Status of Women Committee on Sept. 28th, 2016

[Steph Guthrie]

That's such a challenging question because, quite honestly, I think a lot of this comes down to a need for a change in social norms, a change in hearts and minds. A lot of that can really only happen through individual consciousness-raising. I do think that a lot of the social platforms that are most dominant in our online sphere of conversation are primarily run by homogeneous groups, mostly younger white men. I think that they often possess a real lack of understanding of what online harassment can look like.

Their moderation teams, I think, need significant training and ongoing training on not just online harassment but specifically on anti-oppression, because I think that there's a real lack of understanding of the difference that women and girls experience or that gender non-conforming people experience.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Even though I am out of time, as a younger white man, thank you very much for helping inform my perspective.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

I did allow some extra time there.

Now we're going to go to Mr. Genuis for seven minutes.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. It's a real honour for me to be able to be subbing in this committee.

Before getting elected, I spent four years volunteering on the board of a great organization in my riding called the Saffron Centre. It does work on consent education as well as on counselling.

I really appreciate the testimony of the witnesses. I want to probe a little bit, initially at least, this issue of awareness about these issues—public awareness, public attitudes on consent—and maybe what we can do about it.

To start with, to Ms. Decter and Ms. Liliefeldt, we talk about the positive importance of informing people about consent, but there's also the side of countering or trying to stop negative messages that are coming to young people and others from other places about consent.

One of the eye-opening things for me as part of the organization that I previously mentioned was realizing that a lot of the initial awareness about sexuality for a lot of our young boys is coming from violent sexual images that they're consuming on the Internet. It's a real problem that their basic presumptions about the way sexuality works are shaped by these initial images that they don't really have any kind of context for understanding.

You referred to the Internet as being the Wild West. At the same time, there are other countries that I think try to be a little bit more interventionist around some of these issues.

I would like you to first comment on what we as legislators or what civil society can do to counter some of these negative messages. Then I want to ask you about the positive side of consent education after that.

[Ann Decter]

On the issue of young boys first encountering information about sex and depictions of sex on the Internet through porn, the way to get to that is to educate them at a younger age with better content, right? Something like the Ontario government's new sex education curriculum is really exactly what's needed. It's really about consent.

I worked in day care, and children in day care can be taught that you have to ask before you touch something or someone and you have to ask before you grab something, and that's really what consent is in the simplest form.

As difficult as it is as a legislator to try to get through to people, the best thing you can do is teach a healthy sexuality as young as possible.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Being from Alberta, I'm personally not that familiar with the details of the Ontario curriculum, but I think we would all agree that to see discussion of the consent piece, at least in curricula, is very important. That's the positive side, and that seems to me like the easy part, not that it is necessarily always easy. We should all be teaching what consent is early on.

Even with consent discussed in school, potentially, young boys still are able to access hard-core images that may seem much more immediate to them than something they're hearing in school. Do you think we should be pursuing strategies for limiting the access of those images at the same time, at least for people who are minors?

[Ann Decter]

Through legislation?

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Well, through legislation, through collaboration—

[Ann Decter]

Certainly as a parent I would pursue that. I would be talking to my son if that's where he's learning about sex—not that I have a son. With legislatures, it's a thorny issue. I think the frame that we would bring to it is things that are exploitative and things that are promoting hatred and misogyny, rather than “that's a depiction of sexuality”.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Right, and I'll pick up on that. My sense is that there's a need for parents to be involved. We need to think about getting information to parents about what's going on out there, whether it's digital literacy or just being aware of some of the things that are going on in youth culture.

Could you maybe talk a little bit about parent education and engaging parents with this information so they can support their kids as well?

[Raine Liliefeldt]

In terms of the work that we're doing with girls with the trusted adult guide, one of the recommendations is to not wait until something is a burning issue, but to create a culture where those items are discussed all the time. There are conversation starters, and we talk about “dishwasher” conversations or “waiting for the bus” conversations or “watching TV” conversations that trigger an opportunity to engage in that discussion.

We also recommend providing information around hypermasculinization and hypersexualization to parents so that they can have those kinds of conversations.

Another big part of the work that we want to do is to enhance critical thinking for all youth and adults.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Thank you very much.

I think I have little bit of time left and I want to go to Ms. Guthrie.

It was interesting to hear you talk about restorative practices in the justice system. I'm assuming that at some point, restorative practice assumes that the accused has to acknowledge that they've done something wrong. They have to be willing to accept the restorative process and its outcomes. I would imagine that there would be plenty of cases in which a person would not do that.

I'm curious if you have comments on that aspect. Are there changes that could be made to the criminal justice system as it currently exists? I was even thinking about the classic question of judges versus juries. Maybe juries have a closer experience of more people's lived reality; I don't know. Maybe you could explore those two pieces.

[Steph Guthrie]

You're absolutely right that restorative practice can't be facilitated effectively with someone who's not willing to admit to wrongdoing. That said, a lot of the incentive to not admit to wrongdoing comes from feeling fear of incarceration, fear of social isolation, and fear of other consequences that someone may feel may come from admitting that they caused harm. This is backed by research.

If people who have caused harm are approached by a program option whereby they're not going to be incarcerated as a consequence and they're actually going to have some measure of community support in being accountable for the harm they caused, the research shows that the rate of people consenting to a restorative practice is quite high. They usually want to, when that's an option.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

That's time.

We'll go to Ms. Malcolmson for seven minutes.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Thank you to all the witnesses.

As you can tell, our time is short. I'm going to start with asking you questions that I think will get a yes/no answer, or if not just tell me, and then I'll try to get a bit more conversational afterwards.

To Ms. Guthrie, in relation to some of your comments around digital literacy education, can I take it that you would recommend that digital literacy be delivered to workers in the public education system, to police, and to people working in the justice system?

[Steph Guthrie]

Yes.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

To our YWCA witnesses, from your experience with service delivery across the country and working with all of your networks, have you found that victims' access to services, to justice, and to protection is equal across the country?

The context is what we can do to knit together services, because we're coming from the federal level, while a lot of the things we're talking about are completely outside the federal realm. The federal government could take some leadership and bring provinces together to bring in some of those best practices, which Ms. Decter cites as being, for example, the consent education in the Ontario education system or flashes of brilliance around digital literacy.

To any of the three witnesses, could you describe to us the benefits of that national weaving together of strategies, particularly as YWCA is a signatory for the blueprint for a national action plan to end violence against women and girls?

[Ann Decter]

It's interesting. I just finished writing a brief for the federal strategy on gender-based violence, which is what we're going to get instead of a national action plan on violence against women and girls. It recommended that we seek national standards. It would have to be a collaborative process with the provinces and territories. Even just access to shelter, for example, for someone in Toronto versus someone in Inuvik.... In remote communities, it's very hard. In the very small communities, shelter might just be a room in someone's house. You might have to go to the jail, which is probably a room in someone's house, and you have to be flown out to get to safety. It's those kinds of things.

There's a lot of work to be done around standards in general. I think national standards would be really excellent. The federal role in those kinds of things is going to be leadership and coordination, trying to get the provinces and territories to some kind of standard. It will also take more funding to the territories.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Is there anything from either of the other witnesses on the benefits of federal leadership knitting together the response to services that are within provincial or territorial jurisdiction?

[Steph Guthrie]

I think Ann covered it well.

[Ann Decter]

Also, you would get cross-pollination, learning about what's happening in different provinces and different areas, which would promote change faster. We're a national organization, and for us to get a message out across the country is obviously much more difficult, much more expensive, than to have the federal government get a message out when, say, all the status of women ministers are meeting or all the justice ministers are meeting.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

I have a further question for YWCA. Do you think that the federal government should be reviewing the justice mechanisms, including policing and prosecution and alternative justice, as we look at these cyberviolence questions?

[Raine Liliefeldt]

I think so, yes.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Are there any comments around the rate of reporting for victims of cyberviolence in relation to their belief that the police will honour their story or will treat them well?

[Raine Liliefeldt]

We do consultations with young women across the country as part of our needs assessment, and what we heard from young women is that they don't report, so we don't have qualitative data. From what I understand from conversations with some of the folks at the OPP, the OPP have very limited quantitative data as well. Essentially what we're hearing is that young women aren't reporting because of the situations they witness when someone is brave enough to come forward.