Thank you, Chair.
I heard Halton Women's Place refer in their introduction to the lack of comparable access to services for women fleeing violence across the country. We also heard comments about the lack of a national action plan from both the Canadian Women's Foundation and the BC Society of Transition Houses. I'm hoping that you can add to that.
Maybe I'll direct my questions to Joanne Baker from British Columbia—as I am. Can you tell us more about the consequences of the federal government's decision not to fulfill its United Nations commitment to do a national action plan, which would coordinate...? Actually, in the words of the blueprint for a national action plan, it said “in the absence of a national action plan, responses to violence against women in Canada are largely fragmented, often inaccessible, and can work to impede rather than improve women's safety.”
Can you give the committee a little bit more of a sense of the impact on the ground of the federal governments having chosen to work on StatsCan and federal agencies rather than taking that leadership at a national level, as we had hoped, to coordinate responses and assure a consistent level of safety across the country?