NDP MP Leah Gazan issued the following statement in Parliament:

Mr. Speaker, I want to start by offering my condolences to the minister and noting her courage for sharing her story, her family story of violence. No family is free from gender-based violence. I honour her today, as well as all the women in the chamber. This is a sombre day, but it is a day of solidarity. As my Conservative colleague and my Bloc colleague said, we are united against violence.

Today I rise with a heart that carries many stories of loss. I rise first to honour the 14 young women murdered at École Polytechnique simply because they were women: Geneviève Bergeron, Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz, Hélène Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviernick, Maryse Laganière, Maryse Leclair, Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, Michèle Richard, Annie St-Arneault, Annie Turcotte.

They were 14 lives full of promise, 14 dreams interrupted by hatred. Their brilliance, their courage, and their futures were stolen in a single violent act that shook our country to its core. We say their names because their lives mattered. We say their names because their work mattered. We say their names because their presence mattered. The world they were building deserved to continue. Their family members, who I wish to honour today, live with a grief that does not fade. Their classmates, including our colleague, and community still carry the memory of that day.

Across the country, women still carry the knowledge that they were targeted because of who they were, because they were women. The tragedy at École Polytechnique was not an isolated event. It was an expression of misogyny that continues to shape the lives of women everywhere. It reminds us that gender-based violence is not an old wound healed by time. It is a living wound that demands action, compassion, real investment and truth.

Gender-based violence does not come in degrees. It does not rank itself. It does not make one group more worthy of mourning than another. Every woman harmed, every girl targeted, every gender-diverse person threatened and every life stolen by hatred is a profound loss for the people, for their family, for their community and for this country. The sorrow of one does not diminish the sorrow of another. These tragedies stand beside one another, each deserving our full attention and our full commitment to change, yet we must speak honestly.

While gender-based violence harms women everywhere, it does not harm all women equally. Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA+ people live with a level of violence that is not only severe but also systemic. Their families endure disappearances that are met with silence. Our lives are threatened by conditions created through generations of colonial policy. Our safety is undermined by poverty and racism, by the lack of services, and by failures of institutions meant to protect them. We are in a constant state of grief. It is constant, unrelenting and violent.

This is not a parallel issue. It is not a separate crisis. It is part of the same violent web that took the lives of those young women at École Polytechnique. It is part of the same misogyny intensified and sharpened by the deep roots of colonialism. We must tell the truth.

The targeting of indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA+ people is part of an ongoing genocide in this country. It is something that was acknowledged by the Right Hon. Justin Trudeau as an ongoing genocide, not a metaphor. It is also something for which, even in this year’s budget, there was zero budgetary allocation to deal with this crisis. That hurts. That is systemic violence that continues to wound us because we are valuable, we are precious, we are sacred and we are worthy of safety and dignity.

It is the lived realities of families who search for loved ones without the support they deserve. It is the lived reality of mothers who hold vigils year after year. It is the lived reality of communities who bury daughters and aunties far too young, the women who go missing outside of my front door, the very front door that is a block and a half away from where women were taken by a serial killer and left in a landfill, and people are refusing to search for us. We are valuable. We are worthy. We are precious. Our humanity, and seeing our humanity, matters.

To honour the women of École Polytechnique is to honour all women who face violence, and to honour all women is to confront the specific violence faced by indigenous women and girls and gender-diverse people. These truths do not compete. They reinforce one another. One teaches us the cost of misogyny; the other shows us what happens when misogyny is multiplied by racism, colonial history and state neglect. Both demand that we act with urgency and courage. The response must be as full and determined as the sorrow we carry.

We honour the 14 women murdered at École Polytechnique by refusing to accept violence as inevitable. We honour indigenous women and girls and 2SLGBTQQIA+ people by refusing to allow their names to fade into silence. We honour all survivors by creating a world where equality is not an aspiration but a guarantee. That means real investments in safety for everyone. That means implementing the calls for justice. That means culturally grounded healing programs, safe housing, mental health supports, protection for two-spirit identity and accountability for institutions that have failed communities again and again. That means recognizing that no woman’s life is disposable, no child’s future is negotiable and no family’s grief should be ignored.

Let us build a country where the names of the 14 women who were taken at École Polytechnique are held with love; a country where indigenous families no longer stand in the snow and rain holding candles, time and time again, for their loved ones, particularly their daughters who never come home; a country where justice is not symbolic but lived; and a country where safety is an expectation, not a privilege. For those taken too early, for those still missing, for those carrying wounds, both visible and invisible, for those yet to be born, let this be the moment we choose action over sorrow, truth over silence, justice over delay. We owe it to all of them.