Status of Women Committee on Feb. 5th, 2015

[Mylène Freeman, NDP, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Oh, that's tough.

I'm going to move quickly to NWAC.

I feel as though I need to ask you this. As long as we don't address the legacy of residential schools, the history of colonization, the systemic oppression that is ongoing, and as long as we don't radically shift the way we do things to work on a nation-to-nation basis, can we really address violence against women, specifically aboriginal women in this country?

[Claudette Dumont-Smith]

That's the underpinning of why we're calling for a national public inquiry, to really get at the root of the problem. It's true that a lot of things have been put in place in my lifetime, and the rates are not going down; the murders are still there. They're even increasing in some situations. Until we do that, I think we're just going to be spinning our wheels, again.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Thank you for being very brief on a very difficult question.

We'll continue.

Ms. Perkins, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Pat Perkins, Conservative, Whitby—Oshawa, ON]

Thank you very much.

I thank you all for participating today. It certainly has been a tremendously worthwhile exchange of information.

I find there's much to have a dialogue about throughout the entire country. We certainly can understand that there are very specific challenges in very specific areas.

I would like to focus my comment and my questions to Lana in particular, if I could, with respect to the fact that we are trying to come up with promising practices that can be brought forward for the reduction and prevention of violence to women and children. You were speaking about it in terms of an evidence-based approach and that there should be national standards and accountability frameworks that are built in.

If there were national standards that were to take into account all of the variables that are brought forward, how would you see that roll out? What type of accountability framework do you think would be doable, if you will, in terms of everybody having their own program end of things? Who would the accountability be from, and how could that be structured to give us some sense of the successes and the challenges?

[Lana Wells]

Great.

First I want to echo the need for a national action plan. I think you've heard that in every meeting. But it can't be designed in isolation, and I don't think it's just up to the federal government to solve this issue. I think the inclusivity piece, the customization to ensure we're reflecting all of the different populations in Canada, is clear.

I think that needs to have a process attached to it, so that everyone is building their capacity to understand the root causes, the solutions, the risks and protective factors, and to understand the solutions. As my colleagues have pointed out, there's a lot of great and amazing work happening in community, getting it captured so it does move into evidence-based portals and so forth. I'm really talking about evidence-informed because things change over time.

I think the inclusivity, the process, is as important as the plan. I monitor all of the government plans all around the world. We have 80. We analyze them. We try to understand what our government is doing, why they are doing it, the evidence on which it is based, and the accountability.

Interestingly, two governments in the world actually monitor and have an accountability framework, where there are actually indicators and measures for which they're responsible. So often we have these wonderful plans that governments put out, but nobody is doing the implementation or is responsible for the implementation, and then nobody is doing the accountability measurement piece.

[Pat Perkins, Conservative, Whitby—Oshawa, ON]

Which are those two countries?

[Lana Wells]

You have New Zealand and Sweden. I'm happy to send you all this research we've been analyzing.

Many governments talk about outcomes. The Government of Alberta has created a set of outcomes. It's the monitoring, implementation, and then the evaluation piece that often gets dropped. I understand political cycles, but we need a long-term sustainable plan that is committed over decades. This is an issue that is going to take decades, not two years to solve, so that would be my recommendation.

I know the long-form census that was lost is politically on the table right now; we've lost a lot of good data and surveillance data and we need it. We need to be able to oversample in provinces so that we can have good numbers in provinces as well. I think the surveillance data is critical.

[Pat Perkins, Conservative, Whitby—Oshawa, ON]

What do you think the accountability piece would look like?

[Lana Wells]

I think it should be a shared responsibility with the Government of Canada, the provinces and territories, and community groups. I think that together everybody needs to be accountable for pieces. Ministries and departments need to be written into that plan versus just writing in what needs to get done, who is going to do it, what's the timeline, how it's going to be achieved, and how we are going to know if success has been achieved.

[Pat Perkins, Conservative, Whitby—Oshawa, ON]

Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Thank you very much.

I now yield the floor to Ms. Crockatt, who has five minutes.

[Joan Crockatt, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Thank you so much and thank you to all our witnesses for coming.

One of the things that I was struck by in the testimony, and all of you have had some really good points that I have been madly trying to take down, is that we have hundreds, maybe thousands of programs out there to try to curb violence against women. We've been at it in Canada since I think 1965 when we started these shelters. I think most of us in this room have been involved in that endeavour in some way, shape, or form, and poured quite a bit of blood, sweat, and tears into it. What we are trying to get at here is where are we as far as the cutting edge? Where is it moving?

I thought Lana made some excellent points about needing measurement and needing to figure out what is working because we could sit at these tables and go to conferences for years and still not get to what is working.

I liked it, Claudette, when you said it is true that a lot of things have been put in place but the rates are not going down. We obviously need to find some new ways of tackling some of these problems.

I think what I heard today is that championing women's leadership—Deepa made that point very well—educating men and boys, these look like cutting edge things that are starting to show results, also educating people about cultural things, especially our new immigrants. It looks as if I'm hearing from you that our two most vulnerable populations are aboriginal women and immigrant women.

It's funny, I was just talking to Jason Kenney yesterday about what kind of expectations we can set up for our new immigrants so they understand that it is not acceptable in Canada to beat your wife or sell your daughter or give your daughter away to someone in a forced marriage.

Calgary Immigrant Women's Association, I wanted to point out by the way, have some really good monitoring. I thought Gerry Mills from Nova Scotia might want to connect with them because they have had great success in getting ongoing funding for programs because they build a monitoring component into every program so they can tell which is the most effective.

Lana, do you have any research on the programs that are working for immigrant women in particular?

Sorry for the long question.

[Lana Wells]

I would turn to my colleagues. I think they are both experts in best and promising practices in the immigrant women's sector.

[Joan Crockatt, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

You're the research person.

[Lana Wells]

I haven't studied the immigrant sector. My area is primary prevention and looking at promising policies and practices that support people to not engage in unhealthy or abusive relationships. So I think my colleagues had better respond to that.

[Joan Crockatt, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Okay, let's go to Nanok.

Can I ask you that same question then, please?

Then we will go to Deepa.

[Nanok Cha]

Sure.

My project is not research, but we had a needs assessment among young immigrant women. By the way most of them came here as refugees. By having this needs assessment of their challenges, we had identified a lot of social issues such as the lack of community resources, educational opportunities, employment opportunities, intergenerational conflicts, some domestic violence, and language supports. Some of them were very general settlement issues but they are really related to young immigrant women's position in Canadian society.

[Joan Crockatt, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Because my time is short, if I could ask you, what is actually working? What would you say is the one thing that is critically working for you with immigrant women?

[Nanok Cha]

Creating a safe space is the most valuable lesson we learned. When they go out, they are judged as young and as immigrant women who came here as refugees. They are being bullied, and they become disconnected because of that. But having that space for themselves, that really opens up their conversations to talk about social issues, and make sure it's not your fault and that it's not only your personal struggle. Opening up the conversation led them to really see themselves as leaders and to challenge those social issues as a group.

So building strong group support and peer mentorship has been successful.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Thank you.

Could I have Ms. Mattoo just briefly answer Mrs. Crockatt's question?

[Deepa Mattoo]

Yes, definitely.

I think there are three programs that work really well, in our experience: the art-based programs, the parenting-based programs, and the peer-based programs. All three of them work really well with immigrant women.

What is really important is to remember when you're looking at the success of these programs is that programs where they have an experience of sharing their knowledge and expertise...because they do come with a lot of expertise and knowledge. They are also witnesses to violence against women and they know the survival tactics that sometimes you and I don't know. We are not leveraging that expertise; we are not getting that information from them and learning from them and including them in that leadership. So I think these three programs work to...[Inaudible--Editor]...that voice.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Duncan, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

I'm going to come back to Ms. Wells.

We've heard repeatedly “sustainable funding”, but you also talked about the substantial increase to Status of Women. Could you talk to that, and then tell us what would sustainable funding look like as opposed to project funding?

[Lana Wells]

I think funding mechanisms are part of the problem. I think we need to rethink our funding approach. I talked about funding projects for the long term, recognizing that new, innovative programs take about 18 months to two years to get designed and even start to be tested. Then there's the attachment of evaluation and research dollars to the program to ensure that it's being captured in a way that can then be tested, and potentially going through maybe a randomized control trial and so forth.

There needs to be extensive dollars long term and guaranteed funding for five, seven, or 10 years. My colleagues in Nova Scotia spoke about how their employees have one-year contracts. They're year to year. That does not give people in the human service sector stability, the ability to plan, or the desire to stay in this sector because there's no job security.

I think those are significant issues and that the federal government and provincial governments could be doing some major changes around the funding mechanisms and approaches. Just those in themselves could make a significant difference to the women's community and agencies that are serving women and children.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Thank you.

Ms. Dumont-Smith, could you talk about what cuts to funding have meant to your organization? If there hadn't been those cuts what could have been done?