Most definitely I can.
Women, when they face violence and are in a precarious immigrant status, which sometimes does not give them a substantial connection to Canada, definitely have less protection within the systems available to them. They sometimes are threatened with deportation by the abusers. Also, the system is built in such a way that they can actually face, as a consequence of that violence, being deported. Irrespective of whether or not they reported it, they can face the consequences of being deported because they were violated or because they chose to report abuse. That's something that we see with various provisions, whether they be for conditional permanent residency or for misrepresentation or for a domestic charge against their co-applicant. We see all that happen in various areas of immigration provisions, and this is something that needs to be changed.
Again, there needs to be a cultural shift within the immigration policies to be more sensitive to the violence that women experience while being precarious. Unfortunately, it is as though they are in some kind of invisible chains that are put around them through these immigration policies. Those invisible chains need to be taken care of. At this point, the changes we are proposing through this committee are that our policies shouldn't be there to basically bind them into violence; our policies should be to free them from violence.