November, as you know, marks Woman Abuse Prevention Month. Today, we were greeted by the Ontario Association of Interval and Transition Houses with their Wrapped in Courage awareness and advocacy campaign.

I would like to thank OAITH executive director Marlene Ham for your incredible work along with your team: Amber Wardell, learning and development coordinator of OAITH; Lauren Hancock, policy and research coordinator of OAITH; Sherece Taffe, digital office support of OAITH; OAITH board members who are here today: Melanie Ducharme, executive director of Pavilion Women’s Centre; Jessie Rodger, executive director of Anova: A Future Without Violence; Jyoti Singh, executive director of Nellie’s Shelter; Erin Baydak, team manager of Western Ottawa Community Resource Centre; Tessa Mcfadzean, director of Good Shepherd Women’s Services; Sly Castaldi, executive director of Guelph-Wellington Women in Crisis; Jennifer Chamberlin, executive director of the Red Lake Emergency Women’s Shelter; Carla Neto, executive director of Women’s Habitat; as well as some other organizations that were here today: Yasmine Youssef, executive director of Nisa Foundation; Daniela Giulietti, director of public affairs of YWCA Hamilton; Alicia Whyte, manager of programs and client services of Women’s Habitat; and finally, the fantastic team from Aura Freedom International.

November is Women Abuse Prevention Month, and today our galleries are filled with advocates from the Ontario Association of Interval and Transition Houses. They’re raising the same question again and again as violence against women has reached epidemic levels. We’ve asked your government to declare intimate partner violence an epidemic, like almost 70 municipalities have done, but you refuse.

Last year in Hamilton, police received 13,000 calls for intimate partner violence and almost 5,000 women and their children were turned away from shelter beds because they weren’t available—again, an epidemic of violence against women and your government refuses to increase their core funding, which has been frozen for over 15 years.

So it’s nice to see all of the government wearing their purple scarves, but we need to see more than that performative action. We need to see this government declare intimate partner violence and gender-based violence as an epidemic, and we need to see core funding increase after 15 years of frozen core funding.

These women are doing important work to keep our women safe. Will we ever see your government truly support women in this province: yes or no?