If I can take a moment, I'll say that I'm completely and strongly in agreement with that, and ditto--the same--for girls and for aboriginal girls: there need to be specific advocates for young women, for aboriginal young women.
As far as denial goes, I think one thing would help. Sometimes we write reports to the United Nations about this situation of homeless girls in Canada--about how there is homelessness of girls in Canada--and one of the things that happens is that when Canada goes before the UN, it prepares reports, as you know, for different covenant committees, and I think there's a lot of denial in those reports. One of the first things would be....
Some countries, when they're preparing reports to the United Nations, approach preparing those reports by saying, “These are our challenges, this is where we have problems, and we have not done this and this”. They say, “Women and girls are not succeeding in these areas and this is what we're going to do about it”. When Canada goes to those UN committees and reports, I think it hides as much as it can and denies as much as it can about what is happening. Those reports are not very useful.
I think one of the things would be that those departments that prepare those reports need to start being honest about what's going on in Canada. They need to start looking at those UN consultations or presentations before different committees as moments to actually work on recommendations, rather than just to defend how amazingly forward Canada is on human rights. I think they need to actually say, “Okay, we have problems, and this is where we need to work on those things”.
And once again, a body of accountability would be useful.