Mr. Chairman, first let me indicate to Ms. Peterson our appreciation for the trouble you took trying to come up and deal with this particular report. The time that many people took to be involved with the development of the report and recommendations, including those who were a part of the group who developed the report and made their presentations and made their issues known, is important. I do not deny that these issues are important. It is important for all of us to try to understand and appreciate the issues before us in terms of gender equality or those issues that do affect women very differently. It is not to diminish the importance of the recommendations or the issues in terms of recognizing how we view, both as men and women, the issues or how they are dealt with differently, it is more that there is a responsibility on the part of everyone to deal with these issues. We have to be prepared to try to appreciate the differences. You have noted that. We cannot always disassociate our responsibility as men from addressing these issues, the same way that women cannot dissociate their responsibility of dealing with those issues and concerns that apply to how we deal with men.
The point which Mr. Gargan made, perhaps not as gently as he could have, is that when you stereotype the issues and do not place the responsibility on all people, both men and women, to deal with these issues and to address gender equality between men and women, and their understanding, then the general public loses, the women lose, society loses, and the men lose. In many respects we are concerned that you do not want to place these issues in the context of being simply women's issues. It is far more important than that. It is the responsibility of society to respond to these issues.
I have read most of the recommendations, and I have no problem with them, in many respects. I do not necessarily say that all of the recommendations cost money. I think there is a suggestion sometimes that reports are going to cause the public purse a great deal of dollars. I know there are costs but I am not certain that the costs are so substantive that people cannot deal with them, either now or in the long run.
Mr. Chairman, our discussions here today may be not be as long as you want them to be, but as I pointed out to the Minister earlier, I think the recommendations in the report which has been brought before us requires some clarification and some comment from you with regard to the intent of the report, the intent of the recommendations. Even more than that, I think a fairly clear interpretation is needed on the part of those organizations that are also involved in trying to resolve the matters of violence against women and equal treatment. No matter how it is done, it is not acceptable and should not be put up with by anybody. The fact is that in our society this is occurring every day. It is important and incumbent upon all of us to somehow become responsible for getting rid of those kinds of action and reaction. I wanted to make this particular point because I do not want you or the public to get the impression that our short discussion today ends the whole issue because it does not. We want the aboriginal native organizations, the Inuit Women's Association, the Native Women's Association and the Council on the Status of Women to deal with these issues with us.
In many respects the report only highlights those issues and those recommendations which you and your review committee felt were important enough to highlight. The question now is, who is involved in the implementation of these? The government and other organizations who are watching us every day to make sure that we respond to the needs of women and to the issues they raise. It is responsible of us to make sure they have their input into helping us respond to this along with our government, to lay out a plan as to how we are going to address these particular matters.