Hi. Thank you.
I have been the executive director of Victim Services of Brant for over 20 years. We're located in Brantford, Ontario, and part of our catchment area is the Six Nations of the Grand River.
I'm here today to speak on the concerns that victims may have about changes in this legislation.
In the past year, we have responded to eight homicides in our community. Many of those have been homicides with a gun, a weapon, and quite a number of those have also been drug-related.
We have seen that over the last five years our domestic violence numbers have almost doubled and our sexual assaults have increased by about 20% of those that have been forwarded to Victim Services. I think it's significant to understand that over 40% of the calls to Victim Services of Brant are gender-based violence.
We saw sudden deaths, especially during COVID, increase by almost 58%, and the majority of those were overdose-related. They had to do with a lot of bad fentanyl coming into our community and people overdosing, many of them just occasional drug users and not understanding the drugs they were getting and that they might contain fentanyl.
I think it's really important that I also note that of the incidents we dealt with last year, we had 427 breaches of probation or breaches of conditions. I think that's important to note because many of those are with regard to domestic violence victims or criminal harassment victims, who continue to be threatened and fear for their safety because the offenders are out of custody and are able to access them. I think as a representative of victims, I would like to make sure that when you're looking at the legislation you will building in many protections for victims, especially of gender-based violence, who may be impacted if some of these mandatory sentencings are reduced.
We deal with it every day. Safety planning is something we do repeatedly with victims. We have a number of very serious high-risk victims in our community, and even though the offender has been charged and has spent time in custody, they are now out and the victims are still feeling very much at risk themselves and for their families.
Once again I would thank you for giving me the time to speak today. I will be interested in any questions that may come forward.
Thank you.