When I got up at six this morning I wasn't feeling too athletically inclined, but I must say, after being here for only a few minutes, I feel a tremendous sense of renewal and reenergization because when you're with so many people supporting and committed to the same cause and such an important cause ¾ the eradication of domestic violence in our society ¾ one cannot help but, I think, return to the fray, to the battle for each one of us, later today and in the weeks and months that come. And we double our efforts to ensure that our families, our communities, and our country are a safe place for all people to be.

I first want to congratulate the organizers of this eighth annual fund raiser. Every year this event continues to grow and continues to speak to the very strong support of this community for our friends, our neighbours, perhaps many people we don't know (in the sense of putting a name to). But, they are our neighbours who are in need, and I think the number of people here this morning speak to that need and the commitment on the part of so many to work to meet that need. Every year on the anniversary of the massacre at L'Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal, people like us, people like you across the country, hold fund raisers, vigils, and education and awareness campaigns about the horror of domestic violence and violence against women.

Just this week I visited a display on family violence in the House of Commons Hall of Honour. This was a display done by women and children who are survivors of domestic violence in the Ottawa region. The display was a T-shirt exhibit. It was actually quite simple. And, it was profoundly moving in its simplicity. Women and children living in a shelter had designed T-shirts that spoke to their experience and their feelings and their sense, in too many cases, of hopelessness, their overpowering and overwhelming sense of pain, sadness and despair. And you know some of these T-shirts were done by small children. You could tell ¾ the characters were little stick people on the fronts and backs of T-shirts, but the messages were profound. I remember one little girl saying in French "I have the right to be left alone" and

the stick person had hands all over the little body. And this small female child was the victim of sexual abuse by a family member. And, in a sense, it is those images that can so profoundly tell us what people suffer when they are the victims of domestic violence or sexual assault. And having said that, there was also a tremendous sense of hope emanating from these T-shirts. And I think all of you here this morning are part of the hopefulness of those victims. They were sending a message to all of us that they want some very simple things.

They want respect, they want dignity, they want the right to be left alone. If someone says "no", if someone in a family situation, a small child, says "no" and wants her bodily integrity to be respected, that is a right we have to acknowledge and we have to protect. So while I looked at this display and found the effect overwhelming, in many other respects it was overwhelmingly hopeful. Because these were people who were healing. These were people who were moving forward and they were people of hope.

And the three organizations that we are helping here this morning are similar organizations who acknowledge the problem in our local communities and provide hope to people. The Lurana Shelter, the Indo Canadian Women's Association, and A Safe Place in Sherwood Park ¾ all of which have an outstanding record of offering counseling, practical support and a safe haven to victims of violence. All three have also been especially successful in reaching out to members of the city's Asian and Aboriginal communities. Time and time again their staff have helped break the chains of isolation and walls of silence that often deter or discourage women and children in these communities from seeking help.

Twenty-five years ago, no matter where you lived in Canada, family violence was a kind of personal tragedy that was largely suffered in silence. For victims, perpetrators and even observers it was a secret they kept behind closed doors. While, today, that kind of secrecy is not all together gone, the dimensions of the problem are out in the open.

As a society we have begun not only to acknowledge and condemn family violence, we have begun to understand it ¾ be it physical, sexual or emotional abuse ¾ and the many complex issues it raises. Anyone, anyone can experience this devastating violation of trust and personal security. Family violence cuts across class, race, religion and geography. However, women and children are most often it's victims. In 1996 alone almost twenty-two thousand cases of spousal assault were recorded in one hundred fifty-four police departments across this country. This sample is thought to represent, however, only approximately one half the actual volume of spousal assault cases for that year. In nine out of ten of these cases the victims were women. A national telephone survey by Statistics Canada conducted in 1993 found that one in three adult Canadian women had been physically or sexually assaulted by their partners or former partners. Over one half of these women had experienced serious assaults. What's more, in almost forty percent of cases, the violent incidents were witnessed by children, which is itself a form of emotional abuse that feeds the vicious circle of violence. It is not surprising to learn that women in violent marriages are three times as likely as women in non-violent marriages to report that their spouses witnessed violence as children.

The perpetrators need help as well. Healing must take place so the violence can be stopped. And what about children as victims? In 1996 almost one in five physical assaults reported to the police were against children under the age of eighteen. Twenty percent of these were carried out by a family member. In the same year sixty percent of reported sexual assaults were committed against children. And almost one third of the perpetrators were family members. The tragedy ¾ and one of the things that I try to remind people as Minister of Justice and it's hard because we are brought to up to believe that the family is a place of love and support and security ¾ but the tragedy is that the family is an incredibly dangerous place in our society for too many women and children. And we have to acknowledge that. We must acknowledge that

harsh, stark reality. And I think we're beginning to. But until we embrace the fact that this foundation of society; this idealized notion of family that for most of us, thank God, is a place of security and love and support; is not a reality for many women and children, we will not, I think, begin to truly find the cause of domestic violence.

Obviously these statistics are disturbing. What's hardest to imagine is the human suffering that this form of violence engenders. Violence in any kind of family or intimate relationship is a fundamental breach of trust. Its impact on victims is devastating and lifelong. Families are uprooted and divided. Days of work and days of school are lost. Lasting relationships are hard to establish. Grades and productivity suffer. And there are also significant economic costs; costs of a health care system, social services, and the criminal justice system in all parts of this country. The health-related costs of violence against women in Canada have been estimated to be as high as 1.5 billion dollars and this doesn't even include the cost of hospital admissions and physicians services. We all pay in some way for such a pervasive societal problem, either directly or indirectly, and we must all therefore be part of the solution. Both individually and collectively we must take responsibility for addressing this problem as it presents itself day to day. And we must all work on the root cause of the problem such as attitudes which condone the use of violence to control others, stress associated with unemployment, financial hardship, and alcohol or drug abuse, and find new ways to break this cycle of abuse.

In fact, the Government of Canada's approach to family violence recognizes the need for broad societal engagement. It is only by coming at the problem from a number of perspectives and directions and by working with other levels of government, women's organizations, as well as other community organizations in the private sector, that we are going to find meaningful solutions to this complex social problem. This approach has helped enable progress in areas of prevention, protection and support to

women and children leaving violent situations. The cornerstone of the federal government's work on family violence has been the family violence initiatives. Since 1988 three successive federal family violence initiatives have sought to promote the well-being of the family and to improve the ability of the criminal justice, housing and health system to help victims and stop offenders.

Through the family violence initiatives we've been able to provide national leadership and coordination in a number of key areas including public awareness, criminal justice reform, prevention, protection and treatment services for Aboriginal and Inuit communities, emergency shelter and longer-term housing services and an enhanced national information exchange. The current family violence initiatives, announced in 1997, focused primarily on preventing and responding to violence against women and children in the home.

The new initiative concentrates on promoting continued public awareness of the problem, as well as public involvement in the response to family violence. It works to strengthen the response of the criminal justice and housing system to family violence and undertake data collection, research and evaluation that will help us identify the most effective intervention. As part of my department's family violence initiative activity we will be funding the Canadian Association of Sexual Assault Centers over the next five years to support its Links Project. The Links Project will improve the response of the criminal justice system to family violence and it will provide better services to women, victims of family violence and their children. The initiative has provided support to other organizations as well. And last spring, here in Edmonton, we assisted the Institute for the Advancement of Aboriginal Women with an important conference. It was entitled "Gathering Our Strength", and it brought together Aboriginal women to address justice related issues that have touched their lives and to identify and discuss measures that could bring about change. In addition to program support, our government has taken steps to improve the way in which family violence is dealt

with in legislation. Legislation amending the anti-stalking offence of criminal harassment, as well as new peace bond and sentencing provisions, have helped to improve protection to women and children from abuse ¾ although I'm the first to acknowledge that there are still important enforcement issues in relation to some of those changes.

We've also amended the Criminal Code to protect sexual assault victims by restricting the production of personal information records such as psychiatric, therapeutic and counseling records in sexual assault trials. As many of you know, this legislation is being challenged in the courts. In fact, there was a case ¾ the first in this latest round of challenges ¾ that began here in Alberta. The case is now before the Supreme Court of Canada and we in the Federal Department of Justice have intervened and we intervened early in this case to defend the constitutionality of the legislation. We will argue, as we have before, that the legislation balances appropriately the right of the accused with the privacy and equality rights of sexual offense complainants.

And recently we launched the implementation, finally, of our gun control legislation. My colleague, my predecessor Alan Rock, and all my colleagues and the Prime Minister deserve a lot of credit for fighting, I think, a very long fight ¾ and Canadians have ultimately indicated that they support the approach that we have taken. The support for gun control and, in particular, universal registration is at an all time high in this country. Over eighty percent of Canadians support universal registration let alone the basic principle of gun control. Sixty-five percent of Albertans support universal registration. Over eighty percent of Ontarians, over ninety percent of Quebec ¾ Canadians are telling us whereever they live that they have the basic right to live in safe and secure communities and they expect their Government to act reasonably and responsibly to deliver that safety and that security. And this government believes that gun control is an important part of that safety and that security. You know, if I might take a minute, I find it interesting that those who have

supported gun control from the beginning are those who live with the effects, the result of violence because of firearms ¾ the people, the policemen who go to calls and don't know when they go on a domestic violence call, a 911 call, whether there are firearms in that house and policemen who lose their lives or are injured. Policemen who know they're not serving the victims in that house as well as they could because they have no means of knowing whether there may be firearms in that house.

The victims ¾ people like Suzanne LaPlante Edwards who was with me on Tuesday, and whose daughter was killed at L'Ecole Polytechnique ¾ the victims support gun control. And everybody who participated in the gun coalition. They are the people who have seen the evidence of the injury, the violence that irresponsible use and criminal use of firearms can create in our society. And I thank all of them and all of you who fall into those categories of "others" for your support. And we don't pretend that gun control is going to, in and of itself, solve all the problems of violence in our society or criminal activities with the use of firearms. We don't pretend that. There is no magic in delivering safety and security in our society. Do you know what Canadians say? "Governments, we expect you to take responsible steps one at a time, incrementally, understanding that this a complex issue, in order to make this a safer and more secure place".

And I'll say what I've said everywhere else I've been. I don't want to take away the firearms of legitimate gun owners. Nothing could be further from the truth, but Canadians want everyone who owns a gun to deal with it responsibly, to ensure that we have a culture of safety surrounding firearms in this country. Our gun control legislation serves many different purposes but one of those purposes is to send a signal that when people own potentially dangerous or lethal things in a civil society we expect people to take responsibility for them. And for me it's a very simple message and it's one that I have not heard any

convincing arguments in terms of refutation. So I was very pleased to be able to participate in the implementation of our new gun control legislation. But this morning I want to also acknowledge all the

people in this room and elsewhere who have worked so hard for so many years to make sure that was a reality. In relation to other things that we're doing, my department is also looking at other kinds of legislative reform and we have a project called "Children as Victims". It is a review of the criminal law that relates to the protection of children. Some areas under consideration for reform are provisions relating to children's testimony, the minimum age of consent to sexual activity, the definition of specific offenses against children, including physical and emotional abuse, neglect, child homicide, and sentencing measures to protect children from offenders. We will also be cooperating with provincial and territorial governments on related child-protection issues within their jurisdiction. And let me also just mention another legislative initiative that we have begun and is particularly important to some who live here in the city of Edmonton.

And that is our review of the laws in relation to provocation and self defense. Considerable concern has been expressed by women and victims groups that these provision condone violent behaviour. Over the past year federal justice officials have consulted with a range of interested individuals and legal professionals with a view to possible reform of these controversial defenses. We must at this point consider the need for legislation that reforms the law in these areas, bringing it more in line with today's societal values and expectations. Now my department is at work with many, both at the provincial and territorial level, in terms of not only legislative reform but making sure that we're working together, be it the police, be it prosecutors, be it non-governmental agencies and their involvement with women and children who have been the victims of domestic violence.

And I come back to the point I began with, which is that we have to have a multi-sectoral approach. We have to have an integrated approach if we're actually going to deal with the scourge of domestic violence in our society. Much of the time of people in my department and much of my time in this area is spent trying to make sure that we're working better together, and that we have the resources we need and I will be

the first to concede that they are more limited. For example, look at the area of civil legal aid which is one that we're grappling with now. Resources are limited. But we have to do a better job of marshaling those resources and using those resources. And I see now a much greater desire on the part of different governments and different agencies within our communities to come together and constructively think about how we can put our share of the resources on the table to do a better job than we have been doing. My department also does a tremendous amount of public education in relation to domestic violence. Recently we produced a series of public legal education materials entitled Abuse Is Wrong in Any Language. This series is specifically aimed at immigrant women and service providers working with these women giving them information about the Canadian law and their rights and making the criminal law and the legal system more accessible to all to help combat the isolation that put these women at higher risk. And many of you in this room are probably aware of the Department of Justice publication The Secret of the Silver Horse, which has been a very popular and effective tool for helping open lines of communication with children on the issue of sexual abuse.

Ladies and gentlemen, time is moving on. There is just one last initiative of my government that I want to talk about and that is our crime prevention strategy because, at the end of the day, what I would think we would all agree on is that it is much better to prevent crime than have to deal with the effects of crime after it's happened. And that is nowhere more true than it is in the area of domestic violence. And the crime prevention strategy that we have developed at the national level is a new program and it's not a lot of money. It's thirty-two million dollars a year in each of the next five years to work with local communities all over this country to deal with the root causes of crime. So, as I said earlier, we know the root causes of domestic violence. Why does somebody, think it is okay to sexually assault a child, why does a parent think it is okay to physically abuse a child or a spouse physically abuse their spouse? What is there in that person's life and experience that has lead them to that point? And, unless we deal with the root causes we will

always just be applying band-aid solutions after someone has been horribly hurt. So crime prevention is about trying to prevent all of those horrible things happening in the first place.

And we are working with local communities and non-governmental agencies all over this country to get at the root causes of all kinds of crime, in particular domestic violence and violence against children. Those are two of the three priorities, the other one being Aboriginal people. These are the three priorities of our crime prevention initiatives. And I've got to say the city of Edmonton is a leader in crime prevention and in fact there's a great program here that my government is supporting entitled "Success by Six", a program championed by the former chief of police Doug McNally. And "Success by Six" in fact is the kind of initiative that we should all be working on because what it does is identify kids who may be at risk whether because of violence or sexual assault in their families, health problems, lack of adequate housing. But when we identify those kids we intervene in those kids and those families lives to make sure that by the age of six they're ready to learn and that they are safe and secure and well-adjusted children. And those are the kinds of things that we want to do together with all levels of government and with non-governmental agencies to make sure that we do live in a safe and secure society.

Many of you in this room are criminal lawyers. Every day somebody comes to me and says "Minister, if you just make the criminal law tougher, if you just amend the Criminal Code, if we just put more criminals in jail for longer we'd have a safer and secure society". Well ladies and gentlemen it's been tried here and elsewhere and, while we need an effective system of criminal law, that doesn't work. It doesn't really increase the feeling of safety and security on the part of Canadians or on the part of women and children in this society. What we have to do is acknowledge the fact that violence and especially domestic violence is a complex societal problem. If I could magically pass a criminal law that eradicates domestic violence and sexual assault against women and children I would. Everybody would. But we know

that's not the answer. The answer is time to figure out why it happens in the first place. And we have got to spend more time and more resources doing that.

Do you know in this country we spend thirty-two billion dollars a year after someone's been hurt. After a crime has been committed, with the police, with prosecutors, with the courts, with the appeals system in our courts. Thirty two-billion dollars a year after somebody has been hurt by somebody else.

And we started last year to spend thirty two million dollars a year at the federal level on preventing that pain in the first place. Ladies and gentlemen don't you think we've got our priorities wrong. And ladies and gentlemen we will be a safer and more secure society if, in fact, we spend some of those thirty-two billion dollars trying to understand why people do horrible things to other people in the first place and dealing with the root cause of the crime. And it's going to take a major reorientation in the way we think. It's going to take a major reorientation of our justice system. But I am a firm believer that we can do this. We must do this because we owe it, we owe it to every woman and child who has been hurt, every woman and child who has lived in fear for their physical or emotional integrity. In this country which has so many creative and wonderful people and has achieved so much over the past one hundred and thirty years, I have no doubt that we could reorient our approach to safety and security to ensure that we put the emphasis on prevention and that's one of my key challenges. I hope I can count on all of you for your support over the coming months. Because I'm a firm believer that unless we reorient the way we look at these issues we will continue to have too many victims and we will continue to have too many Canadians who lack confidence in our justice system. But we can break that cycle and I think the way to do it is to acknowledge we have to eradicate the root causes of crime. And that calls on all of us in our family and our local communities. So ladies and gentlemen I thank you all for being here this morning. You are an important part, a strategic part, a crucial part, of helping me deliver on my responsibility to the Canadian public, which as I said already is

very simple, but incredibly important ¾ that is, to deliver to every Canadian the right to feel safe and secure wherever they live in their families.

Thank you.