Status of Women Committee on Dec. 4th, 2014

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

I apologize for my tardiness. You know I like to be on time. I especially want to thank you all for being here and punctual.

Welcome to the 40th meeting of the Standing Committee on the Status of Women, in which we will be examining promising practices to prevent violence against women. It will soon be December 6. It is now December 4, so this is perfectly appropriate.

Today, we welcome Ms. Martin, who is the executive director of the Canadian Network of Women's Shelters and Transition Houses.

We also welcome from Ernestine's Women's Shelter, Sharlene Tygesen, executive director; and from Armagh House, Madam Lynn Ward, who is also executive director. Thank you and welcome.

I will let you each make your presentation of 10 minutes, followed by a question period.

Let us start with you, Ms. Martin. You have 10 minutes.

[Lise Martin, Executive Director, Canadian Network of Women's Shelters and Transition Houses]

Thank you for the invitation and the opportunity to discuss with you promising practices in our collective efforts to prevent and eventually end violence against women.

The Canadian Network Of Women's Shelters and Transition Houses brings together 12 provincial and territorial shelter networks, which represent over 350 shelters across Canada. The network is a young organization, which was incorporated in November 2012. The network represents a unified voice that works to make violence against women a priority. Shelter workers across the country recognize that services alone will not put an end to violence against women.

The network, along with its member shelters, is committed to working toward long-term systemic change. For this reason, our presentation will speak to both promising practices that deal with the immediacy of the needs of women and their children fleeing violence, as well as promising practices that could lead to the long-term change required to make a visible difference in the rates of violence against women in Canada.

It is important to be reminded of the fact that shelters contribute much more than a safe place to stay. They provide vital services and resources that enable women and their children, who have experienced abuse, to recover from the violence, rebuild self-esteem, and take steps to regain a self-determined and independent life. Shelters also contribute to awareness raising and social change as part of broader efforts to prevent and eliminate violence against women and girls.

I will begin by first presenting a few promising practices that have been put in place by our members.

Women leaving volatile abusive partners face the extreme challenge of accessing timely and responsive safety supports from courts and police. All too often their lives hang in the balance.

In 2001, the Alberta Council of Women's Shelters piloted Dr. Jacquelyn Campbell's danger assessment tool to help shelter workers assess abused women's risk of lethality and to advocate for women's protective needs with legal and police services. This tool is comprised of a set of 20 weighted questions and an incident calendar that women complete alongside shelter workers.

A 2009 study on this program showed that while the process of completing the danger assessment tool is emotionally difficult for women, it often affirmed their decision to leave, motivated them to take action and develop a safety plan, and finally raised awareness of community services. Since 2009, the danger assessment tool has been disseminated in Alberta through its inclusion in their shelter practice orientation manual.

Through the Walking the Path Together program, the Alberta Council of Women's Shelters has recently adapted the danger assessment tool for off-reserve shelters serving indigenous women alongside a safety plan tool called “Protection, Options, Planning: Taking Action Related to Safety”.

Once risk has been assessed, at-risk women need mechanisms for coordinating with multiple safety and support services. A circle of safety and support is one such mechanism that is offered in Prince Edward Island. In this program, women who are concerned about their physical or emotional safety because of family violence can be referred to a circle of safety facilitators. Together, they select a group of support people in the woman's life to participate in the circle: police victim services, probation, mental health or addiction staff, family, neighbours, friends, employers, church, or social groups.

The group meets in person several times to discuss how they can all contribute to a personalized safety plan for the woman and her family. The program helps build links and continuity of care between support services and helps ensure that women feel safe and supported in the community. Most importantly, it reduces the risk of physical or psychological violence, or murder for women leaving volatile abusive partners.

Women who experience long-term abuse often have co-occurring mental health or substance use concerns. This can create barriers to receiving effective support from women's shelters.

In 2011 the BC Society of Transition Houses piloted the Reducing Barriers project to improve practices in caring for abused women. The pilot took the form of a working group that brought together staff from different transition houses with a range of criteria for accepting abused women as residents, as well as staff training sessions, and a best practice tool kit on how to accommodate women with substance use and mental health concerns.

As a result, the pilot evaluation showed that shelters were accepting a 9% higher proportion of women with some kind of substance use or mental health issue who previously may have been unable to access service at some shelters. The women accepted at shelters after the Reducing Barriers project also arrived with greater needs, reporting higher levels of poverty and past abuse and lower levels of family support. Women receiving shelter services reported a high sense of support from the shelters after the project but dissatisfaction in accessing supports and services from the broader community, where they continue to face many barriers. This project shows the impact of a harm-reduction approach for the most at-risk groups of women through staff training and accommodation. It also highlights the limitations of providing isolated pockets of support within a broader context of barriers.

It should be noted that a number of promising practices are developed and implemented with project-based funding. Although promising, these practices often do not live up to their full potential for lack of funding. It is estimated that the time period between the beginning and full implementation of a promising practice is three years. Project funding rarely is beyond two years. When one implements a practice that has clear positive outcomes, the next logical step is to scale it up. Unfortunately, funding is even more difficult at this stage, as governments often reject these applications on the basis that they are duplications of previous work. This was the case with the project in Alberta, which had adapted the danger assessment tool to work with aboriginal women. A proposal was submitted to Justice Canada to scale up implementation of the tool in all of Alberta's shelters. However, the proposal was turned down.

In March 2014, the network released the results of its first annual shelter survey. We chose to call it “Shelter Voices” to highlight the voices behind the numbers, the voices of the women who have survived abuse as well as the women's shelter workers. From across the country, 242 shelters responded to our survey. Shelter workers were asked to identify the top three critical, urgent issues they faced. Effectively addressing increasingly complex issues faced by clients was indicated by 60%, while 51% noted the feeling of not being able to affect the systemic causes of the issues facing clients, and 46% noted low pay.

Shelter workers were also asked if they were able to change one thing that would improve the lives of abused women and their children, what would it be? The top four responses were access to affordable and safe housing, a comprehensive and promptly responsive legal system, adequate income and social support, and services that are interconnected and continuous. In the words of one shelter worker:

It’s so hard to watch how the system wears women down, especially when they have so many barriers, that they want to give up. That’s why we care so much because every woman should feel like she has a chance to make it.

Indeed, every woman needs to have a chance to make it. For this to happen, we need to go beyond addressing the symptoms of violence against women. We need to make a concerted effort to bring about systemic change. A promising practice to enable this is to develop and implement a national action plan on violence against women. Presently, Canada has no comprehensive strategy to deal with violence against women. We are of the position that the federal government needs to launch a national public inquiry into missing and murdered aboriginal women immediately. Canada's national action plan on violence against women will need to be informed by the outcomes of the inquiry. The action plan specific to aboriginal women will thus inform Canada's broader action plan on violence against women.

National action plans can provide a framework for strengthening the systems that respond to violence against women. They call for collaboration between all levels of government, civil society, survivors, and first responders. In April 2014 the Canadian Network of Women's Shelters and Transition Houses convened a meeting of 26 women who represented various sectors of the violence against women movement in order to begin to develop a blueprint for Canada's national action plan on violence against women. This work is ongoing, and we sincerely hope all political parties will commit to the development and implementation of an action plan as part of their platforms for the 2015 federal election.

Along with many partners, the network feels that an action plan is a promising practice, as it will help ensure consistency across and within jurisdictions in policies and legislation; consistent approaches to the prevention of and responses to violence against women; collective pursuit of the most appropriate solutions; high-level commitment to a multipronged, coordinated, pan-Canadian approach; and coordinated, clear, and effective services and systems for survivors of violence against women that respect and respond to diversity.

In order for Canada's action plan to successfully lead to long-term change, it will need to include, among other things, new commitments and clear targets; effective prevention mechanisms; universal coverage of response mechanisms for survivors; a review of justice mechanisms and policing practices; support for reliable data collection, allowing for better tracking and evaluation; and substantive human and financial resources to support these measures.

Finally, the process for developing Canada's national action plan must include consultation with all stakeholders, including front-line workers and survivors; the direct and meaningful participation of non-government actors, and a formal mechanism for their ongoing participation in the implementation process; high-level leadership and accountability from governments at all jurisdictional levels; clearly defined, time-bound goals measured against detailed baseline data; and substantive human and financial resources to support these processes.

There are lessons to be learned from Australia, where a national action plan on violence against women was announced after a two-year development process that included a broad cross-section of stakeholders. Australia's plan spans over a 12-year period and is divided into four three-year plans. Our colleagues in the Australian shelter network have noted that an important part of this work has been the bipartisan support at the federal level as well as the collaboration of the states and territories. They feel that for the first time ever they have a national landscape at federal and state-territory levels, where there is a consistent policy understanding of gender-based violence.

Although we advocate for an effective national action plan on violence against women as a promising practice, we cannot stress enough the importance of a broad-based consultation with stakeholders in both the development phase and the actual implementation.

Thank you.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Thank you, Ms. Martin.

The floor now goes to Ms. Tygesen, for 10 minutes.

[Sharlene Tygesen, Executive Director, Ernestine's Women's Shelter]

Thank you, honourable members of the study. Thank you for the opportunity to address the committee and share with you my experience as a survivor of violence against women, as a front-line worker and as a lead of a shelter for abused women and children, and as someone who has spent nearly 30 years working to end violence against women and children.

My name is Sharlene Tygesen, and I am the executive director of Ernestine's Women's Shelter in Rexdale, Ontario. Ernestine's was opened in 1983 by a group of community members who saw a need for a safe place for women and children fleeing violence. Since that time, Ernestine's has assisted over 5,000 families with critical immediate care services. I think it's safe to say we know a thing or two about domestic violence and intimate partner abuse.

I genuinely appreciate the opportunity to provide my experience. I hope this study continues to reach out and listen to front-line organizations such as Ernestine's but the key word is listen. Because if you do listen, you will quickly realize there isn't an enormous amount of information that is revolutionary or new.

I could tell you stories starting with my own about what it means to encounter violence and abuse, or I could tell you the stories of all the families who have sought shelter or critical immediate care services at Ernestine's alone. Our shelter is one of 13 in the greater Toronto area and one of approximately 593 across the country. If I started telling stories of each of the 3,300 women and 3,000 children who seek refuge in our country's shelters every day, I would be speaking non-stop for more than four days. The sad part is that I wouldn't be telling this committee anything it hasn't already heard in some form or another.

Evidence of the severity of the scope of the violence against women and children is well known, well researched, and indisputable. One out of three women has been beaten, forced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime. Every second a woman somewhere in Canada experiences some form of sexual violence. Eighty percent of aboriginal women have been assaulted or abused. Women with disabilities are 150 times more likely to be sexually abused or assaulted than women without disabilities.

In Canada, one to two women are murdered by a former or current partner every week. Every year in Canada, up to 360,000 children are exposed to domestic violence. Children who witness family violence often display elevated rates of depression, aggression, delinquency, and other emotional issues.

Women are three times more likely than men to be physically injured by spousal violence and five times more likely to require medical attention. Eighty-nine percent of sexual assault victim survivors have no visible physical injuries. Violence against women and girls is a global pandemic. Violence is a major factor in women's health and well-being. Health-related costs of violence against women in Canada exceed $1.5 billion a year. Five hundred women and children have been murdered in Ontario alone since 1990. How long to tell all those stories? Do we really need to go over all of this again?

This government has a bold initiative to improve the lives of women and children across the globe. It's called “Saving Every Woman, Every Child: Within Arm's Reach” and has been announced with justifiable pride and fanfare. How unfortunate from the perspective of organizations who have had to deal with the day-to-day realities of violence and abuse that the government has been systematically taking deliberate steps to place safety beyond the reach of many women and children.

This has been going on since 2006 when Status of Women Canada had its budget reduced by 40% and 12 of its 16 offices were closed. At the same time, the government changed the funding rules to specifically exclude organizations that the government feels are providing advocacy, including the defunding and resulting closure of the National Association of Women and the Law, a vital legal advocacy resource. Make no mistake, we cannot change our society for the better. We cannot rid ourselves of the horrible costs of violence and abuse without advocating for actual recognition of the rights of women and children.

Despite repeated calls by women's groups, first nations and provincial leaders, this government has also refused to launch an inquiry into the more than 1,200 aboriginal women missing and murdered since 1970. We cannot hope to address the complex needs of vulnerable communities such as first nations without an honest and transparent study of those socio-economic causes and effects of violence and abuse.

This government eliminated the national child care program, which previous governments had spent years negotiating with the provinces. Lack of access to adequate child care resources is a critical factor in a woman's return to an abusive relationship and can completely deny her the opportunity to realize economic self-sufficiency. It also places children at risk by returning them to unsafe and unhealthy environments for lack of better affordable options.

There is no federal initiative like the Ontario partner assault response services program that uses the resources of the justice system to identify and intervene in the cycle of abuse, by holding abusers accountable and requiring mandatory counselling and education. Instead, the federal approach is to offer support as victims of crime rather than acknowledging the gender composition of this violence.

As this government sends millions of dollars overseas, we are doing very little to address the human and financial costs of violence and abuse in our own society.

Your own Department of Justice concluded in a 2012 study that the total economic cost of domestic violence is $7.4 billion every year. That is a staggering amount of money. We wouldn't even need anywhere near that amount to make lasting and effective change in this country. The incentives are there, both human and economic, so what is stopping the federal government from decisively leading Canada and the world toward the end of violence and abuse?

I have some recommendations for a national action plan and I'm happy to offer my thoughts, but I'm sure you've already heard what I'm about to tell you. In fact, the Ontario Association of Interval and Transition Houses has presented almost exactly these findings in its 2013 case of a national action plan on violence against women.

I recommend that the federal government lead the provinces, territories, and aboriginal governments in the collaborative effort to address violence and abuse.

I recommend that as part of this effort the federal government ensure that all levels of government continue to draw on the advice and expertise of survivors, shelters, and community organizations.

I recommend that this federal government recognize the gender reality of domestic violence and intimate partner abuse and the historically unequal power relationships between men and women.

I recommend that this government recognize that gendered violence is a form of discrimination and a violation of the human rights of women and children.

I recommend that the government, in partnership with provinces, territories, and aboriginal governments, implement clear strategies to help communities prevent and respond to different types of violence.

I recommend that this government undertake an inquiry into the causes and outcomes of domestic violence in aboriginal and other vulnerable communities, particularly the cause and solution to missing and murdered aboriginal women.

I recommend that this government, in partnership with provincial, territorial, and aboriginal governments, create initiatives to address socio-economic factors contributing to the violence against women, particularly education, housing, pay equity, and the provision of a natural socialized child care.

I recommend that this government clearly set specific goals, timelines, and outcomes for measuring progress.

Finally, I recommend that this government commit adequate human and financial resources to specifically carry out a national action plan.

Once again, I am truly grateful to all of you for having me here and the opportunity to share my experience and my recommendations.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Thank you very much, Madam Tygesen.

Now over to Ms. Ward, for 10 minutes.

[Lynn Ward, Executive Director, Armagh House]

Thank you, Madam Chair and the committee, for this opportunity today.

Just to let you know, I'll be referring to Armagh House by its first name in the rest of my discussion with you today.

“What is Armagh?”, some of you might be thinking. Well, it's not a shelter; it is a home. It is second-stage housing for women and children who have been victimized by domestic violence. To paint a picture of the physical setting where we help victims of violence, Armagh is a 1920s renovated home that houses women and their children in Mississauga.

I would like to give you a few important facts about Armagh. It has nine separate units, apartments if you will, ranging from 300 square feet to 600 square feet. The apartments are self-contained apartments for which our residents pay rent like any other apartment. They do so, however, with it being scaled to their income.

Each resident can reside with us for up to one year. Right now, today, Armagh continues to be the only facility to assist women and children in the Region of Peel after they leave emergency shelters.

The need for Armagh is clear when one considers that, in a period of 18 months, we had 110 referrals for women and children in need and we can only house 21 families for that period. We can house up to 40 women and children at one time. We often receive referrals from the Milton and Oakville areas, since these cities have no second-stage housing to offer these women who are leaving the shelters.

The above details show the need for Armagh, but it does not show how we have renovated the residence into a home so that the families we help have a safe, supportive environment for them to continue their fight towards independence and overcome the multiple issues they now must face with overcoming the realities of violence.

I would like to give you a brief history of Armagh to give you an idea where Armagh has come from and where it wants to go. Armagh has been open as the next housing option for women and children leaving local shelters since 1991. Historically, although these women would be referred to Armagh by the shelters, that is no longer the case.

Armagh is now housing women referred from the local Children's Aid Society and specifically from the domestic violence team. The need for places like Armagh is only expanding, but its importance goes far beyond simply giving these people a place to reside.

What does Armagh do besides simply offering housing? Armagh aims to move these women towards overcoming the challenges they face after escaping from violent homes. Our primary goal is to increase the safety of women and their children when they begin to return to the community. We also assist women on a personal level by enhancing their self-esteem to stop the cycle of returning to a violent relationship. We also help these women and their children heal from the effects of violence through counselling and we direct them to services to address their legal, social, and financial needs.

These goals are achieved through the many programs that Armagh offers. Examples of our programs and the scope of the issues they encompass include the following: developing safety plans to address the immediate safety concerns these women have and when they return to the community; providing parenting support for women with children, including public health consultations if required; applying for income support for the many women who do not have an income, education, or the knowledge how to; assisting and securing immigration status if needed; offering legal support, including applying for and being approved for legal aid; providing court support during the court process; and giving on-site group and individual supportive counselling.

There are a few more points I would like to raise. In 2013 we undertook to produce a strategic plan for Armagh, a defining moment in its history with the introduction of its first ever strategic plan. The strategic planning process was inclusive of volunteer board members, staff, clients, funders, donors, and community partners. Our collaborative strategic planning process confirmed that there is a clear admiration for Armagh's services within the Region of Peel and a desire to see services expand to meet the ever-present and growing demand of this high-population community.

We identified the following three pillars: establish capacity expansion and facility compliance options, care for the future by supporting our clients' children, and help clients build their new future.

As for establishing capacity expansion and facility compliance options, Armagh's impact is in part limited due to its location, size, and the age of the facility structure. It is our plan to expand in the future by exploring options to increase capacity at the present and possible future locales. This initiative is in the preliminary stages. It is one being discussed due to the needs placed on our current facility.

As for caring for the future by supporting our clients' children, it is widely acknowledged that a key opportunity to break the cycle of abuse is the engagement, support, and education of children who are witnesses of domestic violence. Our objective is to establish a comprehensive service model for women and children residing at Armagh. This model includes programs and community service partnerships, focusing on education and supportive policies for parenting, to stop the cycle of abuse.

In the strategic planning process, supporting children and youth emerged as a leading priority. Recognizing this programming gap for our clients, we are in the process of securing a plan for educating them and their families in an attempt to address the needs they have clearly expressed to us. A plan of this nature is sorely needed to assist these individuals to become healthy, first and foremost, as well as self-confident, and ultimately, self-sufficient.

As for helping clients build their new future, overwhelmingly, participants identified Armagh as providing not only a safe haven for clients, but also, the best possible opportunity for a new future. Participants also widely acknowledged that there are significant systematic barriers for women attempting to transition to independent living. Key barriers included economic disparity due to lack of employable skills, affordable and accessible child care, language barriers, lack of affordable housing, and cultural factors such as social isolation.

In conclusion, Armagh makes a difference in the lives of women and children who have had their lives stolen due to violence. How? It gives them the tools to rebuild themselves before re-entering the community, often for the first time in their lives.

We are part of the rebuilding process for these victims when it comes to their needs that stem from the realities of abuse. Establishing second-stage housing with supportive programs in communities where they don't exist, or are scarce, is one area where we can create stability, and strengthen prevention in the future for violence against women.

A national strategy would need to be tied to achieving clear and specific outcomes and strategies, and include measures to evaluate success. It would need to acknowledge the higher risk of marginalized women, connect it to other social issues such as homelessness, recognize the impact of children's exposure, ensure men and communities are all part of the solution, include effective justice responses, and include a comprehensive prevention plan with strategies ranging from public education to interventions for victims and perpetrators.

All levels of government would need to work together to bridge the service gap and ensure its success.

We are proud of our accomplishments in providing women and their children with the best possible opportunity to overcome the devastating effects of abuse, to deal with the past, to address the present, to plan for their future—the future for them and their children, and to live violence-free lives.

I hope the information I have provided will be useful for your committee's study. I thank you for your time and would be very pleased to answer any questions you may have.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Thank you very much, Ms. Ward.

Now we have a period for questions.

Ms. Truppe, you have the floor for seven minutes.

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

Thank you, Madame Chair.

Welcome and thank you everyone for sharing your testimony with us.

This study is on best practices and promising practices, things that your organization may have done that might help someone else, projects that you've done. I heard a lot of initiatives that you would like to see, but they weren't necessarily best practices or promising practices of things you've done. These are great organizations, so hopefully I can get something great that you've done in your organization, so we can use it as a model, perhaps, for other organizations.

I wanted to clarify something else.

Sharlene, I think you had mentioned the funding for Status of Women.

I wanted to clarify that the reduction was due to administrative savings and that it wasn't project funding. In 2007, 10 million new dollars were put in there. It was announced to give more money to the programs, and that brought the program funding to $19 million. I just wanted to clarify that. Also, $146 million in funding has been approved to end violence against women and girls since 2007.

I have a couple of questions about best practices.

Lise Martin, maybe I can start with you if that's okay. You were talking about Walking the Path Together, taking action in relation to safety. Do you have a best practice that came out of that initiative?

[Lise Martin]

Actually, that is a best practice. It was a project done in Alberta specifically because there's a very high percentage of women in the shelters in Alberta who are aboriginal, and it was around the danger assessment tool.

In fact, I was speaking to the executive director of the Alberta Council of Women's Shelters yesterday. She told me that they had a call from the family of an aboriginal woman who had done the danger assessment tool. It had made a huge difference in her life. In terms of the police, she had ensured that charges were laid. She was actually going back to school and had really taken control over her life after having had the opportunity to use this danger assessment tool.

Again, that's the project where they did want to scale it up to other shelters, but it was turned down.

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

Was this your organization's initiative, or did you get it from someone else and it had been working?

[Lise Martin]

No, it's the Alberta Council of Women's Shelters' initiative.

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

You also mentioned—

[Lise Martin]

Actually, there's quite a bit of information I could share about that project.

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

That would be great. Thank you.

You also mentioned long-term abuse. There are barriers to getting help from the shelters; I think you called it the Reducing Barriers project.

[Lise Martin]

Yes, from B.C.

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

Can you tell us a bit more about that? What great thing came from that one, because that sounded like a really interesting initiative as well.

[Lise Martin]

I could speak a bit to it, then my colleagues could perhaps speak to more specifics in terms of.... I think it's a well-known fact that women who are survivors of abuse, because of the abuse, often develop either addiction issues or mental health issues.

It is a challenge for shelters to accommodate some of these women because, as Sharlene said—actually I'm not sure if it was in your presentation—there are often an important number of children within shelters. That presents challenges. So this project was really to face this issue with the harm reduction approach, to give proper training to shelter workers to be able to accommodate these women. You need specific infrastructure at times to really and truly implement a harm reduction approach, so they did develop a tool kit, which has also had positive results.

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

Thank you very much.

Sharlene, I think you talked about the violence on children when we were talking about children in the shelters, and Ernestine's Women's Shelter recognizes the impact of violence on children and acknowledges the rights of children. Is there something that your organization has done that would be a best practice that you'd like to share, or we could use as a model as well?

[Sharlene Tygesen]

We've done a bunch of different things. One of them is going into schools. High schools are actually much easier to get into. I don't know if it's because they're older and can make those decisions. However, getting into the elementary schools is not so easy. Quite frankly, it would be great if we could do that.

We do have some partnerships with some great schools. The principals are the kings and queens of those castles, so it does depend on who is there whether or not we'll be able to get our foot in the door and do that. Even now, doing it is still only grade 4 through 8. It would be really nice to be able to get into kindergartens and day cares and much younger, and start very young to talk about issues of witnessing and violence and children's experiences needing to be heard. It's important. The majority of clients residing in our shelters are children. That's who they are.

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

I agree, younger would be better.

[Sharlene Tygesen]

Totally.

We're a 32-bed shelter and we have 14 bedrooms, so you have 14 women and you have 18 that are going to be kids. Often we will go over that if we have to.

Again, engaging men in work that we do is really.... I think that landscape is kind of changing—

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

It is for sure. Yes.

[Sharlene Tygesen]

—from when I started to where we're going. There's definitely more of a need for us to engage men in the work we're doing.

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

Through Status of Women, we've been funding projects that engage men and boys, which is key.

[Sharlene Tygesen]

Yes.