I will be silent no more. I have been an elected Member of Parliament for almost 9 years. But before that, I worked around the world as a specialist on inclusive political participation. I worked with the Global Program for Parliamentary Strengthening in the Democratic Governance Group at UNDP. I was an advisor to Parliaments in Bosnia, Kosovo and Bangladesh. I managed a global network to connect women in politics and open up democratic processes to be more inclusive of women and other excluded groups. I ran a program to facilitate inter-party dialogue in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In short, my whole life has been dedicated to making democracies work better for everyone by ensuring processes that amplify voices, especially those of women. I ran for office specifically to ensure that the voices of women and other excluded groups would be heard in our parliament. I was chair of the all-party women’s caucus and I founded an all-party democracy caucus to work across party lines to improve how our Parliament functions.

But this week, I closed my constituency office because I fear for my safety and that of my staff. Headlines in mainstream media about me scream “Abuse survivor demands Liberal MP apologize after testimony ‘hijacked’ in chaotic House committee” and “Witnesses storm out of House committee in tears, decrying Liberal politicization”. Social media posts include comments like “It sounds like Anita has to get assaulted viciously to take this issue more seriously”, “Look at this fat POS, someone put her out of her misery”, “I guess these women would change their mind if it happened to them or someone they love”, and worse. My car license plate was posted online. How did we get to this point?

I believe that what has happened in recent months in the Status of Women committee is a case study in how our parliamentary institutions are being deliberately dismantled, and those who defend them or call it out are being targeted, attacked, silenced and intimidated into leaving political office. The traps that are being set by the far-right, their willingness to use anyone’s pain to achieve political ends, and a capitulation by the media to click-bait have made it impossible to protect and defend parliamentary processes or basic fairness.

I have been on the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women (FEWO) for a majority of my time in Parliament. Up until last April, the committee had been chaired for 7 years by Conservative MP Karen Vecchio (this committee is always chaired by a member of the Official Opposition). During her time as chair, the committee published 45 reports, most of them by consensus. This is far more than any other committee. Members of the committee worked collaboratively across party lines. There was respect and even friendship between members of different parties. The committee was living proof that Parliament can function well and bring in voices of marginalized Canadians who have otherwise not been heard in the halls of power. So what happened?

In 2022, with the overturning of Roe v. Wade in the United States, many Canadian women woke up to the reality that women’s fundamental right to autonomy over their own body could not be taken for granted. It was a profoundly jarring moment for many of us, including several members of FEWO. A Liberal member put forward a motion to reaffirm women’s right to choose in Canada. The same thing happened in other committees, like the foreign affairs committee, where Conservative MP’s filibustered the motion for months, delaying all other committee business. But not in the Status of Women committee. The chair, Karen Vecchio, made an impassioned plea during the committee meeting that such a motion would only put her and other pro-choice Conservative women in a difficult position, and committee members agreed for the sake of the unity and effectiveness of the committee, and out of respect for one another, to adjourn debate on the motion. After the meeting, members across parties even hugged one another, recognizing how deeply we all felt about this issue, but determined that it would not change the collegiality and respect that we had always had for one another.

But in that moment were the seeds of downfall for our committee. Not only did Ms. Vecchio use her calm, fair and firm leadership style to forestall a divisive debate over abortion, but she also pushed back when members from her own party tried to use tactics like “ambush motions” to drive wedge issues or embarrass other members.

Normal parliamentary practice in Canada is that there is a “committee on agenda and procedure” – or steering committee - made up of the chair and vice chairs from the other parties, that meets in camera (behind closed doors) to work out what studies the committee will work on next and any other issues to do with the committee business. Normally, all members of the committee will put forward motions regarding what to study, and the steering committee will discuss these motions and come to a consensus on a calendar based on many factors, including the urgency of the issue and fairness between parties. In all my years both working in Parliament and as an MP, until this week I have never seen a chair call a meeting and invite witnesses without first consulting the members of the steering committee. 

An “ambush motion” is when a member of the committee – knowing that the steering committee has already come to a consensus on what to study next – waits until the committee is in public and televised, usually during witness testimony, and uses their time to move a motion with the sole purpose of forcing the other parties to say no in public in order to embarrass them. Recently, Conservative MPs have made an art of moving such motions and then taking the footage of whichever MP moves to “adjourn debate” and then they put out sensational videos on social media designed to create outrage against that Member and her party. Whenever this has happened to me, the online and physical threats against me increased exponentially. It is as though when a Conservative MP posts these rage-farming tweets, they are pointing their followers  - including some who are prone to violence – toward their next target. When Ms. Vecchio was the chair, she was very effective at shutting down these kind of tactics from her own party members. And she was punished for it.

Following Trumps playbook, since becoming Conservative Party Leader, Pierre Poilievre has put out a narrative that Parliament is broken, and the institutions are rigged. The Status of Women committee was living proof that this narrative was not true. And so Poilievre had to destroy it. Last April, with no warning, Poilievre removed the chair, Karen Vecchio, from the Status of Women committee, likely because she was too effective. Members of the committee from all parties except the Conservatives publicly decried this move, and speculated that the new chair, Shelby Kramp-Neuman, would be under pressure to do the bidding of her party leadership instead of acting in the interest of the committee and of Canadian women, or face the same consequences as Ms. Vecchio. We all implored her to maintain the fairness and respect that Ms. Vecchio had shown, and if so we would do the same. For a while, she did that.

Last week that all changed. The leadership of the Conservative Party has apparently instructed all Conservative committee chairs to unilaterally call at least 5 committee meetings over the summer recess on topics to embarrass the government. Last week, Ms. Kramp-Neuman issued a notice of meeting unilaterally, with no consultation with any members of the steering committee or other parties. The common practice in committees is that when a meeting is called with witnesses, each party is given the opportunity to submit names and they are invited based on the number of members from each party on the committee, to ensure a balanced panel that represents all voices. Since Canada follows the Westminster system of parliament, the majority of our rules are unwritten, based on precedent. So if practices are changed, new precedents are established, and rules can change. Therefore, if a committee chair (or multiple chairs) openly flout the established practices and procedures, it can have long-term consequences for the fairness of our democracy. It is therefore vital that these kind of breaches of the rules be called out and stopped.

Last week, the chair not only called a meeting on Intimate Partner Violence unilaterally with only a few days notice, but she also invited only witnesses to testify that were proposed by Conservative party members, denying other parties the right to submit names. One of the witnesses, a survivor of intimate partner violence, said she flew from California to attend the meeting. But her name was only added to the meeting agenda one hour before the meeting began. During the meeting, many parliamentary rules were broken, including allowing witnesses to show “props” – in this case photos, allowing private video footage to be taken while the meeting was in session, not ensuring that Members could speak in the order in which they put up their hands, not overruling points of order that were unrelated to procedural issues, allowing yelling and disruption in the room, and more. This kind of chaos is, in my view, part of a larger strategy of discrediting our institutions in the eyes of the public. Members are left in the difficult position of either allowing the rules to be broken, or calling it out and being vilified and gaslit through a very effective Conservative communications war machine that uses emotion to manipulate.

Knowing that the Conservatives would put forward an ambush motion of some kind during the meeting (which they tried to do), and that we could not allow a precedent for the chair to repeat this flagrant breach of procedure in the future, Liberal and NDP Members were left with no choice but to put forward our own motion first – in this case choosing to resume debate on the abortion motion that we had adjourned two years before out of collegiality. But after the committee voted to start debate on the motion, the Conservatives used every possible delay tactic to make sure the substance of the abortion motion did not come to a vote, and as a consequence we could not return to the witness testimony. What we underestimated was that there was no bottom to the level to which the Conservative members were willing to go. The Conservatives knew that we would have to find a procedural way to call out their blatant flouting of the rules and norms of Parliamentary democracy or otherwise live with a committee that would become completely dysfunctional going forward.

For context – imagine if a judge were to call a last-minute trial and only allow the prosecutor to call witnesses to testify and then not share those witness names with the defence until one hour before the trial. This break with parliamentary practice was similarly egregious. The Conservatives knew that we would have no choice but to do something to not allow such a meeting to go ahead. And yet, they invited witnesses who had been victimized and traumatized to testify, using their pain and trauma to put us into a corner. It was a trap, and as I said in the media, I deeply regret that it was the witnesses who suffered for it. It broke my heart to see what was once a safe and victim-centric committee cause such distress to the witnesses and their families. In my focus on trying to save our committee from the same dysfunction and partisanship that has plagued other committees, I played a role in adding to their trauma and for that I am very sorry. Nothing that happened in that meeting should ever have happened.

Canadians need to understand the significant shift that has taken place in our politics in recent years. It is no longer about debating issues and policies – it is about undermining the very institutions that allow for that debate to occur. It is no longer about collegial disagreements between honourable members, but about destroying the other person – their reputation, their sense of security, their family and their willingness to continue in public life. I know that by writing this I will face even more attacks, but I believe in my heart that Canadians care. That they care about our democracy and about our decency. That they care about living in a world where fairness and equality and the rights of everyone are respected. Nobody wants to live in a world where might makes right.

As I write this, as a result of the media and social media coverage of this meeting, I am receiving email, phone and social media comments that have my staff afraid to go in to the office and my family members looking over their shoulders. This kind of tactic is in effect a form of political intimidation. Just recently, the former Liberal vice-chair of the Status of Women committee, Pam Damoff, announced that she would not run again in large part because of the toxic environment and threats to her own safety. The former chair, Karen Vecchio, announced this week that she will not run again. But what happened in the Status of Women committee is not an isolated incident. It is not the only committee where this is happening. It is not even the only Parliament where this is happening. It is also not accidental. This is part of a much larger global rise in authoritarian, anti-democratic, misogynist movements that are undermining democracies everywhere.

There is a reason that we have a constitution, a rules-based international order, and democracy. Canada used to be somewhat insulated from anti-democratic and authoritarian threats because of our geography. Today, these forces and movements can get right into our children’s phones. They can get into our Parliament. They can get into our heads.

So the next time you see a headline like “Liberal MP accused of derailing committee as witness demands apology”, take some time to watch the whole meeting. Pay attention to politics and to what is happening right here in our own Parliament. Ask questions. It is our very democracy that is at stake.

Anita Vandenbeld is the MP for Ottawa West--Nepean