Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank our witnesses for appearing before us today.
This is a very important piece of legislation for our government. Following up on the previous study, we spent the better part of almost a full year studying the strengthening of protecting women in Canada's immigration system during which, Ms. Fakhri, I'm happy to tell you, the issue of conditional PR came up considerably. There was also the important recommendation coming out of the report that we should inform immigrants before they come to Canada of their rights when they come here, because they are in fact not forced to stay in an abusive marriage. There are so many channels that they can avail themselves of; however, we found in that study that they were not aware of them. One of the recommendations there dealt with informing people before they come here what their rights are so that, when they come here, they do not feel imprisoned in the relationship that they're in.
In December of this year, Antonio Guterres, who's the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, had an initiative put through. He put out a release marking 16 days of activism against sexual and child-based violence. These 16 days of activism led up to international Human Rights Day on December 10. This year the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees' office's theme is protecting the rights of and preserving childhoods, working together to address child marriage. Mr. Guterres urged governments to take action, saying:
We must advocate with governments for child marriage to be prohibited by law, and for this to be effectively enforced.
I'm very pleased and proud to see that our government is taking the lead on this issue because this is something that we started well before Mr. Guterres' latest initiative.
I wonder if you could comment on this. In particular, do you have any knowledge of what other governments are doing to help prevent this issue worldwide? This is not just a phenomenon that affects Canada; it affects other governments as well.
Perhaps I can start with you, Mr. Kurland.