Good afternoon, minister. Thank you for the work you do within your department.

I want to draw your attention to a particularly concerning reality that affects victims of sexual assault.

In Canada, the journey of sexual assault victims through the justice system is fraught with obstacles. According to Statistics Canada, only 6% of victims report to the police. Among these reports, attrition is significant at every stage: Just 36% of those reports lead to charges, and some of those charges result in convictions. These figures are not insignificant. They point to the fact that very few people are being held responsible by the justice system for the sexual violence suffered by thousands of people, particularly women. They also mean that things need to change to give more victims the courage to press charges. Finally, they illustrate the need to restore confidence in the justice system.

Minister, faced with these alarming figures and criticism from some experts—

I think I understand the question, and I hope you have the opportunity to finish asking it later.

This is a very important issue, and the government needs to address it. I will be introducing a new bill this year to address the reality of violence against women, including the process followed by courts when dealing with offences such as sexual assault.

The laws that we’re going to introduce will address gender-based violence in society more broadly but include reforms in the criminal trial process. My eyes were opened to the scale of this problem during the few years I spent early in my career as a parliamentarian on the Status of Women Committee when we studied in depth some of the challenges of women facing violence and the challenges they were coming forward to report. It is going to include a whole-of-society approach, from educating boys and men to educating police officers to having trauma-informed responses in the courts.

It is also going to require procedural changes that do not make it so painful to go through the process. In addition to these challenges, we need to address the subject of delays, which, in the events where we do have people coming forward, trying to bring their case to conclusion, still sometimes see things result in a stay rather than a conviction not because a person has defeated the charges but because the clock has run out.

We intend to address many of these challenges in a piece of legislation coming forward in the next few weeks.

Thank you very much for your informative answer, minister. As you plan and develop this reform, do you intend to consult victims and community groups?

Yes. That consultation process is under way, some of which includes my personal engagement on round tables dealing with victims’ advocates. Others involve engagements by the department to reach a broader audience. My own philosophy is that laws developed behind closed doors on Parliament Hill will never properly address the concerns of the people who rely on the systems we try to build. If we incorporate, in a democracy, the voices of those most affected by the decisions we make, we will make better decisions.

To the extent that you, other parliamentarians or Canadians more broadly wish to take part in the process, know that we sincerely hold the belief that building their perspective into the bill will result in stronger protections for survivors of sexual violence.