On December 6, CUPE Ontario joins millions across the country in solemn remembrance of the 14 women murdered at Montreal’s École Polytechnique in 1989. Among them was Maryse Laganière, a CUPE member who worked at the school.
These women were targeted simply because they were women, and their deaths remain a stark reminder of the deadly consequences of misogyny. The National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women is not only about mourning those lives lost; it is about recommitting ourselves to ending gender-based violence in all its forms.
Tragically, violence against women is still a present reality for too many women. In Ontario, women continue to die at the hands of men in acts of domestic violence and intimate partner violence. Women who are Indigenous, Black, racialized, 2SLGBTQIA+ and persons with disabilities are at even greater risk of gendered violence.
Yet despite the urgency of this crisis, the Ford Conservatives have repeatedly refused to acknowledge it. As MPP Kristyn Wong-Tam noted in the legislature last month, the Ford government refused three times to declare intimate partner violence an epidemic. And Conservatives have stalled the passage of Bill 173, the Intimate Partner Violence Epidemic Act, 2024.
Such refusal is not neutral; it is partisan, divisive, and rooted in a deeply ingrained misogyny that denies the reality of women affected by violence. In denying them recognition, the Conservatives block the first steps toward reducing the number of deaths women suffer every year because of gendered violence. This partisan poison has real consequences: people continue to lose their lives.
Conservatives’ failures do not stop there. As CUPE members who provide supports for women fleeing violence can attest, services and shelters in Ontario remain chronically underfunded. The Ford government’s refusal to invest in prevention and protections for women is a refusal to act.
CUPE Ontario does not accept this failure. Even if the provincial government will not act, we will use the power we have as trade unionists to help end violence against women. Because violence in the home does not stay in the home – it affects workers, workplaces, and communities. Recognizing this reality is essential to protecting our members and to addressing the broader epidemic of violence against women.
We support CUPE National’s creation of the Safe Union Spaces Working Group, which is working to make sure that our union is free of harassment and violence against women; the group’s report is here. CUPE Ontario’s Women’s Committee has also produced the guide We Believe You, to amplify the fact that gendered violence can occur in union spaces, as well as at home and in the workplace. And locals have model bargaining language to negotiate collective agreements that provide protections to members experiencing domestic or intimate partner violence.
The Women’s Committee has also mobilized petitions in support of the Ontario NDP’s economic plan for women, recognizing that economic justice is inseparable from safety and dignity. This campaign is a way to begin building the protections women need, and it is a way for our union to lead where governments fail.
On December 6, we remember the women murdered in Montreal, and we remember all women lost to gender-based violence. But remembrance is not enough. Action is required. The Ford Conservatives have shown that they will not act. But CUPE Ontario and CUPE members will. Because violence against women is preventable, and prevention requires action.
On this National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women, CUPE Ontario recommits itself to that action. We honour the memory of those lost, we support the survivors, and we demand a future where women are safe, respected, and free from violence.
