Status of Women Committee on Oct. 17th, 2016

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Good afternoon and welcome, ladies and gentlemen.

I call the meeting to order.

We are continuing our study of violence against young women and girls in Canada. We're moving along to focus on some of the things that are happening on campuses.

We're fortunate to have with us today Dawn Moore, who is an associate professor in law and legal studies at Carleton University, and we also have Anuradha Dugal, who is director of violence prevention programs in Montreal. Welcome to you.

We're going to have our normal 10-minute introductions from each of our guests, and then we'll begin our questioning.

We'll start with you, Ms. Moore, and you will have 10 minutes.

[Professor Dawn Moore, Associate Professor, Law and Legal Studies, Carleton University, As an Individual]

Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.

Thank you for inviting me to speak to you this afternoon.

Sexual assault in Canada is an issue of great concern to me. I hope that our government will take this opportunity to improve the lives of women.

You've received my brief, so I will get directly to the point: what I see as the core problem of responses to sexual violence, both on and off campus, because campus is a mirror of the broader society. I have a few other ideas to share on how these problems might be addressed.

The core problem is acknowledging sexual violence as a social fact. At the core of my research on both sexual and domestic violence—which routinely overlap, even on campuses—sits the disavowal of sexual violence as anything more than a few rotten apples, rather than a cultural phenomenon.

Some may elect to call this “rape culture”. I'm agnostic on this term. We can refer to it as such if that makes sense and if it's helpful, but I also recognize that this term has come to carry a great deal of political weight and has constituted its own battleground, so I am electing to talk about sexual violence as a social fact, with the proviso that what we call it is far less important than recognizing that it exists.

Recognizing sexual violence as a social fact does not mean that all men are rapists. I can't state that emphatically enough. Such a recognition acknowledges instead that we live in society that shames, blames, and dismisses survivors' experiences of sexual violence on one hand, while on the other hand tacitly or explicitly permitting and, in some cases, encouraging sexual violence.

To acknowledge that we live in a culture saturated with sexual violence today is no different from past recognitions of other social ills such as racism and homophobia. Today we can own the fact that both systemic and overt racism and homophobia have been and continue to be unfortunate features of our society, and in that admission, in naming these problems head-on, we have been and continue to be able to take steps legislatively, socially, and systematically to address these problems. However, until we own that the problem exists, there's very little we can do to address it and to meaningfully make things better for the lives of women and girls.

Sexual violence is a reality on campus. It is embedded in frosh week activities, fraternity and varsity initiations, and, sadly, sometimes even in public statements made by university leaders. Survivors of sexual violence on campus, and indeed women in general, feel the brunt of a culture of sexual violence. They have difficulty accessing services, they are disbelieved or dismissed when they speak up, and almost invariably the outcomes of formal reporting mechanisms leave them feeling unprotected and silenced.

Much of this is driven by a strong ethic of institutional risk management on the part of universities. The university, any university, does not benefit from keeping accurate records of incidences of sexual violence, from encouraging survivors to report, or—as I would argue is the most important task at hand—from implementing an aggressive sexual violence prevention strategy. To do any or all of these things is to have the institution admit that sexual violence is a reality on its campus and in its community. University leaders are loath to admit that their campuses are so-called “rape campuses”, and I use this in scare quotes because this is a term that is embraced by the student movement to express the gravity of the problems they are encountering on their campuses. The risk of liability is most easily mitigated when the problem does not exist, so it comes as no surprise that, in our research, universities routinely denied that there was a problem with sexual violence on their campuses, even as students and survivors told us exactly the opposite.

Okay, that's the problem, so what do we do? Let's say that in my perfect world, we're able to admit to sexual violence as a cultural aspect of our society that manifests on campuses. We've named the problem, so what can we do about it? How do we fix it?

Of course there's no magic bullet, but since I have the attention of some of the top decision-makers in this land, at least for the next six minutes or so, let me build on some of the work that this committee has already done and make a few suggestions. I'm particularly interested in this committee's attention to a national action plan focusing on prevention, continuity of care, and safe reporting mechanisms.

Sexual violence, as you are all aware, is not just a criminal issue. It impacts access to education and health, and at its core, it's about human rights. In terms of sexual violence, this means gender equality.

Sexual violence impinges on the human rights of women in Canada. If Canada is to become a truly gender-equal society, we need to act now to address gender-based violence.

The federal government could take leadership and work in coalition with the provinces to develop a national strategy for colleges and universities that would ensure impactful prevention initiatives, largely in the form of ongoing education. This is the key to addressing sexual violence. This is what we did with racism and homophobia. People learned that these things were not okay. Canada is a different, and, I would assert, better country because of it—a world leader, in fact.

After an incident of sexual violence, survivors need care. I know governments and institutions are focused on the numbers and insist on developing frameworks around accurate reporting. I understand that need, but coming from a survivor-centric perspective, survivors often are uninterested in reporting and instead want services. They need health care, academic accommodation, safety on campus, and, most of all, to be believed. Again the federal government could play a pivotal role here, not just in funding but by ensuring that there is a basic standard of care for survivors across the country.

If we want survivors to report, we have to make reporting safe and survivor-friendly. Policing and prosecutorial services routinely deny survivors even the opportunity for adjudication, much less, given the current tests in law, any real chance of securing a conviction. Survivors who do come forward must tell their stories over and over again. Their believability is called into question. They are called liars or sluts. Their characters and previous behaviours are interrogated, including their sexuality, and all to reach the very unattainable goal of securing a finding of guilt. The threshold of reasonable doubt is very difficult to cross in the case of sexual violence, because almost all sexual assaults happen in private, with no witnesses. This is even more difficult in what we now call the “post-Ghomeshi era”, in which you will be hard pressed to find any survivor who is willing to put herself through a criminal process.

The same can also be said for internal university and college reporting processes. These are piecemeal and typically involve gag orders that direct survivors not to discuss their cases with anyone except on the vaguely defined need-to-know basis. This is a clause that many survivors read as a threat against them for seeking support, advice, or counselling, alongside advocacy.

Alongside law reform, which is under the purview of the federal government, a national action strategy could also include bringing the provinces together to ensure they have a uniform reporting and investigatory regime that is supportive of survivors. This does not mean an erasure of due process, but it does mean that we can implement protocols for reporting and investigating that are more friendly for survivors. Gender-based violence should be, needs to be, and must be a top issue for the Minister of Justice, the Attorney General , and the Minister of Health.

Finally, none of this is of any use without oversight and transparency. Circling back to my earlier assertions regarding university risk management, universities and colleges ought to have oversight bodies that are charged with reviewing not only reported cases but also service provision and prevention strategies on campuses. Here again the federal government could take the lead in order to offer a uniform oversight mechanism that would hold universities accountable if they fall short of national standards. I think they could set the bar very high.

The United Nations' safe cities strategy might be a good place start. Could this government implement the spirit of the UN's initiatives but think in terms of safe campuses? It could start with pilot projects on specific campuses that target innovative safety initiatives, such as anonymous reporting and mandatory and ongoing rape culture education. There could be policies that put the onus on the respondents to rearrange their work and study lives in order to make campuses safer for women, instead of on survivors, who, in my research, told how they had to move out of dorms, drop classes, miss out on employment opportunities, and even leave the university altogether in order to ensure their safety.

I realize this is the beginning of what I hope will be a thoughtful and ongoing conversation about how Canada can embody the principles of gender equality by addressing its main barrier, which is gender violence.

Naturally, as an academic, I have many more things to say on the issue, as well as the issue of the policing of domestic violence. I could go on for hours, but, as I said, I think we need to have a conversation. In order to begin that, I will now stop talking and welcome any and all questions.

Thank you all for your attention.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Thank you.

Now we'll go to Ms. Dugal. You have 10 minutes.

[Anuradha Dugal, Director, Violence Prevention Programs, Canadian Women's Foundation]

Thank you, Madam Chair. Good afternoon, everyone.

Thank you, Madam Chair and the Standing Committee on the Status of Women, for this opportunity to address the question of violence against women and young girls in Canada, in particular in relation to campus violence.

We commend the committee's focus on this timely and critical issue. The current discourse, especially over the past week, speaks to the urgency to act on this matter and the need to counteract the misogynistic and sexist behaviour and attitudes that harm girls and women in their abilities to lead fulfilling and meaningful lives. This is an opportunity that we really cannot miss.

As a bit of context, Canadian Women's Foundation is Canada's national public foundation dedicated to improving the lives of women and girls. We focus on three core areas: stopping violence, ending poverty, and empowering women and girls. We advocate at the national level for strategies and policies that contribute to gender equality across Canada.

For 25 years we've invested in 1,400 communities, helping 250,000 people. These programs focus on violence prevention, healthy relationships among teens, empowerment to women and girls, mentoring, work experience, poverty elimination, and capacity-building.

Our vision is for all women in Canada to live free from violence. We help women in Canada move out of violence by funding emergency shelters and through prevention programs. We also invest in co-educational school-based violence prevention programs that teach girls and boys and all genders to stop the violence. We understand how the ripple effects of investing in such programs improve women's well-being, their economic prospects, and social conditions, while conversely, we understand the personal, social, and economic costs of allowing this to persist, in particular with respect to violence.

Here are just a few facts about violence against women in Canada.

One-half of all women in Canada have experienced at least one incident of physical or sexual violence. Sixty-seven per cent of all Canadians know someone who has experienced physical or sexual violence. Sexual assault is a gender-based crime. Of reported adult victims, 93% are female, and 97% percent of the accused are men. Women aged 18 to 24 experience the highest rates of sexual violence.

The vast majority of sex assault still goes unreported to police. In one poll, the most common reason women gave for not reporting sexual assault was feeling young and powerless. Of the respondents, 40% said they remained silent because of feeling shame, and 29% blamed themselves.

Of survivors who did report sexual assault to police, in the same poll, 71% said the experience was negative. We have noted that sexual assault is the only violent crime in Canada not declining, with women's risk of violent victimization 20% higher than men's as of 2014.

It is instructive to point out where declining rates of police-reported domestic violence have been found, and we can attribute it to some mitigating factors: increasing social equality; financial freedom, enabling women to leave relationships that are abusive in earlier stages; and sustained efforts by women's organizations at the grassroots to end domestic violence.

If we compare sexual violence and domestic violence, we see there are also far more services in response to domestic violence, whether it's in the police and court sector, the coordination of community services, availability of shelters, etc., than there are for sexual violence in Canada.

These indicators demonstrate that we have a far greater need for coordination at the community level to effect change in attitudes, behaviour, and the institutional responses to sexual violence.

We know that patterns of abuse are learned early. Research suggests that the earlier children receive healthy relationships education, the more lasting the outcomes. Over the past 15 years, the foundation has focused resources on co-educational teen healthy relationships programs. Educators see the value in teen healthy relationships programming, preparing 11-, 12-, and 13-year-olds for intimate relationships before they typically start dating.

Through these projects, teens are taught skills, warning signs of unhealthy relationships, foundational behaviours for healthy ones, and where to get help. These are delivered in classroom work as ongoing programs through discussion role-playing and ongoing workbooks that they work at during out-of-school hours, facilitated by teachers, community members, and youth.

The involvement of youth and peers contributes greatly to their success. Research also illustrates that meaningful youth participation in program design contributes to the development of more relevant and effective services and provides youth with the opportunities to gain skills, as well as empowerment and leadership opportunities. It also helps them make healthy connections.

This program is also designed to include boys as leaders and to engage them in conversations and activities that deconstruct power dynamics, such as race, class, gender, and privilege, in general. It does not engage in blaming men and boys for the violence. The participant surveys show that 90% of students said the programs helped let them keep their relationships healthy even years after leaving school, and more than 60% said that the programs influenced their choice of partners and helped them decide how to leave an unhealthy relationship.

We believe that the teen healthy relationships program should be incorporated in high schools across Canada and that it would be instructive in the development of campus prevention programs. Early intervention underscores the importance of talking and learning about healthy, equal relationships before heading to college and university, and it can be a way of preventing campus violence.

Campus violence, as we know, occurs against a backdrop of prevailing myths of victim blaming about sexual assault, cultural normalization of sexist attitudes, institutional behaviours, ignorance about the laws of consent, poor institutional prevention programs, and a lack of mechanisms to respond to sexual assault.

Over the past few years, media attention has highlighted the vacuum in consistent proactive approaches. The foundation, in a cursory scan in 2014 of seven universities across Canada, found a patchwork of procedures for dealing with sexual violence.

We know through some of the work we've done that four out of five university undergraduate students on Canadian campuses have been victims of violence in a dating relationship. There are two stats that are used quite consistently, but they're very worrying: one-fifth of male students agreed that forced sex is acceptable if someone spends money on a date, is stoned or drunk, or has been dating somebody for a long time, and one other survey showed that 60% of Canadian college-aged males indicated they would commit sexual assault if they were certain they couldn't get caught.

We also did polls at Canadian Women's Foundation ourselves. We wanted to see how women who had experienced sexual assault might be seen in the wider community, so we asked questions about whether people believed that victims brought sexual assault on themselves. Our survey showed that 19% of respondents believe that women may provoke or encourage sexual assault when they are drunk, and when you take it down to the age group of 18- to 34-year-olds, it's nearly 25% who believe that same finding.

A more recent survey about consent revealed that although 96% agreed that sexual activity between partners should be consensual, two-thirds of Canadians did not understand that this meant it had to be ongoing, positive, and enthusiastic.

The survey also revealed that many young Canadians have a blurred understanding of consent when technology is involved. Almost one in five, 21%, aged 18 to 34, believe that if a woman sends an explicit sexual text, then it means that she is inviting the recipient to engage in off-line sexual activity.

We know, as both these surveys show us, there is a need to create and integrate campus-based programs targeted at young people to empower them, learn their rights, and above all develop a culture and climate of consent. Therefore, there must be a clear understanding of sexual consent and of sexual violence according to the Criminal Code of Canada.

We know that one way to address sexual assault on campus is to encourage stand-alone sexual assault policies. Out of 100 universities and colleges across Canada, approximately 24 now have stand-alone policies. These recognize that sexual assault is different from other forms of misconduct, and they set out specific procedures for handling complaints.

The passage of Bill 132 in Ontario included a proviso that all publicly assisted colleges, universities, and private career colleges are required to have stand-alone sexual violence policies by January 2017. This act also requires them to review their policies every three years and to do so with student involvement. Manitoba, Nova Scotia, and British Columbia are also looking at this, but policies are not enough.

As my colleague stated previously in her brief, we know that we need much more responsive programs, programs that deal directly with what victims need and provide victim-centred responses, with victims themselves being included in the creation of policies and protocols that come out of the stand-alone protocols, so it's not only the youth—

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

I'm sorry; that's your time. Thanks very much.

You'll get some more chance to elaborate, I think, when we start the questions.

I want to welcome to our committee today Mark Gerretsen, Wayne Long, Garnett Genuis, and Brigitte Sansoucy. We have gender parity again today on our committee, and that always makes for improved discussion.

We're going to start our questioning with Ms. Nassif for seven minutes.

[Eva Nassif, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I would also like to thank both witnesses for their presentations.

My first question is for Ms. Moore.

In your research in sexual violence on post-secondary campuses in Ontario, have you looked at how the incidents of sexual violence were report on campuses across Canada and how the subsequent investigations were conducted?

[Prof. Dawn Moore]

Yes, and that is specifically in Ontario.

I'm sorry, but I'm going to answer your question in English; my French isn't up to snuff.

We know that policing services in Ontario specifically have what we call “unfounded” rates that are alarming. We're in Ottawa right now; the Ottawa police have an unfounded rate of 40%. That means that 40% of the women who come to Ottawa police with a claim of having been sexually victimized are turned away at the door, so the police refuse to even investigate, let alone go forward with a prosecution. After that we can follow through with attrition, which means that for those 60% who do engage in a police investigation, there's a high attrition rate again at the prosecutorial level, as crown prosecutors make a decision about whether or not a case is worthy of taking to trial.

We end up with somewhere between 5% and 10% in the province of Ontario—and I would argue that it's comparable across the country—that do go to trial, and then there are the convictions that we see as a result. Of 100% of of sexual assaults, somewhere between 5% and 10% go to prosecution; maybe 1% of those will result in a conviction and a guilty finding, so you can see why victims themselves have very little faith in attaining any kind of justice from the system, because their chances of finding a guilty verdict are slim. Then once a guilty verdict is found, sentencing is usually very permissive.

I'm not an advocate of heavy-handed sentencing, because as I said in my presentation, I think we really need to be putting our energies into preventing sexual assaults in the first place. When we're dealing with reporting and investigation, we're closing the barn door after the horse has run. What we want to see in this country is not.... As my colleague said, anywhere from one in five to one in six women have experienced sexual assault before turning 25; that's unacceptable. We need to prevent that from happening in the first place, before they even need to go to police or any other reporting mechanism.

[Eva Nassif, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

You say that prevention is the best thing, but who do you think should conduct these investigations and how could we improve the responses when incidents like this are reported?

You just said that the current approach isn't effective and that prevention is the best approach, but how do you think the system could be improved?

[Prof. Dawn Moore]

I think police need to be better educated about the circumstances of women who have experienced sexual violence. There are some very basic things: being given a comfortable room, a private space, in which to give statements; being able to choose the gender of the investigator; being able to develop a rapport with that investigator before actually having to delve into the minutiae of what happened during a sexual assault; preventing sexual assault victims from having to testify in the presence of their assailants; offering them adequate protection, knowing that if they come forward with a complaint that a restraining order will actually be enforced; and having what I flippantly call a sexual assault midwife, somebody who will guide sexual assault survivors through the criminal process. The Province of Quebec does this particularly well in terms of having a centre that sexual assault survivors can go to once they have reported, and they are actually assigned a counsellor who will take them through every step of the process and will keep them apprised of where their case is at.

The other thing is timing. If you make a report of sexual assault to the police, it can be six months to a year before you see any response to that report. That's a long time for a survivor to wait to have to tell and retell her story.

There are a lot of basic things we can do to make the system more approachable for survivors, but we also have to keep in mind that the judiciary needs to be educated as well. We now have two extreme examples in Canada of the judiciary making it very clear that survivors are unwelcome and will not be treated respectfully in a court of law, those being the Ghomeshi decision and the case in the Prairies. Judicial education is also key here in terms of respectful engagement with survivors.

[Eva Nassif, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

Thank you.

My next question is for Ms. Dugal.

According to the Canadian Women's Foundation website, research shows that adolescence is the best time to address violence prevention with kids because violent behaviour is often integrated very early in life.

Could you give us some examples of promising practices that teach adolescents about healthy relationships, and the difference between a healthy relationship and an abusive one?

[Anuradha Dugal]

Thank you very much for the question.

I will also answer in English because I'm more used to talking about these issues in that language, but I will be happy to practise my French later.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Ladies, that's your time. You'll have to hold your answer for another time on the next round.

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

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you so much to each of you for coming and spending today with us. We certainly appreciate your viewpoints on this issue.

I'll start with a question for Ms. Dugal.

Ms. Dugal, I'm hoping you can help me understand. You talked about the perspective that young men hold with respect to women and you expressed some things that concern me in terms of the liberties many of them feel they can take. With that, I'm wondering if you can comment on whether you believe pornography has an impact, and if so, to what degree.

[Anuradha Dugal]

That's a very interesting question.

We know that young men at a very early age can develop attitudes that mean they regard women in a more sexually objectified way and are maybe not so concerned about developing healthy and egalitarian relationships with women. We know that many young men do, from a very early age, have media smarts—we have specific data on this—and do engage in using online pornography, starting as young as age 11. Some of them may have had a certain number of views. I believe it's close to 50% who may use online pornography two or three times a week, and that might be increasing as they get older.

We don't know that there is a direct connection. I do not believe that a direct connection between the use of online pornography and unhealthy relationships has been made. However, there are certain indications that the ways in which young men see objectification of women from a very early age could create those attitudes that then become pervasive, as we see in media.

However, to be honest, it's not just pornography. I would posit that you see similar attitudes about women in music videos. You see it in online video games. You see it in very many movies. The types of media images that young men see do tend to objectify women, and they're the same media images that young women are seeing, so it's not wholly the education of young men that we're concerned about here: it's also that young women are beginning to see themselves as sexual objects and therefore will play that out in their relationships.

There's a question as to whether young women are even able, at the very beginning of their activities, particularly their sexual activities, to think about what pleases them, or whether they are more concerned about what will please their partner. That's something that is brought up in some of the healthy relationship programs we support. Healthy sexuality is part of that, and that includes things like talking about sexual pleasure, talking about being positive in the ways that you look at sex and that intimate part of a relationship.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Moore, I'll ask you the same question. Could you comment on some of your reflections with regard to the impact that pornography might be having on sexual assault against women?

[Prof. Dawn Moore]

Our study didn't really focus on pornography, so I'm not sure that I'm really well positioned to comment. I think the point that my colleague has made about objectification more generally is very well taken, but I don't think that pornography is the single thing we can point to.

One example I can give you from our research was that one of the survivors I interviewed told me about a fraternity-sorority party called a “stop light party”. I don't know if anybody's heard of these or not. Essentially, you wear red, yellow, or green. Green means “Go ahead; do whatever you want to me”, as if consent is not required. Yellow means “I require consent”, which to me is just a completely unintelligible way of presenting consent on campus. Red means “I'm not willing to engage in sexual activity”. To me, that example has always come back as a really clear way of capturing the way consent is understood, particularly among first- and second-year students on university campuses. This is something that you can just willy-nilly throw out, and if people are wearing green they don't need to provide consent; it's just expected that they'll put out whatever's requested of them.

She was also clear to me that the women who were wearing yellow were seen as prudish, whereas certainly the women who were wearing red were just, like, forget it. Only the women who were wearing green were seen as attractive at these fraternity and sorority parties. I find that to be a very sort of jarring, but also very accurate, depiction of the way this kind of objectification works in the cultures on campus.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you.

For my next question I'll start with you, Ms. Moore.

Around this table you have a group of individuals who have been elected to the House of Commons. It is our chief objective to put legislation in place. We can talk about the various measures that are needed to help stagnate or thwart the degree to which sexual assault is taking place, but at the end of the day—and I have a great appreciation for those mechanisms—around this table we are very interested in the potential legislation that could be put in place.

With that in mind, what would your recommendations be for this table?

[Prof. Dawn Moore]

I've laid out some recommendations in the brief that has circulated. I'm not sure if you've had an opportunity to review it.

It's difficult, because you're crossing legislative boundaries between provinces and the federal government. As for what falls under the purview of the federal government, I do think there are reforms that could be entertained with criminal law. We were able to do this with battered women's syndrome. We were able to recognize that there are particular gender circumstances in the case of domestic violence that would not hold a woman accountable to the same standards as any other person in the case of self-defence. This is the Lavallee decision...it doesn't matter; I won't give you a law lecture on it. The point is that the Supreme Court was able to make a provision within the Criminal Code to allow for gender disparity in experiences of violence.

I think we have a thoughtful Supreme Court, I think we have a thoughtful legislature, and I think it is possible to entertain legislative changes that might understand sexual violence as being a crime that is different from the other kinds of crimes that we find in the Criminal Code. This is not a crime of property—

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Thank you. No problem.

We'll start with you, Ms. Sansoucy. You have seven minutes.

[Brigitte Sansoucy, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'll pick up where my colleague left off and talk about promising practices.

More specifically, Ms. Dugal, do you think it is important to share these promising practices with everyone working in the field of violence against women—including the federal government, of course—to create a strategy that takes into account all the existing strategies of both the provinces and the community organizations?

[Anuradha Dugal]

Is the question for me?

[Brigitte Sansoucy, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

You can start, and if Ms. Moore has something to add, she can.

You have the floor.

[Anuradha Dugal]

Okay.

Yes, I think what's important is that the federal government take a leadership role and that the provinces understand that there is an expectation that universities and colleges have to have policies and procedures in place. I understand that education is provincially mandated, but there are many ways in which the federal government can take action. As Ms. Moore explained, a national action plan on gender-based violence or violence against women would be a good place to start.

I think it's also important to note that the federal government has a role to play in establishing policy and investing in potential knowledge transfer on this issue. As an example, I'll give you the funding that we have received as part of a partnership grant with McGill University on a partnership about preventing rape culture within universities through evidence-based research, as it could inform the curriculum and policy change. That is a national project that includes 10 universities across Canada and will include more and more as we go forward. It's looking at policy and it's looking at the role of arts and popular culture and at news and social media, and it will go as far as changing college curricula to include information on sexual assault within dentistry, within journalism, within law, and within the education curricula that already exist.

[Brigitte Sansoucy, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Thank you.

Ms. Moore, I don't know if you have anything to add to that. If not, I have another question for you.

Some of your recommendations relate to research. Could you tell us how important it is to support research in order to have a better understanding of the profound causes of violence against women and to adapt to new forms of violence?

[Prof. Dawn Moore]

As I said in my brief, the study we did was the first study to be done in 10 years. It's the only study to actually qualitatively take information from...it was only three campuses, so it's a small start to addressing a much bigger problem, but what we need to do is accurately capture the situation of sexual violence across the country—not just the numbers, but people's experiences with what's happening on their campuses.

Of course, the federal government has a federal funding body, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. It would be wonderful if one of their areas of concentration was on gender-based violence and special grants were made available to researchers, because there are crucial questions that remain unanswered—for example, the pornography question that was asked earlier.

We didn't have an opportunity to interview university men about their views, but what my colleague has said about boys in high school indicates that we need to know what the mentality is out there, and where they're getting those ideas. You can't get that strictly from surveys. You need to get that from across-the-country research. It takes time to clear ethics boards, but it also takes time to build trust in particular communities.

The other population that was wildly under-represented in our research was indigenous people, and that's because there's a huge trust-building exercise that needs to go on before you can do research with indigenous populations. We know there's a massive problem with sexual and gender-based violence in indigenous communities and among indigenous peoples and we know it comes from a culture of colonialization and the effects of colonialization, but we don't know how that's manifesting for indigenous students on university campuses. If I were to pick my top area, that would be the one place where I would want to go directly, to find a way to chronicle the experiences and the needs of indigenous students on campus.