I rise today to mark the thirty-first anniversary of the Polytechnique femicide and to pay tribute to the 14 young women who were killed on December 6, 1989.

Let us remember those 20 minutes of horror, which have been retold many times to ensure no one will forget that the victims were chosen by the killer because they were women and because they had dared to study engineering, which is traditionally seen as a male domain.

I was 30 years old at the time. I was a young, idealistic journalist based in Toronto. I thought I could change the world one news report at a time. I was also in a male-dominated workplace where women were slowly taking their place. I was a confident feminist who always pointed out double standards, discrimination, and misogynistic attitudes and comments.

The Polytechnique tragedy deprived us for quite some time of the hope that the feminist revolution was under way and that no one could stop it. The killer expressed his outright hatred for feminists. He has often been described as a mad killer, but he represented a masculinist way of thinking that had spread in Quebec, a backlash against liberated women.

Fortunately, over the years, a new generation of Quebec feminists has taken up the torch with new slogans and a passion that I am pleased to see. This year women represent 31% of the students enrolled in the Polytechnique program.

In the meantime, survivors and loved ones plunged headlong into a battle for gun control. The Polytechnique killer had emptied an entire magazine of 30 bullets from a Ruger Mini-14 semi-automatic into the female students in the classroom. Nathalie Provost was there and she survived. She said:

Yes, the gun is a game-changer. The force of the shots played a major role, as did the ability to fire off shots in rapid succession.

Thirty years later, this deadly weapon was still in circulation, since the Nova Scotia mass murderer had a Ruger Mini-14 in his possession.

This firearm is one of the 1,500 assault style firearms that the federal government banned by order-in-council on May 1, a major step forward for the group PolySeSouvient. However, as December 6 draws near, Heidi Rathjen, who witnessed the shooting, wants the government to take action, to implement, as it promised, a mandatory buy-back program for all these deadly weapons and to impose stricter restrictions on handguns.

Ms. Rathjen does not believe that the pandemic justifies the delays, on the contrary. She said:

. . . in an extremely stressful context where victims of domestic violence are even more vulnerable and where there is a greater risk of suicide . . . gun control becomes all the more urgent.

I agree. Thank you.