Thank you, Madam Chair.
I would like to thank all of the witnesses for their great testimony today and for being here to answer our questions.
My questions are going to be a little all over the place. I've been thinking about the root causes of this type of violence, and I really want to get to the bottom of why and to the different types of dynamics that play a role here.
Is anyone able to answer the question of whether cultural communities—and I'm not talking about indigenous women per se, but cultural communities or immigrant communities—face higher levels of violence than white communities or communities that aren't necessarily from immigrant backgrounds? I don't know if anyone has a stat on that.
No? Okay.
The reason I was going there is that some of our panellists earlier, and Ms. Bell now, mentioned that more younger women are getting into relationships where they face violence. One in three young girls between the ages of 12 and 14 is in a relationship where she may experience violence. Also, Melpa Kamateros, in previous testimony, said that younger people are the ones seeking help in shelters right now.
Coming from a cultural community myself, I know that dating in our teens is frowned upon, so it's not necessarily allowed. Based also on my experience as a teacher, I feel that a lot of young people I knew who were from cultural backgrounds weren't necessarily the ones who were dating.
Ms. Bell, in your experience, what would be the reason...? If younger and younger people are coming out with these types of issues, and we're trying to tackle it from the root and not allow this type of violence to continue later on, what are some of the things that you think people can do?
First of all, what are the signs to look out for? Obviously, you mentioned three of them. Also, what types of programs can the federal government put into place? We obviously don't deal much with education, but what types of programs can we can put into place that would fund these types of initiatives to help end those signs, let's say, early on?