Status of Women committee  Thank you for having me here today. I'm pleased to be here to talk about best practices and preventing violence against women. As you know, I am the executive director of West Coast LEAF. West Coast LEAF works to achieve equality by changing historic patterns of systemic discrim

Status of Women committee  I will for sure. I'm sorry. I'm on my last paragraph here. In this report we make a number of recommendations to government, including the creation of a new office independent of government, but focused within the federal ministry of the Status of Women to conduct research, to f

Status of Women committee  Yes. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, I think what's needed are national standards in a number of different areas around economic security for women, that being one of the direct pieces of connection to violence here. If women are empowered and independent financially, they

Status of Women committee  I'll answer the second question first. It is for boys and girls. An important piece of the program is that it educates both boys and girls about the power imbalances, as I say, sexism, racism, and understanding those terms, and understanding stereotype and gender bias, for exampl

Status of Women committee  It would be that the conditional permanent status provisions be revoked. The federal government has not provided conclusive evidence that there is a widespread fraud problem, which is the justification for this provision, or really significantly, that this provision actually is g

Status of Women committee  Yes, absolutely. We've expanded the program a lot in the last few years, and the response is increasingly positive. We introduced a new program this year called TrendShift that is based on our work, as I mentioned, our cybermisogyny work. We produced a report with recommendations

Status of Women committee  I don't think it's a productive tool for women in general, but I will say the specific recommendation would be to exempt women who are making gender-based persecution claims. At the very least there should be a more accountable process for the minister in designating third countr

Status of Women committee  Sure. You know, it is passed. My feeling about it is there are some really good provisions in it about criminalizing the non-consensual sharing of intimate images. I think that is positive. I think it's unfortunate that it was coupled with provisions that look like they may very

Status of Women committee  There are a lot of recommendations in our report. I'm happy to send it to the committee, and I will do that. There is probably one I would draw the committee's attention to, if that's your question. It is the creation of a new position that is funded through Status of Women Cana

Status of Women committee  Absolutely we need to take it seriously. Hate, harassment, sexism—it's nothing new. Certainly that's not changed. The fact that it's there has not changed with the advent of the Internet age. What is new is the level of anonymity that can be found online and the kind of licence,

Status of Women committee  Sure. I was just going to provide the example of stories in which women's pictures are posted with their details. The cyber-violence turns into real violence when their addresses, their social insurance numbers, and their telephone numbers are posted online. I just wanted to p

Status of Women committee  I'm sorry, for some reason we're having trouble hearing you. Did you ask whether we were consulted?

Status of Women committee  West Coast LEAF was not.

Status of Women committee  I would like to see a return to the time—it was in the nineties, I believe, and I don't have the date—when the federal government gave funding to provincial legal aid plans through tied transfer payments, transfer payments with strings attached. Basically that is a funding requ

Status of Women committee  There are so many recommendations on improvements to family law. Most of my recommendations would probably go to the provinces rather than to areas within the jurisdiction of the federal government.