Lisa MacLeod: Liberals' contradictory judicial and foreign policies endanger women

Canada is drifting into a dangerous contradiction: we speak the language of women’s equality but tolerate legal, judicial and diplomatic outcomes that steadily erode women’s actual standing under the law.

This is not rhetorical overreach. It is the observable reality of judicial rulings, policing outcomes, and a foreign policy posture that accommodates regimes where women are formally subordinated.

A state that cannot or will not protect women’s safety, dignity, and equality is not merely failing a constituency. It is undermining its own legitimacy.

The Canadian justice system increasingly prioritizes procedural minimalism over public safety. This shift was codified by Bill C-75, which mandated a “principle of restraint,” making release the default and detention the exception.

We’ve seen what these principles look like in practice. In Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Omogbolahan “Teddy” Jegede was charged with sexually assaulting two women. Despite the severity and multiplicity of the charges, he was released on conditions pending trial. This was not an evidentiary failure. It was the intended outcome of a system that weighs an accused’s liberty above the collective safety of women.

Late this year, the federal government introduced the Protecting Victims Act to address these systemic gaps. But it remains a reactive measure to a crisis of their own legislative making. When bail is presumptive for predators, the state effectively delegates the risk of violence to the women in those communities.

Following his conviction on two counts, Jegede’s recent sentencing has been equally troubling. The judge reduced Jegede’s sentence to only two years based on racial and cultural factors, thereby creating a two-tier justice system and devaluing the women who were assaulted.

The erosion of safety is not limited to domestic crime. It has also reached the realm of national security. In Toronto, Waleed Khan was recently charged following a series of attempted kidnappings of women at gunpoint. Police describe the acts as hate-motivated and linked to ISIS.

This matters because ISIS upholds a governance system built on the institutionalized rape and enslavement of women, as documented by a UN investigative team. When extremist cells target women on Canadian streets, they are not just committing crimes; they are importing a misogynistic ideology of control. By failing to name this as a targeted war on women, Ottawa misses the core of the threat.

Canada’s domestic incoherence is mirrored in a foreign policy that subsidizes the very ecosystems where women’s rights go to die.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban have instituted what legal experts speaking at the UN have called “gender apartheid,” erasing women from public life. While Canada issues condemnations, its diplomatic “engagement” lacks the hard red lines necessary to defend women’s equality as a non-negotiable value.

Then there’s Canada’s posture towards the Qatar-Hamas Nexus. Canada has deepened ties with Qatar, signing a 2021 Defence Cooperation Agreement and a 2024 Memorandum of Understanding. Most recently, Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand stated that Canada has “shared values” with Qatar. Yet Qatar serves as the primary host for the political leadership of Hamas — a group that used systematic sexual violence as a weapon of war on October 7. In September 2025, Prime Minister Mark Carney went so far as to condemn strikes on Hamas leaders in Doha as an “intolerable expansion of violence and an affront to Qatar’s sovereignty,” effectively prioritizing the protection of a terror-patron state over accountability for crimes against women.

Meanwhile, Canada continues to support the Palestinian Authority in its role of “stabilizing and governing the West Bank,” despite its “Pay for Slay” policy that has rewarded the families of those who murder and kidnap civilians. The policy was reportedly restructured into a social welfare system in 2025, but some critics are not convinced. By validating these “cozy” relationships, Canada provides a veneer of legitimacy to movements that view women’s bodies as tactical battlegrounds.

To mask these failures, the federal government routinely redirects public debate toward abortion as the sole litmus test for women’s rights. This is a strategic diversion.

Abortion access is settled law in Canada. What is not settled is the right of a woman to walk down a Toronto street without being targeted by an ISIS-inspired kidnapping plot, or the right of a survivor to know her attacker isn’t back on the street 24 hours after an arrest due to permissive bail.

States derive legitimacy from their ability to protect their citizens. When the government tolerates a “principle of restraint” for predators at home and a principle of engagement for misogynistic tyrants abroad, it is no longer a champion of equality. It is a merchant of complacency.

If Canada continues to negotiate away the safety of its women for the sake of judicial “efficiency” or diplomatic “utility,” it will fail more than just half its population. It will collapse the rule of law itself.

National Post

Lisa MacLeod is a former Ontario cabinet minister and six-term MPP, and is an ambassador for the Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s Promised Land project.