Honourable senators, today, may we all pause and take note of the ongoing need to address violence against women.

Unless we address the fundamental social, economic, health, racial and gender discrimination that facilitates the continuing epidemic of such violence, we will still be talking about this and the devastation of tragedies — like the École Polytechnique — another 34 years from now.

The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, the Mass Casualty Commission and countless years of advocacy underscore that a central feature of the work to end violence involves the acceptance of responsibility by men to promote and model non-violent behaviour.

My friend and mentor Rick Sauvé models and educates others in this regard. Born into a working-class francophone family with Indigenous roots, and despite still awaiting redress to remedy his wrongful conviction, with every fibre of his being, Rick works to promote and protect the rights of others.

In addition to earning his high school diploma, a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology from Queen’s University and an Honours Bachelor of Arts degree in criminology from the University of Ottawa, Rick has fought for the rights of others. I first came to know Rick when he and members of the Manitoba Stony Mountain Indigenous Brotherhood led the prisoners’ voting cases. Once paroled to the community, Rick refused to leave his friends and colleagues behind, and continued to support and assist men and women in and out of prisons. He also developed one of the first — and quite clearly the most successful — gang disaffiliation initiatives in the country.

Many Indigenous and Black prisoners and former prisoners credit Rick and his interventions with assisting them to exit gang life and transform their lives, their families and their communities. In fact, since prisoners who identified as gang affiliated are disproportionately segregated, during the study of Bill C-83 — the bill to replace segregation with structured intervention units, or SIUs — the Parliamentary Budget Officer identified Rick’s initiative as a far more effective alternative approach to the use of either SIUs or segregation.

Rick’s decades of exemplary paid and volunteer work resulted in him being awarded the 2017 Ed McIsaac Human Rights in Corrections Award by the Correctional Investigator of Canada.

Please join me, honourable colleagues, as I say: Chi-miigwech, Rick, to you and to your family — especially your beautiful, lovely partner Michele, your daughter, your grandson, and your brothers — for so generously sharing you with us.