Thank you, Chair.
It's nice to be back in person this week.
Picking up on a couple of comments, I think that if we're talking about “epidemic”, it's actually gender-based violence. I know that has been declared an epidemic in municipalities. It's not just intimate partner violence, but gender-based violence.
Speaking of removing victim consultation, from my understanding—I could be wrong—right now victims have the choice of three options. There's a written submission, not testifying at all or testifying. It gives more autonomy to the victim to be able to make a choice about how they want to deal with a case. I could be wrong. I'd like to hear what your understanding is.
I think “any” is actually really important. If you look at cycles of abuse, depending on where the victim is in the cycle, they may or may not feel safe to report the abuse, even though they may be in a life-threatening situation, which is why I think “any person” is really important in terms of what was proposed by the Liberals.
If a person is too fearful even to report—I know you want to do a study on coercive control—and believes that if they report, something terrible is going to happen to them, they might choose not to report, whether it's true or not, depending on how they're doing.
I actually do support the amendment of having “any”, for that reason. I think it—