Status of Women committee  I'd like to see us use some of the legal mechanism we have in place that I think have been underused, particularly the charter. For example, the issue of housing has come up across the board today. We have a provision, section 7, that refers to security of the person, and that's never been interpreted as the right to housing.

Status of Women committee  First I'll quickly touch on your question around services for men. I was having a conversation with a group of social workers about why the focus is always on women. One of the things they said is they have nothing for the men. They may know that she will go back, or he will go on and be with another woman.

Status of Women committee  One of the key themes that came out of the last project we did with women who were involved with the child welfare system as parents was on male violence in their lives. It manifests itself in a lot of ways, but one of the biggest is actually fear of calling police if there's violence in the home, because they've seen children apprehended.

Status of Women committee  I'm from Pivot Legal Society. We're a not-for-profit legal advocacy organization based out of Vancouver's downtown east side. As we've heard, this is a very complex issue. In your introduction you mentioned that there hasn't seemed to have been any action on this issue. I'm just going to keep my presentation very, very basic and just talk about three really basic human rights issues that I think the federal government does have the capacity to address.