Your question about what has happened in Quebec is an excellent one, in my opinion. The fact is that, at the time, people were saying there could be 5,000 applications, or 1,500 applications at best.
When I was preparing for my appearance before the Committee, I tried to obtain some information. I called the Office of the Minister of Revenue. There are no statistics available at this time with respect to the number of victims of crime who have availed themselves of the provisions under Bill 58. However, the table in Appendix 6 of the Quebec Labour Standards Board report shows that, of 3,818 complaints made under the Labour Standards Act, only 16 were made by victims of crime. That gives you an order of magnitude, but in actual fact there are no statistics available. I was told that it would be impossible to secure that information, because when complaints enter the system, there is no distinction made between people requesting sick leave, as opposed to family leave. However, based on what has been observed on the ground, very few victims have availed themselves of these provisions.
With respect to compassionate leave, some statistics are available on the website. In that regard, it is clear that there are currently a large number of Canadians who are unaware that such a thing as compassionate leave even exists; 40% have never heard of it, and 10% know only very little about it. And yet this is something that has been available for a very long time.
With your permission, I would also like to add that a great many family members of homicide victims do not take advantage of available services. Either they are not aware of them, or they do not necessarily feel the need to access them at the time. As a result, it is very difficult to ascertain the number of people who would like to take advantage of these measures. We are seeing that a lot of people want to get back to their normal life as soon as possible. That is important. Returning to the labour market is also important. It's equally true that some people need more time and are more vulnerable, for all kinds of reasons. However, none of this has been documented in victimology research.
We are in a new area of law. You are in the process of developing new law. What you are doing through the bill you are currently examining is extremely innovative in Canada, compared to other countries.
In closing, I would just like to say that Canada is a leader in developing programs to support victims. We are moving forward with this kind of legislation. It is true that we don't have access to all the data. But do we necessarily have all the data when a decision is made to build prisons and billions of dollars have to invested? Do we know how much it will cost for programs in future, when federal inmates ask to access such programs?
Perhaps we should be showing some flexibility towards the victims of crime, who have long been ignored.