Justice committee  Mr. Chair, if I might add, in 2016 the federal, provincial and territorial ministers responsible for justice determined, as part of their deliberations over how to address the Supreme Court of Canada's decision in Jordan and to find efficiencies to address and prevent delays, agreed that one of the important measures that could be advanced and that would help address the issue of delays more generally would be to address mandatory minimum penalties.

Justice committee  No, thank you. I'm fine.

Justice committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the opportunity to be here today to speak to former Bill C-36, as well as to what we know about the social context to which it applies and its impact. Available data in Canada and around the world identifies that the majority of people who provide sexual services are women and girls; the vast majority of those who purchase sexual services are men, and the majority of profiteers and procurers are also men.

Justice committee  I will try to briefly respond. Since the development of what became the CVBR in Bill C-32, Justice Canada has worked closely with the Department of National Defence in developing what has become the “civilian VBR”. They weren't in a position to bring forward similar amendments on their part because it's a much more complicated regime.

Justice committee  If I might take a stab at part of the answer, we are still awaiting some research that's in the process of being wrapped up, so we hope to get some better information on that in the months to come. One of the things that was really important in the development of what became the CVBR is there were quite a few consultations held by the government—the minister at the time—with Canadians, the victims themselves and victim-serving organizations.

Justice committee  I'm not aware; I'm not in a position to respond to that. It could be that it's outside of the victims strategy. We're not in a position to comment or to answer the question.

Justice committee  I would say that for sure a big part of our recent efforts since 2016 though Justice Canada has been support through the FILUs, the family information liaison units, with regard to murdered and missing indigenous women. In addition to that, we do continue to work and to look at, for example, working with individual communities for even more lessons learned about some of these different issues that have been identified as ways to improve responses on a go-forward basis.

Justice committee  I could add a comment. It is true that the federal government announced funds to support victims during the pandemic. We can undertake to provide the committee with some information about the funding provided, particularly that announced through Women and Gender Equality Canada.

Justice committee  Again, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, the federal victim strategy has been in place since 2000. It's gone through a number of updates, modernizations and overhauls. The key components to that strategy at the federal level are coordination of the different departments and agencies that have mandates to serve and work with victims.

Justice committee  Yes, I'll start, and if I may, I'll turn to my colleague, Madam Bouchard, to continue. To start with, the federal government made available through the Victims Fund, for provinces and territories, approximately $10.6 million over the years from 2016 to 2020 to help support the implementation of the CVBR in their jurisdictions.

Justice committee  Thank you. We are pleased to be here today to discuss the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights and related efforts by the Department of Justice. Ensuring access to justice for victims of crime and giving them a more effective voice in the criminal justice system has been a long‑standing commitment of the federal government.

Justice committee  I'm not sure if my colleague Ms. Underwood wants to speak to that. I would just say that, as an official at the Department of Justice, I'm not well positioned to speak to transfers of funds dealing with health.

Justice committee  As and when the government moves forward with its proposals to amend the Criminal Code in support of that commitment, obviously we would normally—and we would definitely, in this particular case—look to work closely with our provincial and territorial counterparts to enhance their understanding of what's being proposed but also about the tools that exist already in the Criminal Code.

Justice committee  That is my understanding from that report as well. The “Family violence in Canada: A statistical profile, 2019” did conclude that there has been an increase in the level of violence against seniors, including in the family violence context. Absolutely, we do need better, broader and disaggregated data, and that's part of what we're going to work towards to help us be in a position to better collect that data through Statistics Canada.

Justice committee  Again, the “Family violence in Canada: A statistical profile, 2019” report does provide some of that information from Statistics Canada, as noted. It talks in particular about violence against seniors at the hands of someone known to the victim, but it also gives a little information about stranger violence against seniors by way of comparison.