Thank you, Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses. The timing is really good to bring this information together.
On November 8, your Centre for Justice Statistics in Stats Canada released a report called “Police-reported sexual assaults in Canada before and after #MeToo, 2016 and 2017”. The numbers were pretty striking. There were 25% more victims of police-reported sexual assault in the three months after #MeToo first went viral. The average number of police-reported sexual assault victims went from 59 per day before #MeToo to 74 per day after #MeToo.
I'm hearing that this is increasing the load on the front-line women's organizations, whether they're operating domestic violence shelters.... It's all sexual assault prevention. They're very intertwined.
I'm curious as to whether you have data or are planning to collect data, now that the taboo on reporting is being lifted, on how this increase in demand is stretching the limits of these sexual assault support centres and the rape crisis centres, the help lines, the trauma lines. There are so many that are involved in this.
Is this something that StatsCan is collecting or is planning to collect?