Okay.
Evidence of meeting #150 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was women.
A video is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #150 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was women.
A video is available from Parliament.
4:45 p.m.
Executive Director, Boys and Girls Club of Ottawa, Boys and Girls Clubs of Canada
They are very different.
Sorry, but I'm just trying to remember your question.
4:45 p.m.
Laurier—Sainte-Marie, NDP
I was asking you what the proportion of refugees was and how you were raising awareness to attract newcomers.
4:45 p.m.
Executive Director, Boys and Girls Club of Ottawa, Boys and Girls Clubs of Canada
Yes, we do see a lot of refugees.
Over the years there have been different waves. In the last 10 years, there have been a lot of Somali refugees and refugees from different parts of Africa, especially in our urban clubs across the country. Most recently, there have been a lot of Syrian youth, again in our major urban centres across the country.
We actually do a lot of outreach. We work very closely with the school. The schools are trying very hard with English as a second language classes, but honestly they are overwhelmed. When you come to this country and you're in grade 1, you're learning quickly and it's your first time in school, but it's different when youth come. Someone like Hena, who came only about three and a half years ago, was all of a sudden thrust into high school. High school is challenging enough for most kids, but they don't know the language. So much is new, so we work very closely with the schools.
Here in Ottawa, two of our clubhouses are located in schools that are in particularly marginalized neighbourhoods that attract large numbers of refugees and immigrants.
4:45 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Rob Oliphant
I'm sorry to interrupt, but we have to stop here.
We will continue with Mr. Ayoub, in French, I believe.
4:45 p.m.
Ramez Ayoub Thérèse-De Blainville, Lib.
Thank you very much.
Most of my questions will be in French. You can answer in English; there is no problem with that.
I am a Quebec member of Syrian origin. I listened carefully to Ms. Izzeddin's story and I noted hope, work and welcoming. This is the best kind of testimony we can have. That does not take anything away from your very important work, ladies and gentleman, but Ms. Izzeddin's testimony is truly refreshing and confirms the fact that we are doing things in a certain way and that we are doing them well.
My question is for Ms. Izzeddin.
Among the services you have received since you came to Canada three and a half years ago, what aspects have you felt are good and what would you do differently? Without saying that things went wrong, what would you do differently or would improve? What services has your family received? You have received services through Ms. Mooney, but what other services have you received and what do you think about them?
4:50 p.m.
Student, Boys and Girls Club of Ottawa, Boys and Girls Clubs of Canada
I would say that the ESL classes were the best services that helped me at school.
4:50 p.m.
Thérèse-De Blainville, Lib.
Would the language be the first thing you gained as a service and that was the most important in order for you to be included, to make some new friends and to participate in life in Canada? Would that be the first and most important thing for you?
4:50 p.m.
Student, Boys and Girls Club of Ottawa, Boys and Girls Clubs of Canada
If I had spoken English, life and school would have been way easier.
My dad was a train conductor and electrician, so he would have worked, but he's not working now because he is still in school. So is my mom. If we had spoken English, we could have done many things. I could have graduated from school by now, but I can't until next year because I'm not done with my subjects yet. I'm still learning.
4:50 p.m.
Executive Director, Boys and Girls Club of Ottawa, Boys and Girls Clubs of Canada
One thing Hena mentioned to me on the way here was the number of forms from the government that her family had to fill out on multiple different things. That was very challenging for her family, because they were in English or French, and a lot of them were not available in other languages. It's something that we see a lot of at the boys and girls club. It puts the burden on someone like Hena to be the translator and take on a lot of family responsibility far beyond her years.
4:50 p.m.
Thérèse-De Blainville, Lib.
I understand.
As for you, Ms. Mooney, what kind of interactions do you have through the services you provide? You talked about schools. What more could the government do to improve the services you provide and promote consistency among the services offered by schools and non-traditional services like yours?
My question could also be for Ms. Smythe.
4:50 p.m.
Executive Director, Boys and Girls Club of Ottawa, Boys and Girls Clubs of Canada
Well, for lack of a better word, certainly we could use more financial help. Across the country, we don't receive very much money from the federal government for the services that we do provide, which we think are pretty essential.
We put a lot of emphasis on education. Across the country, we have scholarships, and in all of our clubs, we run homework clubs, after-school programs and leadership programs. Those are really key, I think, as part of the integration and helping kids to finish high school and to move on to be productive taxpaying members of society. Also, we're putting a lot of emphasis on good citizenship and giving back, and what it means to be a good citizen.
4:50 p.m.
Executive Director, New Circles Community Services
Yes, I would say the same thing.
Were you asking about what we would need to be able to do an even better job than we're doing now?
4:50 p.m.
Executive Director, New Circles Community Services
Most definitely, it really has to go back to funding and to government funding, especially in the programs we offer, because we depend on private donors, and that can be very difficult to function with.
4:50 p.m.
Thérèse-De Blainville, Lib.
What kinds of services would you be able to give new families that you're not giving them right now?
4:50 p.m.
Executive Director, New Circles Community Services
I think what we would like to do is offer more of an array of services. Right now, we are providing both a retail program and a business program, and both of them require a pretty high level of English. If we were able to provide other services or other employment programs where somebody with lower language skills could still participate and then perhaps move up into better employment, that's something we'd really like to do.
4:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Rob Oliphant
I'm afraid I need to end this panel here. I feel like we just started.
The committee will consider your testimony today, obviously, but also, if you have anything else that you would like to send to the committee in writing, especially in terms of recommendations on pushing new ideas towards settlement services.... You're all non-traditional providers of these things from very different perspectives. If you have anything else you'd like to submit to the committee in writing, we would very much appreciate it.
Thank you very much. I'm sorry that we were shorter on our questions than normal.
We're going to suspend for a few minutes while we change witnesses for the next panel.
4:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Rob Oliphant
We will reconvene and hear from our next panel.
We're going to begin with Ms. Reimer from Edmonton.
Because you are coming to us via video conference, Ms. Reimer, I'd like to start with you, just in case we have a problem, and then we can fix it later if we need to. Then we'll hear from the witnesses who are in the room.
Take it away. This is your time to make your opening remarks.
April 1st, 2019 / 4:55 p.m.
Jan Reimer Executive Director, Alberta Council of Women's Shelters
Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today.
I'd like to begin by acknowledging that I'm speaking to you on Treaty No. 6 territory and that the Alberta Council of Women's Shelters works in communities in Treaties Nos. 6, 7 and 8.
Your request is timely as this issue has been weighing heavily upon women's shelters in our province and indeed across the country. Women's Shelters Canada will be hosting shelters from across Canada in late May with a focus on navigating immigration systems and on access to services with immigrant and refugee survivors of violence against women.
In Alberta just two weeks ago we launched a campaign in response to the New Zealand massacre, “Alberta Kind”, as we felt we could no longer stand on the sidelines to bear witness to the crescendo of racism, hate crimes and violence directed towards Muslims and the anti-immigration sentiment in general that is being increasingly expressed. This is directly related to settlement issues, as racism is a barrier to employment, housing and feeling safe in your community. Women and families should feel safe to worship in mosques in Canada, and often they do not.
One of the beauties of Canada is how people of many lands have come together to forge a shared identity: that we can practise different faiths, or none, yet share respect of our laws and our country. We know that we need strong national action on this, and we know that it is a responsibility for each and every one of us.
The Alberta Council of Women's Shelters supports 37 members from across the province. These members provide a range of services to women, children and seniors facing abuse, through emergency shelters, second-stage shelters and seniors shelters, to provide a safe haven. ln the last three years, members in Alberta have provided shelter to more than 30,000 women, children and seniors, and outreach services to more than 17,000, while at the same time turning away more than 47,000 women, children and seniors due to a lack of capacity in our system.
In Alberta, shelters work with women to use a tool called the danger assessment, developed by Dr. Jacquelyn Campbell of Johns Hopkins University, which helps to assess the likelihood of women being murdered by an intimate partner, in order to better appreciate her level of danger and inform safety planning. Research shows the danger assessment has the highest predictive validity of all actuarial risk assessments researched to date. Danger assessment scores show that almost two-thirds of women who complete the assessment are at a severe or high risk of being killed and definitely require the safety and supports provided by women's shelters. Women are in this category because, in part, they are being threatened with a gun or are being subjected to strangulation.
We are hoping to work with Dr. Campbell on fine-tuning the DA specifically for immigrant populations and Women and Gender Equality has given us the green light to develop a concept paper on this.
I had the opportunity to consult with ACWS members in advance of this meeting. My comments today reflect the views of our membership, rooted in many years of experience in providing supports to immigrant women, as well as our safety from domestic violence initiative, which outlines evidence-based and promising practices with respect to women's safety.
In general, committee members, the experience of an immigrant woman facing abuse is similar to that of most women in many ways, but certainly not all. What I mean by this is that every woman who faces abuse from her intimate partner requires certain essential supports to allow her to transition out of that relationship to safety.
The dynamics are the same: the desire of one human being to exert power and control over another. ln recognizing this, we know that women across Canada need an effective and responsive legal system in both the criminal justice component, where perpetrators are held accountable for their actions, and the family law area, where officers of the court understand what domestic violence is and how to navigate this issue with a clear sense of what is before them by promoting the safety and well-being of a woman and her children.
We know that she requires trauma- and violence-informed care in a safe environment where she and her children can begin to heal. We also know that she requires the various arms of government and relevant community organizations to develop and employ effective mechanisms for collaboration, so that her wishes are at the centre of the process and information is shared to help enhance her safety. One example of that is the interagency case assessment teams, or ICATs, which originated in B.C. and are now being piloted in Alberta, with support from the RCMP and provincial government bodies.
These supports are required for women facing abuse. That is why my first recommendation to you is to develop a national action plan for ending violence against women. The federal plan is a welcome start, but a national plan that can integrate all these concerns and considerations into one overarching strategy is an essential part of solving this issue and will of course have to incorporate the settlement needs of newcomer families from an intersectoral approach, which I will now address.
I would like to illustrate some of these supports with a story from one of my colleagues in the Calgary Immigrant Women's Association. The story was provided to us as part of the research project we conducted to create an inventory of promising practices. This story focuses on Joanne, a young divorcee from India. She arrived in Canada in 2010 as a self-sponsored permanent resident. Her family in India was concerned about her marital status, and in 2012 she returned there to marry a young man. She was touched by his willingness to marry a divorcee despite cultural norms.
He came to live in Canada with her. When he arrived, he became controlling and abusive. He didn't allow her to contact her family, and he monitored all her movements. She gave birth to a baby boy in 2013. Joanne hoped this would change her husband's behaviour, but in 2016 he punched her in the face in front of the child. Children's Services got involved with the family. Joanne was referred to the family conflict program by her multicultural broker. When the counsellor first spoke to Joanne, she was very determined to make her marriage work and not divorce again.
The culturally sensitive support made it very easy for Joanne to open up to her counsellor about the importance of keeping her family together. She mentioned to the counsellor the respect she had for her husband due to breaking the norm of marrying a divorcee. She knew that he needed a shift in perspective to see the impact of his behaviour on their son. Joanne was very keen to receive couples counselling in their first language with someone who understood the cultural dynamics.
Despite his initial reluctance to do this, Joanne's husband joined the counselling sessions to learn co-parenting skills. The counsellor worked closely with them, and after a few sessions Joanne's husband realized his mistakes. He concluded that a sense of powerlessness from their move to Canada had made him feel inferior to his wife and drove his behaviour in that way. Gradually, the counselling for co-parenting focused on the marital relationship.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Rob Oliphant
I'm going to need you to advance to the end, as we're over the time now.
5:05 p.m.
Executive Director, Alberta Council of Women's Shelters
What I'd really like to talk to you about, then, are our recommendations to you, which are at the end of our presentation. They are the following:
We really do need legislative and policy changes that meet Canada's international human rights obligations and prevent the separation of a mother from her children when a woman is experiencing family violence and abuse, has children who are Canadian citizens and is being forced to leave the country, as well as a co-application process for couples that ensures women are aware of their rights when they arrive in Canada.
We also need flexible funding models that include a national fund for women's shelters to access in order to address the needs of immigrant, refugee and trafficked women. Also, shelters need specially trained staff to work with immigrants and trafficked women and cover the basic needs of abused women without status, as well as housing programs geared to the needs of immigrant and refugee women fleeing violence.
We also need standardized programs, including translation services, settlement supports with both a rural and an urban focus, and programs that increase the awareness of men with respect to the effects of domestic violence upon themselves and their children.
Finally, we need a strong national campaign against racism, anti-immigration and Islamophobia, with tools that can be shared across agencies and programs. All Canadians should have the ability to feel safe and respected in their communities.
Thank you.