Status of Women Committee on Oct. 3rd, 2016

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

I only have a couple of minutes, so I'll just ask another question to both of the organizations.

For the best practices, or the good outcomes that you've developed within your own communities or within your own organization, how much hope do you have around being able to share those practices and use those networks in order to have the good outcomes and the good strategies that you have developed, and be able to telegraph those out? What's your capacity to share that information and have everybody benefit from what you've learned?

[Lisa Lachance]

I can start. We will benefit from core funding for two and a half more years, which has allowed us to build an online site where organizations can go and figure out how they might increase the use of evidence or the use of evaluation in their work and in their services. That is an extremely privileged position in the child and youth services sector. This is a sector that is constantly trying to figure out how to do the next month, the next year, and the next project.

[Nancy Beth Guptill]

In Atlantic Canada, we started meeting with the other maritime provinces to work together in sharing our strategies and findings. Our goal is to find a regional strategy and approach, pool resources, and come together. We just started initial conversations that way.

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

Good for you. That's going to be valuable for everybody.

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

All right.

We'll go to Ms. Vandenbeld, for seven minutes.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

I want to thank all of you for being here.

I'd like to pick up on the mental health issue again, because I'm quite struck by Alicia and her comment that the fear is just as real. The mental health implications are just as real, and yet there is a perception that the virtual world is not as real, and so there is an impact on mental health, but also the ability to seek help.

I noticed that you had said 55% of young people reach out online, and in the background documents there were some indications of ways in which the support and the help can also be provided online. If we're talking about things like real-time crisis intervention through Skype, and through technology or peer support, can you tell us a bit about what can be done and what is being done, and if there is a role for the federal government with funding, with projects, or even in legislation?

[Alicia Raimundo]

One of the things that I hope for would be to have the formalized online peer support and online counselling offered more regularly in the hours that this happens to young people. You could be waking up in the middle of the night to 40 tweets telling you that you're ugly and that you should die. We need more services that would be able to respond to those needs, so that you know you're going to go to someone who is accountable for what they say to you.

The other thing I would add is that I had a very good friend who was in and out of the hospital for abuse she was receiving on Instagram and Twitter. Every time she'd go in the hospital they'd take her phone away. Of course she is going to get better if her phone is not there, and so they weren't addressing the issue. Then she would get back out, see what everyone was saying about her, and then go back in. It was a merciless cycle.

I would encourage more evidence-based and better services to be available online. There's an organization out of the United States where young women who have been harassed can get online support from other young women who have been harassed online. I found it really helpful, and so did a lot of my friends, just to be with people who know what it's like to be hit with a constant barrage of seeing awful things about yourself everywhere.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

I heard you when you said, and others have said, that the solution was to just go offline. That reminds me of when women were told to just don't go out onto the streets, then. This is space where women have a right to be. I'm quite concerned that what we're hearing is that there isn't awareness of legislation. There's no awareness that it's illegal to send an intimate image to a third person.

This is also for the East Prince Women's Information Centre. I believe you said there are gaps in the legislation. We're hearing two things in the committee right now. We're hearing that the legislation that exists is not being enforced, that some police are not aware of it, and that a lot of young people are not aware of it. I'm interested to hear about the gaps in the legislation, as well, if there is a need to legislate further, particularly with regard to the Criminal Code and what the thresholds are for criminal harassment.

I'll put that to the East Prince Women's Information Centre first and then see what you think.

[Andy Lou Somers]

I know from speaking with our justice minister that there's not really any legislation in place right now, and they are not going to do stand-alone legislation. They're going to wait and see what Nova Scotia does before they look at anything.

I know they're looking at it in the schools. We just met with the minister of education. They want to work with us, if we can, to help them get some new policies in place to deal with this. When we did the focus groups at the schools, we realized that there are a lot of other issues to be dealt with, as mentioned. There needs to be a safe school act here, which we don't have on the Island.

When we talk with the police, they just keep telling us they need more policies, or nuts and bolts, to deal with issues that we feel are illegal, but they say they don't have enough.

We feel we need to keep advocating, working on this issue, and working with them. We hope that we're going to be able to. They're all very willing to work with us, so we're just going to keep trudging along and see what we can do.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

In addition to the provincial justice systems, do you see a role for the federal government, even in terms of sharing best practices or in terms of criminal law?

[Andy Lou Somers]

Yes, definitely.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Do you want to respond?

[Lisa Lachance]

We've been involved with the project, Shift, being done by the YWCA. I know that they were in last week.

After hearing from East Prince, it's clear that we're all really at the beginning of our understanding of this. Ongoing support for research, and research plus action, like this particular project stream, is really important.

There's a good role for the federal government, as well, as Alicia said, working with Internet service providers and corporations like Facebook to have a national response and to encourage civil and corporate social responsibility. I think that's really important.

There have been pockets of initiatives that have popped up that have contacted us. It's challenging for a coalition of community groups to stand up to Facebook, Twitter, or Internet service providers to make a difference. Together, I think there's a real concern among community organizations about this, so I think a sort of top-down, bottom-up approach would be really effective.

To your earlier questions about mental health, everyone is talking about the need to create a mental health app. This is part of responding to youth, where youth are at, and when they need help, as Alicia said. It's also part of a response to the mental health in-person services being so limited across the country.

We keep talking in the mental health sector, asking where the app solutions are, what the online solutions are, and yet, the online environment is not safe. I think it's really important, too.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

I quickly want to go to something that we heard in the statistics about the fact that this is happening more to girls than to boys. Do you think it's partly because there's more of a stigma on girls, particularly when it comes to cybersexual violence, than there would be on boys? If that's the case, how do we de-stigmatize girls when they're subjected to this?

[Nancy Beth Guptill]

What we've found—

[Alicia Raimundo]

I was just going to say that I think this comes down to victim blaming, and we have to stop that. Even when you're talking about them participating and sending nudes, that right there is victim blaming, because you don't know what's going on what's causing the pressure to do it. You don't know the sweet-talking and how much their saying they love them is causing that to happen.

[Nancy Beth Guptill]

What we've found—

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Sorry to interrupt. That's the end of her time. We're going to go to Ms. Vecchio for five minutes. She could continue the questioning, if she wants.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Actually, I'm also going on the mental health stage with this.

Alicia, thank you very much for sharing your different stories and personal story here. The one thing we notice is that mental health of youth is a big concern. You even talked about the young girl going into the hospital and them taking the phone away.

What approaches do you think, as parents, mental health workers, and workers like yourselves, are the best techniques that you use to help the youth who have been victimized? What are some different things that you would recommend for us as legislators to put out there to make sure we educate?

After Alicia is done, this also goes to Prince Edward Island.

[Alicia Raimundo]

Instead of trying to.... I think some of this asking the youths to just give up their phone or to stay off the Internet comes from wanting to protect them, but I think part of this is about how they're going to receive these messages, so sit down with them and show them that these messages aren't correct. Show them that they're not right about them, that they're not the only ones sharing nudes, and that the guy is kind of the bad person here for sharing it.

As Lisa said, I think we really need to invest in research, evidence-based, but we really need to not be afraid to look at it head-on instead of trying to protect them from it ever happening. It's going to happen—because we don't fully understand why it happens—so sit with the youth, look at the messages, and just let them know that those messages aren't true.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

That's excellent.

Do you have anything to add from Prince Edward Island?

[Andy Lou Somers]

No. We totally agree with that. She said it just as we would.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Fantastic.

You also talked about a safe schools act. Did you indicate that in Nova Scotia or in Prince Edward Island there is nothing like a safe schools act that would be done through the province?

[Nancy Beth Guptill]

Prince Edward Island is one of four provinces that does not have a safer schools act. Off the top of my head, for the other three, I can't ramble them off, but no, we do not have one. In terms of our cyber-safety issues within the school system, that's dated back to the late 1990s, so they're really outdated. There needs to be a complete overhaul.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Absolutely. Thank you very much.

To go back to the mental health part, the biggest issue here is not just the people doing it. It's those victims that I think we need to really watch out for. If we were to make a list of priorities.... I think that a lot of times we look at why people are doing this. We'll look at the course...but I think we also have to look at the victims and how we can make sure the victims are protected.

What is the best thing to do? Would you approach it through working with the victims first or would you approach it as a whole 360°, where we're dealing with the victims and trying to deal with the education? How should we prioritize this, since we need to make a difference and we need to make it now? What would some of your priorities be?