Status of Women Committee on Dec. 9th, 2014

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Good morning.

According to my BlackBerry, it is exactly 8:45 a.m., daylight savings time or Eastern standard time. I would like to welcome you to the 41st meeting of the Standing Committee on the Status of Women. This is the committee's last meeting of 2014, which makes it a very special one. We are continuing our study on promising practices to prevent violence against women.

Today, we have the pleasure of welcoming Marion Little, an assistant professor at the University of Victoria's School of Public Administration.

We also have with us Tracy O'Hearn, who is the executive director of the Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada.

Joining us by video conference is Bonnie Johnston and Jenny Ofrim, from the Sheldon Kennedy Child Advocacy Centre, and Fay Faraday, who is a lawyer and visiting professor at Osgoode Hall Law School.

Each group of witnesses will have 10 minutes to make a presentation, which will be followed by a question period.

I would like to start with Ms. Little. You have 10 minutes.

[Marion Little, As an Individual]

Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee. Thank you so much for your invitation.

Please permit me to open and close with poems that invoke some of the voices of the many women and girls I’ve been privileged to serve over the years.

The first is from Jamie Jardine.

Wounds
I stand naked
Looking in the mirror
What do I see?
Not the flawless woman I so yearn to be
But a damaged girl permanently scared,
Scarred from unwanted abuse that will not fade,
No matter what I do.
Every time I look, I’m reminded of where,
And from whom they came.
I’ve stopped trying to change,
To cover or erase these scars.
I’ve stopped explaining these dark wounds.
These are my tattoos.

There are so many issues I would love to speak about with you today. Drawing on my experience, I will focus exclusively on the marginalized women who are many times more likely to be targeted by violence than anyone else. My primary point is that marginalized women require sustainably funded, tailored, responsive, unconditional peer-to-peer programs informed directly by their needs and the context in which they live.

I'm so nervous; I can hear my voice shaking. Pardon me.

This core best practice is recognized as the most accessible, effective, and cost-efficient way to increase wellness while decreasing marginalization and experiences of violence. Marginalized women are more likely to participate in peer-to-peer programs than in mainstream programs. Disclosure is more likely in trusted peer settings, making them critical for response, liaison with police, trauma recovery, and violence prevention.

My secondary point is that the best practice in policy development and drafting new law related to marginalized women requires that these peer groups be comprehensively consulted, alongside the national academic research consensus on the issues.

In the B.C. missing women inquiry report “Forsaken,” the Honourable Wally Oppal defines marginalization as “the social process by which individuals and groups are relegated to the fringe of society” and “systematically blocked from rights, opportunities and resources that are normally available in a society”.

It is related to the “endangerment and vulnerability to predation” of marginalized people, “creating the climate in which the missing and murdered women were forsaken”.

He says the following:

Three overarching social and economic trends contribute to the women’s marginalization: retrenchment of social assistance programs, the ongoing effects of colonialism, and the criminal regulation of prostitution and related law enforcement strategies.

According to the Ending Violence Association of BC, most women and children killed or seriously injured by domestic or sexual violence in recent years were members of marginalized groups. Please see endingviolence.org. They identified gaps regarding specialized, domestic, and sexual violence services for marginalized women, in particular aboriginal women; immigrant women, including refugees and migrant workers; women with disabilities; women with mental health or addictions issues; women in rural areas; impoverished women; lesbians and transsexual women; and sex workers. And I would add the service gap for youth who are homeless or at risk of homelessness.

According to Statistics Canada, women aged 15 to 24 are most commonly targeted by all forms of violence. This, combined with marginalization, makes it difficult to grasp the enormity of the issue, particularly since marginalized women are often reluctant to call police and more likely to access informal supports.

As you know, aboriginal women—first nations, Métis, and Inuit women—experience higher levels of violence and are disproportionately represented in the number of missing and murdered women across Canada. They have a heightened vulnerability to violence simply because they live in what the Honourable Wally Oppal calls “a society that poses a risk to their safety”. The report also said, “In British Columbia and around the world, vulnerable and marginalized women are exposed to a higher risk of violence including sexual assault, murder and serial predation.”

The B.C. Missing Women Commission of Inquiry says that it’s imperative we realize the broader forces of marginalization and societal dismissal and abandonment that contributed to the vulnerability of the women. That dismissal and abandonment also shaped police response. While aboriginal and sex worker groups have identified valid concerns about the B.C. inquiry, it also contains very thoughtful recommendations. I commend it for your consideration.

Please review the executive summary of the Honourable Wally Oppal's report, “Forsaken”, via the website of the Attorney General of B.C. I also invite you to review the October 1, 2014, letter to Parliament from the Secretary General of Amnesty International, which is available on their website.

The Supreme Court has recognized street-based sex workers as some of the most marginalized members of society. The first nationwide research on sex work is emerging just now from the University of Victoria Centre for Addictions Research. It offers new—and what some may find surprising—findings. Understanding the reality of sex work here is central to developing laws, policies, practices, and supports that will actually prevent violence and increase safety for all of us. Please see their website at understandingsexwork.com.

Peer-to-peer supports are a core best practice for marginalized groups. For example, PEERS Victoria and sister agencies across Canada provide rare, unconditional, and trusted peer-to-peer supports for current and past sex workers when they are distressed, experience violence, or seek help. Sadly, all are grossly underfunded.

The respectful relationship between PEERS Victoria, the sex workers they serve, and the Victoria police special victims unit routinely leads to the arrest and jailing of violent offenders, increasing public safety. Support for marginalized groups positively impacts the whole community.

Unfortunately, it takes only a few unethical officers to destroy that trust and the related benefits. Sex workers and research tell us that police are among their clients, and that there are unethical officers who are violent or abuse their power to coerce sex. It is a common enough experience for sex workers in Canada, such that they tend to distrust police as a group. The reality of unethical officers harming or exploiting sex workers poses a certain dilemma under Bill C-36, where those same officers now hold increased power over sex workers and an increased reason to silence them.

Education across the justice system about marginalized women is necessary to increase reporting, ensure effective responses, protect the vulnerable, and prevent violence. Ongoing abuse prevention training and strong policies to address abuse of power within government institutions, such as health, justice, and social services, are also necessary, because marginalized women tend to distrust them due to routine experiences that range from discourtesy and dismissal to exploitation and violence.

Sexual exploitation of minors is not sex work. It's child abuse. It and trafficking are separate issues and direct acts of violence with specific laws. However, laws are not enough to prevent these atrocities. As a primary prevention, we must provide stable housing, food security, and nurturing supports for the over 65,000 youth in Canada who are currently homeless or at risk of homelessness—see raisingtheroof.org.

Violence against marginalized women and girls is directly linked to our child poverty rates and our housing crisis—our home crisis, actually. If we're serious about violence prevention, we will mitigate the factors that increase marginalization at individual, relational, community, and societal levels. This requires accessible stable housing, legal aid, food security, and clean water. It requires enough affordable child care spaces, addiction treatment beds, and transitional shelters, as well as programs—particularly peer-to-peer programs—that support trauma recovery, skill development, and community building. We must invest in increased resilience and empowerment.

If we tolerate violence against marginalized women, sex workers and aboriginal women being the starkest examples, then we allow that to stand as a threat to all women, a graphic threat that violence is tolerated against any of us, depending only on circumstance and social whim, and that neither our laws nor our rights and freedoms as Canadians will protect us from it. Socially condoned or ignored violence against marginalized women is an open attack on every woman, an open attack on the justice system, and an open attack on the rights and freedoms of Canadian citizens.

I will close with one final, very brief poem from a poet at PEERS, who uses the metaphor of a maze full of dead ends contrasted against a labyrinth that is one circling contemplative path:

Puzzle
My life is a maze.
I’m always running into a dead end
No matter which way I turn,
Even when I take the next right step.
I strive for my life to be a labyrinth;
To go in, and no matter which way I go,
It’s the right path to that place
Where I am always centred.

Thank you.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Thank you very much, Ms. Little.

Ms. O'Hearn, you have 10 minutes.

[Tracy O'Hearn, Executive Director, Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada]

Good morning.

Ullakut.

Thank you for your invitation. I don't speak much French.

I would like to bring greetings and best wishes from Rebecca Kudloo, who's our president. She lives in Baker Lake, Nunavut, and is not able to be here today. She very much appreciates this opportunity.

For those of you who may not be familiar with Pauktuutit, it just celebrated its 30th anniversary as the national representative organization of all Inuit women in Canada. It has a broad mandate, but our work is focused in three main areas: health is certainly one; violence and abuse prevention has been one of the biggest priorities for 30 years now; and socio-economic development broadly.

I'm happy to answer any further questions you may have about that.

We've been asked today to talk about best or promising practices in education, the social programs that can help prevent violence against women.

For Inuit women, violence prevention policies and programs must be based in Inuit culture, values, practices, geography, and language broadly. This is standard practice in our work. We produce a broad range of resources for people to use in the communities, whether individuals, service providers, or other organizations. Our work is always produced in plain language English and at least one dialect of Inuktitut. Inuktitut is one of the three indigenous languages in Canada expected to survive, and it is still used on a daily basis.

We try to learn as we go and improve our ways of communicating. The Internet is rapidly spreading across the north—we now have a Facebook page—but things like radio are still very effective. Everyone goes home at lunchtime and listens to the radio, so it's a challenge. Probably one of our biggest challenges is communicating across one-third of Canada's land mass, but we try to learn and improve.

Unfortunately, Pauktuutit has been working on this issue for 30 years, and not only has the situation not improved, it's become significantly worse. I won't reiterate all the statistics and rates of crime. They're very well known. I would like to note that a recent report by Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated, which is the Inuit land claims body in Nunavut, recently released its most recent report on the state of Inuit society and culture, with a focus, in part, on violence against women. It says that Nunavut is the most dangerous jurisdiction in Canada in which to be a woman or child, and that's absolutely true.

With regard to violence against women, it also has to be addressed as a significant mental and physical health issue. There's the whole range of responses: emergency, interventions, medevac, surgeries, rehabilitation, time away from their families, and employment. I'm sure we're all quite familiar with a lot of those impacts.

I would like to just draw your attention to the fact that there were four regional health surveys done. There are four primary Inuit regions in Canada.

In Nunavik, in the study conducted in 2004, they found that half of the women who participated in the Inuit house survey reported they had been victims of sexual assault or attempted sexual assault when they were minors. One-quarter had encountered the same problem as adults. For men, 16% of men, who participated in that regional survey, indicated the same problem as children, and 13% as adults. In Nunavut, one in two Inuit women have experienced severe sexual abuse during childhood and these injuries go far beyond broken bones. They can damage a soul and ruin a life, potentially, without support and specialized services. Those are by and large not present in Inuit communities.

We know in our hearts, but cannot yet prove through evidence, that many victims of child sexual abuse are choosing to end their pain by ending their lives. We know.

I'd like to talk briefly about a project that we're just concluding with Status of Women Canada. This has given us the first opportunity to conduct a survey of knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours among Inuit women and men, different age groups, about the knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours that support these crisis levels of violence. We're actually gathering results as we speak. The project will end at the end of March. We hope we'll learn a great deal from the results of that survey.

Part of what we're doing is developing a tool kit of resources. Our project is to engage men and boys in reducing violence. Again, it's the first opportunity we've had to take this approach. We're also developing a tool kit for individuals, men's groups, and others to use in the communities to encourage men to come and talk about their challenges, their difficulties, and try to heal.

With regard to recommendations about best practices, we participate in every opportunity we're given to bring forward the voices of Inuit women. At the end of October we attended the 4th National Aboriginal Women's Summit in Membertou, Nova Scotia. As members of the national planning committee, we're now trying to prepare a report from NAWS. When we were in Membertou, our task was to look at the recommendations from the first three NAW summits with a view to what has been done, what needs to be done now, and what needs to be done next. The major theme in the recommendations that came forward from 2007 was the need for coordinated, multi-year sustained funding. This work has to be tailored to meet the unique needs, priorities, and circumstances of first nations, Inuit, and Métis women, and it must be done in equal partnership with representative organizations. Unfortunately, that has not yet been done.

I'm going to speak just briefly about the national action plan to address violence against aboriginal women that was announced in September. I know some organizations responded quite quickly. We didn't, because we needed to understand what was in there, what might be new, what might already exist. We actually just issued a press release last week to the extent that we could, based on the information that we have received, primarily from Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada. Of the $7 million annually that's available for family violence prevention and protection through Aboriginal Affairs every year, Inuit women across Canada are at this time in receipt of $75,000, which is 1% of the $7 million. Inuit communities continue to be specifically excluded from federal funding that's available for shelters on reserve. We've tried to bring that up at the policy level with the department for about 20 years—as long as I've worked with the organization.

Taking a look at the $20 million that was available this year to aboriginal representative organizations, which included a theme around family violence prevention, of that $20 million, we received $80,000 this year to work on economic development. When you look at this $20 million plus the $7 million, of $27 million this year that is specifically for aboriginal peoples, women—and I would interpret that as Inuit women—through Pauktuutit, are receiving one half of 1% of the annual funding made available through Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development. I felt I had to bring that to your attention.

I would also say that with regard to best practices or promising practices, there haven't been enough Inuit-specific violence prevention initiatives that have been evaluated over time to really even offer promising practices. We are supported in our work. Our work is directed closely by women in the community, service providers, Inuit experts, and other experts. We're confident that we're on the right path, but it has to be broader, sustained, and evaluated over time.

Again, I'm very grateful for your time this morning. Thank you very much.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Thank you very much.

We will now hear from Bonnie Johnston. We will speak to her by video conference, and she has 10 minutes.

[Bonnie Johnston, Chief Executive Officer, Sheldon Kennedy Child Advocacy Centre]

Thank you.

Thank you for the opportunity to present to the status of women committee this morning. We're especially honoured to be a part of the discussions during the 16 days of activism against gender violence.

I'm Bonnie Johnston, CEO of the Sheldon Kennedy Child Advocacy Centre in Calgary, and with me is Jenny Ofrim, our evaluation coordinator.

Today we are going to talk about the critical connections between child abuse and violence against women, and to offer recommendations for promising practices to address and prevent these crimes.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Madam Johnston, I would like to ask you to slow down a bit so the interpretation can be done. I know you are very enthusiastic and dynamic when talking about the project, but if you can slow the pace down a bit that would be much appreciated. We'll allow for more time anyway.

Thank you.

[Bonnie Johnston]

It's a little different here in videoland trying to connect with your audience. We do appreciate that. Thank you so much. It's seven o'clock here in Calgary and I don't think we've had our coffee yet, Jen, have we? We will slow down.

Canada is very fortunate to have federal and provincial governments that recognize the importance of healthy child development. We also have key assets, including a number of Child Advocacy Centres in Canada that are leaders in supporting victims of child abuse.

Today we have three key messages for you.

Number one, children who experience abuse are more likely to commit violent acts against their partners and their own children in the future, and to be revictimized as adolescents and adults.

Number two, witnessing domestic violence is a form of child abuse that often happens with other forms of abuse in the home. These are not isolated issues, and solutions must focus on all forms of violence.

Number three, girls and women are disproportionately affected by abuse especially sexual abuse. To prevent or decrease violence against women and girls in the future we must focus on preventing abuse and intervening early with children and youth who have been abused, and with families who are at risk of abuse. This will result in better quality of life for our children and families, as well as result in valuable returns on these investments that will be seen in generations to come.

The Sheldon Kennedy Child Advocacy Centre is a not-for-profit organization working in partnership with six government organizations—Calgary Police Service, Calgary and Area Child and Family Services, Alberta Health Services, Alberta Justice, RCMP, and Alberta Education—to better serve children and families impacted by child abuse. We are extremely proud of this model that has come together. The centre became fully operational with all partners, including close to 100 staff on site, in April of 2013.

The primary objective of our centre is to minimize trauma through multidisciplinary teams that specialize in treating, investigating, and supporting children and families who have been impacted by abuse. This includes all child sexual abuse cases being dealt with by the police and the most serious, severe, and complex cases of physical abuse and neglect reported within our partner organizations. It is truly a system of integration and collaboration that wraps around children and families.

In our first 16 months of operations the centre assessed almost 2,000 infants, children, and youth.

[Jenny Ofrim, Evaluation Coordinator, Sheldon Kennedy Child Advocacy Centre]

Over the course of our first 16 months of operations two-thirds of the 2,000 children and youth assessed at the centre were girls. Of these 2,000 cases seven out of ten were for reports of sexual abuse, and two out of ten were for severe physical abuse or neglect. Ninety-three per cent of the children and youth seen at the centre were offended against by a trusted person such as a caregiver or parents.

The centre has also had the opportunity to collect information on the impact of this abuse. Although we have only been gathering this information since April 2014, data is already demonstrating that, at the time of initial assessments at the centre, one out of three infants, children, and youth struggle with suicidal thoughts, substance abuse, self-harm, mental health, aggressive behaviour, or sexualized behaviours. When we isolate youth aged 12 to 17, one in two struggle with these issues. After hearing from several experts on violence against women it is no surprise that the prevalence of this crime and the issues related to it are staggering.

The impact of child abuse on rates of re-victimization and future violent offending behaviour needs to be taken into consideration to find solutions to prevent violence against women.

One of the largest studies to date, conducted as part of the adverse childhood experiences research in the States, has demonstrated that being physically abused or sexually abused or growing up in a home in which there is domestic violence doubles the risk of perpetration or victimization of domestic violence as an adult. For children who experience all three types of abuse, the risk is increased by three and a half times for women and even more for men.

Children who have been abused grow up to have children of their own. When this trauma is left unaddressed, these children can be impacted in many ways by their parents' historical abuse. If we do not address these issues early, research indicates that these girls are four times more likely to report self-harm and suicidal ideation, 30% less likely to graduate from high school, 1.5 times more likely to use illicit drugs as an adult, and three times more likely to have an early unplanned pregnancy.

The term “cycle of abuse” is used often, and it is a reality for many of the children we see at the centre. We need to recognize that child abuse is a national public health issue. We need to put concerted effort into preventing abuse from happening to children. If it does happen, we need to ensure that the best services are wrapped around them as early as possible so they can move forward with healthy and productive lives, free of violence.

[Bonnie Johnston]

Based on our experience and the insights of others who have been working vigorously in the fields of child abuse and violence against women, we appreciate the opportunity to make the following recommendations.

Recommendation number one is that the federal government demonstrate global leadership by committing to predictable and stable funding to address child abuse issues. This should include increased funding to support the further development and operations of child advocacy centres across Canada. The child advocacy centre model is an innovative way of addressing child abuse. In recognition that child abuse is an issue that reaches across sectors, this model brings together law enforcement, child protection, the crown, education, and therapeutic and medical services. Together, these sectors create a business model that works more effectively and efficiently. Bringing these sectors together provides an opportunity to wrap services around a family as opposed to a family having to navigate separate systems on their own during a traumatic time.

Recommendation number two is that the federal government engage its research organizations such as the Canadian Institutes of Health Research to focus on child abuse issues, including the social and economic impact of collaborative models of service delivery. To date, research in the area of child abuse has been limited by disclosure and reporting rates. As multiple sectors continue to work together, a more sophisticated understanding of the issues and impact of child abuse and domestic violence is emerging.

Recommendation number three is that the federal government commit to mitigating the impact of child abuse through early intervention that includes access for children and families to intensive, evidence-based therapies. This includes swift access to youth who demonstrate sexualized behaviours that are intrusive or offending in nature.

Recommendation number four is the encouragement of provincial cross-ministry policy and practices that support the sharing of relevant and critical information. From a practice perspective, the information shared among the centre’s multidisciplinary teams has proven to be instrumental in providing timely and tailored responses to families in need. Quite simply, we are doing in hours and days what was taking weeks and months to do before we could adequately respond to these families. This allows each member of the team to make conscious decisions about progressing with each case that is in the best interest of the child and their family.

Recommendation number five is that specialized and timely interventions be provided to pregnant women and parents of infants who are living in high-risk environments. Low-cost and safe child care needs to be provided to women who have limited options. The focus on maternal and infant health needs to continue to be a priority for the Public Health Agency of Canada. Our centre also offers a prenatal outreach support team that provides outreach to highly vulnerable pregnant women and connects them to prenatal services that meet their needs. We started with 30 referrals in year one. We are over 240 referrals in this region right now for these women in high-risk situations. This program has had excellent outcomes reducing risk and decreasing the number of babies coming into care of child protection.

Recommendation number six is that standardized and specialized training be provided to professionals in education, health, the justice system, and social services to assess for abuse, sexual re-victimization, and domestic violence as part of their interventions with children and youth, ensuring professionals such as teachers have the skills, training, and tools to recognize child abuse, understand their responsibilities, and respond in supportive and compassionate ways, and ensuring that professionals who work in the field of child abuse have access to specialized training and support.

We are beginning to understand the issues of child abuse and their links to violence against women in far more sophisticated ways. We are building innovative, collaborative models. When we come together as government, communities, and organizations, we will be successful in making a difference for our children and ultimately building resilience for generations to come.

As a community, we have a moral and ethical call to action to protect our children in making child abuse and violence against women national priorities.

We thank you for your time and support for these very critical issues.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Thank you, Ms. Johnston and Ms. Ofrim.

Ms. Faraday, you have 10 minutes.

[Fay Faraday, Lawyer, Visiting Professor, Osgoode Hall Law School, As an Individual]

Thank you for the invitation to speak to the committee.

As you were told in the introduction, I am a labour and human rights lawyer here in Toronto and a visiting professor at Osgoode Hall Law School. For the last 25 years I have been working with low-wage migrant workers across all the different streams of temporary labour migration: the seasonal agricultural worker program, the live-in caregiver program, and the temporary foreign worker program.

What I want to speak about today is the structural problems that make women migrants particularly vulnerable as targets of sexual violence. The two themes I want to address are the need to remove those structural terms and conditions built into the temporary labour migration programs that make women vulnerable targets for sexual violence and to think about ways to build practices that build security.

The things that make migrant workers vulnerable to abuse, and particularly women to sexual violence, are conditions of dependence, isolation, precarious immigration status in Canada, and the lack of effective routes to raise complaints about their treatment. Those are the four things I want to look at.

What I'd like to do is also connect this with an example coming out of the Presteve Foods fish processing plant in Wheatley, Ontario. It's an example in which 42 Mexican and Thai women migrant workers came forward with complaints of not just employment violations, but sexual violence in the workplace. The employer was charged with 23 counts of sexual assault and 5 counts of common assault. In the end he pleaded guilty to common assault, but the allegations with respect to the sexual violence went forward in a human rights complaint before the Human Rights Tribunal in Ontario. What's remarkable about the Presteve case is not so much the vulnerability and the abuse that the women faced, but the fact that they were able to come forward and file legal complaints. What's remarkable about their situation is that they were unionized. They were able to bring those complaints forward with the backing of their union and community organizations in southern Ontario, but most women don't have that support. As you'll see, even with those supports, it was not sufficient for them.

The primary condition that makes women such vulnerable targets to sexual violence when they are migrants is the dependence that is created through the tied work permits. Under the temporary labour migration programs for low-wage workers, workers come here on permits that tie them exclusively to the single employer named on the permit, to the specific job named on the permit, in the location that's identified in the permit, and for the time period on that temporary permit. That single condition creates an enormous imbalance of power that makes it virtually impossible for workers to resist the abuse that they are subject to.

For many workers, the temporary migration programs also either require as an element of a program that their housing is tied to the employer, or in practice it has been and is in fact provided by the employer. That again creates another link that makes them even more vulnerable.

The third factor I want to draw your attention to is the fact that most migrant workers who are coming into these low-wage jobs are paying predatory, extortionate recruitment fees to come here. I did a study published in April that showed that two-thirds of live-in caregivers who are coming into Canada are paying recruitment fees of between $3,500 to $5,000. The fees go up from there: $7,000 to $9,000 or $12,000 for an individual worker coming in.

For the workers in the other sectors, in food processing, in restaurants, in other low-wage jobs, there are similar rates of paying these illegal recruitment fees. That ties them even more closely to the employer because they're unable to resist unfair treatment and sexual abuse on the job because they have to repay those recruitment loans.

What happened in Presteve is that these workers from Mexico and Thailand had come to Canada. They were tied to that employer. They had paid up to $10,000 in recruitment fees. When they arrived they were living in a bunkhouse on the employer's property, so were completely isolated from the local community, and were subject to extensive practices of sexual violence and harassment on the job.

The inability to complain about that is very real because they can't quit and get another job; they are tied to that employer. They can't quit because they have to pay back the recruitment fees. They are isolated by language. They are isolated physically. They are unable to access settlement services, which is another real concern. The federal organizations that provide settlement services to workers are only available to people with permanent status, not to those with temporary status. There's a real lack of protection for workers when they do come forward with claims of sexual violence.

In this case, the events of violence happened in 2007 and 2008, and the legal proceedings are still ongoing. There were 13 separate procedural motions before the Human Rights Tribunal. The final decision on the merits has still not come out. But in the course of that, these workers are on permits that are for only two years. The legal processes grind slowly. Many of the workers who were subject to the abuse have had to leave the country. There is no process in place to ensure protection for women when they do come forward. There's no access to open work permits or other forms of security that would allow them to remain in Canada, to earn a living while they're pursuing their legal claims, or to establish security so that they can pay off the fees that they had to pay to get to Canada.

What is important to recognize is that there are ways to change this. These recommendations have been made in the past. One of the key changes that needs to be made is to eliminate these tied work permits. There have been recommendations made repeatedly in the past for province-wide permits or sectoral permits that would allow workers to be able to move, or to change employers, when they are facing abuse. What's needed is very strong legislative protection and enforcement to eradicate the practice of predatory recruitment fees. Workers need access to settlement services to overcome the isolation. They need access to unionization and community networks. They need access to information about what their rights are when they arrive in Canada, and about who can help them, so that when these situations of abuse arise, they have someone to go to. They need effective remedies to ensure that their rights are rectified, so that they're not subject to a legal process that will drag on far longer than they can stay in the country. But ultimately, the bottom line is that they need access to routes to permanent status, because it is a matter of being trapped in a situation of temporariness, where all their entitlements to be in Canada and to have any rights in the country are dependent on ties to their employer.

The changes that have been made, both to the temporary foreign worker program, in June, and to the live-in caregiver program, have not in any way addressed the structural vulnerabilities that are created by those tied permits and temporariness.

I'd be happy to answer any other questions you have about this.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Thank you very much, Ms. Faraday.

We will now move on to the question period.

Mrs. Truppe, you have seven minutes.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'd like to welcome and thank everyone for your testimony today. It's always very helpful to hear from the different organizations on what great work everyone is doing, and to receive your feedback on what needs to be done.

Tracy, you had mentioned a couple of things here. I want to get your feedback on some of the projects that you're doing. When you were talking about the action plan, the $25 million that we had announced for investments includes not only the first nations, but Métis and Inuit as well. Of the other initiatives in the action plan, we've announced $200 million. Of that $200 million, $158 million is going to be for shelters and family violence prevention activities, which I think will be very helpful for a lot of the different organizations.

Can I ask you first, what is the Inuit population?

[Tracy O'Hearn]

The Inuit population is approximately 60,000.

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

Sixty thousand across Canada....

[Tracy O'Hearn]

Across Canada...and it is the fastest growing population in Canada.

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

It's the fastest growing?

[Tracy O'Hearn]

Yes, it is.

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

Okay.

You received funding, 2013-14, for $1 million in core and project funding from Aboriginal Affairs. What was that project? What was that used for?

[Tracy O'Hearn]

That would represent a number of things. The organization receives $396,000 a year in core funding, but that supports a portion of the board expenses, board meetings, a portion of rent, audits, and those sorts of operating costs.

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

A lot of administrative...?

[Tracy O'Hearn]

Yes. There's a great deal of reporting on all of our projects, so of that $1 million there would be a certain amount of core funding and the rest is through annual projects or primarily annual proposal-based projects.

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

The remainder, so between that $400,000 say, just to round it off, to the million is just for....

[Tracy O'Hearn]

That's right and that could represent one project that's $75,000 or a two- or a three-year project at a total of $300,000.