Thank you, Madam Chair.
I'd like to thank you all for coming today. Your presentations were great.
I would like to point out that Barbara is from London, Ontario. Barbara, you do a great job researching violence against women and children. Thank you for that.
Barbara, this one is for you. On February 25 of this year, Stats Canada released a report, “Measuring violence against women: Statistical trends”. It indicated that following an incident of violence, Canadian women are statistically more likely than men to disclose their victimization to family and friends—80% versus 56%. I think one of you mentioned that as well, that women report it more than men.
In your 2004 “Workplace Harassment and Violence Report”, you noted that women cope with harassment, and sexual harassment in particular, through externally focused behavioural strategies such as avoidance or seeking support, and also internally focused psychological strategies such as denial, detachment, and self-blame.
Would you say that there is a need for access to social and personal support networks alongside the reporting and mediation of an incident of sexual harassment in the workplace? The reason I'm asking is that the federal service employees have access to an employee assistance program, which provides e-counselling and referrals to local counsellors to assist public service employees in dealing with personal or workplace-related issues. This has only been raised once since we've been listening to it, so I'm just curious to hear your opinion on it.