Human Resources Committee on Oct. 21st, 2014

[Lenore Lukasik-Foss]

I'm wearing two hats today. I'm the president of the Ontario Coalition of Rape Crisis Centres. I represent 26 rape and sexual assault centres across Ontario. We work primarily in advocacy. Similar to what Heidi's saying, we try to encourage conversation, awareness, education, and policy change in order that our communities better respond to the needs of sexual abuse and assault survivors.

I'm also representing a local sexual assault centre in Hamilton. That's the Sexual Assault Centre (Hamilton and Area). Next year is our association's 40th anniversary. We were the third rape crisis centre in Canada. I'm very proud of our community for that.

We provide services to men and women survivors of childhood and adult sexual assault. We have a 24-hour support line. We spend a lot of time doing prevention work. As Heidi was mentioning, a lot of time is spent in Grade 9 health classes with the boys and the girls, talking about consent and relationships, to be able to help them get the language and learn how to do this, because we don't teach our young folks how to do this. We also do specialized programming with newcomer communities because we know there's a huge stigma for them to walk through the door of a sexual assault centre. We try to do bridging programs to make it easier for folks to walk through our door.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Thank you.

We'll move on to Madam Sims. I believe you are sharing your time with Mr. Brahmi.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Yes.

Mine is just a brief comment. First of all, thank you so much for the work you do. As you said, when people run away from you at events it points to the value of the work you do and how people are not comfortable talking about this subject. But we know that domestic violence crosses all socio-economic and ethno-cultural communities.

I think the point I'm going to take away from here, which I already know, is how we are failing in our communities to provide safety and security to the women who do want to leave, because of the the cuts to legal aid and to advocacy...and even helping with transition, the lack of beds, especially the lack of beds for women with families.... If you have two or three kids, you are in a completely different situation than if you are on your own. So I appreciate all of that. I would like to have a much deeper conversation about what we should be doing there. But I do really want to say we appreciate your support for this legislation, which is there to correct that.

Once again passing this legislation is not going to fix domestic violence, nor do I think that financial gain is the driving force for the domestic violence. There are many other things that drive domestic violence.

So I just wanted to say a big thank you.

Mr. Brahmi has gone for a coffee, so I will ask a brief question.

If there were three things that you would like governments to do that would address domestic violence in a physical way to support the victims of domestic violence, what would those three things be?

[Lenore Lukasik-Foss]

Well, that's a million-dollar question, but I'll try it without a lot of thought beforehand.

I think we need to have adequate child care available for women. As I said, shelters are mostly full of children because the highest risk group are young women, and we know that the women are more likely to be murdered, experience higher rates of sexual violence, and that they often have young children. One of the barriers that keeps women in situations of domestic violence is money, a financial concern. Affordable day care would be a help. Housing would be a help so that women have a place to go, because women are afraid of being in poverty—and that's a reality, that if they leave they'll be poor.

I just think it's about having adequate resources for them to walk them through the next steps. Emotional support counselling, call it what you like; child care; and housing would be huge. It's not the whole thing, but those are the “top of the head” things.

[Heidi Illingworth]

I would absolutely agree. I think the shelters we have are doing a remarkable job with very limited resources. If I could see a huge cash influx to allow them to hire more staff and expand beds on the front line, that would be amazing.

Second, definitely it's affordable, safe housing for when women are leaving and transitioning back into living arrangements with their children on their own.

Third, I would also like to see a lot more money in prevention across the country so that we can reach our youngest children who are starting school. It's great that we're going in at Grade 9 across Ontario, but in many ways that's too late in my opinion, and we need to be much earlier talking about respect in relationships and how we solve our problems in respectful ways with each other.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Thank you very much.

I agree, and I think if I had to pick the top three, it would be very similar to the ones you chose. What always amazes me that when we do a profile of the person who is suffering from domestic violence we usually think it's somebody who doesn't have a good job, doesn't have a good education, and totally dependent. But you and I know that's often not the case. I've known very strong women who, when you looked at them from the outside, you would never think anybody would take that lady on, because she is sure, confident, makes great money. Yet once you take away the layers, we have domestic violence right across.

So one of the key areas that you've mentioned is prevention, and it starts very, very early. I think it starts in the home from the time our kids are little, with parenting, and goes throughout our system.

Do I have more time?

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

No, that's it.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Okay, thank you so much for coming here, and last but not least, for what you do.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Mr. Maguire.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Thank you.

In the follow-up to the questions that I asked before, in your organizations—we certainly want to work with them and have worked with them in the past—there is a need for the policies that you're working with and I'm wondering what the major issues are. You've outlined them, through the clarity that you've given us on the different programs you offer. What would be the key ones you'd advocate for next, besides the bill that we're dealing with today? What do you see as the major area where your resource centres and our government can work together?

[Lenore Lukasik-Foss]

Wow. Thank you very much for this opportunity to share feedback beyond the scope of Bill C-591, which I also think is very important. I would love to see a national strategy on violence against women, a comprehensive strategy that would include, of course, prevention and intervention, what we do when the abuse happens. Then we need that transitional support to help strengthen the families after they leave the violence—or if they remain, how we can get supports and counselling in place to end the violence. I feel that's missing on a national scope and would like to see it.

I agree that Grade 9 is too late; they just don't let us in the doors a lot earlier.

[Heidi Illingworth]

I would agree 100% with Lenore. We definitely are missing a national strategy that includes those three key areas. I think we need to focus more in Canada on preventing sexual and domestic violence. I think these areas are still very much hidden from the criminal justice system; victims don't report these crimes and it's probably not going to change unless we focus a lot more financial resources in this area. The majority of victimization in Canada is happening in these areas, and that's not reflected in police statistics and criminal court statistics because many of these cases never come to that point. If women are able to, they're escaping to shelters on their own and the criminal justice system is not necessarily becoming involved and perpetrators being sent to prison in every case, so we need to concentrate on early intervention and prevention.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Obviously, more education in that whole process and area would be a big plus and your organizations do a lot of work in them. Do you see yourselves as brokerages for that at your organizations? Obviously you must be doing a lot of the hands-on work as well. Could you clarify that for me and facilitate where and how in-depth the interaction is?

[Lenore Lukasik-Foss]

I'm confused about the question. Do we also provide service but do advocacy work in policy?

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Yes.

[Lenore Lukasik-Foss]

Yes. Absolutely. The goal for me is that we would have no more clients.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Absolutely.

[Lenore Lukasik-Foss]

I don't want to work in this field any more. In my lifetime, I'd like this to be an issue that we've tackled. I'm optimistic, but I'm also realistic that this is likely not the case. Absolutely, our work at our centre is hands-on, front line work with thousands, when we think of our crisis line and all our programs for folks in our community. We also take the time to come and try to speak to governments and policy-makers about the important things, the really serious things that you can do to impact victims in our communities.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Thank you, Mr. Maguire.

We'll move on to Madam Sims.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Thank you very much.

You must be wondering why we're not asking you about the legislation that we're here to study. I'm sure you did your homework before you came. In many ways, it is related to the legislation. I think this is one of those cases where I think all parties around this table are in agreement with the legislation. The only concern we have is we'd like to see the word “manslaughter” added. Other than that, we're going to be fine. If we're not really targeting what's in the legislation, that's why. I just wanted to explain this.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

We're giving people a lot of latitude here today, moving off the topic of our legislation, because you did travel here and you have a lot of expertise to offer.

We'll move to Mr. Armstrong, if you would like to wrap it up perhaps.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

I have a couple of really quick questions, Mr. Chair.

Lenore, in your presentation you gave some figures on the cost of crime, and I think you said violence against women amounted $7.4 billion.

[Lenore Lukasik-Foss]

Yes.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

How is that calculated, because that sounds like a huge amount?

[Lenore Lukasik-Foss]

Yes--