Letter from MP Mark Warawa
Dear friends,
I wanted you to be among the first to know my decision about Motion 408 because your support has meant so much to me. We have already achieved so much, and yet there is still so much for us to do.
When I made my decision to introduce Motion-408, my goal was to raise awareness that sex selection is happening in Canada. Canadians have responded to our efforts by supporting Motion 408 through thousands of letters, phone calls and petitions. Many of you as individuals and as organizations have been integral to this effort.
Over the last couple of weeks, I seriously considered my options and how best to move this issue forward. I hope to continue raising awareness throughout the nation on university campuses and community centres, giving lectures and engaging in debates. Within Parliament, I will continue to discuss this issue with colleagues across all party lines. Legislatively, I introduced a new bill on a different, but related issue, which will better protect children from sexual predators. I am calling this bill, C-489, the “Safe at Home” bill.
Confronting sex-selection and gendercide is bigger than Motion 408, and so as this chapter comes to a close, our work continues. Please write or call my office and let me know how we can continue addressing this important issue. I look forward to working with your organization in the coming months and years as we raise awareness and continue to change the status quo.
I would like to close with the words Member of Parliament William Wilberforce sent to his supporters after his first bill was defeated in his eighteen-year campaign to abolish the slave trade through Britain’s Parliament: “I wish you… to consider yourselves not as having concluded, but as only beginning your work: it is on the general impression and feeling of the nation we must rely, rather than on the political conscience of the House of Commons. So let the flame be fanned continually, and may it please God, in whose hands are the hearts of all men, to bless our endeavors.”
Thank you,
Mark Warawa, M.P.
Langley
