Status of Women Committee on Oct. 17th, 2018

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here today. I appreciate what you're sharing with us.

I'll start with Mr. Richter. I think you probably refer to a similar model that I know of in the health system where we spend 97% of our dollars on acute care and 3% on public health: We have the ambulances at the bottom of the cliff picking up the bodies, instead of somebody at the top of the cliff figuring out how to keep them from going over the cliff.

If you had your way, how would you design the system?

[Tim Richter]

How long have we got?

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

It's seven and a half minutes.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

I know it's a big question. I think I would use the term “wraparound services”, but I'm not sure where you would go.

[Tim Richter]

I think you're exactly right. I will give you an example of one of the things that we're learning. We've seen the housing first approach applied at the community housing program at Discovery House in Calgary. We've also seen that model replicated in, I think, eight or nine different cities around the country.

There's a lot to unpack here, but we have to look at the flow of people into the domestic violence system, what happens to them while they're there, and the movement of people out. I think you cannot separate housing stability and the support services that they need to address their trauma, make sure their kids are well, deal with their safety, help them address their mental illness, and help them address addiction concerns. I think that wraparound support in housing is very critical, ultimately, to their success.

If I were to redesign the system, I would look there. I would also look at rights-based approaches. The homeless system is built around the funding in the system. We talk about sectors in the homeless system. We have addictions, mental illness, new Canadians, indigenous, etc. What happens is that the homeless system is organized around the funding in the system, not the people in the system.

I think it's critically important. That's why I keep pushing to talk to these women of lived experience, because I think those of us working in the system need to be challenged and to listen to what these women are asking for, what they're needing, and what they think should happen for them versus what we have to give them.

I think if we were to reorganize and redesign the system, the homeless system and the domestic violence system would be one system. It would be coordinated across.... Everybody moving through would be visible to us. We'd know them all individually. We'd be able to provide individual support, and we'd understand what's bringing them there, and could better problem solve towards prevention. Then we'd have individualized solutions and we could test whether they're effective.

Most importantly, and this is why I'm a huge advocate for the right to housing, we need to respect their individual rights and choices and presume that these women and their children know what they need. They're competent, capable, smart, resilient women and they need to be supported, and they're capable of making choices.

I can't speak to the domestic violence system, but the homeless system can be very paternal. You'll get what we have to offer as opposed to what you need. A system designed around rights, that looks at long-term housing stability and recovery based on many of the principles of housing first....

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

You've mentioned funding. For capital funding we seem to be addicted to one-time funding and to one-time grants, not long-term. In operating, you have staffing, and this model creates a difficulty in the way you get and retain staff because of the operational structure we seem to be addicted to, which we view in a year-to-year.... How do you operate?

I think that's probably a significant piece of your institutions as they are.

[Tim Richter]

Lise spoke to this in terms of the funding for these shelters and for the staff, noting how different it can be from coast to coast.

I want to emphasize the point that one of my colleagues made, which is that the chronic underfunding of women's programs and services is in itself a form of violence against women. We don't have these services created specifically for women, and they're not well-funded.

The other thing we're understanding is that people who were in the homeless system, not suffering domestic violence, with very complex needs were not getting served well, because the staff working in those systems don't have the training or capability to work with very complex mental health, addiction and trauma needs. Investment in the skills in the sector is important as well.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

How much voluntary co-operation is there within the sector in Calgary? I think of the Calgary Catholic Immigration Society's work with newcomers, or of The Mustard Seed, or of some of the other institutions in Calgary. How is your co-operation with the other agencies in the community?

[Tim Richter]

The homeless system and the domestic violence system in every community, including Calgary, operate as completely separate systems. They don't communicate a whole lot. There has been very good work here in trying to connect those two systems.

To speak of federal jurisdiction, I was on the minister's advisory committee for the new reaching home strategy, and one thing the committee observed is that there's no national definition of homelessness. Communities use their own definitions, which narrowly define homelessness, restricting it to homeless shelters and homeless agencies and organizations. This specifically excludes women.

If you want to increase co-operation at the local level, one thing the federal government can do is have a national definition of homelessness, probably based on the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness definition, which specifically includes women. Women fleeing domestic violence are homeless.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

What you're saying is, instead—

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Martin—

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

—of focusing on bricks and sticks and structures, we need to focus on the clients.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Excellent.

Thank you very much, Tim.

Thank you, Martin.

We're now moving to Sheila for seven minutes.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

This question is for Women's Shelters Canada. Is there anything you wanted to add to the end of your presentation before you were cut off?

[Lise Martin]

Yes, it's a point Tim made about visiting shelters. I would like to extend to all of the members.... Since the House will be in recess the week of November 12, I would encourage all of you to go and visit a violence-against-women shelter. I'm glad to make that connection. You can get my email address and a way to reach me through Women's Shelters Canada.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Thanks.

You mentioned the uneven access that women have to protection from domestic violence across the country, its patchwork nature. The United Nations special rapporteur to end violence against women made the same observation about Canada's system and specifically called out the Liberal government for failing to keep its commitment to adopt a national action plan to end violence against women and girls.

Can you talk a bit more about how a national action plan would help?

[Lise Martin]

A national action plan would provide a baseline, and it needs to be resourced. Like the national housing strategy, which provides resources to the provinces and territories, an action plan on violence against women would need to do this in the same sense. We heard on Monday that this is the first step toward a national action plan so we hope that will come forward. Again, it's this patchwork of services and the example of housing that Tim was referring to.

One example is, in communities in Quebec you need to be living in that vicinity for 12 months before you can access social housing. Once again, I think in a lot of these systems it's often women who live in rural or remote areas who are most disadvantaged. When you have a shelter that has a huge catchment area, the women aren't living there for 12 months, so their stay in the shelter needs to be extended; they need that safety and then you get back to this capacity problem.

Length of stay differs across the country. Maximum length of stay in Alberta is 21 days. In Ontario and Quebec there's no maximum. In a number of other provinces it's 30 days. We need to be able to have some consistency across the country and of course address the funding deficit around this.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Is a parallel that the federal government gives the provinces and territories money to implement the Canada Health Act and then there's an expectation of equivalent access and standard of service? It would be a similar kind of federal, provincial, territorial—

[Lise Martin]

Yes, of how we're addressing violence against women.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Women's Shelters Canada was one of the signatories to the blueprint at the time, just before the 2015 election. Can you give us a sense of how much broader the support was or maybe file with the committee the names of the signatories to that national action plan blueprint?

[Lise Martin]

Sure, I can file the blueprint document. The document was collaboratively developed by 22 provincial and national women's organizations. It addresses the continuum of violence against women. Even though we're talking about shelters here, we all know there's a huge continuum when we're talking about violence against women. It's important that it all be addressed.

What's really important is that prevention and addressing immediate services go hand in hand. It's not one or the other. It's really important if we're going to make advances on this issue that we keep that in mind.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Last month I think your organization also released a report on the gaps in domestic violence policies and services across the country. Did you file that with this committee, or could you?

[Lise Martin]

I'm not sure of the process but I did give it to the clerk of the committee.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

That's super, thanks.

I'd also like to ask you to expand on your comments about operational funding. Can you tell us more about how the insecure and competitive, speculative characteristics of the federal government's program funding is taking workers' time away from that front-line service?

[Lise Martin]

As I said, the federal government's only program is through CMHC and that is not for operational funding. When shelters want to do additional work or find out a bit more information on the women they're serving, or how to provide better services to the women they're serving, it's a patchwork of projects, either through public health or Status of Women Canada. It's always very difficult to provide long-term stability and services, not only to the workers, but to the women. What often happens is that you build up these promising practices and then when the project funding ends, so does the promising practice, unfortunately.