Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
I put forward four suggestions, and further to what I think many people around the table are talking about--senior women and poverty--I included income splitting, which I think addresses poverty for seniors, women in particular, because of the traditional role that women have played and there has been no respect for or a dollar amount given to the work they have done at home.
If we were to investigate and make a recommendation maybe at some point that we could at least start with senior women, with income splitting there, perhaps it would allow them to have pensions, the government pensions, because they're not even entitled to that if they didn't have an income at some point. So I thought it would tie in nicely with the discussion on senior women.
I also support the idea of talking about violence against women--in particular, sexual assault. I know many times I've asked witnesses before the committee about statistics, if we have any, whether they've changed, because I remember when I was a volunteer that it was one out of three women at some point in their life. I believe that has not changed, and it has been ten years since I worked as a volunteer for a rape crisis centre. So I think we need to find out if we've actually made some progress in this, and if we haven't, maybe make some recommendations on how the government could address this issue.
I also thought perhaps we could talk about women and entrepreneurs, and more specifically trade, the international trade side of things. Perhaps the committee could participate in a trade mission for Canadian women and Canadian entrepreneurs and really start focusing on how small-business women can expand.