, it was not apparent. In a commentary to National Newswatch, she insisted the backlash she suffered led to her to close her constituency office for a week out of “fear for my safety and that of my staff.”
“The traps that are being set by the far-right, their willingness to use anyone’s pain to achieve political ends, and a capitulation by the media to click-bait have made it impossible to protect and defend parliamentary processes or basic fairness,” she added.
Although Vandenbeld’s intervention hijacked the meeting, she insisted, “I ran for office specifically to ensure that the voices of women and other excluded groups would be heard in our parliament.”
Yet Vandenbeld seemed to object to Alexander showing pictures of her cuts and bruises.
“During the meeting, many parliamentary rules were broken, including allowing witnesses to show ‘props’ – in this case photos,” complained Vandenbeld.
The Liberal MP alleged that committee meetings were being called throughout the summer at the direction of Conservative Pierre Poilievre who was “following Trump’s playbook.”
“Right-wing populism is threatening our democracy, undermining our institutions, and creating division,” Vandenbeld alleged, due to “authoritarian countries…spreading disinformation” to prompt “polarizing discourse” and “rage farming.”
The MP’s warning about “anti-democratic and authoritarian threats” putting “our very democracy… at stake” rings hollow. Don’t blame Russia or even China for a Parliamentary meeting that went woefully awry by the actions of MPs themselves. The Canadian justice system is failing victims and the public at large, something no blame game can justify or resolve.
