Thank you.
First of all, before I begin, I just want to clarify something.
As many have raised the issue of the Senate, I just want to put on the record, since this has clearly become an issue of discussion in our committee, that I'm proud of the NDP position that doesn't support an unelected Senate at all, and I think that would be a solution to most of our problems. If we're going to talk about strengthening democracy, there's a lot to focus on, and fighting for the Senate isn't one of those things.
Moving on to questions, Monsieur Marcoux, the point of what we're doing here is to come up with recommendations. There's been a fair bit of focus around legislation, but I want to get into one issue that we also raised in the discussion around online harms that we had a few months ago, and that is the issue of gender-based violence.
A lot of the talk around child exploitation really points to the very deep issues we face as a society with respect to gender-based violence. We know that gender-based violence is on the rise. We are seeing an epidemic of femicides across the country, and we know that for young women online, the online realm poses immense risk and danger.
I wonder if you could speak to how important it is to have a federally funded strategy to end gender-based violence, not just online but in general. To what extent do we need to take gender-based violence seriously as a way of also taking online harms and the online safety of our children seriously?