Status of Women Committee on Nov. 20th, 2014

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Okay. Thank you very much.

We go to Mrs. Ambler for seven minutes.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

I'm delighted to have the opportunity to find out a little bit more information.

I want to talk to you about young girls and in particular the initiative around the International Day of the Girl. Last month, I think we all know that Minister Leitch and the Government of Canada hosted an event in Toronto with about 500 girls to mark the International Day of the Girl. It was the same day that Malala was supposed to speak, but unfortunately, that didn't happen on that day.

We all know too that the day promotes equal treatment of and opportunities for girls around the world. Canadian girls are generally better off than girls in developing countries in areas like law, nutrition, health care, education, training, and of course freedom from violence and domestic abuse or abuse of any kind. This UN initiative has been, I think, taken on with some gusto here in Canada.

I was wondering if you could tell us about how the initiative helps immigrant women and young girls, and about the kinds of programs that the International Day of the Girl has spurred here in Canada.

[Linda Savoie]

You're correct that the pickup around this event has been extraordinary for a day that's been in existence for barely two years. It's quite amazing how popular it has become. We get some indications of interest through, for instance, the pickup of our educators' kits that are on our websites. We provide material if schools want to celebrate International Day of the Girl. It's definitely always a very popular item.

In our projects that are youth-led, we fairly regularly see components that highlight International Day of the Girl. These projects of course are in their early days. I should mention particularly for new members that most of our projects are for a duration of two to three years. What we see in the early days gets confirmed in three years or sometimes later.

In terms of pickup around International Day of the Girl, it has been quite extraordinary. I can't say that I would have a breakdown for you of how it's being picked up differently by different populations of girls whether they are immigrant girls, aboriginal girls, etc., but that's certainly an interesting point and maybe something we could explore. For instance, at the event in Toronto that you mentioned, the 500 girls that were there represented a multitude of ethnocultural communities. It was—

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Were you there?

[Linda Savoie]

I wasn't in attendance but I was getting messages from my colleagues throughout the day, because we were in lockdown here in Ottawa. The extraordinary diversity of these girls speaks to how universally this issue touches girls across Canada and across the world.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

That's wonderful. Thank you so much.

I noted that Mr. Barlow talked about involving boys. I know for the International Day of the Girl you see people walking around with the bright pink pin that says “Because I am a Girl”. I think that's a good start, but it's so important to involve boys at a young age as well and to talk to them when they're still in grade school. I'm wondering if within those programs that were mentioned earlier about the transition from elementary school to high school there's a component for boys as well or if you think there should be or if you're looking into that possibility.

[Linda Savoie]

I should frame my answer in the context that we typically see three categories of interventions with respect to engaging men and boys.

We have the true engaging men and boys projects, where we focus on young men acquiring the confidence to speak out against violence. We're not dealing generally with perpetrators. We're dealing with bystanders who don't know what to do and how they can help. Right? It's equipping them to understand how to behave and giving them the opportunity to interact with the young women who are at the receiving end of this so that they will understand the consequences for their sisters, their girlfriends, and so on and so forth of this sometimes insidious violence. That's one category of project.

There's another category that we've put in the basket of healthy relationships. Those categories of projects will again be working with men and boys, and particularly with boys and girls to give them the tools to understand what healthy relationships are and how to live them throughout their lives. Those could happen exactly in those transition periods, certainly, for both boys and girls.

Then I'd say there's another type of project that we use to address the issues of violence against young women and girls, and those are youth-led projects. Those youth-led projects are not only girl-led—we encourage them to give a role to the boys—but it's also important that the girls are empowered and are the ones who are informing the direction of these. We have found these youth-led projects to be extremely successful in creating the dialogue and the momentum for girls' needs and voices to be heard about the violence they're experiencing on a day-to-day basis.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

I think we would all agree that they're very important. Thank you.

I wanted to thank you, Kimberly, for talking about violence as a health issue. It's not how we often think of it. We think of it as a justice issue only....

That cannot be seven minutes.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

It is.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Really? Oh, darn.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Time sure flies, but I think we got the point. If you want to expand on that later on, you will be more than welcome to do that.

We have Ms. Ashton, for seven minutes.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

First I have a quick question for Stats Canada.

I noticed on page 13 at the bottom it says that the statistics exclude data from the Northwest Territories, Yukon, and Nunavut. Knowing that the north has some of the highest rates of violence against women, I'm wondering why that is the case and why we don't have information on those three territories in this key package.

[Cathy Connors]

I'll start, and then my colleague can jump in.

We do collect information from the territories. We collect it separately from the provinces for various reasons. There are different methodologies. When we produce the information, we don't pull it together because it's not comparable. We've created it in different ways for various reasons. The information for the territories is available, and we can provide that to you.

Kathy may have something else to add on that.

[Kathy AuCoin]

With the list of publications, we had a dedicated release focusing on the territories. Again, with a limit of 10 minutes and presenting two sets of data points, it could be overwhelming. But the data is there. We've run it.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Please rest assured that for me, I'm from the provincial north, and it would not be overwhelming at all seeing that the severity of the issue is something that needs to be recognized. We'd welcome the information. I'd love to see it as part of the key presentation that we get. But I do need to move on to another question.

Justice Canada, you spoke of important initiatives that you fund working with indigenous women. You spoke of victims services in particular. I was a bit distraught to hear in the case in Manitoba of Rinelle Harper, who was sexually assaulted almost two weeks ago, that it was up front in the news in Manitoba for multiple days and made national news as well, but it took almost a week for victims services to get in touch with the Harper family. I happen to know about this because she's my constituent and her family lives in my constituency.

You fund the programs, but when it actually comes to connecting with the families, it's a bit of another story. I'm wondering if maybe they need more support on the ground. This wasn't a story that wasn't known to the general public, after numerous days of it being in the news.

[Pamela Arnott]

I won't comment on the specifics of that case. I think certainly more funding for victim services would not go amiss, as we heard in the presentation today.

Domestic violence and violence against women are the kinds of victimization that people talk about most or are most aware about in Canada. Any of the efforts we can make as a government to improve the response to that particular form of victimization won't go amiss.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Thank you very much.

I have a quick question in terms of language. I suppose this pertains a bit to all of you in what you're looking at.

When we talk about violence against women, particularly on campus, I think there are many examples of how young women activists are really pushing the envelope on how we talk about this. I appreciate, Madam Savoie, the comment about how cameras and emergency lighting aren't the be-all and end-all, and that in fact we have to tackle something broader, which is most notably referred to as rape culture.

I'm wondering if in the language you're using you're mirroring the kind of language that is now very commonly used to describe the culture that exists—arguably, not just on campus, as we deal with sexual harassment here on the Hill—reflecting the kind of language that young women in Canada are using to describe what they're facing and the levels of violence that they're facing. Is that being integrated in either your work on cyber misogyny, or in the questions in the survey, or even in the kind of language that you're using to work with women on campuses?

Perhaps we could start with Status of Women.

[Linda Savoie]

I certainly agree with you that language can be extremely helpful and extremely divisive.

In our position as government, at Status of Women we try not to pick a language that will exclude groups. We try to be as generic and boring sometimes as necessary to allow the groups to come to us using their own language. We will have groups that will come to us talking about a rape culture, and we have other groups that are not comfortable using that language, and they're all welcome.

I know we sound boring, but we do try to stick to language that will indicate to groups that they are welcome, no matter what they call the issue. We stick to plainer terminology.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

I appreciate that you do accept that, and it is the language that is increasingly being used.

Perhaps we could hear quickly from the Department of Justice. You spoke about cyber misogyny. Often these terms are used in similar discussions. Does your programming reflect that kind of language that's increasingly being used, particularly among young women?

[Pamela Arnott]

We don't tend to use that language, as my colleague has said.

We try to adopt language that is as inclusive as possible when we are approaching communities or making funding available to communities.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

What if a request for funding comes using that kind of language? Is that a red flag?

[Pamela Arnott]

That's not a problem at all.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

What about language in terms of your surveys? Is that something you're looking at, that kind of language?

[Cathy Connors]

We tend to use plain language at Statistics Canada. We do an awful lot of qualitative testing before we conduct our surveys. Quite often we notice that there are differences in language use across the country.

What we try to do is come up with a language that is the type of language that people use across the board, that everybody will understand. We also define in great detail what we're looking for in our surveys.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

That's perfect. Thank you.

I hope you'll consider using it more and more. We're having an unprecedented conversation, I think, both on social media in our communities and in the mainstream media about what is increasingly known to be rape culture.

Thank you for sharing your feedback.

I quickly want to turn the attention of the committee to a motion I put forward asking for the minister to come and present on the supplementary estimates. Obviously, time is of the essence on that front, so I want to make sure we deal with that motion as soon as possible. I believe there are copies that are being distributed.