Certainly. I would say that bystander intervention training needs to be mandatory. It needs to be across the board. I work with a program where I teach bystander intervention to children aged three to 10. It's a life skill. It's like administering CPR. It's like naloxone and a life skill if you see someone in distress.
I want to reference something that was said earlier this morning. People are not doing well. If you take public transit, you can tell that people are not doing well. If you wait in a drive-through that takes too long, people are popping off at a rate that we've never seen. People are not well. Bystander intervention skills are life skills that we need to make standard across the board, but certainly in the House of Commons amongst MPs, amongst members, amongst staffers and amongst interns. That is something that is, by definition, culture change. It's not putting the onus on the person who's been targeted to be the only one to raise it. It's saying, “I was there. I saw it. I'm going to say something. I'm going to set partisanship aside and say that ultimately we all benefit by putting a stop to this.”
I would also say, although it feels reactive, that to return to the point made earlier by Ms. Rempel Garner, we do need to also look at how we even define harassment in terms of the Criminal Code. Changing that is an opportunity for public education. Stalking has only been illegal in Canada since 1993. Until I started an organization in January, there was not a single organization in Canada's history focused on stalking.
There's nobody to talk about what this looks like and to help us get into the weeds. This is an opportunity that you have here. By changing that legislation, yes, it's responding, but you're raising awareness on this. We're not talking about people being annoying on the Internet. We're talking about people threatening our lives and impeding our ability to do our jobs. That public education piece is, by definition, prevention as well. Bystander and redefining criminal harassment are the most important, in my view.