Citizenship and Immigration committee  Good afternoon.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Hello.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Hello from Montreal. I will definitely try to be within my time, but I also have a lot of notes. My presentation will be slightly different because we stress a lot of prevention at the organization. We have a network of services that provide services and activities in up to 15 l

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, okay. I will go over the general recommendations that we have, then, because I will not be able to finish: equality of access to information on gender equality, legal system and Criminal Code in Canada in language of origin, mandatory language courses and integration program

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you very much for asking me that question, because I had a whole section on forced marriages that I couldn't get to.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you very much. Yes, we do have requests with regard to forced marriages. Actually, we are embarking on year two of a project that we've done on honour-based violence. Forced marriage is part of this issue. When we do get requests, they are usually, because of the project w

Citizenship and Immigration committee  As well, upon consultation with our community workers, our cultural intermediaries, we have to say that the issue of forced marriages is something that comes up more and more. I revert back to the issue of language; when there is no linguistic access, no information can get throu

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Of course not. This is a field that's just being developed here in Quebec, largely through a project that we have been applying for the...I think it's year two now. Through the project we have enacted what we call legal clinics within certain communities, where information on ite

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Okay. Thank you.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We feel that there should be more leniency regarding the cases if there is a case concerned with conjugal violence, there should be an exemption for the victim, and she should be able to stay in Canada and not be deported.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you. I'm sorry I tried to interject earlier. When I hear things such as the use of the Internet in order to inform people...we have our clients, and I'm sure the social worker can attest to that. They don't even know how to use public transport because the linguistic issue

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, of course. That is one of the things I said at the start of my presentation. The woman has to be informed at the very start of the process and after she first enters Canada. Afterwards, her progress should be followed.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, the follow-up should be done automatically. How else can we determine if there is spousal abuse? Police reports can indicate such a situation, but if the woman cannot speak any language but her mother tongue, we can't expect her to indicate that she is a victim of spousal ab

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I will let the social worker, the caseworker, answer that.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  But education is not an indicator of whether or not there's going to be violence. We have a lot of educated women also who are victims of abuse and education is not an indicator also of who the abuser will be, because a lot of educated men are also abusers. No, education is not