Dear Mr. MacGregor:
Congratulations on your recent election win! This November is the 24th anniversary of the international campaign 16 days of Activism against Gender Violence with Canada’s National Day of Remembrance and Action being Dec. 6. We would like to invite you to come to our Dec. 6 vigil to pay respect to all the women who have lost their lives to gender-based violence.
Additionally, we would like to invite you to advocate for ending violence against women as the following from Statistics Canada show that more improvements are needed:
• While Canada had been seeing a decline in spousal violence, the 2004 and 2009 General Social Survey on Victimization showed this progress has stalled with six per cent of Canadians continuing to self-report being victims of spousal violence in the last five years
• Over 6,000 women and children escape domestic violence to sleep in an emergency shelter every night, with 200 women being turned away nightly due to shelters being full
• Only 10 per cent of women report sexual abuse to police
While we are pleased that the government will be taking action by doing a national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women, Cowichan Women Against Violence Society would like the Canadian government to do more to stop violence against women.
The next cycle of the General Social Survey on Victimization is set to be released soon. We would appreciate you monitoring results and bringing findings to the attention of the House.
Violence against women needs immediate attention and increased funding from the influential powers of the federal government. Will you advocate for this? We look forward to hearing your response on this.
Thank you for your time and commitment to ending violence against women.
The Social Action Committee
Cowichan Women Against
Violence Society