, 08.01.2024 12:49 PM

My latest: the feminists who aren’t

Supposed Trudeau Liberal mantra: believe the victims.

Actual Trudeau Liberal motto: humiliate victims.

That truth was revealed, yet again, this week on Parliament Hill. A House of Commons committee was conducting a rare Summertime hearing. The subject: violence against women.

It’s an important issue. Canadian women are five times more likely to be targeted with sexual assault. In their lifetimes, four in ten Canadian women have experienced some form of violence from a partner. In 2022, almost 200 Canadian women were murdered, mostly by men – that’s one every two days.

So, the Status of Women committee scheduled a meeting this week to hear from police officers and victims themselves.

The Liberals on the committee, it appears, were in a bad mood. They didn’t want their Summer vacations interrupted. They adjourned early, back in June, and won’t be back until the middle of September: that’s three months on the golf course and away from legislative business.

So, the Grits were grouchy.

Cait Alexander, a young woman who heads an advocacy group called End Violence Everywhere, was there to give evidence. Her family sat behind her as she spoke. “I’m supposed to be dead,” Alexander said. She showed the assembled MPs harrowing photographs of three years ago, when her then-boyfriend beat her and left her for dead.”If you haven’t met a survivor and a victim’s family, well, now you have.”

After Alexander finished her opening statement, Liberal MP Anita Vandenbeld spoke. You could be forgiven for thinking that Vandenbeld is a nobody who couldn’t get picked out of a one-person police lineup. She’s worked for the United Nations (naturally), and she’s been investigated by the Ethics Commissioner (practically a Trudeau Liberals job requirement). That’s about it.

Vandenbeld spoke. She made a few vanilla comments about the issue before the committee, and then she went after Conservative MPs for “politicizing” the issue. Which she, herself, then did. She wanted to talk about abortion.

The witnesses who had been invited to speak were dumbfounded. So were the Tory and NDP MPs present. Cait Alexander couldn’t believe what was happening. She held up the photos of her battered body again. She was crying. An advocate of battered women, Megan Walker, spoke: ”This is the problem. Did [Vandenbeld] listen to anything that was said this morning?”

The meeting descended into chaos, while the female victims of violence looked on, appalled. MPs started raising points of order. NDP MP Leah Gazan said: “I’m disgusted because I wasn’t given a chance to put forward witnesses when I’m representing ground zero for murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls.”

At that point, Cait Alexander got up and left, in tears. Walker got up and followed her.

Some of the MPs apologized to Cait Alexander’s Mom, who was still in the committee room. Her mother was unmoved. “Sorry isn’t good enough,” she said. “We’ve heard ‘sorry’.”

And that, really, was the best and only response to a disgusting, appalling display by Anita Vandenbeld her ilk: saying “sorry” isn’t enough. It doesn’t cut it.

But Vandenbeld is a Trudeau Liberal, isn’t she? She’s a card-carrying member of the cult that professes to be feminist, and then sticks by the boss when it’s revealed that he groped a female reporter at a beer festival in 2000.

They’re the ones who regularly chastise Conservatives (and others) for being insufficiently on the side of women – and then look the other way when their boss kicks two impressive women, Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott, out of cabinet. For talking back to him.

They’re the ones who insist that they want to ensure women have the right to choose – when they could have passed a law enshrining abortion rights at any time in the past decade. But didn’t.

By their words and their deeds, we know who the Trudeau Liberals are. Non-entities like Anita Vandenbeld show us, all the time.

They’re liars and hypocrites.

And, this week, they again reminded us that they don’t give a sweet damn about female victims of violence.

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11 Comments

  1. Warren,

    Liberals take note: this person has all the necessary qualifications to be your next leader. A perfect fit in the Trudeau tradition…

  2. Jason says:

    These Liberals have not done one damned thing in 9 years to improve the lives of Canadians. It’s all been one enormous self-serving grift. This is just another example.

    I did not like the social conservatism that was seeping into the Harper government. I’m pro-choice. But I have stood by this comment I made back around Election Day 2015: Stephen Harper’s Conservatives respected women infinitely more than Justin Trudeau’s Liberals ever did.

    To Trudeau and his patsies, women, like every special interest group, are props to be used when the cameras are rolling and nothing more.

  3. Douglas W says:

    If I was a Conservative strategist, I’d be reaching out to Jody Wilson-Raybould, Jane Philpott and Cait Alexander to see if they’d be interested in running under the Conservative banner in the next federal election.

    I suspect their collective responses would be No.
    So be it.

    It would certainly nullify the assertion that Conservatives remain insufficiently on the side of women.
    Worth a shot.

    • Jason says:

      If the NDP had competent leadership, Philpott and JWR would already have orange seats.

      Pierre can keep his mouth completely shut on this matter and still take it as a big W. The conduct of the Liberals (and, to a lesser extent, Leah Gazan) was selfish and deplorable.

    • Douglas,

      Excellent.

      It would be nice if they agreed to run. I would also add
      Celina R. Caesar-Chavannes to that list.

      • Jason says:

        The 3 politicians mentioned are way, way too far to the left for the CPC (and even the Liberals for that matter, but they made for good optics). Plus, Philpott was the only one of the 3 who didn’t make identity politics her raison d’etre.

        • Douglas W says:

          It would have to be very enticing to get these former Liberals to come on board.

          Wilson-Raybould: Foreign Affairs
          Philpott: Health (again), Treasury

          Would they to spite JT? Absolutely.

  4. Martin Dixon says:

    Can’t type out what I really think of this ridiculous nutcase.

  5. Ron Benn says:

    Vandenbeld is the MP for my riding. The only other time I recall seeing her name in the news is when she raised a resolution to stop hearing witnesses to a committee looking into sexual harassment in the military.

    Once is once. Twice is the start of a pattern. The pattern being Vandenbeld as a willing participant in shutting down investigations involving inappropriate behaviour by men against women. That she is a woman is why she was chosen by the puppet masters who control her strings. Imagine the sh!t storm if these stunts were done by a man.

    At issue is the character of an individual who is a willful participant in the charades that take place within Parliament and its committees.

    • The Doctor says:

      The only explanation I can think of is that the Liberals are convinced that abortion is the magic bullet issue that can/will save their butts (or at least the furniture) in the next election. And so they have marching orders to turn every public appearance and statement into a rant about abortion.

      I’m pro-choice, but I just roll my eyes whenever the Liberals blather on about this. I think they have a bit of US envy, because i think it’s a much more potent issue for the Democrats in the US this election cycle. I don’t think many Canadians are going to cast their vote solely, primarily or even significantly based on the abortion issue this time out.

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