Evidence of meeting #72 for Justice and Human Rights in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was complainant.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
Thank you very much. All of your testimony was very helpful.
We will now move to questions from the committee.
We'll start with Mr. Nicholson.
5:05 p.m.
Conservative
Rob Nicholson Conservative Niagara Falls, ON
Thank you.
Thank you very much for your testimony today.
Ms. Mattoo, you indicated that you believe counsel should be an important component of the assistance that a complainant, someone who has been victimized, should have. Would you agree that this is a step in the right direction, that the counsel for the hearing of the complainant is the first step and that it should continue throughout the process? Is that basically what you're saying?
5:05 p.m.
Director, Legal Services, Barbra Schlifer Commemorative Clinic
Absolutely. In the submission from the clinic, we are saying that it is a step in the right direction, but there is a challenge with the fact that they're saying that it will only be available at certain stages and not throughout the process. Our experience from independent legal advice for sexual assault survivors tells us that it's actually really important for survivors and the victims to come forward and get that advice right from that initial point and through the whole process.
5:05 p.m.
Conservative
Rob Nicholson Conservative Niagara Falls, ON
Thank you very much for that.
Ms. Dale, I bet you are looking for progress that we are making. I'm sure you're supportive of the private member's bill that will require judicial training—
5:05 p.m.
Executive Director, Barbra Schlifer Commemorative Clinic
Yes, I have been in support of it.
5:05 p.m.
Conservative
Rob Nicholson Conservative Niagara Falls, ON
—in this area. That's one step in the right direction.
At one point in time, you said that your organization provides non-legal advocates to help navigate the system for the victims. Would it be better to have a legal advocate? I mean, trying to stick—
October 25th, 2017 / 5:05 p.m.
Executive Director, Barbra Schlifer Commemorative Clinic
We have both.
To clarify what I was trying to say, we're always in a resource crunch. This is always the argument against more and more lawyers entering the system. We are very much in support of proper legal counsel with a proper role in the law, but there are additional things that happen in cases of gender-based violence that women require which are outside of the purview of a lawyer's expertise. Lawyers are not always the best people to glue women back to the systems that they need to support them in their social life. What we have in Ontario is a combination.
You may know that the legal aid system in Ontario has a minimal amount of support for family law. Often women who are experiencing violence have multiple family law issues. In our clinic, which is not legal aid supported, we provide representation in family law.
Additionally, we have three workers whose job is to navigate that system with her, so that she understands the system and she gets the social supports she needs, like housing, income support, access to child care, access to children's aid, or whatever it is she needs in that context. Additionally, these workers know the family law system well enough that they can be the ones that literally run down the hall and make sure duty counsel is on tap or make sure that the legal aid certificate is being applied for when she's eligible for it.
It's that glue in the system which we believe would help in the case of sexual assault. Again, since we're talking about a different scenario, where she doesn't have legal standing, in addition to legal counsel, what we're looking for is independent legal advice, in addition to which she will have some kind of specialized support in the court system that is not victim services because victim services has a limited role and they cannot discuss anything that has to do with the dispensation of the case, as you probably know.
In order to have proper support that's in her corner, we're suggesting an additional element beyond strictly legal.
5:05 p.m.
Conservative
Rob Nicholson Conservative Niagara Falls, ON
Thank you very much for that clarification.
To everyone here, we've heard quite a bit about the codification of the unconscious provisions. We've heard both for and against.
Ms. Segal, I'd like to ask you a question, if you don't mind.
I'm not in the business of defending the government's legislation particularly.
5:05 p.m.
Voices
Oh, oh!
5:05 p.m.
Conservative
Rob Nicholson Conservative Niagara Falls, ON
No, it's true. I'm here to try and analyze what they have and.... They do have the complainant is unconscious as one of the requirements, but there's also this other section, “the complainant is incapable of consenting to the activity for any reason other than the one referred to in paragraph (a.1)”.
Don't you think that helps in terms of expanding it, so that it's not just limited to a person who is unconscious?
5:10 p.m.
Staff Lawyer, Women's Legal Education and Action Fund
I'm going to direct questions to Lise Gotell.
5:10 p.m.
Dr. Lise Gotell Chair, Women's Legal Education and Action Fund
We do recognize that the provision does open up avenues for the analysis of incapacity in a more nuanced way than unconsciousness. However, we are afraid that the codification of unconsciousness will reinforce what we're seeing as being a trend in the case law, where there's a drift towards seeing unconsciousness as the threshold of incapacity.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
Rob Nicholson Conservative Niagara Falls, ON
That's fair enough.
We haven't received a copy of your testimony, but Ms. Segal, I think you did say that you do set out in the material you're submitting to the committee some of the possibilities that could be included in an amendment or a particular section for that. Is that correct?
5:10 p.m.
Staff Lawyer, Women's Legal Education and Action Fund
Exactly. It reflects what I addressed in my submissions here today.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
Rob Nicholson Conservative Niagara Falls, ON
Mr. Dias, I have one question for you.
You didn't particularly address the legislation. Can I take it that you're in line with the comments of the other witnesses here today with respect to the actual drafting of the bill?
5:10 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Centre for Gender and Sexual Diversity
Yes, absolutely. We're just giving a warning that once we're able to get some more research, we'll be asking for changes to be made.
Then, of course, we want to emphasize that we do support LEAF's note that the “unconscious” piece might be a problem and might require some clarification. In our experience, and especially with LGBTQ cases, we have noted that judges and crown attorneys find these loopholes to add some sort of simplicity to their process, and often we're very disappointed when victim testimony does not carry the weight that it should.
5:10 p.m.
Liberal
Randy Boissonnault Liberal Edmonton Centre, AB
Thanks very much, Mr. Chair.
Jeremy, thank you very much for joining us. We really appreciate your work.
Because you raised it in your last point, I want to state that the international lesbian and gay association's Canadian representatives and our LGBTQ2 secretariat have been working with Dr. Morgan Holmes, who is one of the lead experts in the country on intersex matters. As a federal government, we are working on a response to issues that face the intersex community, so we really appreciate your bringing it up here today.
From your expertise with front-line workers and through anecdotal evidence, what are some of the issues that face intimate partners and the violence that happens with them, other than challenges related to police? Once you go through the difficulty of coming out and you actually find somebody but then realize that they're beating you or there's violence, isn't it true that that there's deep shame and you don't know who to talk to, even in your own friend circle, let alone professionals?
5:10 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Centre for Gender and Sexual Diversity
Yes. I mean, there are two pieces to it.
One is that there are specific challenges that LGBTQ people face from abusive partners, right? A partner who is abusive might threaten to force you out of the closet. They might tell family members who you're still closeted to and force you out. Or if you're trans identified and you're using their benefits to access health care, health services, or hormone therapy, a threat of that financial cut-off is a very specific and degrading experience that LGBTQ people face.
On the flip side of things, what we've noticed in LGBTQ communities, especially in rural and remote spaces—Grande Prairie, Lethbridge, Sault Ste. Marie, Sudbury—is that LGBTQ folk are reluctant to go to the criminal justice system because they recognize that the violence their partners are bringing to relationships is not necessarily violence because they're—quote, unquote—a “bad person”, but is violence that they've inherited from trauma, from past experiences, and they're bringing it into the relationship. People are trying to find non-criminal justice solutions to address these challenges, solutions that of course don't exist within the LGBTQ community because there is no funding for such services. That's one of the challenges.
At a conference that we hosted in Sudbury, one of the keynote speakers noted that if we were to lock up all the criminals in intimate partner violent relationships, we'd have no one left to date in towns like Sudbury, Trois-Rivières, or Fredericton, because the dating pool is so small, right? StatsCan says that we're 3% to 4% of the population. Most federal departments acknowledge that we're 13% to 14% of the national population, so you're talking about minority communities, and we face very specific and unique challenges. This is a reality that people are talking about on the ground.
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
Randy Boissonnault Liberal Edmonton Centre, AB
I have an additional three questions. How can additional training for police, lawyers, and judges help in the area of intersectionality, particularly for LGBTQ needs? Which organizations other than yours would deliver it? Also, how much money are we talking about?
5:15 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Centre for Gender and Sexual Diversity
Those are great questions.
How would this help? Unfortunately, in our country you can go from kindergarten to a Ph.D. without learning anything about LGBTQ culture, communities, or history, or even about inclusion and how to create respectful spaces. Frankly, this will make our justice system more accessible to the 13% of our population who are dramatically underserved in this cause, and we would carefully acknowledge, based on anecdotal evidence, that many LGBTQ people, within one relationship or another, will face intimate partner violence. We're very concerned about that.
Other than our agency, we house the national network of LGBTQ service providers, so while we would love a ton of money, we actually wouldn't keep it. We would rather train our LGBTQ service provider network and all of the national service providers and enhance those existing agencies, so that services are delivered by queer and trans folks. Similar to how this government and the previous one really empowered indigenous communities to take ownership of their resources and services, we would want to empower LGBTQ organizations across the country.
We're proud to say that the LGBTQ service providers network that is housed at the Centre for Gender and Sexual Diversity does create a total blanket across our nation. If only we had the funding to empower those agencies.... We're not talking about a lot of money. I fundamentally believe that a small investment of a million dollars or maybe slightly more would hire enough staff people in those agencies and would train them, and we would move forward on really enhancing the capacity of these agencies. As an organization, we are not advocating to build LGBTQ shelters in every city across the country for partners escaping domestic violence. We just want the ability to enhance existing service providers to create a good point of first contact and then train those service agencies that are already working in intimate partner violence.
Look at what Ms. Dale is doing and what LEAF is doing. We don't need to replicate that. We just need to work with those services to make sure that LGBTQ, intersex, and trans are a part of their language and a part of the work that we're all doing together to make the world a better place. For that, we need to fund them.