Justice committee  I think what you said is very important, in the sense that the way we treat our seniors is an indicator of the way we as a society respect one another. We talk about systemic abuse, about the growing elderly population, and the growing health care needs of the elderly population.

Justice committee  The research I have done has demonstrated that the moment you detect the abuse and you talk about it, the frequency and the severity decrease by almost 50%, so it does have an impact.

Justice committee  New Horizons has, I think, funded projects in every province of Canada, and it is very important to the work on elder abuse. There is a lot of similarity among projects across the province. I think the Canadian network does a lot of work to see how we could share information, so

Justice committee  Do you mean without consent from the person?

Justice committee  That's why we're working hard to try to look at how they can report to us if the person doesn't want it to be reported. Can we knock on the door? It's not so simple.

Justice committee  I think you were talking about this older gentleman who was quite competent and able, etc. If that person was a victim of a criminal act, he would go through the normal channels, he would porter plainte. I don't know how to say it in English. If it was his family member who had d

Justice committee  No, I think it might release the person from their confidentiality, and they would be able to do something to help. As I mentioned before, where there is a duty to report—in the United States, most of the states have mandatory reporting laws—they do not see more situations of eld

Justice committee  I think the duty to report and the whole issue of being bound by our professional orders of confidentiality are in conflict. If we are bound to report, that releases us from our duty of confidentiality. The importance of reporting is to ensure that we can do the right types of in

Justice committee  I would say the laws are very different. In some areas, their civil laws are much more involved in elder abuse. There's mandatory signalling. In the States, you have to signal any situation of elder abuse, but yet they don't identify more situations of elder abuse than we do here

Justice committee  I think we also have to keep in mind psychological vulnerability.

Justice committee  I think once you're at the point of sentencing, you're probably dealing with pretty extreme cases. It is hard to get someone to porter plainte. If you do get to this point, especially with those people who have a formal caregiver, not a family caregiver who has neglected an elder

Justice committee  Yes.

Justice committee  I think it's going to give a message to those people who do abuse the elderly criminally that this is not going to be taken lightly by our society. I was just at a meeting in Quebec with some police officers and other health professionals who are looking at.... In Quebec, we do h

Justice committee  I would like to clarify something when it comes to zero tolerance. I think zero tolerance is necessary in long-term care facilities, hospitals and institutions. Zero tolerance is necessary in those places. However, in the case of people abused by their close relatives, I think w

Justice committee  I think we do need to have a multifaceted approach to elder abuse. Just having an amendment to the Criminal Code is not sufficient. It is a complex issue and it needs a multifaceted response. But that doesn't take away the fact that this amendment is important and it states somet