Kelly DeRidder

In response to a question from Pat Kelly

“I agree. A committee must look closely at this bill. The new commission would have too much power and might just add more bureaucracy to avoid real blame and criminal accountability.”

“Mr. Speaker, yes, I agree. This is absolutely something that needs to be scrutinized as we move into committee. The commission would be a superregulator and be able to make its own decisions. Would there really be accountability in that, or is it just going to be another excuse, another layer of bureaucracy, where we would be able to pass blame instead of having real, true criminal accountability for a few of the items just discussed?”

“Too many Canadians cannot afford food, including hundreds of thousands of children. The government is making life more expensive. When will it take responsibility and admit there is an affordability crisis?”

“Madam Speaker, of course, the member used the opportunity to attack Conservatives instead of focusing on a solution. One in nine households in the Waterloo region struggles to afford food. Across Canada, food banks saw 2.36 million visits in March alone, and one-third of those were children. There are 800,000 children going hungry in Canada. Canadians cannot afford excuses, and they cannot afford the government. When will the government take responsibility for making life more expensive and finally admit that we are in an affordability crisis?”

“All parties have talked, and I am asking everyone to agree to send this bill to the public safety committee instead of the justice committee.”

“On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, there have been discussions amongst all parties, and I believe if you seek it, you will find unanimous consent for the following motion. I move: That Bill C-240 be transferred from the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights and referred to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security pursuant to Standing Order 73(3).”

In response to a question from Andréanne Larouche

“I want Parliament to pass this bill to keep a national plan against partner abuse going. Leaving an abusive partner is hard and dangerous. Victims often cannot leave because they lack money, housing, or child care. This bill will help us track what support victims actually need and fix the gaps in our system.”

“Mr. Speaker, one of the hardest things to imagine is being afraid of the person one lives with: the person who is supposed to care about them, the person they share their home with, and the person who may know exactly how to make them feel trapped, isolated and afraid to leave. For some people experiencing intimate partner violence, getting out is not always as simple as walking through the front door. There may be children or pets involved. There may be nowhere else to live. There may be financial barriers, threats or even a real fear of what happens when an abusive partner finds out that they even want to leave. We have to keep these things in mind when we talk about preventing intimate partner violence. In 2024, police recorded more than 128,000 victims of intimate partner violence in Canada. Nearly eight in 10 were women and girls. That same year, 81 women were killed by a current or former intimate partner. Those numbers are devastating, and behind every one of them is a person, a family and a life that is forever changed. As the shadow minister for women and gender equality, I take this issue seriously. It is also something we have been hearing about through our work in committee. We have just wrapped up a study on women’s shelters, and we look forward to finalizing the report and putting forward recommendations that reflect what we have heard. During that study, we heard from amazing witnesses. Some of them work on the front lines, helping women navigate the difficult times and these difficult moments in their life. Others have survived abuse and have since dedicated their life to helping other women find safety and rebuild. There is something important about hearing from people with lived experience. They understand what it takes to leave. They understand the fear, the uncertainty and the challenges that come with starting over, and they know that getting someone out of immediate danger is only a part of their journey. A woman also needs somewhere safe to go. She may need help finding housing, supporting her children, accessing counselling or getting back on her feet financially. She needs to know that when she asks for help, there will be someone there to help her walk through her very next steps. A common theme that kept coming up during committee was the need for practical supports that meet women where they are at, along with coordinated resources to make support accessible. Telling a woman to leave an abusive situation is one thing. Making sure she has somewhere safe to go when she does it is another. We need to be honest about that difference. That is why Bill S-242, Georgina’s law, is worth talking about. The bill is about continuing a national action plan to prevent intimate partner violence. We can announce funding and study the issue, but what matters most is where we do the work. We need to ask the right questions. Where are women having trouble getting help? What happens when a shelter is full? What options does a woman have if she decides to leave tonight? How do we make sure that women in smaller communities have access to supports too? How do we make it easier for the organizations helping these women to collaborate and work together? These are not hypothetical scenarios. They are the real kinds of work and what a women thinks about before they leave. It helps her determine if there is an actual safe way out. We cannot expect someone who is already dealing with fear and uncertainty to spend days calling different organizations, repeating her story and trying to figure out which services might be able to help her. We need to make it easier for women to find all the available support, and we need to be honest about where that support is falling short. That is where the experiences of the witnesses we heard from become so important. They have seen what works. They have seen where women get stuck. They know what happens when women are ready to leave but do not have the money, housing or support to make that possible. When survivors dedicate their life to helping other women, we should listen to what they have learned. Their experiences cannot be something we listen to and acknowledge just during committee but forget the moment we walk outside those doors. They should help shape decisions we make. One of the things I want to see from this kind of national work is a clear focus on prevention. Far too often, we have this conversation only after the tragedy has occurred. A woman is seriously hurt, or a family loses someone they love, and everyone asks, “How could this happen?” We need to ask those questions before we reach that point. Did someone recognize the warning signs? Was there help available? Did the person experiencing abuse know where to turn? What barriers were in place that left them feeling that leaving was impossible? IPV does not always begin with physical violence. It can start with controlling behaviour, threats, isolation or financial abuse. A person may gradually lose contact with friends or family or become increasingly dependent on a partner causing them harm. By the time we reach out, they may have been dealing with the situation for a very long time. We need to make sure that people take the warning signs seriously. We need accessible support and people who know how to respond to services and can help prevent the situation before it escalates. We need to remember that leaving an abusive relationship can become one of the most dangerous periods for the victim. That makes safety planning and access to knowledgeable support all the more important. Prevention is not simply telling people that abuse is wrong. It is making sure that people recognize they are in an unsafe situation and know that they have support to turn to and a way to move forward. I would also like to take a moment to acknowledge and thank the people who work in women’s shelters and support organizations every single day, like a few in my riding such as Women in Crisis, the YWCA, Safe Families, the Sexual Assault Service Centre and many more. These people sit with women in crisis, help them make difficult decisions and work with them to give their children and themselves a chance to move forward, sometimes to the point of burnout. Their work matters tremendously, but we cannot rely on them to make up for every gap in the system. They need resources to be able to do their jobs, they need to be able to connect women with the services they require and they need us to take their concerns seriously when they say that something is not working. That is one of the reasons I look forward to finalizing our committee’s report on women’s shelters. We have heard from people with lived experience and from survivors who turned some of the hardest moments of their lives into a commitment to helping others. We owe it to them to take their testimony seriously and consider what changes would make a real difference in their lives. There is not a one-size-fits-all approach, but there should be a common expectation that women who need help immediately can find it, and they should be treated with dignity and respect as they do. I want to be clear about what Georgina’s law can accomplish. On its own, this bill would not create more shelter beds or frontline organizations. What it would do is require continued national action, engagement with those affected by IPV and regular reporting. If a woman cannot find a safe space to stay, we need to address that. If services are difficult to navigate, we need to look at how to make them more accessible. If organizations are identifying gaps in support, we need to hear about them and respond. That is how we keep this work grounded in the lives of the people it is meant to help. No woman should feel like her options are to stay in the abusive relationship or leave without knowing where she stands or where her children will sleep. No woman should have to navigate a maze of services all the time in trying to get herself to safety. No survivor should come forward to tell us what needs to change and feel their experience has gone unheard. Georgina’s law is an opportunity to keep prevention on the agenda and bring the right people together to identify what is working, what gaps remain and how we are going to fix them. At the end of the day, we can have meeting after meeting and create endless programs to help, but that is not success. We measure it by whether a woman needs help and can get it, whether she can find a safe place to go, whether she and her children can begin to rebuild their lives and whether we are doing everything we can to prevent another family from losing a loved one. That is the responsibility we have and it is the work we must continue.”

“Food bank visits across Canada are way up, and one in nine families in my area relies on them. Even a huge local donation could not cover the need. The Liberal government is failing to fix the high cost of living, and they need to do something about it.”

“Mr. Speaker, Canada’s food banks saw 2.36 million visits in March alone, up 117% since 2019. In Waterloo region, one in nine families relies on food banks just to get by. Waterloo businessman Jim Balsillie donated an extraordinary $4.5 million to our local food bank. That was an incredible act of kindness and generosity. The fact that our food bank still needs more support, despite a donation of that size, shows just how great the need has become. It is clear that the Liberal government is failing to acknowledge the affordability crisis or ensure stability within our market. Until these things change, it is only going to get worse. Canadians need to be able to put warm food on the table without relying on a food bank. The Liberal government must react to the needs of everyday Canadians.”

“Waterloo region had 70 overdoses in four days. The government's drug policies have failed. I want the government to change direction and focus on treatment and recovery instead.”

“Mr. Speaker, if the government is serious about strengthening protections, maybe it should actually do it. Waterloo region had 70 overdoses in four days. This is not just a public health issue. This is a humanitarian crisis. Our Conservative plan will keep communities safe. How many more lives need to be lost? How many more families torn apart before this government finally reacts? When will this government reverse course, admit that its policies are failures and start focusing on recovery, rehabilitation and treatment?”

“I want the House to pass this bill. It sends young people who break the law into addiction treatment instead of jail. It also stops judges from jailing them just because they struggle with treatment. Locking up young people cuts them off from their families and makes crime worse. Getting them help breaks that cycle.”

“Mr. Speaker, I want to start today by asking everyone in this room to think of a teenager in their life. It could be their son, daughter, grandchild, niece, nephew or even a neighbour. Imagine that teenager is going through a rough patch. They got caught up in substance abuse or addiction, which is something that happens in all our communities day in and day out. Now imagine that the rough patch leads them to make a mistake. They commit a petty crime or make a poor decision that brings them into contact with our justice system. What do members want to happen to the teenager in that moment? Do they want them to be locked away in a cell, surrounded by influence, where their addiction could continue, or do they want them to recover, to get into counselling and get the help they need to turn their life around? I think most of us would choose care. We would choose to give that young person a second chance at a different life, which is a choice that brings us here today to Bill C-231. Bill C-231 is about updating the laws we have around youth justice to focus on health, recovery and healing. The first big change it would bring is to create a path to recovery for a young person who broke the law, instead of sending them straight to jail. It would give them that second chance to get clean, get healthy and rebuild their life before a continued life of addiction truly takes hold. I think that second chance is something we can all understand. None of us would ever want our worst decision at 17 years old to dictate the rest of our life. We understand that a young person can change, because we have seen it. We have seen young people graduate, get jobs, rebuild relationships with their families and become leaders in their community. The question is whether our justice system is going to help them make that possible or whether it will make that journey even harder. We all know that recovery is not a straight line. It is a climb. Sometimes we stumble, and that is okay, as long as we get ourselves back up again. This bill would make sure that if a young person stumbles on their first try, the judge cannot throw them back into prison for failing treatment. Why is this important? It is because fear cannot shut down recovery. If a teenager thinks that admitting they have slipped up will land them in jail, they will likely hide their struggles, lie to those around them or even run away. By removing that threat of time in prison, we would give them a safe environment to keep trying until recovery sticks. To understand why this change is necessary, we have to take a look at how our system works today. For a long time, our system has operated like a hammer: If a person breaks a rule, the hammer comes down. However, addiction is not something we can hammer away. We cannot punish trauma, or dependence on a substance, out of a human being. When we lock up a young person who is addicted to drugs or alcohol, two things usually happen. First, they will not get access to recovery and the care they need to beat the addiction. Second, they are isolated from their family. We remove them from their school or learning program and connect them with deeper criminal behaviours. When they eventually get released, often as young adults, their addiction is still there, but now they have lost their support system, or it is broken, and their future opportunities are limited. Creating a cycle where people reoffend time after time does not make our community safer. This is where I believe we need to think beyond punishment with respect to addiction. We need to start thinking about outcomes, and at the end of the day, the goal in our justice system should not be simply to punish someone but to create a path to breaking cycles and building a different life. We have to ask ourselves what a true, safe community looks like. Is the neighbourhood safer when a young person is locked away for six months, only to come back angrier, more disconnected and still addicted, or is the neighbourhood safer when that same teenager is guided through healing and education, and can build a stable life and become a happy, healed, productive neighbour? Bill C-231 would step into that cycle and break it at the beginning. It recognizes that teenagers’ brains are still developing. Their decision-making skills are still being formed. Teenagers are wired to make mistakes, test boundaries and sometimes fall into bad situations, but their brains are remarkably adaptable. At that age, with the right structure, the right rehabilitation plan and proper guidance, a young person can turn their entire life around before adulthood. This is why early intervention is so incredibly important. The earlier we can interrupt addiction, the earlier we can reconnect young people with their family, with education and with their community. This is not about letting people off the hook or ignoring accountability. Recovery is hard work. One has to show up every day, take accountability for one’s past and do the heavy emotional lifting it takes to heal and become truly addiction-free. This is real accountability. It requires far more effort and leads to far better results than just sitting in a jail cell. Think about what this means for families. When a young person falls into addiction, it is not their personal crisis. It pulls in their entire family. Parents spend sleepless nights worrying about their child, whether they will come home and whether they are still alive. They look for treatment beds, navigate confusing and expensive health care systems and try desperately to keep their children safe. When legal trouble hits, many parents feel isolated, as if they have hit a dead end. They fear that the court will take their child away and lock them up, leaving the underlying issue untreated. Bill C-231 offers families hope. It would turn the feeling of being stuck into a doorway for help. It would allow everyone to work together to guide our young people back on the right track. It says to parents that their child has made a mistake but that we are going to focus on getting them well so they can rebuild their future. That future matters. If we help even one young person recover, we are helping not only that individual but also their parents, their siblings, their classmates, their future co-workers and even the communities that they will eventually be a part of. Every young person we help get back on their feet is one more person who has the opportunity to contribute instead of being trapped in a cycle of addiction and the justice system. To wrap things up, I want to leave us with one simple thought. A society should not be judged by how strictly it punishes its young people when they fail. It should be judged by how effectively we help them stand back up. Bill C-231 is practical, compassionate and a necessary update to our youth justice system. It would choose rehabilitation, and, most importantly, it would give young people who have lost their way a realistic path toward recovery. We all want safer communities. We all want our young people to grow up healthy and educated and to have a wonderful life that they build on their own. Bill C-231 would give us the ability to make that a reality. In the name, memory and honour of David, I look forward to the bill’s passing the final stage.”

“Eleven years ago, Canada had the richest middle class in the G7. Today, the government has spent billions of dollars, but still cannot get projects approved. I want to know why nothing gets approved.”

“Madam Speaker, 11 years ago, we had the richest middle class in all of the G7 under the Harper government. After 11 years of failed policy and blocking our economy, we now seem to be turning course. After many announcements and billions of dollars spent, why does nothing seem to get approved so that we can get back to the amazing Canada we had before the Liberal government took office?”

“I want the member to explain what the government is doing to lower costs for Canadians. I also want him to answer why they will not get rid of the gas tax completely.”

“Mr. Speaker, I would like my colleague to please emphasize the importance of lowering costs on Canadians. Could he actually lay out all of the measures taking place right now, as well as answer why they are not implementing the entire plan and eliminating all the federal tax on gas?”