Thank you very much. I want to thank all of our witnesses, not just for your testimony today but also for the incredibly important work that you do.
I'm going to be directing most of my questions to the Canadian Center for Women's Empowerment. I'm incredibly happy to see you here, Ms. Haileyesus. The work that you've done is incredibly.... It's avant-garde. It is work that really hasn't been documented, although anecdotally a lot of women understand that economic abuse and financial abuse are very much a part of the control and the abusive situation. It's something that needs more research, as you said.
My question to you is a bit cliché. It's “he didn't hit you, did he?” or that you can't see the abuse. That's hard enough when it comes to psychological, emotional and sexual abuse, but when it comes to economic abuse, there are many circumstances where that might seem normalized. He controls the finances, or it might not seem so bad that he's grabbed the credit card to go out shopping. It can happen to very strong women, including women who are employed, who one would think would recognize it. There's an issue in terms of identifying that as a form of abuse.
Why is it so important that we get the data and that we have this national advocacy on economic abuse? It can be stand-alone as well, although as you mentioned, it almost always accompanies other forms of abuse.
Why is it so important that we do this advocacy to ensure that people, women, who are experiencing it and are in that situation will know that it is a form of abuse?