I can reiterate our concerns regarding older women with disabilities. If you'll allow me, I'll continue in English, because my recommendations are in English.
Again, we'd just ask the committee to remember that Canada has obligations under its UN commitments to CEDAW, the CRPD, UNDRIP and other UN treaties. Monitoring is one of the things that we think is quite important for dealing with and trying to address the high levels of abuse that we see in senior care in residences and institutional settings.
We remind everyone that there is a really important issue with and concerns about sexual assault and sexual abuse of older women, particularly older women with disabilities. Again, a lot of information was provided on that by the other witness.
A really important point, one that was very well made by all of the panellists, is that it's very important to see all of these recommendations from an intersectional perspective to understand that we need important policy reforms that look at those things.
DAWN Canada would remind the committee of a project we launched that developed a social media platform called “More Than a Footnote”. The reason we developed that message is that we understand that, far too often, many of the things we are talking about today are footnoted rather than understood to be important in fully developing policy recommendations.
I would say again that the vulnerable person standard is something that DAWN Canada and many other national disability organizations feel is critical to understanding the risks that the new legislation—well it's not so new now—on medical assistance in dying poses, particularly to older women with disabilities. While we understand that this is the law, it's important for lawmakers to understand that there is a vulnerabilization of certain communities through medical assistance in dying and that we need to develop standards and that the disability community needs to be involved in this monitoring process.