We know we can't even consider helping domestic violence victims escape from that cycle if we don't do more to address economic violence so we can remove women from the poverty and insecurity cycle that very often traps them in the domestic violence cycle in the first place.
I'd like to go back to the somewhat chilling article that appeared this morning. It tells the story of Naima Rezzek, who was stabbed by her former partner last Saturday. She was the second woman killed in three days and the fourteenth woman killed in Quebec since the start of this year. Eight of those women were killed in domestic violence situations. The author of the article asks the question, “So what's going on here? In less than five months, more women have already been murdered than in all of 2023.”
My thoughts about the coercive control issue stem from the fact that I was challenged on the subject by a female member from Quebec City. You told me you had been consulted about that article. I know that you weren't just consulted about the article, you also contributed to the report entitled “Rebâtir la confiance”, which brought together the various initiatives in Quebec. That's more or less what was said in the article.
There are a lot of things that Quebec can do better, but the ball is now in the federal government's court regarding the criminalization of coercive control, and we can't toy with that ball.
How do these figures reflect the situation? How could this tool for detecting coercive control help reduce the number of crimes against women?