Status of Women Committee on Nov. 27th, 2014

[Dr. Jocelynn Cook]

Yes. I think that relationship between poverty, homelessness, and violence came out in some other presentations. We know that the data show that socio-economic status in general has a number of risk factors that include things that would put women at unique risk for violence: substance abuse, homelessness, poverty. As well, effective support systems and access to services and service delivery I think are really important.

I think from everybody's perspective, as was discussed, poverty is very, very linked in terms of putting women in situations where they're at risk not only for violence but also for not being able to access some supports and services that may be available because of the whole issue of poverty itself and because of the context they might be experiencing and living, such as homelessness, not being able to access legal aid, and things like that.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Thank you.

Ms. Govender, I'd like to turn to you once again. You spoke about, and my colleague had an opportunity to outline, the really groundbreaking work that West Coast LEAF has done on cybermisogyny and the very clear reality that too many young women in our country face. I mean, I work in an institution here, where the average age is much older than what would be considered young. Often we express this sort of awe at, “Well, what is cybermisogyny? What is going on online that we don't understand?” Somehow we don't actually get to what is going on. Often, in fact, we resort to using words like “bullying” instead of talking about misogyny or harassment, particularly sexual harassment, and also sexual violence.

I'm wondering if you could speak to how important it is to take cybermisogyny seriously. Does it in fact mean addressing some of the systemic inequality that's faced by women, not looking at it as just a one-off phenomenon that we see online? Is it in fact a reflection of the kind of inequality that young women face in their daily lives? Is it something that we need to take seriously and deal with?

[Kasari Govender]

Absolutely we need to take it seriously. Hate, harassment, sexism—it's nothing new. Certainly that's not changed. The fact that it's there has not changed with the advent of the Internet age. What is new is the level of anonymity that can be found online and the kind of licence, the free licence, to speak without immediate reaction.

When you look online now, you can see a level of vitriol that you don't see elsewhere in life very often. That vitriol is very often directed against women, people of colour, immigrants, and so on, and against LGBTQ individuals as well, which is another key area. I think it's really important to name those sources, those sociological sources of hatred, if I can say it that way, in order to figure out how to address it. If we just call it bullying, we obscure what's really happening and we obscure the solutions that we need to have in order to address this issue.

I think it might help to ground this discussion a little bit. I talked a little bit about it in my opening, but what we're talking about here is a whole crop of sites called revenge porn sites. These are sites where jilted ex-boyfriends, to use that phrase, might post a picture that a woman might have shared with him consensually, or a girl might have shared with him consensually, but who did not consent to having it posted online. There are stories in the news of—

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

You can continue, but please finish up, as I have to move on.

Go ahead and finish, please.

[Kasari Govender]

Sure.

I was just going to provide the example of stories in which women's pictures are posted with their details. The cyber-violence turns into real violence when their addresses, their social insurance numbers, and their telephone numbers are posted online.

I just wanted to provide one example of how this plays out.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Thank you very much. I'm sorry for the interruption.

Ms. Ambler, the floor is yours. You have five minutes.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Thank you to all of you for being here today and for your wonderful presentations.

I have what I think might be a fairly quick question for you, Dr. Cook.

I was wondering when you were talking, what it is that makes pregnancy a particularly vulnerable time for women. Does it have something to do with a power imbalance? Is it jealousy issues? I'm just wondering.

[Dr. Jocelynn Cook]

Being a scientist, I think it's all estrogen.

There is the emotional stress of being pregnant, worrying about your pregnancy outcome, worrying about the developing baby, that you're providing all of the best tools for this little developing baby to be born healthy.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

What is it about that that makes her more likely to be abused in that time period?

[Dr. Jocelynn Cook]

There is mixed data on that. Sometimes the physical abuse might switch to emotional abuse or more physiological abuse. There's data that shows that. There's also data that shows there could be escalated abuse, both physical and emotional abuse. The studies aren't 100% conclusive on that.

There could be issues related to jealousy, related to changing body structure, related to women, the perception that women during pregnancy may not be able to do all of the things they could do previously physically. I think it's probably very complex and it's different in different situations. Women during pregnancy are also on an emotional roller coaster, I guess, for lack of a better term. That just happens to be the physiological effects of all the changes in hormones. I think all of those things together make women vulnerable.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

You spoke about the role of physicians. We've talked in other studies about the fact that when doctors go to school, they learn about physiology, but they don't learn about emotions. They don't learn about issues like violence. They don't learn about eating disorders, behavioural problems, nutrition, a whole bunch of things that aren't included in the medical school curriculum.

Would you say that some aspect of violence against women be something that physicians should be more aware of or be able to deal with, or maybe that's just not what they're supposed to do? Which side do you land on that issue?

[Dr. Jocelynn Cook]

The medical school curriculum is really hard to influence. We tried to influence it before related to alcohol use during pregnancy, and it was very difficult.

Health professional organizations like the College of Family Physicians Canada, the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, nursing, midwives, have their own continuing medical education curricula. They provide training for their members based on what they think the members need and what the members actually identify that they need.

That's a really great opportunity to be able to develop curricula or training courses or specialty courses related to violence against women, around risk factors, roles of health providers, accessing resources, how you help women do this. Health professionals have to take a certain number of credits for their continuing medical education, so I think that would be a great way to introduce the practicalities that are current and evidence-based in terms of some of those courses. The reproductive rights piece might be a great subject for that as well. I think that's a great way to do that.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Wonderful. Thank you.

Lisa Steacy, I'm wondering if you could elaborate on your second point. You focused most of your comments, because of time constraints, on the responsibility of the criminal justice system to respond to sexual assault and violence against women. Your second point was about men consulting with.... I'm sorry, I was writing quickly, but I didn't quite catch it. I thought I'd give you the opportunity to talk about your second point.

[Lisa Steacy]

The second thing I was trying to draw attention to was something that I mentioned that was affirmed by the largest ever global study into violence against women. It's that the independent women's movement and the mobilization of feminists worldwide has been hugely influential in policy change regarding violence against women. Independent women's groups and the independent women's movement are not funded to meet, coordinate, or advise the government, never mind operate in the first place. For example, CASAC has no operational funding, no national staff, no travel budget, no lobbying budget, no funding whatsoever, and we still do the best we can to do the work that we do, but our capacity to do it has been drastically reduced from back in the 1980s and 1990s when we regularly were invited to meet with and advise the government, as well as each other as the women's movement, as to what needed to happen in order to prevent violence against women and advance women's equality.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Thank you very much, Ms. Steacy.

I will now give the floor to Ms. Crockatt for five minutes.

[Joan Crockatt, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Thank you very much to all of our witnesses today.

It is very appropriate that we are discussing this topic right now in the 16 days of activism against gender violence. I think our minister has shown a lot of leadership in speaking out. We've talked about awareness today and I think it is very important that we state openly that violence against women and girls is not okay. We do not accept that. That's one of the key starting points for all of us to get where we want to go.

One of the things I worry about.... I was a founding member of a sexual assault centre in Alberta and my mom started one of the first women's shelters for abused women in Alberta. Hers was in the 1970s; ours was in the 1980s. I worry sometimes that when we get together we talk about the most basic issues instead of maybe capitalizing on the best things that are happening to move us forward, so that we can keep focusing on how we move the ball forward. Which things are working? We have been recognizing these problems and we want to collect our gains here and see what we've got that's moving forward and working.

I was very pleased to hear the comments from LEAF about cyberbullying. I think the cyberbullying legislation is one of the new fields we're moving forward in. I think that we have programs for immigrant women now, where they're receiving information about what the rules are in Canada. Some of those programs are for immigrant men who have no idea that they can't come to Canada and engage in family violence, that it is not acceptable here.

I'm wondering if we can talk about some of those thing that we've collected knowledge on, where we really think we are moving forward. I thought maybe I would talk to Ann. First of all, on #NOTokay, do you think we are making any gains in changing attitudes, and what are the best practices you've found?

[Ann Decter]

I think we have made some gains in changing attitudes. Certainly, since I was young there's no doubt there has been quite a bit of movement from my examples cited about Margaret Mitchell being laughed at in the House of Commons in the 1980s when she talked about domestic violence, and now domestic violence is more than recognized. We have programs on it. People know it's wrong. They know it's a crime. It took time for women to establish that it was a crime, but we still have a long way to go. We have areas, such as when you're talking about cybermisogyny, where there have been huge advances in the opposite direction, the introduction of anonymity in terms of attacks, those kinds of things.

When we did our launch of #NOTokay, the other day we had with us Dianne Woloschuk who is the president of the Canadian Teachers' Federation. She said that parents and teachers cannot cope with the overwhelming messages about violence against women and misogyny that are coming out of social media, video games, music videos. They really need a way to work with that. That is one place where we hope that #NOTokay will be useful.

We're asking people, when they see things that promote violence against women or attack women, that they call them out online by saying it is not okay. We're hoping it will be a simple tool that moves people from letting things ride to actually expressing it when they feel it's not okay. I think that's a bit of a crucial thing, particularly with men and boys who tend to go with peer behaviour, rather than being the one who disrupts what's going on. I think we certainly see that on campuses. We really need those guys to be able to say they're not okay with this.

[Joan Crockatt, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Were you at all motivated by, or were you aware of the cyberbullying initiative that Laureen Harper and Minister James Moore launched in 2013? Did that make any impact on you with respect to launching your own this year?

[Ann Decter]

Yes. Social media cuts two ways. On the one hand, there is all of the cybermisogyny that goes on; on the other hand, it's a way by which you can reach young people at relatively little cost. As we saw with the hashtag “been raped never reported”, people can express what's going on with them in ways that they can control.

It's a tool, and we're trying to turn that tool in the direction of decreasing violence against women and girls.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Thank you very much.

Your time is up already. Time sure flies.

We will now move to Ms. Duncan for five minutes.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

I'm just looking for a yes or a no answer right now.

Ms. Decter, were you consulted on the minister's new action plan on family violence?

[Ann Decter]

Not that I am aware of, no, we weren't.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Thank you.

I'll put the same question to LEAF and to CASAC.

[Kasari Govender]

I'm sorry, for some reason we're having trouble hearing you. Did you ask whether we were consulted?

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Yes. Could you tell me whether you were consulted on the minister's new action plan on family violence? I'm just looking for a yes or a no.