Thank you so much for your question. It really does draw attention to some of the challenges associated with gathering statistics as a whole. I say that from the perspective of public health information.
In the context of public health professionals, as I said, information starts with being able to recognize the signs of abuse and being able to track that abuse. So for specific questions with respect to the types of reports, we did undertake a gender-based analysis of existing evidence that led to several recommendations, including data to analyze trends by culture, by aboriginal identification, by immigrant status, or socio-economic status.
In the Public Health Agency, part of our responsibility is to be able to work closely with professionals and be able to acquire the information that is charted by those public health professionals. When we are able to undertake that kind of work, then the type of information and the type of guidance and the type of reporting will improve.
All of this is really important to understanding women's experience of abuse. There will be differences with an individual's desire or reluctance to share information about abuse. For example, women who are in certain communities may be very reluctant to question or challenge authority in any form, because of the way they were raised. We have to be mindful of that in working not only with public health professionals, but when working with other organizations at the community level, so they're aware that the tracking of that information is very, very important.
As a result of the analysis that we've undertaken, we've also come to understand--which we apply in our policy work--that disability is a risk factor for abuse in older women. That may seem obvious, but, again, I think we make several generalizations about seniors, whether it be older women or not, and we have to break that down and start to understand the effects that abuse may have, depending on the population of where the person comes from.
Simply to give you statistics, women live longer with more disabling conditions such as arthritis, osteoporosis, and women with disabilities are 1.5 to 10 times more likely to be abused. This information coming to light and being able to report it will have the impact of being able to change public policy and to be able to be more mindful of that.