Thank you, Madam Chair and committee members, for inviting [Technical difficulty—Editor] privilege to be here with you today. I want to thank each of you for your service to ending intimate partner violence in Canada.
I'm calling from the town of Canmore, Alberta, which is located within the Treaty 7 region of Southern Alberta. The territory is home to the Métis Nation of Alberta Region 3.
Since 2010, I have held the position of the Brenda Strafford chair in the prevention of domestic violence in the faculty of social work at the University of Calgary, where I am leading a research hub called “Shift: The Project to End Domestic Violence”. The focus of our work is on preventing first-time perpetration and victimization of domestic and sexual violence by designing and scaling up interventions that target the structural and cultural conditions that produce and reinforce violence, while trying to build the will and skills of individuals, families, communities, organizations and systems to prevent violence.
Over the years, our primary prevention efforts have focused on developing multi-level interventions that prevent teen dating violence, because we know that one in three Canadian youth experiences violence, and that victimization during adolescence is related to revictimization in adulthood. Youth who have experienced dating violence have a higher rate of experiencing domestic violence in adult relationships, so working with youth and the adults around them is a key strategy for violence prevention.
We've also focused our research on supporting the transformation of the anti-violence sector to better serve and support informal and natural supporters, because we know that only 12% of Canadians experiencing intimate partner violence go directly to the police. Most survivors and aggressors go to their friends, families, neighbours and co-workers first. In fact, research shows that positive informal supports lead to decreased risk of experiencing domestic violence, especially if that support occurs before relationships become violent, when initial problems or issues begin to emerge. So the importance of stepping in early with the right skills must be taught to all Canadians.
For 11 years, our research hub has been designing, implementing and learning ways to engage and mobilize more men and boys in violence prevention and gender equality. We believe violence is a learned behaviour, and if we want to stop violence, we must work with and support men and male-identified people. One of our most recent partnerships is working with the Calgary Police Service, a male-dominated environment, with which we are testing a “nudge and social norms” approach to get at the structural and cultural change, because we know policy and training are not sufficient to get at the changes we're all seeking.
Since COVID, we've been digging in to understand how big data, artificial intelligence, machine learning and predictive analysis can support prevention efforts. We're trying to leverage new technologies to monitor COVID impacts to inform our response and recovery in real time, as we have no central repository of comprehensive, cross-analyzed violence data in Alberta. As a result, we partnered with a collective impact organization that represents hundreds of anti-violence organizations and systems in Alberta to better collect data but also to use the information to inform prevention efforts.
Lastly, we're conducting a research project to better understand alternative justice approaches to sexual violence healing and prevention. By “alternative justice approaches”, we mean those activities and interventions that are outside of the criminal legal system, that are survivor-centred and trauma-informed, and that promote prevention and healing with survivors and aggressors of sexual violence.
At Shift, we believe we need to be working on initiatives that create hope, healing and opportunities to transform gender relations and norms, that support accountability and repair, and that are survivor-centred. We believe a non-mandated model that integrates reparative and transformative principles has the potential to meet survivors’ needs, rehabilitate offenders, address injustice and prevent future acts of violence.
I'm super excited to be here with you today. As a committee, you have a very large and important mandate. I'm hoping our conversation will continue to motivate you to undo the systems of oppression that are hurting and reinforcing violence. That means focusing time, resources and political leadership on the root causes of violence.
I know this task is daunting and overwhelming, but for us to end violence, we will need to dismantle white supremacy, patriarchy, colonialism and racial capitalism, because they are the foundation that gives rise to individual and collective manifestations of violence. These systems have normalized inequality and systemic racism, put profit and exploitation over people's well-being, put individualism over co-operation and social cohesion, and normalized competition, aggression and many forms of violence that we don't often recognize as violence—