Citizenship and Immigration Committee on March 4th, 2014

Evidence of meeting #15 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was cases.

A video is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

Strengthening the Protection of Women in our Immigration System

Committee Business

MPs speaking

David Tilson

Rathika Sitsabaiesan

Costas Menegakis

Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe

Also speaking

Lesley Soper Acting Director General, Enforcement and Intelligence Programs, Canada Border Services Agency

Geoffrey Leckey Director General, Enforcement and Intelligence Operations Division, Canada Border Services Agency

Jean Cormier Director, Federal Coordination Centres, Royal Canadian Mounted Police

Melpa Kamateros Executive Director, Shield of Athena Family Services

Siran Nahabedian Social Worker for Female Victims of Conjugal Violence and of Domestic Violence, Athena's House, Shield of Athena Family Services

Richard Kurland Policy Analyst and Lawyer, As an Individual

Deepa Mattoo Staff Lawyer and Acting Executive Director, South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario (SALCO)

5:25 p.m.

Executive Director, Shield of Athena Family Services

Melpa Kamateros

Yes, the follow-up should be done automatically. How else can we determine if there is spousal abuse? Police reports can indicate such a situation, but if the woman cannot speak any language but her mother tongue, we can't expect her to indicate that she is a victim of spousal abuse.

5:25 p.m.

NDP

Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe NDP Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC

Thank you.

5:25 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative David Tilson

Thank you.

Mr. Shory, one very brief question.

5:25 p.m.

Conservative

Devinder Shory Conservative Calgary Northeast, AB

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for giving me an opportunity.

I'll go back to Montreal where I started my Canadian life back in 1989.

I have a question. I'd like to have a comment from everyone. My question is very simple: do women who come to Canada with education face less abuse or do they have an opportunity to deal with it on their own or are women who do not have a language ability in either English or French more your clients? Let's start with the Shield office.

5:25 p.m.

Executive Director, Shield of Athena Family Services

Melpa Kamateros

I will let the social worker, the caseworker, answer that.

5:25 p.m.

Social Worker for Female Victims of Conjugal Violence and of Domestic Violence, Athena's House, Shield of Athena Family Services

Siran Nahabedian

The question is whether we have more women coming to our services who do not have certain education levels?

5:25 p.m.

Conservative

Devinder Shory Conservative Calgary Northeast, AB

The women who do not have the ability to speak and communicate in one of our official languages.

5:30 p.m.

Social Worker for Female Victims of Conjugal Violence and of Domestic Violence, Athena's House, Shield of Athena Family Services

Siran Nahabedian

Yes, a lot of our clientele are women who come here and do not know English or French.

5:30 p.m.

Executive Director, Shield of Athena Family Services

Melpa Kamateros

But education is not an indicator of whether or not there's going to be violence. We have a lot of educated women also who are victims of abuse and education is not an indicator also of who the abuser will be, because a lot of educated men are also abusers.

No, education is not an indicator of the presence of violence but, yes, if women do not speak the language they are more vulnerable to not being able to speak of the violence and to ask for assistance.

5:30 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative David Tilson

Thank you.

That concludes our time, ladies and gentlemen.

I'd like to thank Shield of Athena Family Services for your presentations, the South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario and, of course, Mr. Kurland, for your presentations this afternoon. Thank you very much for coming and you've been very helpful.

This meeting is adjourned.