Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
It's a pleasure to be here to discuss a very important issue for our country.
Public safety is obviously a major priority for Canadians. It's become a major priority for the government and, in fact, that was clearly demonstrated during the recent federal election campaign with a series of commitments around public safety.
It's clear that within public safety there are certain issues that demand we all, as Canadians, pay distinct attention to them. The scourge of gender-based violence we've seen in our communities needs to be addressed.
I heard the announcement of a sixth femicide in Quebec this year. That's hard to believe. We need to take action to address violence against women on a daily basis in communities across the country.
Before we get into the specific questions you may have—and I'll endeavour to be under time so that we can save time for those questions—I just want to situate this conversation within the public safety strategy that the Government of Canada has adopted, which rests on three key pillars.
The first is to adopt stronger criminal laws to combat hate, to reform bail and sentencing, to take action on intimate partner violence and to protect our kids against exploitation online and in the real world. In addition to these pieces of legislation, we're taking a broader approach to how we combat crime and enhance public safety.
The second pillar in the strategy, in that regard, is to make investments in the front line, whether those are new RCMP officers, new officers at the border or additional supports for community organizations, including organizations that support victims of crime and including support for women's organizations that support victims of sexual violence and gender-based violence.
The third pillar of the strategy, which I view to be the most important in the long term, is to make the upstream investments to help build healthier people and healthier communities, which will translate into safer communities. This involves a series of investments in affordable housing, in supportive housing and in mental health and addictions. It involves programs that target at-risk youth. In the longer term, it involves investments in infrastructure that allow people to live in, and enjoy, safe communities with access to the recreational and cultural infrastructure that allows them to fully participate in life in their communities.
There are a number of bills before the House of Commons. I've had the opportunity to appear before different committees, to an extent, in particular on Bill C-16, which I expect will go to the justice committee. If this committee is interested in having me appear again to discuss the minutia of that particular piece of legislation, please know that I would be grateful to do that.
In closing, Madam Chair, the first two and a half years of my career as a parliamentarian—as you know well, having chaired capably during that time—were spent on this committee. It was an enormous professional honour for me to be able to work across partisan lines to establish recommendations that were in fact adopted into government policy to help combat gender-based violence in particular. We've relied on some of those recommendations to inform the legislation that I've just described.
I'm happy to hear what recommendations this committee may have in respect of those pieces of legislation and on the important issue of gender-based violence more broadly.
Thank you, everyone. It's a great pleasure to be here. I look forward to your questions.