Thank you, Madam Chair.
Good afternoon, everyone.
My thanks to the members of the committee for inviting the Fédération des maisons d'hébergement pour femmes to appear today. My thanks also for your commitment in combatting violence against women.
The federation is made up of 37 shelters across Quebec. We shelter thousands of women and children. We also provide post-shelter services, together with external and [technical difficulties] services. Our community involvement includes awareness and prevention. We represent federation members at various parliamentary committees and government working groups. We are currently involved in the implementation of specialized courts in Quebec. We are working on pilot projects in 10 of Quebec's 17 administrative regions.
The government has a very strong desire to combat violence against women. It is important to emphasize that the specialized courts will hear not only cases of spousal violence, but also cases of sexual violence. This is a great innovation. It will result in a much more detailed examination of violence against women.
The Fédération des maisons d’hébergement pour femmes is the only provincial association whose members take in women, not only as the result of spousal violence, but also for family violence, human trafficking, sexual exploitation, forced marriages and so on. However, the federation's mandate is basically focused on all kinds of violence against women.
We have also worked with the Government of Quebec, which is currently reviewing family law. It wishes to include a legislative framework that recognizes and responds to spousal violence. In so doing, it recognizes the definition in the Politique d'intervention en matière de violence conjugale, which has been in existence in Quebec since 1995.
We have submitted our fifth five-year action plan, which sets out a number of recommendations in various areas such as prevention, psychosocial response or [technical difficulties], meaning everything related to [technical difficulties] spousal violence and other forms of violence.
All departments—