Thank you, Madam Chair.
My question is for Ms. Dhillon. I was moved by her testimony. She has survived through some terrible things. As I listened to her, I tried to imagine that my sister, my mother or my daughter was speaking. I found it very troubling.
The goal of Mr. Garrison's Bill C-247 is indeed that abusers can be charged with these different behaviours. However, as I have often said since we started considering this issue, provisions in the Criminal Code already consider harassment, violence, threats and such as offences. That said, I fully understand that domestic violence takes place in a specific context.
One question occurred to me as I was listening to you, Ms. Dhillon. I was trying to figure out not how we might have punished the abuser, but how we might have prevented it from happening.
Given your experience, can you tell us anything about what can be done so that situations like those you have experienced never happen again? Is it a matter of educating and training responders and the police? Should there be weekly or monthly visits by people with responsibility for these kinds of issues?
How can we detect a potential problem? How could I determine, by watching my friends and acquaintances, that one individual is possibly controlling and violent towards his wife? How can we find that out before anything happens? How can we respond so that it does not happen?