Status of Women Committee on Feb. 3rd, 2015

[Todd Minerson]

That's a great question. There are appropriate places and times for mixed gender, for separate gender, and for bringing everybody together. A lot of the work we focus on is with men and boys, and a lot of times we'll partner. For example, we've partnered with some of the Because I am a Girl initiatives in Toronto. We'll work with the boys for a little bit and other groups will work with the girls, and then we bring them together. That's when sometimes the magic happens: sharing some of that learning.

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

I know we've started doing a lot of different initiatives with men and boys. You can do as much as you want to help women and girls, but it'll never be successful; it's always going to be the same old same old because the men and boys aren't engaged. It's really good that everyone is now engaging the men and boys.

Back to what you're doing in the schools, with all the training you've done, is there a best practice, something that has worked within the school programs that you'd like to share?

[Todd Minerson]

There are a couple of challenges in working in the schools. Some are structural. How do you get to every school and every classroom? We also sometimes call it the dosage challenge: how many interventions, how many assemblies, and how many workshops before change really starts to happen?

We try to tackle it from a bunch of different angles. We try to maximize the dosage and the exposure that young people get. We try to get them involved, but we also work a lot with educators. We've tried to leverage and scale up the impact that we're able to have. For example, we've worked with teachers' unions in Ontario, with both the elementary and the secondary school teachers' federations. With both of them, we've developed e-learning modules for teachers. We can go to maybe 10,000 kids a year with the staff capacity we have, but we've now also created learning tools for teachers that reach 160,000 teachers in Ontario.

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

Wow. That's excellent.

[Todd Minerson]

So there's a way that we can scale up and leverage some of that impact.

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

I have one final question for you. We always talk about White Ribbon as the world's largest movement of men and boys. Do you have numbers on that? How do you track that?

[Todd Minerson]

It's hard to track it entirely accurately around the globe, because we're very decentralized. Some of my favourite people are like the guy in Scotland who e-mails us and says he wants to do something in his community.

What we do know is that in Canada each year we ship about 150,000 ribbons across the country. Those are communities and organizations that are doing activities and are ostensibly not getting more ribbons than they need. We also can track about 70 different communities across Canada that have done White Ribbon activities in the past calendar year. We have partnership projects with probably close to 30 different organizations across the country as well.

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

Great. Thanks for the good job you're doing.

[Todd Minerson]

Thank you.

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

Rosemary, I have a couple of questions for you. I'm just not sure how much time I have.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

You have one minute.

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

Okay.

I know that you work with communities for 10 to 12 years before they are phased out. What happens after the phase-out? Do you monitor them every few months? How do you know they're successful after that?

[Rosemary McCarney]

Typically it's an 8- to 12-year path to build local capacity in communities, but the reality is that because the communities we work in are on the edge from a vulnerability perspective—natural disasters, war, conflict—lots of times you step back and then you cycle back in. Hambantota, Sri Lanka, after the tsunami might be an example; we had literally just moved down the road when the tsunami devastated it. You know where things are and where people are supposed to be, etc., so you move back in. As the purpose is all about building sustainable communities that have the capacity to manage water systems and manage teachers councils, etc., oftentimes what we're doing is pulling that expertise from the community itself to move on down the road with us so that they're training other communities.

When I say “down the road”, it is: it's down the road. You seldom get to exit a country, but you do get to say that the human indicators are at a certain level so that we can exit the community, and then use those practices by engaging local leaders to transfer that knowledge.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Freeman, please go ahead. You have seven minutes.

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

Thanks to all our witnesses for being here today. I'm very, very glad to have you here.

My first question is for Jane Doe.

Ms. McCarney and Mr. Minerson were pretty clear about the fact that they see a national strategy to ending violence against women as something that's necessary. They had quite a few things to contribute, and I thank them for that. How would you see a national strategy for ending violence against women in Canada? What would be the essential elements? Would you see it as something useful?

[Jane Doe]

I am a critic; that's kind of my job. My job and my passion are to look at what's not working specific to sexual assault and violence against women generally. My position is that we do not understand the harm or the nature of the crime of sexual assault or rape; therefore, any solutions that we craft or any committees that we form, governmental or otherwise, that are working towards a solution, I question.

We are so far behind and so upside down about the nature of that crime and the effect it has on women who experience it, their children, and society as a whole. Everyone is affected by it. My position is that the national committee, and of course we need one, needs to spend a great deal of time first on process, as was mentioned. It's critical that this be done and that any committee understand the nature of the crime.

Does that sort of answer your question?

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

I think that makes a lot of sense. You were talking about the difference between how we're treating victims of violence and what we need to be doing to actually support them.

[Jane Doe]

And we don't understand that. We don't even believe it. We do not believe that women are treated this way in a court of law. With that denial and disbelief, it's impossible to....

We need to look at that before we can even think about solutions or national committees specific to that crime.

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

Can you expand on what it is we're doing to women who come forward in terms of the tendency to question victims in a certain way?

[Jane Doe]

I think it's interesting; we've all seen it on television and it's pretty much the same. Sometimes life is exactly like television. Women are annihilated. Everything about them is used against them in a court of law. It's general practice, and as I said, it goes on every day. I can't even begin to make a list or talk to you about the kinds of atrocities that take place. It's happening right now in this country.

I think we all need to go to a sexual assault trial. This is my thing; you are not allowed to form policy or committees until you've sat in on a sexual assault trial and you have witnessed what happens there, or at a minimum spoken to experts who have been there and brought you that information.

If we're going to go to the legal system as remedy—and it appears that the legal system is all we have—women must have their own legal representation. The crown does not represent her. We have to—we must—the government must look at how judges and lawyers are flouting the law on a daily basis.

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

We need to concentrate on empowering the women.

[Jane Doe]

Absolutely.

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

Is the part about the ability to remain anonymous and for confidentiality a big piece of that too?

[Jane Doe]

Absolutely.

Personally, I'm very proud of what I did. I would actually prefer to use my real name, but as I spoke to this sort of shaming and blaming.... I do many things in my life. I work in many different ways and I'm quite public under my real name. If I were to come out, all of that would fall away and I would be the rape victim. I refuse to wear that label. I simply refuse to wear it. It's too damaging; it's too harmful. Therefore, the publication ban assists me in that way.

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

Yet in a sense, the system is currently set up in a way so that unless a woman is almost willing to do that.... Even as Jane Doe you still wear this.