Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you for being here, Minister. I appreciate your willingness to hear questions.
Minister, in the Prime Minister's mandate letter to you, he asked you to “develop a National Action Plan on Gender-Based Violence, with a focus on ensuring that anyone facing gender-based violence has reliable and timely access to protection and services”. As you know, the pandemic has exacerbated pre-existing gaps of assistance toward women. Because of lockdowns, women facing domestic violence are challenged in regard to their exits. It's been a year since the pandemic lockdown. How are Canadian women safer today than a year ago?
On that note, how are indigenous women and girls safer today than a year ago? You haven't released an action plan in response to the report. I asked you this question at committee in July of last year. How are they safer today? What is the process you're in right now in response to that?
In addition to this list of questions, my concern right now is the culture of gaslighting women, which I'm not very happy with. I know we want to counter that, but when you have the Minister of Defence abdicating, and the government covering up for that, to me that is treating the trauma of these women as just invisible. You can say all the nice things and show solidarity through words, but if there's no action.... Then we have these hotel quarantine situations with sexual assaults.
I mean, it's not a safe place right now. It needs to be safer. Can the minister commit to these points and share with us today what has actually been done to make Canada a safer place for women a year after the lockdown?