[English translation not available] ...flourishing in the conditions created by the pandemic. Women, girls, and LGBTQ2SIA+ people face a heightened risk of home-based violence with COVID isolation measures. In Canada, more than 70 percent of domestic violence murders happen after the victim has ended the relationship. Indigenous women are killed at six times the rate of non-Indigenous women. Half of all women in Canada have experienced at least one incidence of physical or sexual violence since the age of 16. Two-thirds of Canadians know at least one woman who has experienced sexual abuse and the NWT is second to Nunavut for the highest rates of family violence in the country.

Various pandemic-related stressors have contributed to the increase in family violence, including job loss and reduced income, food insecurity, fears about contracting the virus, exacerbated mental illness, and disrupted family routines, services, and resources. Isolation puts those surviving the violence in prolonged contact with their abusers and others are no longer around to see the signs of violence. Isolating also means that people aren't leaving the house as much which creates indirect barriers to access services from shelters and other community supports.

Before 2020, the Canadian Department of Justice estimated that Canadians spent $7.4 billion each year in the aftermath of spousal violence. COVID is widening the cracks and making it easier for women to fall through. Poverty in Canada is already gendered. The disproportionate gendered impacts of COVID could have long-term and far-reaching consequences. If we are to restore momentum in our efforts to bring about gender equality in Canada, social and economic recovery efforts must take a feminist approach and, more so in the North, an Indigenous feminist approach. [English translation not available] Merci, Madam la Presidente.