Since June 2022, front-line advocates have reached out to this government about the Renfrew recommendations. This is arising from the 2015 triple femicide, and included an implementation committee to make sure that all recommendations there would actually be carried forward to end intimate partner violence. Those requests have gone unanswered.

Again to the Premier: Yes or no, will this government use its political voice and commit to, today, the number one recommendation from that inquest and declare intimate partner violence an epidemic?

My question is to the Premier. Speaker, the London Coordinating Committee to End Woman Abuse released a snapshot yesterday showing that there were more than 10,000 domestic and sexual violence crisis calls in the London area in 2022, an increase of 54% from the year before. The vast majority of those calls were from women. Over the same period, women were turned away 2,166 times from Anova’s women’s shelter because of a shortage of beds, a 62% increase from 2021. Anova is also seeing more severe cases of gender-based violence than ever before.

Speaker, will this year’s budget include the increased and stable funding that organizations like Anova, Atlohsa and London Abused Women’s Centre need to keep women and children safe?