The Liberal government’s intended changes to Canada’s citizenship guide signal to me that this government is more concerned about being politically correct and gaining votes from the immigrant communities than in protecting vulnerable women and girls in immigrant communities.
The federal government has taken out the section stating that ‘barbaric cultural practices’ such as honour killing and female genital mutilation are crimes in Canada.[1]
Female genital mutilation is a brutal cultural practice that mutilates a young woman’s genitals. The procedure involves partial or total removal of the external female genital or other injury to the female genital organ to eliminate sexual pleasure for women. The World Health Organization estimates that globally, each year, over 200 million girls and women are subjected to female genital mutilation. [2]
According to the United Nations, worldwide over 5 million women are killed in the name of family honour each year. Honour based violence is a term used to identify a particular form of cultural violence against women.[3] It is an act deliberately taken by blood relatives, parents, brothers and uncles, intended to restore ‘family honour’ rooted in efforts to control women’s sexual and social lives. In Canada, thousands of girls living in immigrant families are at risk[4].
The draft of the new Citizen Guide has removed the reference to barbaric cultural practices being a crime in Canada and replaced it with a section on “Quality of Life in Canada” relating to the educational system, saving money for children’s schooling, medical care and leisure time. To me, it suggests that, now, immigrant parents are free to take their teenage girls, born and brought up in Canada, out of the country and force them into marriage or be subjected to female genital mutilation.
Prime Minister Trudeau is fond of repeating that “Canada has learned how to be strong not in spite of our differences, but because of them.” I suggest that tolerance and ignoring these cultural differences, which often cost young girls their lives, should not be tolerated.
The Canadian Citizenship Guide must state in clear terms that taking young girls, Canadian Citizens, out of the country and forcing them into marriage or having them undergo female genital mutilation procedures are viewed as crimes in Canada.
Working as a front line service provider for the past 35 years, I have witnessed countless cases of female genital mutilation and honour based violence. I stood with a mother in the hospital emergency department, whose nine year old daughter screamed in pain because her genital area had become infected and turned into a large boil filled with pus between her legs.
I grew up in a culture where the community condones barbaric practices harmful to young girls. These communities now exist in Canada.
The Canadian Citizenship Guide as it stands says, welcome to Canada, we respect your culture and you are free to practice your religion, but our tolerance ends when human rights are violated.
Female genital mutilation, honour killing and honour related crimes against women are a violation of women’s human rights that marginalizes or denies their sexual and bodily integrity.
In 1987, I started a small project to research the issue of domestic violence. Today this organization provides services to nearly two thousand new Canadians from around the world. They study the immigration Guide from cover to cover. The current guide tells newcomers, in very clear terms that barbaric cultural practices will not tolerated in Canada. For these new immigrants and others, the citizenship guide is a key source of information about Canada’s history, laws and culture.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau should think as the father that he is rather than as a politician. Stand up to protect the rights of young girls and women who are unable to speak for themselves. Removing the mention of female genital mutilation and Honour killings and crimes related to honour based violence from our citizenship guide will send the wrong message.
Front line service providers, like myself, need the time to educate the parents of these girls and make them aware that, in Canada, their daughters are as valued as sons. The new Citizenship guide will no long be clear about what we abhor.
[1] http://torontosun.com/2017/07/24/liberals-citizenship-guide-overhaul-is-all-feel-good/wcm/f3425468-a5af-4cf6-aa4f-e59eb3cbc0a9
[2] http://www.who.int/reproductivehealth/topics/fgm/prevalence/en/
[3] http://www.un.org/press/en/2000/20000125.wom1164.doc.html
[4] http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/cj-jp/fv-vf/hk-ch/hk_eng.pdf