Thank you very much for asking.
I want to explain that more, because I think it's very important. As I said, I've noted that lot of the witnesses you're going to hear from, of course, are people who are doing direct service, including the shelter community. While it certainly is clear and true that there's a problem with accessibility of shelters, that's not the problem that we need to look at right now.
The national action plan is a 10-year plan that allows us to look at these from a more structural place, and that's where we need to begin. I want to remind everybody that shelters and transition houses, just like the ones described by my colleagues—my good colleague from Quebec, in terms of the work of Athena, and other incredible organizations across the country—were built in communities by women with whatever they had—whatever old building, whatever old structure, any old thing they could get—because they were trying to meet the needs that weren't being met anywhere else. Women are the reason we have a shelter network. Women are the reason we have second-stage housing. Women in communities are the reasons we have that.
DAWN Canada is not sitting here with the idea that that's what we need to point to. What we need to address is the fact that for women from diverse communities, including women with disabilities, Black women, indigenous women and women from all kinds of marginalized communities, these solutions haven't worked. It's not a reflection of the shelters. It's a reflection of needing to start again, using the instruments of hope, thinking over the long term and beginning to rethink how we provide those services.
Accessibility is.... Again, I spoke about peer support. A number of different things have to be done in a stepped way for these solutions to have an impact on women and girls with disabilities, because it isn't about building ramps. This is something we said 25 years ago.