Thank you.
When I was addressing the committee earlier, I mentioned that we've been working with the Department of Justice and Status of Women Canada. I would certainly say that your colleagues who work in the national office at Status of Women Canada have been paying very close attention to the information we've been sharing with them over the last few months.
We've also had some very fulsome and excellent discussions with the justice department, particularly with Sue O'Sullivan and the victims of crime office. They've been doing an extraordinary job in terms of leadership on access to justice for victims. I think that's a key piece of this government's work, which DAWN Canada is quite happy to acknowledge is an important step forward.
People with disabilities have been victimized, and they're victimized over and over. This is the kind of oppression that might be hard for people to imagine. Many of the women I have talked to have been abused more than 20 times. They are victims of sexual assault, financial abuse—all types of abuse. There is a systemic problem, as I said before, and it's only going to be addressed if we take a big step forward in developing a national strategy. There is no other way to do this. There is no one good program. This is a large country. We have rural and we have urban.... When you talk about disability, you're talking about a huge range of different issues for different women. Women who have episodic and chronic illnesses experience violence as well.
I haven't talked specifically about different disabilities simply because we're a cross-disability organization, but the complexity of this work and the depth of the challenges are great. Having the government step forward to support the work we're doing with the Canadian Association for Community Living and with our other partners in the disability community and the women's community is a key way for us to be able to move this issue forward.