To begin with, we need to distinguish two types of violence. There is physical violence and psychological violence. A new study has just come out on this subject. I hope that the committee will have the opportunity to hear from Guy Paquette and Jacques de Guise from Laval University's Media Research Centre, who have been studying this issue for many years and published a report in 2004. By the way, they can no longer do such studies because the Government of Canada has decided to withdraw the necessary funding from the centre.
Their research shows that violence can be divided into two types: physical violence and psychological violence, which is increasingly difficult to define. There is no adequate definition of psychological violence. There is more and more psychological violence and it is increasing dramatically, even more so than physical violence.
Many teachers in Montreal have told me that children tend to imitate what they see and what they hear. One teacher told me that some children out in the school yard throw their school bags around to imitate Pokemon characters. So teachers are on the front lines and they see that when children have watched violent shows the night before, they tend to act out more. There have been over 3,000 studies on this issue of violence. Children clearly tend to imitate what they see. I think that we need to be aware of that and especially of the fact that there is more and more psychological violence.