Good morning ladies. Welcome to the Standing Committee on the Status of Women. This issue seems to me to be more and more important. We often hear about violence against aboriginal women, but for various reasons, we don't know much about this subject.
Today, you're sharing with us a part of your reality and thus you're shedding light on a large number of problems that you are experiencing. Violence against women is not something well known to the public. There's not much talk about it. For my part, I think it's very important to understand this reality because I'm not aboriginal and I'm white. We also experience problems of violence, but one gets the impression that the issue is dismissed and not talked about. To my mind, that's unacceptable. I'm addressing all of you because I haven't heard much about it at all. Are you familiar with the Family Violence Initiative? This is what is said about it:
The Family Violence Initiative (FVI) is a long-term commitment of the Government of Canada to address violence within relationships of kinship, intimacy, dependency or trust. The Public Health Agency of Canada leads and coordinates the FVI on behalf of 15 partner departments, agencies and crown corporations. With the long-term goal of reducing the occurrence of family violence in Canada, the Government of Canada provides the Initiative with permanent annual funding.
I was wondering if you were familiar with this initiative and if one of you had ever used it.
No? You weren't aware of its existence? That may be one avenue. There has been a lot of talk about it. Perhaps this would allow you to contact the Public Health Agency of Canada. This a long-term commitment.