Could I just respond to your comment about moving from charity to justice to investment? I think that's really beautifully put, and it comes to the basis of the issue.
I've worked in many places in Canada, as well as in the United States and in Thailand. I've never seen the extent of abuse and violence that I see here in Yukon. I think that's for two reasons: first, some particularly related to Yukon, but also, maybe some deterioration in different systems in Canada, so that things are getting worse than they were when I first started working maybe 30 years ago.
I now routinely see young women who are in very bad relationships. My role as a counsellor is to try to help them have some vision of something better for themselves. Often they have children. Often they have an awareness that their children are witnessing this and their children are going to grow up into the same situation.
When I ask them to imagine the ideal man they'd like to be with, they look at me like I just dropped in from la-la land. They think I'm really out of touch, and they say there are no men who are not like this. Every man in their life who they can think of is either abusing substances, abusing his partner, abusing his children, or damaging or unreliable in some way. When I ask them to imagine a better situation, they're just looking for the best of a bad situation, so they may be staying in a relationship that's bad because they can't afford housing on their own and because they know, on the street with their child or moving from place to place, they're even more vulnerable than they are with that person. Or they're staying with that person, and they say, “Okay, so he's drunk all the time, okay, so he's verbally abusive, but he doesn't beat me up”, and that's the best they can think of.
We need to address issues like providing counselling for women that gets to the root. If I can talk to a young woman for long enough, if we can work together, I may be able to light some spark that there can be a different future for her and for her children. It would help a lot if I could also tell her that there was housing and tell her that there was a future for her.