A witness who left a House of Commons committee hearing on violence against women in tears this week after the meeting devolved into bickering says she fears the incident will make it harder for other survivors to come forward.
In a series of conversations with Global News, Cait Alexander, who testified before the status of women committee that she narrowly survived a violently abusive relationship, said her experience on Parliament Hill has left her heartbroken and furious that the message she came to Ottawa to deliver has been overshadowed.
“It takes courage to speak out,” she said. “It takes courage to face anyone when you don’t know what their reaction to your situation is going to be. And the way that this was handled was the exact fear that every single survivor and victim has.
“That’s why I call it ‘abuse’… because it’s the same gaslighting and minimizing of our experience that makes us not want to come forward.”
Wednesday’s emergency committee meeting was called by Conservatives in the middle of the summer parliamentary recess to hear from advocates for domestic violence victims and a deputy chief of the Peel Region Police in light of several recent high-profile cases and newly released crime data from Statistics Canada.
But the meeting went off the rails not long after opening statements, with Liberal and NDP members accusing Conservatives of rushing the meeting for political gain and not including witnesses from the at-risk Indigenous and LGBTQ2 communities.
Liberal MP Anita Vandenbeld said during the committee that she and all committee members care about the issue of gender-based violence, then called for a debate on a motion related to abortion rights, which the Liberals say would be at risk under a Conservative government. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has denied the accusation.
NDP MP Leah Gazan, who is Indigenous, then raised multiple points of order to speak and, after being allowed to do so, proceeded to talk at length about both abortion access and the lack of marginalized voices at Wednesday’s meeting, reading from prepared remarks.
Vandenbeld’s motion sparked a long back-and-forth on procedure, leaving Alexander and Megan Walker, an advocate for ending gender-based violence, sitting silent at the witness table.
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As the procedural debate played out, Alexander and Walker turned their backs on the committee. They then stormed out of the room.
“I think it was so childish, from all sides,” Alexander said Thursday. That includes the Conservatives, she said, who have since repeatedly attacked the Liberals and NDP over what happened.
“I do not have a partisan agenda. I am very irritated that this has been turned into a conversation about that when it shouldn’t be.
“Our trauma will not be used for political agendas.”
The meeting had heard sobering testimony before it got sidetracked.
Peel Regional Police Deputy Chief Nick Milinovich said in his region alone, data shows that “a woman is strangled every single day.” He shared details of some of the victims of recent femicides in Peel, which he said account for almost 20 per cent of the 114 homicides so far this year.
Alexander shared graphic photos of the abuse she experienced during her opening statement, and read out a list of related cases, including that of 17-year-old Breanna Broadfoot, who was killed in what Ontario police say was intimate partner violence.
Alexander, a Canadian citizen who lives in Los Angeles, told Global News she immediately began reaching out to those survivors and victims’ families for permission to share their stories as soon as she got the invitation to appear at the committee from its staff.
Statistics Canada’s latest annual report on police-reported crime, released last week, shows the number of female homicide victims last year was nearly identical compared to 2022 — 205 women killed — despite a 14 per cent drop in total homicide victims over the same period.
Homicides where women were the victims are up 31 per cent from 2019, compared to 12 per cent for all genders.
The new data also says reports to police of unwanted sex or touching and sexual assault with a weapon, meanwhile, has increased by 75 and 96 per cent, respectively, since 2015.
One B.C. advocate for survivors say the way the meeting unfolded showed committee members didn’t fully appreciate the testimony being delivered, or the significance of survivors and advocates appearing in person.
“We need to be honouring these stories,” said Dalya Israel, executive director of Salal Sexual Violence Support Centre in Vancouver.
“We need to be awake to the realities and the horrors that people are living through, regardless of what government they support or represent or what their background is.”
Vandenbeld and the Liberals did not respond to multiple requests for comment from Global News. An NDP spokesperson said Friday that Gazan was not available to comment after several requests to her office and the party.
Vandenbeld said in a statement to The Canadian Press Thursday that she deeply regrets the “distress that this meeting caused the witnesses.”
“It’s not an apology,” said Alexander, who has called for one.
She said she has not heard directly from Vandenbeld, but has spoken privately to other MPs both on and off the committee — including Conservatives, Liberals and the Bloc Quebecois — who have offered their own apologies and regrets for what happened on Wednesday.
Despite what happened, Alexander said she would still accept a future invitation from the committee to testify, and is hopeful other survivors won’t be deterred from doing the same.
She said her experience and the advocacy it inspired gives her no choice but to keep speaking out.
“If (my abuser) had picked up the meat tenderizer and not the rolling pin we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now,” she said.
“I won’t be silent.”
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