That's a really big question.
The situation with aboriginal women in this country is abominable. I think that's been pointed out very clearly by the United Nations Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women; and the lack of action has also been abominable.
I do not pretend for one minute to speak for aboriginal women, because aboriginal women speak so clearly and so well for themselves, although I do think we need to very seriously listen to what aboriginal women are saying and be very clear about the absolute critical need in this country to support aboriginal women in the ways they have said that they need support, which is both for services as well as for support in the many campaigns that they have.
Violence against women in general is huge. Sexual violence is.... I live in a small university town, and the sexual violence that is never reported is huge and it is increasingly hideous in many ways in the way it plays out. We do not see sexual violence as being a serious issue in this country unless it's something like the Picton case. But the sexual violence to which women are exposed every single day is huge, and it's the same with intimate partner violence. That will not be changed through services.
Do we need services? Absolutely. Do we need well-funded services? Absolutely. Will violence be changed because we provided services? Absolutely not. That's one of the reasons we need the support, and the funding, and the focus of Status of Women Canada to be able to make any imprint on this whatsoever. We've been advocating on that whole question for 25 years, but 25 years is such a small period of time when we think about the barriers and the levels of oppression, and discrimination, and exclusion, and the levels of violence that women have been facing.
One last thing and then I'll stop. When I first participated in the women's movement 30 years ago I thought, innocently, that it would be different for my daughter. I thought it was the fact that people didn't have the information, and if we provided the information, then of course policies would change; it would change. It's been a hard lesson to realize that it's not simply about not having the information, it's about attitudes of misogyny that permeate our policies.