Evidence of meeting #40 for Status of Women in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was children.
A recording is available from Parliament.
9:30 a.m.
Conservative
Susan Truppe Conservative London North Centre, ON
I totally agree.
I think you're right. The landscape is changing, and more people are agreeing to that, because they have to be involved and know what's going on in order to have the protection for the girls and the women.
9:30 a.m.
Conservative
9:30 a.m.
Voices
Oh, oh!
9:30 a.m.
NDP
Niki Ashton NDP Churchill, MB
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Thank you so much to our witnesses who came forward today. We've heard from many experts in this field and from survivors as well.
I want to particularly indicate how much we appreciate hearing from those of you who are at the front lines. I was involved for a number of years with the board at our local women's shelter. It gave me a very acute understanding of the immense commitment you put in and, without question, how much our society relies on the work you do day in and day out. Thank you very much for the work you do and for being able to come here and share with us what we need to be doing.
Really, I had a series of questions that I wanted to talk about, touching on the various issues, but perhaps like you, I think many of us in this room and across the country were shocked and deeply saddened by the homicide of Zahra Abdille and her children in Toronto a few days ago. I'm wondering if all three of you could speak to perhaps the experience that we're hearing about from her case, which is the fact that women get trapped in situations where they have no access to housing and no access to legal services.
Even though shelters are there to help as much as they can, there are so many other issues that compound the victimization that women face, and also particularly, perhaps, women in immigrant communities or racialized communities who may not have access to culturally appropriate services. How can we relate dealing with those compound issues to the kind of action that we need to see from the federal government?
Perhaps, Ms. Tygesen, we could start with you, and then hear from Ms. Martin and Ms. Ward.
9:30 a.m.
Executive Director, Ernestine's Women's Shelter
I'm going to try to figure out all of what you've asked. I'm very familiar in terms of what happened this week in Toronto. I'm not familiar with the specifics of that case. It's probably very similar to a lot of situations that happen if a woman returns. There are other things that are implemented in a shelter when a woman returns, in particular when there are children. When there are children, child protection is notified because if a woman decides to return—and there are a lot of reasons that she would be doing that—when children do go back with her, then we get child protection involved in making sure that all of those things are looked into as well. There are lots of cases that happen like that.
We had a similar situation happen in our shelter, and no shelter staff ever want that to happen to them for sure. It doesn't matter how much you put in place and everything that you did right, and all of the safety, and what you wanted to do, if he wants to kill her, he's going to. That's a reality. If he wants to, he is going to find a way to do that.
In our situation I think a lot of systems let her down. We have court systems; we have police systems. There are all of these different groups of people who sometimes are working in a very fragmented way, and not together in a collaborative way to ensure that this doesn't happen. I think sometimes as shelter workers we're looked at as men hating, family annihilating, trying to rip the family apart, trying to keep men away from their children. It's not what we do, and I wish people would inquire more about what it is that we do. So trying to work together with people who are already thinking that about us makes our jobs very difficult. We're not over-exaggerating when we tell somebody that they're at risk, when we call another agency and say, look, there's great risk here, and these are the things that we see are going to happen and we're worried that the outcome is going to be very devastating—as it was in a particular case for us.
The client had gone to court. We wanted them to consider having no access to the child at this time until something was put in place in terms of his own anger and what he needed to do, and they didn't do that. In fact, he found her at our shelter and when that happens we have to move her. She is no longer safe in our shelter and we have to move her. Often, they are found at our shelters not just because he's done some searching around, but the systems have told him.
So in a courtroom a judge decided that he had the right to know where his child was. So now he's publicly said our address. We now have to go back, and this domino effect takes place where we have to now move her, we have to change this child's school. There are all of these things that happen. Then she goes to another shelter. The court again says, “No, he can have access, he can come and pick the child up at your house,” and that's exactly what he did, and he stabbed her to death in front of the children.
You would like to think he is currently in jail, but he's not. He's out. I think he served four years. I don't know that there's anything at the federal level that happens when they're in jail. He is now released. What is the process to ensure that every woman he ever comes into contact with is going to be okay?
Even at the provincial level we have the PARS program, but it's not evaluated. We have no idea whether these programs that spend a lot of money are working. How do we know they're working? How do you measure them? How do you do those kinds of things?
I don't know if I've answered your question; I probably went off a bit.
9:35 a.m.
NDP
Niki Ashton NDP Churchill, MB
Well, you shared your own experience in that.
We just have over a minute left. Perhaps Ms. Martin could share something.
9:35 a.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Network of Women's Shelters and Transition Houses
I think Sharlene responded perfectly in terms of that's sometimes the best way to understand, through a concrete example of what the shelter workers told us in terms of the need for services that are interconnected and continuous. Just too often this is slipping between the cracks, so we really have to do something about that.
9:35 a.m.
NDP
December 4th, 2014 / 9:35 a.m.
Conservative
Stella Ambler Conservative Mississauga South, ON
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Thank you to all three of you for not only being here today but for all the work that you do in the communities helping women and their children. We really do appreciate it. Thank you for informing our study in this way.
I wanted to tell my colleagues, Lynn, how I met you and how I found out about Armagh House. I was knocking on doors in the 2011 election and I knocked on the door of Armagh House and like a good candidate, I wanted to know who lived there and if they would be voting. I wanted to meet them. The person who answered the door was very cryptic and refused to tell me who lived there. I thought this is strange. It's such a big house. It's beautiful. Clearly people live here. So your folks do a good job of....
Even though it's on a street in a regular old neighbourhood, it's a little bit tucked away. It just kind of got me curious. There's no big sign, as you know. We met shortly after that and I got to hear about all the good work that you do there. I wanted to thank you for that. Here we are about three and a half years later. Now that I know what goes on at this second-stage house, I'm glad that it exists there to help the people in our community and our neighbourhood. So thank you for that.
There's a whole bunch of things I wanted to ask you but let me start with something I think is very immediate and that I know you do well, and that's your goal to increase the safety of the women who are living at Armagh. How do you do this? What kinds of supports do you offer them? What works? What doesn't?
9:40 a.m.
Executive Director, Armagh House
To start, we do a risk assessment when they first move into Armagh so we know their level of risk because they come in from either the crisis shelter, the emergency shelter, and/or through the Children's Aid domestic violence team.
9:40 a.m.
Conservative
Stella Ambler Conservative Mississauga South, ON
Similar to the one that Lise, Ms. Martin, was talking about?
9:40 a.m.
Executive Director, Armagh House
Yes.
However, we're finding the safety changes for the residents that we work with when they're actively in their court process for custody, access, and support. So we're reviewing the safety plans with the women at different stages when they're going through court. The reason for that is that the men are often hostile about the situation with the women, having access to the child, calling them, harassment. They're often trying to find them again.
9:40 a.m.
Conservative
Stella Ambler Conservative Mississauga South, ON
Obviously, your staff are trained and equipped to deal with this.
9:40 a.m.
Executive Director, Armagh House
Yes, they're trained and equipped to deal with this on a regular basis as part of our best practices. Professional development is always a must. Keeping updated with any new tools that are in place or are happening out there, we ensure that they're implemented.
9:40 a.m.
Executive Director, Ernestine's Women's Shelter
Can I add something to that?
9:40 a.m.
Executive Director, Ernestine's Women's Shelter
I'm just thinking as you're talking about it, when new technology.... New technology makes our jobs very difficult. More recently there are things like apps. Google does its Google map thing and then all of a sudden our addresses are online. I'm pretty sure it's not rocket science to not do that kind of stuff. But even just trying to find who we need to talk to at Google or wherever to remove it.... You get apps where we've had a situation with a partner finding her because he had all her information from her cell phone so he could find the GPS.
So every time these new kinds of...nobody considers the impact it might have on a woman's safety. Then other apps come out to try to figure out how we can protect women. When they're coming in, we're talking to them. We actually have sheets now about the process of...okay, your cell phone, you need to do this, this, and this. I just wanted to make sure we're talking about technology.
9:40 a.m.
Conservative
Stella Ambler Conservative Mississauga South, ON
That is such a good point, thank you. We hadn't heard that. Sure the family iCloud, everything gets....
9:40 a.m.
Executive Director, Armagh House
If I could add just one thing with regards to the safety plan, it's around the court system. When the women are going through court, whether through the criminal process or family court, the judge often forces the women to provide their address. We are finding that is a big challenge in what we're facing and we're often advocating on the women's behalf for their protection.
9:40 a.m.
Conservative
Stella Ambler Conservative Mississauga South, ON
That is so good to know. Thank you. I think we are all making a note of that.
I wanted to ask you, and Sharlene as well, about roughly what percentage or how many of the women who come to your shelter also have those mental health or addiction issues as a result of abuse?
9:45 a.m.
Executive Director, Ernestine's Women's Shelter
Again, the landscape is just kind of changing. I don't think it's necessarily new. I've been there since 1991 and I don't necessarily think it is new. It's just that we are way more aware of it. There is more public awareness of them, so people are a little more comfortable talking about things.
We're trying really hard to work from a harm reduction model. Lise as well was saying that a lot of times people are concerned about a harm reduction model because there are kids in the house, but when they're at home, there are children in the house too. So working from that kind of a model—
