The committee's work this session has centred on two large studies: women's shelters and transitional housing, and the labour force and economic impacts of menopause, alongside a shorter study on the abuse and financial vulnerability of senior women and a review of the 2026-27 main estimates for Women and Gender Equality Canada. A consistent thread across the shelter meetings is that the affordable housing crisis has transformed shelters into long-term housing providers, with witnesses reporting stays of months to years, occupancy well above funded capacity, high turnaway rates, and women returning to abusive situations or entering hidden homelessness because no permanent options exist. Witnesses repeatedly called for operational rather than capital-only funding, multi-year stability, dedicated carve-outs for survivors within federal housing programs such as Build Canada Homes and Reaching Home, and recognition of gender-based violence infrastructure as essential social infrastructure. The senior women's study surfaced overlapping concerns about poverty, economic abuse, fraud, caregiver financial hardship, and tax inequities facing solo senior women, while the menopause meetings focused on workplace accommodation, clinician training, research funding gaps, and the roughly seven percent of health research funding devoted to women's health.

A wide range of constituencies and organizations has been heard from. Shelter and housing providers appeared from Alberta, Quebec, Ontario, Nova Scotia, Nunavut, and rural and northern communities, including YWCA Canada, Women's Shelters Canada, the Alberta Council of Women's Shelters, the Fédération des maisons d'hébergement pour femmes, Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada, the National Indigenous Women's Housing Network, and the Women's Centre for Social Justice. Specialized voices included organizations focused on sex trafficking and exploitation, such as Courage for Freedom, SafeHope Home, and the York Region safe house, and on Black survivors. The senior women's study heard from the National Seniors Council, the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, Elder Abuse Prevention Ontario, the National Pensioners Federation, francophone and Indigenous seniors' organizations, and caregiver advocates. The menopause study drew family physicians, nurse practitioners, researchers, a health products company, and the Menopause Society of Nova Scotia. Government witnesses included the Minister of Justice on Bill C-16 and the Minister and officials of WAGE on the main estimates.

Witnesses largely reinforced one another on the scale and drivers of the shelter crisis, the need for sustained funding, and the importance of coordination across housing, health, child welfare, and justice systems. Agreement was also broad on the need for public awareness and education in the menopause study, with witnesses favouring flexible rather than standardized workplace accommodations and cautioning against both trivializing and overmedicalizing menopause. Points of divergence were narrower: trafficking-focused witnesses argued that survivors of exploitation have distinct needs that general domestic violence shelters are not designed to meet, while others framed the problem as a shared shortage of affordable permanent housing; witnesses differed on whether criminal law reform or systemic implementation and poverty reduction mattered more; and witnesses took different positions on bail reform, with some supporting it and one declining to comment for lack of expertise. On Bill C-16, several witnesses urged expanding the coercive control definition beyond intimate partners to include persons of trust or family caregivers, while the Minister of Justice said further policy work was needed before such an expansion, and the anti-fraud centre declined to advise on it.

Over time, the committee moved from the senior women's study and the main estimates in the spring to the shelters study through May and June, then to the menopause study in mid-June, before returning to shelters in late September. Procedural activity increased in the most recent meeting, with motions on notice concerning biological males in women's sports and in federal women's institutions and a proposed study on hate and violence targeting 2SLGBTQIA+ people, along with objections between members and an adjournment motion that carried. Earlier meetings were largely free of procedural debate, though the committee appointed a first vice-chair in late May, adopted the menopause study with a submission deadline, and moved in camera in late April to consider draft reports on section 810 of the Criminal Code and anti-feminism. A recurring note across the session was the committee's own prior work informing government policy, cited by the minister in relation to coercive control and Bill C-225.