Status of Women committee  As I mentioned, I think a good way to start the report could be to look at that notion of best or promising practices generally, before you start enumerating all your best practices. Then looking in terms of how many have been scaled up and what the barriers are to scaling up. I

Status of Women committee  In order for us to be able to share them, we need to have more than one staff person, for sure. It's the way our country is set up and we have to work within that, but every province has its different ways. I do know that in terms of the technology there is a project funded with

Status of Women committee  There definitely is agreement that we need to engage men and boys. However, violence against women is still very much a reality for far too many women, and the problem more recently has been that the pie has not been expanded. A lot of resources are going to engaging men and boys

Status of Women committee  I will. I'm not sure what you'll think of my response, because I feel—

Status of Women committee  Well, I think we have to talk about the root cause of violence against women. Basically, that's men exercising power over women, whether it's intimate partners, colleagues, or strangers on the street. Also, it's about inequality, and if we're going to really address that, basical

Status of Women committee  We are calling for a national plan mostly to make sure that women all across the country can have access to the same level of services. A woman in Thunder Bay must have access to the same services as a woman in Toronto. Accomplishing that would be very significant. If we really

Status of Women committee  It's definitely something that we need to do and we'd like to do. The reality is that the network is young. I was basically on my own until October, when I was joined by a part-time colleague. There are limits to what we can do. One thing that I did want to mention as, I feel, a

Status of Women committee  Yes.

Status of Women committee  I would defer to Sharlene and Lynn concerning the response. They are the ones who have to deal with the day-to-day pieces of it. First of all, it's the delays in court systems.

Status of Women committee  And it wears you down just psychologically.

Status of Women committee  No, but I'm not aware of.... Are you talking about something specific to aboriginal women?

Status of Women committee  We are looking at it in terms of prevention mechanisms, social policy responses, legal responses, and service responses. Those are the four main areas that need to be covered. I spoke in my presentation about what we felt the national action plan could do, but also we feel that

Status of Women committee  That's the National Association of Women and the Law.

Status of Women committee  I think Sharlene responded perfectly in terms of that's sometimes the best way to understand, through a concrete example of what the shelter workers told us in terms of the need for services that are interconnected and continuous. Just too often this is slipping between the crack

Status of Women committee  Actually, that is a best practice. It was a project done in Alberta specifically because there's a very high percentage of women in the shelters in Alberta who are aboriginal, and it was around the danger assessment tool. In fact, I was speaking to the executive director of the