Madam Chair and honourable members, I want to thank you for the invitation to appear before the committee today.
I would like to start with a quote from a research paper that I was part of a couple of years back—namely, that violence against women is a citizenship issue that fundamentally affects a woman's bodily integrity and personhood; it also affects her right to dignity, security, and freedom from discrimination. The previous two speakers spoke to this very eloquently. Simply speaking, what I'm trying to say is that education programs, social programs, and policies in Canada for preventing violence against women need to be framed in a way that is inclusive of all women irrespective of their culture, religion, background, race, or orientation.
My submission will be focused on three points today: sustainable and consistent education and social programs, peer-based and survivor-led programs, and the need for cross-sectoral policies and a national strategy. Most of these points were touched on by the previous speakers in one way or another, so I'll try to keep my comments as brief as possible.
In terms of the first point, sustainable and consistent education and social programs, in our experience over the last 10 years we have seen many innovative educational and social programs that have been launched and delivered in the field of violence against women. These education tools and programs are pertinent to the prevention of gender violence of various kinds, both interpersonal and systemic. Some examples of these tools are the South Asian Legal Clinic's own forced marriage tool kit; the Canadian Council of Muslim Women's resources, such as resources for teachers, family law materials, marriage contracts, and many more; the Community Legal Education Ontario's, or CLEO's, handbook entitled “Do you know a woman who is being abused? A Legal Rights Handbook”, which is accessed by thousands every year; Barbra Schlifer's resources on safety planning, risk assessment, and a graphic novel that was created by the survivors themselves; METRAC's legal education program; and the South Asian Women's Centre's grassroots training materials.
The list is long, and the work produced and the innovative programming done by some of these and many more agencies all across Canada are brilliant, but most of this work is dependent on piecemeal project funding. While the social programming sector is always thankful for the funding, it is continuously struggling. Even when their successful programs could have long-term impact, they do not even get a chance to do a complete feasibility study of the impact of these programs.
My colleague on the panel just before me spoke of a brilliant program that she is leading. That's one of my points about the peer-based and survivor-led programs. While these programs are really important for addressing violence against women, unfortunately they are spread out all across different departments of the government. They are not sustainable and consistent. They are very band-aid in nature. The constant pressure on the agencies for innovative programming without meaningful analysis of some of the existing resources speaks to the lack of interdepartmental knowledge on these issues. It also speaks to the fact that some of these programs are not even given enough chance to look at the real impact of the program in the communities.
In terms of the peer-based and survivor-led programs, which is my second point, my experience at SALCO, and the agency's experience itself, speaks to the fact that when we partner with agencies that have these kinds of programs, or when we connect our clients who are surviving violence with these programs, they work really well, and have a great and positive impact on the lives of survivors. Many agencies all across Canada—we heard from one today—have successfully run these kinds of programs and continue to run them. We have been doing this kind of education and prevention program work ourselves.
It is very important to have women and girls who are survivors lead the discussion on prevention, protection, and empowerment. It is important to note that when programs are led by survivors, it also adds a dimension to the service provision, which adds to their skill set, which adds to their employability, which adds to their own personal empowerment. Leading the discussion themselves on prevention also gives a true reflection of what the assumptions are about their cultures, what the assumptions are about their communities. As these are stories of resilience, where they themselves become the leaders, it definitely brings a new leadership community to the forefront as well.
In terms of the need for cross-sectoral policy, an all-inclusive national strategy, it is imperative for prevention of all forms of violence against women that the policies that are created be cross-sectoral and consistent in every sphere of service delivery, be it law and justice or be it health, education, immigration, and employment.
My colleague spoke before me about the condition of permanent residency that has been created recently by Immigration and about how the impact of that policy among immigrant women has been really harsh. What is important to remember is that violence against women is not one department's issue. It is not one political agenda. It is something that spreads across sectors, and the reason that policies need to be uniform is that they need to be sensitive and alive to the specific needs of women from marginalized communities, such as aboriginal women, Muslim women, South Asian women, and immigrant women.
A couple of points raised before are really important to note. One is programming with the men. Although we see that there is a shift, unfortunately all the programs I spoke about or the educational materials that have been put forward have been very women-centric until now. We haven't seen a lot of funding being given to education programs for men so far.
Another really important point, which I want to reiterate, concerns education among young people from the school system and leveraging curriculums in the school systems all across Canada.
The last point concerns not considering immigrant women as people who need to be saved, but rather treating them as allies, as leaders and people who can educate us about how prevention and protection work can happen successfully.
In conclusion, I just want to say that for prevention of violence against women it is important, moving forward, that the services and programming and policies for survivors shift away from their being held responsible for their own protection and for the crimes committed against them and from conditions such as “leave”, “report”, “decide”. They should be more about saying we will support you because we believe you. I think that is the culture shift we need at this point for a national strategy to prevent violence against women in a more meaningful way.
Thank you.