With your permission, Madam Chair, I can answer that.
Thank you for that really important question, which deals with enforcement.
The Criminal Code is there to enforce just sanctions against people who commit criminal offences. In the context of domestic assaults, to borrow an earlier example, 20 years ago when there was an assault in a domestic context between husband and wife, between a boyfriend and girlfriend or between partners, the police would often come in and separate the parties and say, “You guys need to work this out. This is between the two of you.” That left too many victims vulnerable to continued abuse: Abuse was swept under the rug, hidden away from the public view. It was only after a concerted effort by the provinces, by law enforcement and by advocacy groups to bring this kind of abuse to light that things actually started to be prosecuted in the Criminal Code. Now there is robust prosecution.
The same analogy can be drawn in the context of elder abuse. For far too long, police would come in, do an investigation, speak to one of the parties—usually the party controlling the complainant in the matter, the elder in the matter—and say, “You know, they're just crazy”, or they're this, that or the other thing. Care wasn't taken to remove the potential victim from the situation and talk to them one on one in a way that would allow for a different form of communication, talk to them in a way that would account for the fact that he might be afraid to come forward and name their abuser and say, “I am fearful for my life or safety.”
We need training of law enforcement officers on how to ask the right questions in the right way to develop that evidence. Then there needs to be a will to bring these charges forward—not to view this in the context of a purely family matter or private matter where the police come in and just say, “There, there, just calm down. Everyone just separate for a bit. Then we're going to go away.” These cases need to be investigated properly and then prosecuted vigorously. That is the context I am talking about.
Thank you.