Evidence of meeting #44 for Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was city.
Councillor, City of New Westminster
Yes, even less. But contractors who wished to work with the city and on a city project had to have their workers—
Conservative
Councillor, City of New Westminster
Yes, and it actually didn't discourage too many flag people on the street.
Conservative
Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
Okay, I want to ask some more questions. Since you studied that prior, what were the statistics on how many people prior to getting the living wage were underneath that—
Councillor, City of New Westminster
I don't know that number, but I know it's very small.
Conservative
Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
Okay.
I'll move on. Teesha, honestly, I know it's really difficult when we talk about your story. I dealt a lot with human trafficking and a lot of would-be violence against women and sexual violence within my own community, and brought this year the Shine the Light project to Ottawa, which was shining the light on women's violence. I thank you so much. What you've gone through is absolutely traumatic. What we find is there is such a lack of resources.
Within my own community, I work with a national leader, Megan Walker, on this and she does a lot of work on prostitution, sex trafficking, everything like that. It's devastating. Were there resources here for you when it came to needing that?
Youth Services Director, Community Education on Environment and Development Centre Society
[Inaudible—Editor]
Conservative
Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
There were no resources.
Lorrie, maybe you will know this. Within our community is there a plan to have those resources available? Is there somebody who has come to the community saying, we need to do this. Is that in the vision?
Teesha, I want to know. Is there a plan to make sure that we have something to protect our women from violence. Are there appropriate shelters being built or focusing on sex trafficking?
Councillor, City of New Westminster
The answer is yes. We have a very good house and we have a new one going in, and we have second-stage housing going in for women as well.
Conservative
Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
Awesome. That's fantastic because we do need these types of resources.
Thom, I really appreciate what you brought forward. Do you have a business plan showing exactly how this model works? Do you have something that you can share with the committee?
Executive Director, Co-operative Housing Federation of British Columbia
We do, and I'd be happy to share it. Our initial seed investment came from Vancity credit union, and the model that we're following is complete self-sufficiency within four years from start-up, so we're halfway through that now. We think the revenues off the new developments will fund entirely our activities.
Conservative
Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
Okay, fantastic. Since I don't see the red light on, I'm coming back to Teesha.
Teesha, in your situation of course it's very difficult. What can we do to help our youth who fall into the horrible situation that you did? You are that shining light right now for many people because you have that empathy. What can we do to help others who are engaged in the same situations, whether it's family violence or something even worse than that? I can't think of anything worse. What can we do?
Youth Services Director, Community Education on Environment and Development Centre Society
You can adopt trauma-informed practices, but I think that a lot of people use that as a kind of token statement. It sounds really good to say we do trauma-informed...but when we look at the reality of the situation, we're failing to do that. When we're sending a youth who was sexually abused and raped by multiple people to a male counsellor, who then asks her to close her eyes with her back to a door, and when she can't do that, tells her that there's no point in her coming back, it's bad.
Youth Services Director, Community Education on Environment and Development Centre Society
It's the system and the barriers that we're putting up that are excluding so many people because it is hard to understand what it actually feels like to be in that situation.
When you're a youth trying to access things and all you keep hearing is “no” or “you can't do this” or “you have to be like this to get this kind of service”, every time you're denied, and every time you're turned away, that's contributing to your getting to the point where you're not going to seek help. You're going to stay where you are because you don't see the value in it.
Conservative
Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
The door's being shut just one too many times.
Youth Services Director, Community Education on Environment and Development Centre Society
Yes.
Conservative
Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
Thank you for being here, and thanks for having that mind thought that staying alive for many more years is what's best, because you're definitely worth it.
Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bryan May
Thank you to all of you.
This whole experience, travelling across the country and meeting front-line people who are dealing with this every single day is, I think, really critical to the success of this study. Please keep up the good work. Keep fighting the good fight. We're going to do what we can on our end not to come down and lead the way but maybe to lead from the side and support and fill the gaps where needed.
We are going to have to move fairly quickly since we do have another site visit.
Thank you, everybody. The meeting is adjourned.