Thank you, Mr. Chair, and through you to our witnesses.
First of all, I want to read something from the “Discover Canada” guide. It's under the rights and responsibilities of Canadian citizenship, and the subheading is, “The Equality of Women and Men”. The guide states:
In Canada, men and women are equal under the law. Canada’s openness and generosity do not extend to barbaric cultural practices that tolerate spousal abuse, “honour killings”, female genital mutilation, forced marriage or other gender-based violence. Those guilty of these crimes are severely punished under Canada’s criminal laws.
This is something that has been put into all the guides that we have updated in most recent years, especially over the last three or four years.
Ms. Rosenberger, I tell you, you had steam coming out of my ears, but only because of what you said, not how you said it. The way you described these things at the beginning to me sounded very much like human trafficking, or a form of slavery. I didn't serve 33 years in the military to allow anybody to come to my shores and have to endure the conditions that may be worse than where they came from. To me, that is something that is intolerable, absolutely intolerable.
For example, since we just talked about the “Discover Canada” guide, do you have any suggestions on how it could be altered to reflect information that would help vulnerable women most? It's written down here already, but clearly it's not always reaching all the ears, or else it's concealed from the people who actually need to see it. If they don't speak English or French and are unable to understand what's there, they can't act on their rights.
Could I have your comments?