I agree that it should be part of the Criminal Code and, as Madam Young stated, language is important, and we can't address things when we don't know what we're addressing. I would proffer for the committee that language is important in the way that we prosecute or seek justice as well.
In the court system now, violence gets mutualized in the language. We have a lot of work to do around training our justice, legal and punitive systems around clear and clean language that doesn't mutualize the violence or that doesn't put the responsibility of the actions of the perpetrator onto the victim. That, I think, is really an important piece of it.
That means talking about who did what to whom, and not letting “Jeff hit Jill”—I'm sorry, Jill—get changed in the court to, “Jill was hit,” and suddenly Jeff is gone, off in the night, and it's just Jill here having to deal with this.
I think that's a really important piece of it. As much as trauma-informed models brought us to where we are in this discussion, I think we need to move to violence-informed models that talk about who does what to whom, and we need to have dignity-driven practices that are committed to upholding the dignity of the victims and the survivors of violence.