Status of Women Committee on April 21st, 2016

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

My first question was a general one on drug use and crime. Now I'm being a little more specific and asking if you would be able to comment on the association between drug use and the victimization of or violence against women. I'm narrowing in on one specific crime.

[Angela Connidis]

I don't have specific statistics. I think we could probably.... We might be able to find statistics on that. I would not want to make anything up.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Do you know where we could go to find that information or would you be able to send it to us?

[Angela Connidis]

We can look into it and get back to the committee.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Okay, that would be great. Thank you.

Am I out of time?

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

No, you have about two minutes.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

One of the things that's coming up again and again is the home environment or parents. It seems to be a really significant factor in all of this. Are any initiatives being taken to empower parents?

[Lori MacDonald]

Certainly from a crime prevention perspective when we look at the impacts of youth, at the kinds of crime prevention programs we're putting in place, it's not a singular issue. Risk factors and protective factors can include, as an example, kids who have hyperactivity issues or delinquency issues, family-related issues like a family member involved in crime, community factors. You would look at the relations to gangs, school factors such as whether they are truant and not going to school.

When we look at a crime prevention program, we look at all those things and then the parental piece becomes one part of it. It may not be like SNAP where we work with parents. It may be a program that talks about where they intervene with kids who are having difficulties at home and then give them tools to deal with those issues.

They're always interconnected in terms of the kinds of issues they're looking at and how they assist the kids in managing some of those issues because my risk factor could be more my peers than my parents. My parents are great, everything's good at home, but I have this group of friends who want me to join the gang. Conversely, I could have significant risk factors at home. For example, I could have one parent who has some substance abuse issues, and no parenting skills. It depends on the group they're dealing with, what the issues are, and then what factors they look at to try to positively influence the outcome of that program.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Thank you.

Ms. Nassif, you have five minutes.

[Eva Nassif, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

I'll give my time to Mr. Samson.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Mr. Samson, you have five minutes.

[Darrell Samson, Liberal, Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook, NS]

Okay.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to my colleague.

I'm an educator by training, so the topics of education and young people are close to my heart.

In Nova Scotia, where I'm a bit more familiar with the situation, police officers liaise with all secondary and middle schools.

Does this program exist across the country, especially in aboriginal communities and in areas where the people are much more vulnerable?

[Lori MacDonald]

Many school districts have community policing available, not all. It depends on the size of the community. Bigger urban centres tend to have the liaison available right in the school system. In rural high schools there's a much bigger population. They have more conflict, more issues with respect to drugs coming into the school, or concern about weapons. So it does depend on the province and the municipality and the type of school they have and the issues they are facing.

Most district school boards have a very strong relationship with their safety counterparts in the community, whether that's the local police or working with social service agencies to support the children. It would be very uncommon to see a school system now that wasn't connected to all those social services to support the issues they're facing, including the police in some fashion.

[Darrell Samson, Liberal, Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook, NS]

What's happening at that level is impressive.

I would just add the parent programs. There are many programs to help parents. My experience is that the parents we want to work with don't show up for those sessions in the evenings or on weekends. That's a big issue.

I'd like to take you back. You spoke of a curriculum and it's a provincial jurisdiction. As much as it is, I know that schools and school boards have enough flexibility in the curriculum, I believe, to integrate many of these programs you're talking about because they're very worthy and extremely important, with benefits to school boards, schools, families, and youth.

Is there any way you can try to reach out to school boards? You don't need to go directly to the province. As institutions of the federal government, we do so in many areas.

[Lori MacDonald]

I think it's a very good point you make, and I'll give a concrete example.

I just had the opportunity about six weeks ago to visit La Loche. I went with our provincial counterparts, including from education. Everyone sat at the table together to talk, in that there is an education issue, a safety issue, a health issue, a community resilience issue, and a policing issue. Regardless of whether they were federal, municipal, a local chief, or from the school system, all were invested in having a conversation about how to assist that community.

It's just one example, but you're right, many school systems now are looking for policing to come in to do programs with the kids about staying away from drugs. They're doing pathways programs, behaviour programs, at break time or recess time. They're doing cyber programs now through community policing.

It's evolving, of course. Certainly, it's probably not to the level that we would like it to be in terms of that curriculum, but I think there is opportunity there to advance exactly that conversation you're speaking about.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Excellent.

We're going to go to Ms. Damoff for five minutes.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Thank you very much.

I'm struck by how a lot of our questions are out of federal government jurisdiction in terms of provinces and education. I'm wondering if you see a role for the federal government to play in sharing best practices.

You talked about the hub in Alberta, which sounds like an outstanding model. Is there a role for us to be an information gatherer across the country and have that in one central place to be able to share with various school boards and provinces?

[Angela Connidis]

That's an excellent question, thank you. Yes, that is one of our major roles.

For crime prevention, for example, we have a working group. There's a five-year national action plan for crime prevention, and part of it is collecting the best practices across the country. We've now established a SharePoint portal. All jurisdictions identify their successful crime prevention practices and can post them on this portal so that they're available for everyone.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Do we do that specifically when it comes to young women and girls?

[Angela Connidis]

They can categorize their target audience. They can put it into those categories.

This is a bit of a pilot project to make sure it works, and then it will be opened up to all stakeholders, including educators.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

My other question had to do with cyber-bullying.

Does cyber-bullying fall under the umbrella of cybercrime? How does that tie together when we talk about cybercrime and cyber-bullying? Do they fall under the same umbrella?

[Supt Shirley Cuillierrier]

Cyber-bullying is not a crime, but the components constitute a crime in cyberspace, whether it's harassment or intimidation.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Okay, but when kids in particular are subjected to cyber-bullying, it's 24 hours a day. It's a lot different than when you used to go to school and could get away from it. Now they're going to bed with their phones under their pillows and it's going off all night long. That can also lead to other things.

I heard a speaker a few years ago talk about it leading to trafficking because of that, and girls—this was in the GTA--who you would think would be well established in school, and have a strong family and support network, end up being drawn in because they're are so afraid of being exposed.

Is there anything that's been done on that type of trafficking?

We talked about immigrants and different classes, but we didn't really talk a lot about that, because they wouldn't be people you'd expect to be pulled into trafficking.

[Supt Shirley Cuillierrier]

The work the RCMP has done around human trafficking is really focused on police officers and raising the awareness and having the investigative understanding among police officers. Our position has always been that if it gets reported, we need to understand the crime and be able to act on it.

One of the things that we explored was working with NGOs in Canada that have a better understanding of how to reach vulnerable girls. As an example, we've worked with the Canadian Women's Foundation in the past. We also work with PREVNet. They do a lot of research so that we can have an understanding in terms of being able to message or raise awareness around the issue.

It's still an area that's evolving in terms of our learning, but it is an area of special concern. The online luring of young girls, and luring them into human trafficking, is so under-reported. Many of those young girls don't understand that they're being trafficked. They're in denial to a certain extent. We need to reverse that thinking and have them acknowledge that they are being controlled and trafficked by professionals.

Then there are the teachers, because the teachers are often faced with hearing or perhaps discovering some of these incidents in the schools. It's an area where we need to do more work.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Thank you.

Ms. Sansoucy, do you have more questions? You have three minutes.