Good afternoon, everyone.

My name is Julie S. Lalonde, and I have been working to end gender-based violence for 22 years.

During my career, I have trained more than 50,000 Canadians on their role as witnesses to help prevent violence. I have created awareness campaigns, developed policies and had countless difficult conversations about the reality of men's violence against women in Canada. I have also experienced it.

When I was 18 years old, I found myself in an abusive relationship. It took me two years and two tries, but I did what we told women to do and I left. Unfortunately for me and countless other women across Canada, this did not end the violence, but instead set off a new form. I went on to be stalked by my abusive ex-boyfriend for a decade. The terror only ended with his sudden death a few weeks after my 30th birthday.

A few weeks after that, I was scheduled to speak at the annual Take Back the Night march happening in Pembroke. I had been working in the community for the past few years, researching the experiences of rural sexual assault survivors, who are so often forgotten by policy-makers living in big cities like Ottawa and Toronto. It felt like the perfect setting to share my story aloud for the first time.

Instead, on September 22, 2015, rather than standing on a street corner with a megaphone to break the silence, I was barricaded inside the sexual assault centre with my colleagues because one angry, vengeful man went on a rampage. Carol Culleton, Anastasia Kuzyk and Nathalie Warmerdam were killed that day by a man who had previously been incarcerated for committing violence against women. Again, we could not march in the streets to fight violence against women because our lives were at risk.

Much has been said about Carol, Anastasia and Nathalie's murders. The 2022 coroner's inquest into the triple femicides concluded with 86 recommendations. I encourage committee members to read the report, as well as the Mass Casualty Commission report and the Femicide Observatory's yearly reports. There is so much important research and analysis already out there to help us end gender-based violence. We are not lacking in recommendations.

For today's purposes, I would like to focus on one specific recommendation regarding criminal harassment. Stalking is a precursor to femicide. If you are being stalked, your life is at risk. This is not a matter of opinion; it is a well-established fact, by every possible risk assessment tool in existence.

Why do women's shelters exist? They exist because women fleeing intimate partner violence need a safe place to land. Why are women's shelters' addresses kept confidential? They are kept confidential because those women are being stalked.

We know that stalking is a major red flag, yet in Canada, we lack the public conversations necessary to drive home its severity. Most people do not even know what stalking is, how common it is or how dangerous it is. As a result, they do not intervene to help or call out their friends and loved ones who engage in the behaviour, and victims themselves rarely understand the danger they are facing.

This is our current reality, but it need not be our future one. I am imploring this committee to listen to experts and implement the changes needed to end this epidemic.

Merci.