Status of Women Committee on Nov. 27th, 2014

[Kasari Govender]

West Coast LEAF was not.

[Lisa Steacy]

Neither was the Canadian—

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Neither was CASAC?

[Lisa Steacy]

No.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Thank you, all.

Ms. Govender, you spoke of a lack of national standards for legal aid. If you could make a specific recommendation to this committee about what you would like to see in the report, what would it be with respect to legal aid? Give as much detail as you can, please.

[Kasari Govender]

I would like to see a return to the time—it was in the nineties, I believe, and I don't have the date—when the federal government gave funding to provincial legal aid plans through tied transfer payments, transfer payments with strings attached.

Basically that is a funding request. It would be great to see legal aid as a key piece of a national action plan on violence against women, to say that this is essential for ensuring that women can leave relationships safely and that women and children have their best interests met upon the breakdown of abusive relationships.

That's what I would like to see, and in particular in the areas of family law. It is an area that is often underserved, because it's not seen to have constitutional protections in the way that criminal law has. It needs specific consideration. It needs the federal government to say that family law is a priority.

Thank you.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Thank you, Ms. Govender.

I'm going to pick up on that. When I talk to our local shelters, one of their frustrations is with respect to areas for improvement regarding family law. Would you like to make any recommendations to the committee regarding this?

[Kasari Govender]

There are so many recommendations on improvements to family law. Most of my recommendations would probably go to the provinces rather than to areas within the jurisdiction of the federal government.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Is there a recommendation to the federal government that you would like to see?

[Kasari Govender]

I can't think of anything particular on the Divorce Act off the top of my head, but I can say that the federal government could talk about enforcement of the Family Law Act. For B.C. it's the Family Law Act; in other provinces it's called other things.

Family law is meaningless without the means to enforce it, so it becomes a tool for the rich. Because it's a civil action in civil law, you can only enforce it if you can go to court, or if you can have a lawyer to enforce it. That's where the federal government has a direct role to play.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Thank you so much.

Now I'll go to Ms. Steacy on the topic of sexual assault reporting. Are there best practices for encouraging women to come forward?

[Lisa Steacy]

Is it to come forward specifically to report to the police? Is that what you're asking?

Unfortunately, the continued failure to investigate and prosecute sexual assaults adequately reinforces women's reluctance to report, so it's almost a self-perpetuating system. I think we would need to hear an explicit and deliberate commitment from all levels of government, justice departments, and police forces that they're going to treat crimes of sexual assault and violence against women seriously, that they're going to take women's reports as evidence in and of themselves, and that they're going to investigate them and prosecute them with the same diligence as they do other crimes.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Thank you.

From a health perspective, Dr. Cook, where are the weaknesses in the response to victims of domestic violence? Where can we do better?

[Dr. Jocelynn Cook]

I think we can do better, as I suggested, with helping the health providers understand the risk factors, the signs and symptoms, the health outcome implications, and what they can do in their role to be helpful—mostly navigating the system, knowing what resources are out there, knowing the ability and feasibility of accessing those resources, and helping their office staff to be trained in all of those areas as well, and providing helpful information to women.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Young, the floor is yours. You have seven minutes.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

I want to thank you all for your extensive information and also for the wonderful work that you're doing, obviously, in B.C. Hello, B.C. colleagues.

This question is for Ann Decter.

I was heavily involved in the building of Crabtree Corner in Vancouver, which is the YWCA Vancouver. I was on the board of the YWCA Vancouver for a number of years. I see that as a model for best practices, because in one building we have residential housing, programs and services, even a garden on the roof to grow food, and all of that sort of thing. There's a communal kitchen. It just goes on in terms of it being an integrated, holistic service centre.

Perhaps you could expand a bit on that, Ms. Decter, and share with us whether that is a best practice, because we didn't hear that today. What can you tell us about it in terms of how we can possibly share that model with the rest of Canada?

[Ann Decter]

It's basically a supportive housing model. It is housing young women and it is also providing the support services around it. It's long-term housing. It's not an emergency shelter. I think they've come through emergency shelter to there. On site it has the kind of support services that I talked about shelters having, such as counselling, support for education. I believe there's a small child-care centre on the top floor where women who have children can have their children taken care of on site. They're fully supported to pursue their education or get work, but really to get back on their feet and to live in a safe environment at the same time. We would definitely recommend that.

YWCA Vancouver has another excellent program which is a live-in program for pregnant teenage girls. They can live there and have their babies. They stay there for about 18 months, I think, after they have their children, and they attend high school at the same time. It's basically on site with a high school.

These kinds of services can support young women and mothers to get through the periods in their lives when they are in crisis and then out into the community where they can live safely with the skills they need.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

We talked about a number of different programs, obviously, and services throughout Canada, including research, etc. I'm kind of intrigued by what my colleague, Joan Crockatt, was asking in the sense that her mother founded a shelter in the 1980s and she founded one more recently. Have we really moved ahead in terms of our best practices? Do we now sort of know, as a country and as a society, what works? How do we take that knowledge and apply it so that organizations and people who want to work in the sector can do more effective work? I was involved in, for example, the Mennonite Central Committee and numerous other non-profit organizations where they have shelters, where they provide all kinds of programs and services, but they may not be knowledgeable about the best practices to be effective.

Can you comment on that? That question is for all of you. I'd really love a quick comment from all of you on that.

[Ann Decter]

One thing I would say is, I think the best practices shift as our work moves forward. If you see the stats with regard to shelters, for example—that's part of our area of expertise, as we have 18 shelters across the country in six provinces and two territories—if you have two-thirds of women who are just accessing shelters once, then you know those women have made a change in their lives and are not getting stuck in the same situation, which is pretty much the standard. What I said about seeing in some other provinces a difference in the shelter population than 10 or 20 years ago, with more women with mental health and addiction issues coming to the shelters for abused women.... It's anecdotal, but we hear this from shelter workers. That population wasn't trying to access those shelters before and those shelters were not trying to get their doors open. They were saying, “This needs to be a safe and quiet space and we can't cope with you.” I think that shift in population shows that other women are finding other ways out of violence or that violence is being prevented. Again, it needs a study, but that's anecdotal.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

I'll just make a quick shift there.

Last year we passed Bill S-2, which gave matrimonial and property rights to women who were experiencing violence or whatever on reserve. There had been a gap in legislation. What we did with that, which I think was very commendable, was to say that these women and children don't have to leave their homes to go to a shelter. In fact the abusive man has to leave. These people can stay in their homes and stay in their schools and stay in their community, etc., which I think is far better. Would you agree with that? Is that what I'm hearing you say?

[Ann Decter]

We would much rather see women not become homeless due to violence, absolutely.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

Exactly, but you did not support Bill S-2 though, so that was interesting.

[Ann Decter]

There were issues with Bill S-2.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

Anyway, the point is that it is now in place and that gives us a step forward in terms of another best practice. Is that correct, in the sense that we now have something that means women can stay in their home? Given the high incidence of aboriginal women being on the streets—certainly I saw them when I worked in the downtown eastside in Vancouver with garbage bags full of clothes and stuff like that—I felt that was a huge step ahead.

I see some nodding. Are there any comments from you folks as well? How are we going to see Bill S-2 play out? Are we going to see that women are going to get to stay in their homes?

[Kasari Govender]

Actually I just wanted to speak to your previous question. You said you wanted to hear from us about whether we thought progress had been made and how we make further change. I want to make two points.

One is that I think there has been some progress made in silos. In order to protect women, one of the key pieces that needs to come together is a coordinated response. That's come out over and over again in report after report. There is significant work that needs to be done on coordinating a response, for example, between the criminal justice system, the family law system, the child protection system, and legal aid, all these things working together. That's one point.

The other one is that we do know much of what we need to do. There have been reports across the country. There have been, for example, two key ones that come to mind. One is the Lee inquiry in B.C. That was a man who murdered his wife, his child, and his wife's family. There was a severe lack of coordinated response in that case. The second is the missing and murdered women report from Commissioner Wally Oppal in B.C. Both of them gave lots of recommendations that have not been implemented. That is a really key piece that I'd love to see in the report developing from this study.

Thank you.