As we know, the issue of domestic violence is very complicated, and we all know it's not only a cultural issue. It happens in every culture, every society, and so on.
From my experience in working with victims of domestic violence, I have seen women come here, having been sponsored, who have been in Canada for a year or two years and still don't know how to use the bus or how to call 911. Her husband is not on welfare and they are independent. She is not going to school—she is prevented from going to school—but she has nobody to turn to.
Somehow one out of a hundred might be lucky enough to find somebody—a neighbour or somebody—to call for her, and then she gets to ask for help.
I believe that for any process of sponsorship when a spouse sponsors their wife or their partner from overseas there is a period of waiting for two or three years until the process finalizes and the person enters Canada. If they gave a booklet in the sponsored person's language and told them to review it and said that it would be part of the interview questions, people could enter Canada with knowledge, knowing that that they are choosing the country and that these are their rights in going there. I believe it would make a difference, if you knew that there are services existing.
I hear so many women say that they didn't know that these services existed or they would have left a long time ago. But they are coming, they enter Canada, but they are still under the control and power of their partner.
It is the same thing with finances. Women depending on their abusers, in terms of financially depending on the person who has sponsored them, causes a huge issue. These women have never had access to money, never had a bank account. We have to take them by the hand to show them how to open a bank account. They have never had their own bank account.
These are the steps we need to take to maybe eliminate some of the issues of domestic violence, like working with settlement workers. There should be, at least for two years, mandatory involvement of settlement workers with those newcomers, and regular meetings without the presence of the husband. We need to somehow educate all the women and their children who are trapped in these conditions. This is a new country for them. They have nobody. They have nobody to go to. The only person they know, in some cases, is the person who has sponsored them.