Justice Committee on Feb. 18th, 2021

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

We also heard a bit—

[The Chair, Liberal, Iqra Khalid]

I'm sorry, Mr. Virani. I'm just going to stop you for a second. I've stopped your time.

Ms. Ajibolade, can you try turning your camera off? Maybe that will help the load on your Internet, if that's okay. Thank you.

You'll still be able to answer questions, but with the camera off. Perhaps that will help our interpretation.

Go ahead, Mr. Virani. You're on two minutes and 50 seconds so far.

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Thank you very much.

Abi, we've also heard that one of the factors of coercive control is financial control and controlling women's finances. Some of the work you guys do at The Redwood is about economically empowering women who are fleeing abuse, so could you talk about how economic empowerment is critical in combatting coercive control?

You were also the recipient of a $1.6-million grant from the federal government that helps with apprenticeship and training programs, getting women involved in the trades. How does a program like that help you with the economic empowerment that helps combat coercion and control?

Over to you, Abi.

[Abimbola Ajibolade]

We also believe that if you can break the cycle of poverty, you can help break the cycle of abuse. Many women struggle with putting food on the table and a roof over their heads, and many times they've told us, “I think I might have to go back to this abuser, although this person is causing me harm.” This begs the question whether a woman needs to pick between having food on the table or being able to pay her rent and living with abuse. This program—

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Can I ask you one last question? The time is running short.

We've also heard about how coercion and control are different if there are firearms involved. I hope you followed the firearms announcement we made earlier this week. It talks about having a “red flag” provision, whereby you could look at the digital footprint of a person who's in the home, see if they have a tendency towards violence, and remove a gun from the home.

How would that impact the work you are doing in terms of the clients you serve at The Redwood? Would that help keep women safer?

[Abimbola Ajibolade]

Absolutely.

We have a tool kit for accessibility and how to manage risk, and one of the biggest questions is to check whether there are firearms involved. It helps us to also assess the validity of how lethal this relationship is and what people should be watching out for. Absolutely, I believe it would be....

I haven't had time to read the gun violence act from the government, but I know that this is a crucial part. This is something that women talk to us about, especially when their partners have access to firearms.

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Thank you so much.

In my conclusion, again I want to reiterate that the work you are doing, that so many of the witnesses here are doing, is critical in terms of keeping people safe. We thank you for it. What we're trying to look at is how to empower you to do that work and to keep people as safe as possible, given this pandemic. Thank you for the work you are doing.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Iqra Khalid]

Thank you, Mr. Virani.

Now we'll go to Monsieur Fortin.

Mr. Fortin, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Good afternoon, everyone.

My thanks to the witnesses for joining us today.

I would like to come back to some procedural questions that I had for the representatives from the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police.

Chief Lanouette, Chief Greenwood, where do you think the offence of coercive or controlling conduct would fit into the full spectrum of domestic violence offences, such as assault, harassment, threats, and conspiracy?

As I understand it, it would be ongoing behaviour, but I would like more details on that.

Second, on what principle would a police officer coming into an individual's home be able to determine that this is truly controlling or coercive conduct?

[Chief Francis Lanouette]

Thank you for the question.

The first part of your question refers to the seriousness of the offence. I would probably put it in the same category as criminal harassment. The offences related to coercive control will probably come before an offence involving bodily harm, since coercive control often occurs before acts of domestic violence, to use your example. I would therefore place it in that category.

In terms of evaluation, the police officers would of course have to be trained after the provision was put in place and they would have to have evaluation tools at their disposal. For example, in the United Kingdom, a risk identification, assessment and management tool called Domestic Abuse, Stalking and Honour Based Violence (DASH) has been developed. This tool allows police officers to properly assess coercive control.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

On a daily basis, are there often situations where you cannot charge someone with assault, harassment or another offence, but where you could have charged them with controlling or coercive behaviour?

[Chief Francis Lanouette]

It probably happens quite frequently. I don't work in the field anymore, but that's probably what my fellow officers would tell you.

There are situations of financial abuse, for example, meaning financial control by the husband. The husband may also prevent the wife from leaving the house, from using social media or from seeing friends.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Perhaps I misspoke. Here's what I meant to ask.

Are the police often called on to intervene in cases where a woman, for example, claims that her husband does not let her access her bank account?

Is that situation common or hypothetical?

[Chief Francis Lanouette]

That sort of situation could happen.

People close to the situation are often the ones who inform us of this type of behaviour. So the victims do not necessarily call the police, but rather family members or someone in the neighbourhood. They inform us of the situation and we are called to go and check what is happening at the address in question.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Okay.

I would like to hear Chief Greenwood's views on the same issues. In particular, I would like her to comment on the challenge with evidence. Crown prosecutors would ultimately have the burden of establishing the facts that could constitute this offence.

Chief Greenwood, can you talk about the big picture?

[Chief Kimberley Greenwood]

Thank you very much.

There's nothing worse than officers leaving a residence knowing that there's nothing they can do, so I think it is critical.

The director has spoken about training not only for our officers but for the prosecutors and judges, ensuring we have the tools so that we can identify when somebody is expressing extreme jealousy, or if any threats have been made to the children or to the individual, or there's constant stalking and texting, and whether it's financial, the removal of things.... It's really about ensuring that we look at whether there are other situations going on in the family home.

The use of this, whether it's the DASH tool or the framework, is helpful to the officers so that they have a standard, a guideline, to ensure they're bringing the best results possible during their investigation so that it can be prosecuted effectively.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

The brief submitted by the association refers to a risk assessment tool.

Could you quickly tell me about that?

What type of assessment tool would you like to have?

[Chief Kimberley Greenwood]

As one of the tools, we look to our partners. We know that Australia, England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and France have already adopted forms of legislation that recognize this, and they have existing tools.

We are working with Dr. Gill from the University of New Brunswick. She is helping us. One of her goals is to develop for all police officers this tool that can be inserted into the current framework we have on our collaborative response to intimate partner violence.

It is really about collaboration. We can't do this alone as police officers, so we need to ensure that we have academia at the table and also that we have the service providers there, who are subject matter experts and can support victims—the survivors and their children—in this type of offence.

[The Chair, Liberal, Iqra Khalid]

Thank you very much, Ms. Greenwood.

Thank you, Mr. Fortin.

Mr. Garrison, the time is yours now. You have six minutes. Go ahead.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

We all know that the COVID crisis has placed extra strain on organizations providing support to women fleeing violent relationships, but also on all the community organizations that are providing those frontline services.

I'm very glad to have the National Association of Friendship Centres here. I want to pay tribute to the Victoria friendship centre, which is located in my riding, and which at the beginning of the pandemic leapt right in to provide necessary services without necessarily having the funding in place. Always, I think the experience locally here is that there's a presumption that somebody else is supposed to provide the services to urban aboriginal people.

I'm going to ask a general question that I think I know the answer to, and that is about how friendship centres are coping in providing these services during the pandemic, and whether they've been able to access additional funding to meet the needs, such as the increases in calls for assistance in family violence.

[Jocelyn Formsma]

Thank you for the question. I'll speak very quickly and see if our president would like to add anything.

Just to mention this, on the previous question about the economic and financial coercion, we'll be submitting to the committee “Honouring Her Spark”, which is the Aboriginal Friendship Centres of Saskatchewan's anti-violence action plan that focuses specifically on economic support for indigenous women, so look forward to that.

I would say that in the early days we really got caught in the jurisdictional issue between federal, provincial and municipal governments in not knowing which level of government was going to step forward to support urban indigenous people. We were fortunate to receive support from the indigenous community support fund, which is ongoing.

On a broader scale, we are currently in a program renewal year for the core programming for friendship centres. We're seeking support to not only renew this program but to renew it with enhancements so that we can be part of the rollout for the MMIWG action plan. We can continue the programming we're doing and also enhance the programming we're doing.

As well, as for being part of this “build back better” for Canadian society, we don't think we will be able to do that unless we have full support for urban indigenous people.

I'll leave it at that for now, but thank you for the question.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Okay.

If The Redwood centre can manage their technical problems here, I have a similar question for them. Will they be able to access additional funding to cope with the additional demands generated in terms of family violence by COVID?

[Abimbola Ajibolade]

Yes. We have been very grateful for the support we've received.

Earlier on, when the pandemic had just started, we were already in the process of launching our iDetermine platform, which is a 24-7 live chat and texting option. We were planning to launch it sometime in July when we started it in 2019, but we were able to expedite that and launch it earlier, in May. As I mentioned earlier, we thought that we would serve about 400 to 500 women on that platform in a year, but in six months from the launch date, we had received 700 calls on that line, and it's non-stop, with three or four going on at a time throughout the day, 24-7.

Getting that support to quickly launch that platform was very helpful for us, and it really got that support into the hands of women as quickly as possible.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Thank you very much.

I want to turn to the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police.

We've had two different stories reported to us, and I wonder if perhaps Chief Greenwood could tell us if there is a pattern.

Certainly, locally at the beginning of the pandemic, all my local police forces reported a spike in increased calls of domestic violence, whereas other jurisdictions have said that there was a lull and an actual decrease in calls for support. Has there been a common pattern across the country?

[Chief Kimberley Greenwood]

Thank you very much for that question.

The pattern across the country is very different. It is very locally focused. I will speak to the jurisdiction that I work in, which is the City of Barrie.

At the beginning of the pandemic in March, we saw a dip in our calls for service specific to intimate partner violence or family disputes. We did see it come back to what our four-year averages are. We think that was based on isolation. Once we saw some reopening in the province and the ability for people to get out, seek help and gain the resources they needed to support them through this, we saw saw a peak, and since then it seems that we have returned to normal averages.

Thank you.