Public Safety committee  Not at all. This is the dilemma, isn't it? We have so many opportunities to address gender-based violence, domestic violence, and we have yet to move in a fulsome way. The national action plan that Women's Shelters Canada has advocated for 10 years is a road map for getting to t

Public Safety committee  Yes, please. There are so many things that a victim or survivor has to do when they enter into the system. There are so many considerations that they have in the sense of their safety, their children's safety, employment and just managing the day to day. So many survivors don't

Public Safety committee  I think it's the definitions of “domestic violence” and “family violence” that we need to see in the act, and we need to draw on that definition that already exists within the Divorce Act. That would be an important piece.

Public Safety committee  I think it's really important that we recognize that police have so much power and that there is a disproportionate amount of domestic violence within families of law enforcement officers. We as an organization are one of the few organizations in the country that have a specifi

Public Safety committee  Absolutely. I think that is one of the real problems when we think about what this will look like on the ground. We know it's very hard to follow through on this kind of follow-up, this important follow-up, and we see this in all areas within the system, in terms of the criminal

Public Safety committee  I do agree with that. It is certainly a concern that we have. I know that advocates end up having to follow up to see that the system does follow through on the policies, as well as the practices. Canada has some of the best legislation to address sexualized and domestic violence

Public Safety committee  —could be given different names and take different forms. We are concerned with the lack of consultation to date on how to define them in the regulation and we would want to ensure that the definition of protection orders is included in the act. Thank you.

Public Safety committee  Good evening, and thank you very much to the committee for this opportunity to join you. I am here representing Battered Women's Support Services on the unceded ancestral territory of the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh and Musqueam people. For the last 43 years, Battered Women's Sup

Public Safety committee  Absolutely. I apologize. We recognize that what hurts and kills women and girls is actually gender inequity, and we are 100% in support of Women's Shelters Canada's work over the last 10 years to advance a national action plan on gender-based violence that takes into considerati

Status of Women committee  Overarchingly, it is the result of endemic and systemic racism, attitudinal and behavioural, that is then acted out in what a survivor experiences when they attempt to access services. It's also the way in which services are created and delivered. This is not to disparage our in

Status of Women committee  If I could jump in quickly, coercive control is kind of a rebranding of power and control, which is an idea that we've been working with since the 1990s. That's another important consideration. Often we think about physical and sexual violence, but we're not thinking about all th

Status of Women committee  Yes. I think that's an important piece to highlight. Yes, we have advanced more legal and criminalized options when we're talking about those who exchange sex for money and other things. We know that whenever we seek to create legislation and criminal law around survival and th

Status of Women committee  Thank you. I so appreciate Treaty No. 1, of course, and the home of the Métis people, and I have had the privilege of being in that territory doing this kind of organizing. What we haven't seen, and what you, I believe, have named, is that, historically, services have been bas

Status of Women committee  Who is that question for?

Status of Women committee  As Farrah mentioned so well, the work of this government has been a really important beginning and an advancement. I'm also on the federal advisory committee on GBV. I think what we need is sustained action. The resourcing of women's and feminist organizations across the country