I'm Jo Ann Hyde, and I'm the executive director of Partners for Rural Family Support in east-central Saskatchewan. We are a non-profit charitable organization.
I'm going to talk today about the effects of domestic violence, our financial responsibility towards that.
Probably the greatest issue, the issue that is most widespread and most costly to society today is domestic violence. Its ripple effect is felt in our communities, economy, businesses, law, justice, health, education. It's pervasive.
We currently spend approximately $4.2 billion annually on the fallout produced by domestic violence. That's an old figure, about three years old. I couldn't find one more current, so it's likely we spend more than that now.
We have safe houses in Canada, and when I think about that, when you think about safe houses, it doesn't make sense to me. Is that not like a refugee camp? Why do we have to have places that keep women and children safe? We have those because we are tolerant towards the continuation of violence. Instead of focusing on prevention and intervention, we're focusing on the fallout, on the crisis.
Domestic violence is pervasive in that it knows no income restrictions and it is across all ages, all religions, all cultures, the geography of Canada. Domestic violence is everywhere. It is true, however, that some conditions allow it to flourish, for instance, isolation. And we know that to be true because all we have to do is listen to what is happening in our Northwest Territories or Nunavik, or unfortunately, in my own home province of Saskatchewan.
For Saskatchewan women, isolation is a way of life, and I see that daily in my agency. My agency is located in a very small, tiny city of 5,000 people in central Saskatchewan, and we offer services to a surrounding district of a 100 kilometre radius. Of course those lines are quite loosely defined. If someone calls me from 250 kilometres away and she is isolated and she is in danger, I'm going to help her. She obviously doesn't have the kind of help she needs right there.
This agency works in terms of prevention, education, and information. Four days ago I had an incident happen in my agency that with the help of the police we managed to dissipate; we managed to control the situation. If we had not been there, quite likely the amount of money that would have been spent for the woman in the hospital in intensive care, for justice to become involved, for foster care to become involved, for welfare to become involved, would have been between $200,000 and $1 million, just for that one family unit, just for that one incident that happened last week. Instead it cost three hours of my time, an hour of the RCMP's time, and a wee bit of overhead.
Funding is the most difficult thing for us to garner, and I don't know why. We operate 80% on grants. Grants are criteria-specific, so while they are wonderful to get, it means that we have to gear it specifically towards, say, cyber-safety.
I've never yet read on a grant where it says, “And oh, by the way, feel free to use some of this money towards your rent or your utilities or your wages.”
I am going to have to close my doors. December, somewhere around Christmas, I'm out of money. My next grant comes February 1, and I can't find any federal, provincial, municipal, or urban government that will say to me, “Here is $10,000 to pay for your bills.” Yet last week I saved all levels of government between $200,000 and $1 million.
Thank you.