Mr. Chairman, in fact, the recommendation -- the part that we're voting on -- does say a zero tolerance towards violence. It doesn't say anything about gender or age. It just says that all violence is unacceptable. We didn't put in the recommendation anything like that and in the preamble we do say that we need to stop family violence. That is what we heard when we were travelling around. People said for us to have healthy communities, we have got to stop family violence. We heard that people were still being abused. We also heard in every community that the problem was particularly bad for women and children. That's not to say that we didn't hear, as Mr. Gargan has pointed out, that sometimes violence goes the other way. You will also notice that in recommendation 19 in this report we specifically single out elder abuse. We heard that was a big problem too.
I must say that, as well as statistics which support that the vast majority of acts of violence are against women and children, that is what people say in the communities too. They told us that they expected our committee to come out and say that, in particular, we had to try and do something to address this sort of violence. Our recommendation doesn't say that there isn't all types of violence and it doesn't say that we see any type of violence as being less offensive than any other.
In fact, any type of violence is wrong and that's why the policy says "zero tolerance towards violence," against all persons. Just the way it's phrased, it's a policy of zero tolerance towards violence. That means no tolerance at all towards violence of any sort. That's what that recommendation means. It doesn't mean just women and children. It doesn't mean that at all. It means that any act of violence is one that we condemn. We want to see a policy in place which says that this government condemns it as well.