Status of Women Committee on Jan. 29th, 2015

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

Right, okay, just like anything else. Thank you very much.

The next question is for Jenny.

Jenny, your initial funding was obtained from the Bronfman Family Foundation, and then I think you received funding from Status of Women Canada and Health Canada. Do you remember when that was, and the amount that you received as well?

[Jenny Wright]

The St. John's Status of Women Council has been open for 42 years. It opened in 1972. It was opened by 10 very strong women in our province who organized that. They opened it with very little funding, and then in that fall they opened the women's centre.

Currently, the St. John's Status of Women, which runs the women's centre, and the women's centre are actually two different organizational entities. The St. John's Status of Women receives from the Women's Policy Office $127,000 a year. The women's centre is totally funded on fundraising and donations.

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

What about the funding you receive from Health Canada, or is that not correct? Did you ever receive any funding from Health Canada?

[Jenny Wright]

Not really. We don't have Health Canada funding. We get small grants from our local health initiatives. We also run a housing program, which gets provincial funding. That comes from what we call the supportive housing program, which comes out of housing dollars. We have AIDS-supportive housing.

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

Thank you very much.

Marie-Christine, you have a lot of good programs. You were talking about, was it, Pacifix?

[Marie-Christine Plante]

Yes, Pacifix.

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

You also mentioned something about the federal plan. What did you mean by that?

[Marie-Christine Plante]

The PACIFIX program is funded by the Community Action Program for Children. We receive about $60,000 a year for the project. It's part of our external services, and it enables us to work with mothers and children and, sometimes with fathers who are violent. Unfortunately, we don't meet too many of them each year, but there have been years where we've worked with six fathers. Thirty to 40 mothers take part in the program.

We have individual follow-up and support groups for mothers, and we work with children. Each of these approaches is always co-facilitated by a male and female worker. The goal is to use a positive model.

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

Thank you.

You said you won many awards, so congratulations on your initiatives on doing that for violence against children, increased parenting, etc. Out of all these great things you are doing and these awards you won, do you have a best practice? What is your favourite program or your favourite initiative that helps women and girls?

[Marie-Christine Plante]

That's a very good question.

It's hard to choose one good initiative. In fact, I think we have to use all the projects and be creative when we raise awareness. I listened to my colleagues and Ms. Duhamel and, in my opinion, it's a matter of funding and human resources on the ground.

Carrefour pour Elle, for example, covers a huge area, that of the Centre de santé et de services sociaux Pierre-Boucher, which goes from Longueuil to Contrecoeur. I am the only person at Carrefour pour elle who does awareness outside that area. Alone, I meet with about 2,000 people a year, but if I had a colleague, we could connect with twice that number. Actually, there are several…

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

I'm so sorry but I know I'm going to be running out of time.

Specifically with violence against children is there a program you could share with us? Of all the witnesses we have it's about violence against women and girls but not specifically children and you mentioned children. I was curious to see what you have done for children.

[Marie-Christine Plante]

We have the PACIFIX program. Otherwise, it's really high school students that we work with.

Currently, our project—“les couloirs de la violence amoureuse”—is really very interesting. The idea is to get youths involved through a multimedia labyrinth that shows them what dating violence is. We get them interested through questions, videos and applications. It allows us to connect more easily with youths in high school.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Thank you, Ms. Plante.

Ms. Freeman, you have the floor for seven minutes.

[Mylène Freeman, NDP, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

First, thank you all so much for the work you do, all of you, and thank you so much for being here.

Ms. Wright and Ms. Ryan, the legal group Pivot has found that Bill C-36 is going to have the effect of dramatically increasing violence against sex workers and their vulnerability to violence. Do you agree? Could you describe your view on this?

[Jenny Wright]

St. John's Status of Women runs the only front-line service to sex workers in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, it's called Safe Harbour Outreach Project.

We started SHOP as a pilot project in 2013, and it has been very successful. Since the introduction of the bill we have found many women have come forward with a great amount of fear and lack of understanding about the law. They are saying to us that clients are very nervous; they don't want to give screening information; they don't want to follow the normal procedures of screening that would happen for those in the sex trade to keep themselves safe.

So there is a lot of nervousness on both sides. The women are concerned and they have a lot of questions. They are very vulnerable and very much underground within our province. So trying to get to them and build trust with them and be able to hear their voices and provide services is very difficult, but we definitely have seen a greater fear for safety and that would be the predominant one: how do they keep themselves safe with this new bill?

[Mylène Freeman, NDP, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Anything that drives them further underground directly affects their safety, in other words.

[Jenny Wright]

Absolutely.

[Mylène Freeman, NDP, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

You have been very clear that you feel empowerment is a key to gender equality. Do you have specific recommendations around what the federal government could do to empower women, putting a gender lens on the budget and things like that?

[Jenny Wright]

Absolutely, a gender lens on the budget would be clear: better representation for women. But my suggestion around federal policy is please can we have a national child care strategy? Please can we have a national housing strategy? Women can't leave no matter how wonderful your program is if there's no affordable housing. They can't go back to work and school if there is no child care. These are the bigger issues that we need to begin to address. All our combined work and best practice at this table is phenomenal and we do very similar work. But we can't move women on and get them out of violence when there is no housing, no child care, that enables them to go back to school and to get away, and when our judicial system is traditionally unkind to them.

So if we flip the way in which we look at the social structures that keep and create federal policy then we can start to change that so women can get out and stay out.

[Mylène Freeman, NDP, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Could you describe for the committee how you see the correlation between economic inequality, financial burdens at home, and violence?

[Jenny Wright]

There are many correlations around the economy at home. If a woman doesn't have a job and child care, and is unable to leave, then she's stuck in that situation for a long time. There's also a very strong correlation between when the male partner loses his job and the rise in domestic violence, and woman are very much victims of that. That's something that we need to address. So in communities in Newfoundland and Labrador where mines closed and we had small communities where everybody lost their job simultaneously, we see huge rises in violence against women—interpersonal violence, sexual violence—and zero services in that area to address it. This comes down on the one women's centre that's up there trying to address that, yet they don't have the associated supports like policing, courts, and social workers and such to help women.

The correlation is strong. If you don't have a job, child care, and housing, you can't leave, and the more women are victims of their partner's job losses, the more violence increases in their homes, both to women and to children.

[Mylène Freeman, NDP, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

So economic support systems that we can put in place to support lower-income families and individuals help fight gender-based violence, is what you're saying?

[Jenny Wright]

Absolutely.

[Mylène Freeman, NDP, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

I now have a question for Ms. Duhamel.

You provide direct assistance, but you also work with prevention and respecting fundamental rights. What are the advantages of a prevention strategy and do you support the idea of a federal national prevention strategy on violence against women?

[Nathalie Duhamel]

I would support any government initiative that would fit into the work we are doing to prevent sexual violence. As a group or a community resource, we don't have a government's capacity to help prevent sexual assaults. I think this is crucial, and there is a great need for public awareness. We also need to fight against myths and stigma, make people understand the notion of consent and raise awareness among the general population.

Of course, the federal government could ensure that all information is provided in both official languages.