Mr. Speaker, I move that the 20th report of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, presented on Friday, June 16, 2023, be concurred in.

I have the delight of sharing my time today with the member for Port Moody—Coquitlam.

I am pleased to rise today to discuss my concurrence motion on the report of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development on Canada's approach to sexual and reproductive health and rights.

This was an important report that made 14 recommendations to the Government of Canada's work to promote and fund sexual and reproductive health and rights globally. I want to thank all of the witnesses who came before our committee to provide us with their expertise and their important information.

This report comes at a crucial time when we are witnessing, globally, a terrifying backsliding on women's rights. We are living through a coordinated global backlash against sexual and reproductive rights for women, and we are seeing a global rise in authoritarianism. We are also seeing real barriers to access to reproductive and sexual health care here in Canada, and this is unacceptable because women's health care is a right and women's lives matter.

This report came about after a very challenging period of time for the foreign affairs committee. The Conservatives decided to impose their ideological extremism on the other members of the committee and initiated a filibuster that lasted nine meetings. That was 18 hours of committee time. The member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan essentially held this committee hostage for an entire season, meaning that the committee could not do the other urgent work on Ukraine, Ethiopia, Haiti and others—

Heather McPherson

$561,484.00