Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Thank you for the invitation to address this Committee about best practices in education programs, social programs and policies in Canada that prevent violence against women.
Violence against women is a significant public health issue affecting Canadians, their families and communities. It can have significant and long-term impacts on physical and mental health.
Women abused by their intimate partners experience high rates of injury, chronic pain, post-traumatic stress disorder, and substance use problems. Children who have been abused or exposed to abuse in the family have a higher risk of developing chronic illnesses later in life, such as heart disease and mental health problems, including depression, anxiety, and self-harm.
Boys raised in violent homes are at increased risk of becoming perpetrators of violent behaviour when they reach adulthood, thus continuing the cycle of violence. Girls exposed to violence in the home are at increased risk of being victimized as adults.
The Public Health Agency of Canada focuses on preventing and addressing family violence. This is defined as any form of abuse, mistreatment, neglect that a child or adult experiences from a family member, or from someone with whom they have an intimate relationship. As you know, family violence takes many forms, and includes abusive behaviours that are physical, sexual, emotional, and financial in nature.
Violence against women, the focus of your study, deserves particular attention within this context. As our colleagues from Statistics Canada have indicated, violence accounts for one-quarter of police-reported violent crime in Canada. Almost 70% of family violence victims are women and girls, and 80% of intimate partner violence is against women.
Of course we know that certain populations in Canada are more affected. Aboriginal women experience spousal violence at a rate nearly three times higher than non-aboriginal women.
Female victims of spousal violence are twice as likely as male victims to be physically injured, three times as likely to experience disruptions to their daily lives, and almost seven times as likely to fear for their life.
At the Public Health Agency of Canada we address family violence from a public health perspective, meaning that we put a focus on supporting prevention at the community level and working with our partners to address those conditions that put women and families at risk of being in violent situations.
Under the leadership of the Minister of Health, the agency has engaged with national health professional organizations to discuss their particular role in responding to family violence. Health professionals recognize very specifically the importance of this issue. They are committed to working with us to ensure the health sector is well-equipped to address this problem.
Within the agency we are working in four areas to prevent and address family violence. We have the honour of coordinating the federal family violence initiative. We conduct surveillance and research. We compile and share information to help health professionals and community groups effectively respond to violence. We support community-based children's programs that promote healthy relationships and positive parenting.
Let me expand for a moment on each of those four areas.
The first area of agency action is our leadership and coordination of the family violence initiative, working with 15 federal departments collaborating to address family violence in Canada, including my colleagues here today. This approach ensures that violence is addressed from multiple perspectives, including promoting healthy relationships and empowering women and girls, supporting victims, ensuring that the justice response is appropriate to deter offenders and is sensitive to the needs of victims, and tracking and analyzing data on the nature and extent of family violence. This initiative is our federal forum to ensure that these activities complement each other.
The second area of agency action is research and surveillance. The agency contributes an important piece of the picture of family violence in Canada by conducting national surveillance on child abuse and neglect, including children's exposure to intimate partner violence.
We support research into effective practices to prevent violence against women and their children. Currently we are supporting two multi-year research projects to test the effectiveness of the nurse-family partnership, a specific program to prevent violence from happening in the homes of at-risk young mothers.
We also work to share effective approaches for family violence prevention. We have supported a systematic review of violence prevention programs from around the world to identify those that show evidence of effectiveness. We share information about these programs through the Canadian best practices portal. More than 80 violence prevention interventions are currently posted on the portal, helping professionals and organizations to learn and to implement what works.
The third area of agency action is sharing information across sectors with health professionals and communities. Through the National Clearinghouse on Family Violence, the agency plays the role of knowledge broker, providing resources on family violence to help professionals, community groups, academia, and the general public.
Another important contribution to family violence prevention is our community-based maternal and child health programs. We recognize the crucial importance of creating positive environments at the earliest age. Positive parenting, parental involvement, attachment, resilience, and healthy relationships are all factors that are associated with reduced risk of violence later in life.
That's why we invest more than $112 million each year in our children's programs. These programs reach 250,000 at-risk children and their parents in more than 3,000 communities across the country. Many women served by our programs have had exposure to violence in the past, and 77 of our projects are currently delivered out of shelters for women and children leaving abusive situations. These programs serve as important points of access whereby women living in situations of abuse and violence may be referred to more specialized intervention services.
Earlier this year, we invested a $3-million fund in projects to train community workers to deliver parenting programs that build coping skills and promote the mental health of mothers to address the needs of survivors of violence in a safe and sensitive way.
I'd like to point out to members of the committee that there is growing international recognition of violence as a health issue. Canada sponsored and contributed to a historic resolution at the World Health Organization's World Health Assembly last spring on the specific role of the health sector in addressing violence against women and children.
I had the opportunity to speak about this issue recently at the Directing Council of the Pan American Health Organization. There is a strong interest internationally and in the Americas region and strong momentum to address this issue as a global health problem.
In closing, by continuing to bring attention to the issue, as this Committee is doing, we can continue to make progress towards achieving a world where violence against women is not acceptable.
Thank you for your attention. I would be pleased to answer any questions you have.
Hot off the press, members of the committee, I would like to let you know that The Lancet, one of the world's pre-eminent journals, will release online tomorrow a series on violence against women and girls. This I'm sure will provide the members of this committee with some very important evidence from the research of a very esteemed group of Canadian and international researchers.