When it comes to preventing violence and responding to violence, I think the first and foremost principle is that everybody has a responsibility. It comes down to those issues of whether you're a friend or a neighbour, whether you're a government—municipal, first nations, provincial, or federal. We spend a lot of time, when it comes to first nations girls and women, finger-pointing about who has the responsibility and who delivers what, as a contract or what have you. I think we can see that, unfortunately, this framework does not work. There is a need to have a very different framework around looking at the needs, for instance, of safety for girls, and building the system around the need for safety with a degree of collaboration that perhaps we've never had. Maybe it's overly idealistic in Canada, but it's going to be needed to actually respond effectively.
We have adopted Jordan's principle, around supporting the person and figuring out who pays for it later. I have to say on the ground that's more of a theory than a practice. Frequently, for girls, they're just caught in that situation where everybody apparently has a responsibility, but nobody's on the ground to respond. That type of accountability is needed. If someone has the responsibility, I expect them to be accountable and be present and serve. I find significant barriers there on the ground around who's actually doing what and are they present in the lives of the victims who need them.