Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, very quickly, I would say that there are lots of folks doing great bystander intervention work. We also know that if you don't do booster training six to eight months afterwards, people don't lose the skills, but do lose the confidence because they've spent six months being told to just shut up and stay quiet.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Certainly. I would say that bystander intervention training needs to be mandatory. It needs to be across the board. I work with a program where I teach bystander intervention to children aged three to 10. It's a life skill. It's like administering CPR. It's like naloxone and a life skill if you see someone in distress.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, absolutely. Body language has an impact on intimidation, for example. It's not just a lack of respect that's conveyed by examples such as those just cited: using one's telephone when someone is speaking, talking to someone else nearby and not paying attention. People can also roll their eyes or cross their arms as they look at someone.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Absolutely.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Are you referring to our freedom to speak about misogyny?

Procedure and House Affairs committee  As was mentioned this morning, when we women talk about situations in which we've been harassed, we're told in certain instances that it's not true. We're often told that we should toughen up and find a way to deal with it. We're told that, if we don't have the necessary ability, confidence or endurance, this job isn't for us.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I would say, yes, we should put conditions on people who are threatening people's lives. That shouldn't be controversial.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, I think certainly it would be helpful. I mean, it's an all-hands-on-deck situation. To assume that there's some sort of silver bullet that's going to solve everything.... It's going to be a multipronged approach. I do think that it bodes really well when you see cross-party support around these issues.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Absolutely. I would absolutely agree with that.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I absolutely would recommend that as a member of civil society who cannot speak in public without a security detail because of the amount of death threats I receive for my work on ending violence against women in Canada. I have had rare occasions when folks have been criminalized for their behaviour, but to your point, I absolutely agree that if a member of Parliament cannot get justice for someone who is repeatedly harassing them, how do we expect a 25-year-old single mother who's being harassed by an intimate partner—but using fake aliases online—to get justice?

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Wonderful. Thank you. I'm delighted that Samara was added to the list. Their work is something I was going to reference because they do incredibly important work. Thank you for the invitation. My name is Julie S. Lalonde and I have been working to end gender-based violence in Canada for over 20 years.

Status of Women committee  Yes. I would reiterate what Christine said in terms of collaboration between VAC and CAF. I would also say that WAGE needs to be leading a lot of these conversations. We need an important GBA+ analysis, and they are the folks who created that analysis. They need to be included in these conversations.

Status of Women committee  I'm an expert on bystander intervention, and what I hear from bystanders all the time is, “I didn't say anything because it was just a comment. If he had touched her, I would have said something, but it was just a comment. It was just a joke. Oh, you know how he is. He's old school,” and so on.

Status of Women committee  I'll let Ms. Wood give you a more specific answer to your question. I personally feel that the importance of this training must be emphasized. In the four sessions that I led, none of the senior officers stayed in the room. So, from the beginning, they didn't send the message that the training was important and that it had to be taken seriously.

Status of Women committee  Absolutely. I'm going to go back to the piece around third party reporting, because I think that's a really good, concrete example. When Operation Honour happened, when there was an emphasis on our having to eradicate this behaviour, it was still framed as this: We have to get rid of the couple of bad apples.