Status of Women Committee on Oct. 25th, 2011

[The Chair, NDP, Niki Ashton]

Good afternoon, everybody.

Perhaps we could get started. Our witnesses are ready.

I'd like to welcome two witnesses to our first panel today. From the Canadian Centre for Elder Law, we have Krista James, national director, and from the National Seniors Council, Jean-Guy Soulière, chair.

Thank you for joining us here today. You'll each have 10 minutes to present, and then we'll get right into questions.

I'd like to begin by asking Ms. James to speak.

[Krista James, National Director, Canadian Centre for Elder Law]

I'd like to begin by thanking the committee for this opportunity to present today. My presentation will focus on the recommendations contained in our 16-page brief, which we provided last week. The discussion of recommendations will link to features of the legal framework in Canada, as well as to key themes emerging from elder abuse research.

By way of a broader context for this meeting, we have here a short outline of our brief. It contains four sections. Section one outlined the concept of abuse of older women. Section two outlined current federal, provincial, and territorial legal approaches and responses. Section three discussed key social dynamics involved in the incident of abuse of older women. Section four identified areas for policy and program development, areas where we see the potential for national leadership.

Throughout our brief, we threaded examples of elder abuse, of abuse of older women, taken from case jurisprudence to illustrate how elder abuse, abuse of older women, looks different from other dynamics of domestic violence.

Our brief contains five recommendations. I'll get to them in just a moment.

Abuse of older women is a complex phenomenon. There are many different forms of abuse and different kinds of victims, and no single legal framework or social program is likely to capture all circumstances that fall under the umbrella of abuse of older women.

Addressing the abuse of older women thus requires a multi-faceted national strategy. This submission identifies a number of areas where we see potential for the federal government to take further leadership.

First, older women have needs and experiences different from those of younger women who experience abuse and violence. Over the years, communities and governments have developed legislation, programs, and policies that have been successful in assisting other women to stop the violence in their lives; however, few programs recognize the unique needs and experiences of older women.

To highlight some themes discussed in our brief, there are strong links between financial abuse and physical neglect of older women. Abuse of power of attorney or by a substitute decision-maker is a common theme. Chemical or medication abuse is more common in older women, including denial of medication, overmedication, inappropriate decisions regarding treatment, and not getting proper consent for treatment from the older person or the appropriate substitute decision-maker.

Interdependency is a key theme. Women are harmed by people who are dependent on them for care or for financial, emotional, or other support. Sometimes women are harmed by people who are caring for them, but this is not the norm. The other way around is what we see more.

Family relationships are very important to older women, and maintaining these family relationships, in spite of the dynamics of abuse, can be important. There is a strong desire to age in place: fears and anxieties about institutionalization and loss of independence, factors including financial dependency, disability, or illness, can mean it will take longer for women to develop a strategy to live free of abuse. Isolation is also a key factor emerging from social science research.

So the challenge of how to connect with older women in their communities becomes an issue.

Our first recommendation is that the needs of older women can be different from those of their younger counterparts and communities and organizations should be funded to create resource agencies and programs that provide support and assistance to older women who have experienced abuse, with particular emphasis on making those resources accessible to older women who are isolated in some way.

The flip side of this issue is that older women are also diverse, and there is very little Canadian research on elder abuse in marginalized communities such as first nations, Inuit, Métis, immigrants, and low-income people. However, the limited research that does exist suggests that marginalization complicates abuse.

Given this diversity, this will have implications for the types of assistance that will be welcome and helpful in those communities. Further research should be conducted--this is our second recommendation--to identify appropriate strategies and resources that target different communities of older women and also to increase understanding of the dynamics of abuse that are unique to different communities. You'll note in my recommendation that I refer to strategies that are welcome, workable solutions that will be effective in different communities.

Our third recommendation is to focus on prevention. We are an agency that focuses on the law, and what we notice is that laws tend to be reactive. Legislation provides for a remedy in some circumstances of abuse, generally only after abuse has occurred.

For example, in our paper, we go through the different kinds of legal frameworks in Canada. We see legislation for the protection of persons in care, which to some extent addresses the circumstances of vulnerable older women who reside in care facilities, as a way of providing a framework for mandatory reporting.

Adult protection and neglect and guardianship legislation provides some solutions when an older woman lacks mental capacity or has some other kind of impairment that affects her ability to access support on her own. Domestic violence legislation provides some tools in the context of abuse of older women who might fall under that umbrella.

The Quebec charter provides a route for a financial remedy for circumstances involving exploitation of a dependent and vulnerable older woman—of course, only in Quebec. In some jurisdictions, there is public guardian legislation that grants the public guardian or trustee powers of investigation and asset freezing. This would be helpful in circumstances of financial abuse or abuse by a substitute decision-maker.

These capture the kinds of abuse. It's a bit of a patchwork approach to addressing abuse of older women through the law. Of course, layered on top of that, we have the Criminal Code framework, which provides for a remedy in a context of a criminal act. A lot of the Criminal Code remedies tend to be rather offender focused, and they exclude forms of abuse that aren't a crime, such as emotional abuse and abuse before it manifests to the level of a crime.

Our recommendation number three is that an effective national strategy for addressing abuse of older women include strategies for prevention.

What does this mean? This means providing women with alternatives to tolerating abuse by addressing some of the underlying factors that contribute to abuse, such as: economic insecurity; access to resources; awareness of rights; destigmatization of victimization, for example, through public awareness campaigns; and, assistance with caregiving responsibilities. It should also include training and ongoing support for various professional and service sector communities—health, banking, and justice, to name a few—in relation to their work and coming into contact with older women who might be victims of abuse.

Our fourth recommendation is focused around empowering older women. One of the challenges with a legal approach is that what we see thus far in Canada is that for a lot of the legislation and policy that identify remedies and circumstances of risk and abuse, they're often protective remedies, protective measures that take control, independence, and power away from the vulnerable woman.

For example, guardianship and substitute decision-making measures are certainly necessary in some instances of mental incapacity, but they do take decision-making power away from vulnerable women.

Legal institutions focused on mandatory reporting and disclosure of personal information also undermine autonomy, privacy, and free decision-making. For instance, measures that are focused on putting a woman into a retirement facility to keep her safe again remove independence.

Our fourth recommendation is that abuse is generally understood, at least in the context of domestic violence, to be an act of control that undermines autonomy, power, and confidence of the victim. With that in mind, legal and social policy should not prioritize protectionist goals at the expense of undermining women's autonomy and personal power; rather, legal and policy strategies should be developed through a lens that focuses on empowering older women survivors of abuse.

How do we do this? Some examples are: raising awareness of options; increasing access to services; allowing women to make choices about what steps to take; and providing access to the legal and financial assistance required to follow through on those difficult decisions.

Finally, our fifth recommendation is to focus on practical resources and specific communities. At the national level in the last years, there has been tremendous success in Canada in raising awareness both about elder abuse and about domestic violence.

One of the challenges becomes how to raise awareness of abuse through the combined lenses and how we knit the analysis together and provide people with information on the concrete steps they can take to address abuse in their communities. In terms of concrete steps, of concrete agencies, there remains a lack of public awareness about what an older woman can do if she experiences abuse and about what concerned individuals can do if they believe an older woman is being mistreated, exploited, or abused.

To articulate our fifth recommendation, there is a need for further awareness-raising about abuse of older women, with the focus on identifying available resources. People need to know how they can participate in supporting older women in their communities to access timely support and assistance.

Given the threat that isolation poses in the area of elder abuse, older women need practical information that pertains to locally available, accessible resources, and public awareness initiatives should target remote communities. Currently, there is already less access to information, and there are possibly fewer resources to draw upon at a time of need.

Thank you very much for this invitation. Those are our submissions today.

[The Chair, NDP, Niki Ashton]

Thank you very much, Ms. James.

Monsieur Soulière, we'll continue with you for 10 minutes.

[Jean-Guy Soulière, Chair, National Seniors Council]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

As you heard at the beginning of the meeting, I am the chair of the National Seniors Council. I was appointed in 2007 as the first chair of the new National Seniors Council. In 2010, my mandate was renewed for another three years.

I would like to thank you for inviting me to discuss this topic with you. This is a major issue for both the council and for Canada as a whole. It is a challenge for our society.

I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak about what the National Seniors Council has learned about elder abuse and the recommendations it has made to the government on this matter. A lot of the stuff that Krista mentioned in her presentation is about the issues that were raised with us when we went across the country to consult with experts, front-line workers, and older people themselves. We did produce a report, which I'm sure you all went to our website and read, and it's called the “Report of the National Seniors Council on Elder Abuse”.

I should point out, though, that we were criticized a little for using the term “elder abuse” because, to a lot of people in Canada, “elder” means very different things. For example, in the native population, “elder“ does not necessarily mean older, so we should have called it the report of the national seniors on older abuse, as you have in your brief.

Let me give you a little bit of background on your National Seniors Council. It is a council that reports to three ministers: the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development, the Minister of Health, and the Minister of State for Seniors. The Minister of State for Seniors is the day-to-day overseer of what the council does.

The council has a maximum of 12 members. Right now we are in the process of selecting other members to the council, because the terms of five of them terminated within the last six months. The government is now appointing or at least looking at members to be appointed to the council.

I have the pleasure and the honour of serving with people who have expertise in a whole lot of areas. We had the former president of the Canadian Association on Gerontology as a member. We had Daphne Nahmiash, whom some of you may know, from Montreal, a professor, an older woman herself, who has chaired many committees on elder abuse or the abuse of older people and is participating, in her eighties, on many other committees that deal with this subject. That's the type of members we have on our council.

The first priority that was ever given to the council for study was the matter of la violence contre les aînés. Why was this picked? It is because it is a hidden matter in Canada. It was hidden for a lot of years. As Krista mentioned, there isn't enough research yet on the whole situation, and although a certain percentage of older Canadians are being abused, it is only those cases that are reported that we hear about. An awful lot is not reported, as we found out in consulting across the country on this matter.

As I mentioned, we did provide the government with recommendations on how to deal with this matter. I have an understanding with the ministers with whom we work and to whom we report that our documents, our reports, are living documents. In other words, it's not a report that is put on the table to gather dust. Every time the council meets it goes over all the recommendations it made in previous reports to see what it can raise again as an issue with the ministers and with the government.

In 2007 the government asked the council to look at the abuse of older people. it was Senator LeBreton, who was the minister responsible for the National Seniors Council, who decided on that first priority. What we did was go around the country to find out what it was all about--and the type of abuse.

I was surprised. I thought about physical abuse. Immediately when you talk about abuse, you zero in on physical abuse, but as Krista mentioned, financial abuse is number one--the abuse of older people in a financial way. When you have questions, I have a whole lot of anecdotal experience with people and what they told us about this matter.

We went across the country and had round table sessions in Moncton, Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, and Vancouver. Over 50 stakeholders representing all sorts of different dimensions in regard to these issues participated in these sessions. Boy, did we hear a lot.

The council's approach in dealing with issues is to produce two reports. The first one is what we call the “what we heard” report, and this is a summary of the discussions at the round table. The second report is our analysis of the what we heard report, the research, and then the recommendations that we made. We did provide the government with a report and, as I said, I'm sure you've all read it.

We did find out that there are a whole lot of older people, but especially older women, who are being abused. It's just a numbers game in one way, because there are far more older women at this time in our society than men; therefore, the older women tend to be abused more. Also, there's the link between poverty and abuse. The low-income women...there are far more of them than men, and there's a correlation between poverty, low incomes, and abuse as well.

What we recommended to the government was to implement a national awareness campaign to help increase awareness of elder abuse. I'm sure you all saw the commercials on TV. They usually come out in October. The government has repeated them from year to year. They are striking. Within 30 seconds to one minute, you really see different abuses happening, and these are not rare occasions.

The government put millions of dollars into the awareness campaign. One of the things that bothers me a little is that when these commercials come on, there is apparently an increase in the telephone calls to police departments and many are not well equipped to deal with the situation.

We talked about conducting research to support the updating of existing research on the causes, incidence, and prevalence of elder abuse.

We recommended working in partnership with national organizations that have shown leadership in the dissemination of information. In a whole lot of our round tables, we found that the duplication of effort was just terrible. People who knew one another and were from the same city were doing the same things, but they didn't know about it. This was discovered at the round tables.

We recommended providing support for volunteers to build capacity within the volunteer sector to respond to elder abuse, as well as examining federal legislative and legal frameworks to better understand how they may be applied to cases of elder abuse.

The report was prepared in 2007. The National Seniors Council is proud to see that the government has taken action based on some of our recommendations. I commend you for making this issue a priority, since it is a cancer in our society and we have to address it.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to discuss this topic with you. Thank you very much.

[The Chair, NDP, Niki Ashton]

Thank you very much, Mr. Soulière.

We will now move to the question period and Ms. Truppe will go first.

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

Thank you, Ms. James and Mr. Soulière. We appreciate your coming today and taking the time to be here. This issue is very important to all of us in all of the studies that we're doing, so I'm sure we all have many questions.

Ms. James, this one is for you. You mentioned that there was a link between financial abuse and neglect. Can you elaborate on that a little more?

[Krista James]

There's a link in a number of ways, but one of the most important ways in which there is a link is that financial abuse may be what is causing the neglect.

If there's a situation where an adult has allowed someone else to have control over their finances through a power of attorney, for example, you may see an older person who is missing basic necessities that you think a person with their level of income should have, such as food. Maybe the fridge is empty. Or maybe they don't have the assistive devices they need. Maybe they don't have transportation to get to community events to keep them involved and reduce social isolation.

If the person in charge of the finances is not making sure that the money is being spent to meet the needs of the older person.... Sometimes there's confusion among people appointed under power of attorney about what their responsibilities are.

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Soulière, you mentioned that when you went around the country, you found out that financial abuse was number one. I'm surprised by that as well.

Besides financial being number one, what else came from the discussions? What were the top three items, say, that were reported to you?

[Jean-Guy Soulière]

Well, number one is financial. Then--and it's very difficult to measure--the others include physical, sexual, emotional, and psychological. As well, ageism is a form of abuse of older people.

These are the types of abuse we discovered. They are mentioned and defined in our report.

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

You also talked about the advertising. I remember the advertising, and I thought it was very well done. You obviously felt that it helped seniors, since you said there was an increase in phone calls.

Were you able to measure anything else from that?

[Jean-Guy Soulière]

Not really; there wasn't a follow-up. I know that the department website and our website both received a lot of comments on how valuable they were. But that's anecdotal. When you go to conferences, you meet some of the same people who are involved in it. In Ottawa they have two detectives, I believe, working on the topic of elder abuse. They did mention to me, when I met them in another context, that there had been an increase as soon as these happened.

Awareness is very important in all of this.

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

Yes. I do remember the ads. I thought they were very well done.

Ms. James, in regard to the kind of sentences that seniors' abusers face, can you elaborate on some of the sentences and if you feel they're strong enough? What is your opinion in regard to the sentences they receive?

I think there are probably different sentences for different crimes with elder women, but maybe you can elaborate on a few of them.

[Krista James]

In terms of the scope of research we've done thus far on sentencing where a crime involves an older adult victim, I can't speak to specific length of sentencing right now. What I would say is that actually we found that the age of the victim was rarely mentioned in terms of decisions about appropriate sentencing.

That was the biggest surprise for us. We expected to see more cases where there were older victims. There was a discussion about what might be the appropriate sentence if there were aggravating factors given the advanced age of the victim, but we actually found very few reported criminal court decisions where age of the victim was considered significantly relevant.

Most often we saw it with B and E cases; I guess those would be assaults. Breaking-and-entering cases where offenders were targeting neighbourhoods where it was known that there were older adults living alone in those communities--that was the most common situation where it came up. I don't even recall a case where it came up in a domestic violence context.

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

I haven't read your report, but there's nothing that says what type of sentences these abusers are facing, whether it's physical abuse of an elderly woman or financial or sexual? We don't have stats on that?

[Krista James]

No, not that I'm aware of.

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

Okay.

Am I still okay on time, Madam Chair?

[The Chair, NDP, Niki Ashton]

You have two minutes.

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

In a statement we had previously, the Public Health Agency of Canada mentioned that a gender-based approach that considers treating older women and older men identically will not ensure beneficial outcomes because men and women occupy a different socio-economic status and experience different living conditions.

I'm wondering if either of you could tell me more about the gender-based differences you might have experienced with your organizations.

[Krista James]

My research is academic. I don't work with vulnerable women one on one.

What we notice, when people talk to us about cases or when we look at cases, is that there could be a dynamic of dependency, especially with an older woman who's not the primary breadwinner and doesn't actually have control over the finances. Becoming independent of an abuser becomes challenged by that kind of financial interdependence.

I think also this issue depends on the generations that you look at. We need to be mindful that women's financial independence and savvy and capacity depend on the generation you look at and the community you're looking at.

So it's kind of hard to generalize. We do know, however, that poverty significantly undermines a woman's ability to make choices when she's trying to get out of an abusive situation. Money often equals options. Money sometimes also goes hand in hand with knowledge of options as well, such as access to resources.

Does that answer your question?

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

I think so.

That's good. Thank you very much.

[The Chair, NDP, Niki Ashton]

Thank you very much, Ms. Truppe.

We're now moving on to Ms. Borg, who will also share her time with Ms. Freeman.

[Charmaine Borg, NDP, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Thank you very much.

My question is for Ms. James. You said that money often equals options. Ms. McLachlin, from the Supreme Court of Canada, has said that people are having difficulty getting justice because of cuts to legal aid.

Based on your research, would you say that the difficulty in accessing legal aid will actually prevent seniors who are victims of violence from using the justice system?

[Krista James]

Yes, absolutely. In terms of certain contexts, if there's no access to legal aid, for some women there can be no access to legal options. Access to a family lawyer is going to be crucial to that woman's independence, especially in a domestic violence context where there are financial and property issues.

[Charmaine Borg, NDP, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Thank you very much.

My next question is for Mr. Soulière. I have read a number of newspaper articles dealing with the situation in Quebec. I know you are a Quebecker, so it is very relevant for you. No?

[Jean-Guy Soulière]

I am a good old Franco-Ontarian from Lowertown, Ottawa.