Thank you so much for the question, Anita, and for putting a focus on this because it is very important for the committee. It is part of the newer and emerging research, but it is something that DAWN Canada has been saying for decades. Women becoming disabled through violence is a fact.
The other point I'll make, since we're in this space, is that the rates of disability among indigenous and Black women being higher points to the fact that there are all kinds of reasons that women become disabled through violence, and how these things link up.
To speak specifically to the brain injury piece, this is the hidden tsunami that we must speak about, because this new data, the numbers I was talking about, with fully over a quarter of a million women, in terms of brain injury by itself...and understanding that studies in Canada show that upwards of 50% of women who are going into a shelter or a transition house today have a brain injury.
It doesn't get screened; it doesn't get diagnosed. She goes back out there, and what happens? Well, I can share statistics on the number of women in the homeless population who had a pre-existing brain injury before they became homeless, or the number of imprisoned women who had a pre-existing brain injury before they landed in prison. These connections have to be made when we start to talk about the long view and policy, and improving the supports for women who sustain traumatic and acquired brain injuries because of abuse, because both are true. Acquired brain injury is from long-term abuse and isn't necessarily from a blow to the head; it can be from sustained abuse.
These kinds of things are really critical right now as we start to build out the national action plan. Shelters and all frontline services need to understand how big this is. The disability community and rights holders need to understand how big it is, because we are talking about a tsunami in terms of the size and scope of brain injury and its connections to gender-based violence.