First I would like to thank the committee for inviting the Canadian Association of Sexual Assault Centres/L'Association canadienne des centres contre les agressions à caractère sexuel, which I'll refer to as CASAC, to present today.
Founded in 1975, CASAC member centres continue to provide front-line crisis support and intervention to women who have experienced men's violence, from Halifax to Vancouver, in English and French, in urban centres and rural communities.
One of the crucial functions of CASAC is to speak publicly for the thousands of women who tell us their stories on confidential phone lines. Every woman who calls a CASAC centre takes the risk of speaking honestly and deliberately about the violence she has experienced. I would be doing these women a disservice if I did not speak similarly here today.
Any discussion of promising practices to prevent violence against women requires an honest and deliberate definition of what exactly we are trying to prevent. The phrase “violence against women” elides a fact that must be central to this study, namely that men are responsible for the continued rape, battering, harassment, incest, and prostitution of women.
December 6 this year will mark 25 years since 14 women at L'École Polytechnique were separated from male teachers and peers and then gunned down by one man specifically because they were women. There is still no public or private place in Canada, other than rape crisis centres and transition houses, in which women are completely safe or free from the threat of men's violence.
Battering husbands or ex-husbands in B.C. have been responsible for attempting to murder women, and in some cases their children, in their homes on 17 separate occasions so far this year.
In May, the RCMP confirmed 1,181 cases of missing and murdered aboriginal women, deaths and disappearances for which men were overwhelmingly responsible. Since then, men's lethally sexist and racist attacks on aboriginal women have continued unabated. We know that at least Rinelle Harper in Winnipeg and Marlene Bird in Saskatchewan were sexually assaulted, brutally beaten, and left for dead by small groups of men in public places.
In February, at least two male athletes and students from the University of Ottawa's hockey team raped a young woman in Thunder Bay. Last year female students at UBC and St. Mary's were oriented to their university experience with male-led chants promoting their rape.
Rehtaeh Parsons was raped by young men, and young men continue to attack her by creating and distributing pornographic images of that rape.
The buyers of sex who will soon be criminalized by Bill C-36 for the exploitation of women in prostitution in brothels and on the streets are overwhelmingly men.
More than 330 women RCMP officers and employees have exposed that they were systematically sexually harassed on the job by their male colleagues.
Women have come forward and gone on the record to say that CBC's Jian Ghomeshi used his power and status to attack a number of women he worked with and dated.
These recent and highly publicized cases of men's violence against women echo what we hear when we respond to women who call the crisis lines, from the women who reveal and resist the routine and myriad acts of violence that enforce and exploit women's unequal civic, political, economic, and social power in relation to men. The inequalities of poverty and racism further compound the vulnerability to and effects of men's violence on impoverished women, women of colour, and aboriginal women.
If any practice or policy to prevent violence against women is to be truly promising, it must be grounded in and tested against the promise of women's right to be free from all forms of sexist discrimination and violence. This promise is enshrined in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and articulated in international instruments, including CEDAW, to which Canada is a signatory.
I'll take today's opportunity to reiterate two of the elements of policy change on violence against women that CASAC has advocated for, for decades: first, the responsibility of the criminal justice system to prevent and respond to men's violence, and second, the need for the government to invest in and actively and respectfully consult with the independent women's movement.
Since CASAC is a coalition of rape crisis centres and time is limited, I'll focus on criminal law responses to sexual assaults.
Past improvements to Canada's criminal laws and policy on sexual assaults have been made because of the demands of women and women's groups that criminal law protect their right to equality by preventing and sanctioning the violence that is perpetrated by men against them. Two examples of the hard-won achievements are the criminalization of rape in marriage in the Criminal Code and Supreme Court articulations of the legal obligation to obtain explicit and ongoing consent to sexual activity.
Sexual assault is a deeply gendered crime. Women are the most likely victims of this crime and the least likely to commit it. The criminal justice response to sexual assault is abysmal. Only 0.3% of rapes committed result in a criminal conviction. Statistically speaking, the criminal justice response to rape is one of virtual impunity.
Since the 1970s the statistic that 70% of women who report all forms of sexist violence to front-line anti-violence workers do not engage the police has remained steady. Less than 10% of sexual assaults are reported to the police. Several of the cases that I mentioned earlier have fiercely reignited a public discussion of and debate about the way that the criminal justice system routinely fails women who have been raped. The hashtag “been raped never reported” allowed women to say on social media what rape crisis workers and raped women have known and said publicly and privately for years: women do not and cannot rely on Canadian authorities to live up to their responsibility to enforce the laws that criminalize sexual assaults and violence against women.
In the Ghomeshi case, women came out in a significant number to expose the actions of a violent man and to explain why they did not report these attacks to the police. A tremendous amount of media attention was paid and in turn public pressure was exerted. Feminists reiterated our criticism of the failures to apply criminal law to levy consequences against men in cases of violence against women. Yesterday Jian Ghomeshi was arrested for and charged with several counts of sexual assault and one count of choking a woman. This demonstrates that when there's substantial political will, police and the criminal justice system can and do have the power to swiftly investigate and lay charges when a man attacks a woman.
Rehtaeh Parsons reported her rape to the police before it was public knowledge and national news. After her suicide, pressure from her grieving parents and an outraged public, including feminists, for a response from the criminal justice system mounted. Earlier this week two young men pleaded guilty to charges of making and distributing child pornography in that case. The creation and distribution of the images of her attack have been acknowledged as a crime. No one has been charged with the attack itself.
Rape is ultimately the responsibility of the men who commit it. The inadequacy of the criminal justice system's response to sexual assault provides one stark example of the systemic failure to adequately prevent and respond to the injustices committed against women, both individually and collectively. Criminal laws contain the promise that men will be held accountable for the violence that they commit. Accountability through assiduous application of existing criminal law would demonstrate that the government is committed to preventing the rampant continuation of these crimes.
CASAC research has shown that when a woman is provided with information, accompaniment, and advocacy from a rape crisis centre, her slim chances of having a proper police investigation done and charges laid increase.
Rape crisis centres in Canada were formed in a period when women across the country were uniting to challenge and transform the status quo of women's lives. They were established in the 1970s with, by, and for women of different ages, races, classes, and backgrounds who were taking direct action against men's violence. Rape crisis centres have received no operational funding from the federal government. In British Columbia, where I live and work, no rape crisis centre, including the one I answer the lines at, receives operational funds from the provincial government.
The increased impoverishment of women and the systematic dismantling of social welfare systems means that the remaining unfunded independent women's centres are pressured to tend to all the effects of women's desperate inequality, including hunger, homelessness, addiction, and mental health. Yet CASAC centres continue to connect women to the meagre supports to which they are entitled, to services, and to each other. They connect women's experiences of and responses to men's violence to advocacy campaigns for specific reforms and systemic social change locally, provincially, and nationally.
In 2012, the largest ever global study on violence against women concluded:
The autonomous mobilization of feminists in domestic and transnational contexts—not leftist parties, women in government or national wealth—is the critical factor accounting for policy change.
The development of policy and practices to prevent violence against women will be ineffective without a substantial investment in and incomplete without an active and respectful consultation with the independent women's movement.
The piecemeal projects proffered and funding promised so far in these hearings by the federal government are not an adequate substitute for a substantive and sustained commitment from all departments at all levels of government to preventing and eliminating women's civil, economic, social, and political inequality.
Thank you.