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.