Evidence of meeting #115 for Status of Women in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was homelessness.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Tim Richter  President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness
Lise Martin  Executive Director, Women's Shelters Canada
Paul Taylor  President and Chief Executive Officer, Mortgage Professionals Canada
Jacquie Bushell  Residential Mortgage Specialist, As an Individual
Bob Bratina  Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, Lib.

4:20 p.m.

Residential Mortgage Specialist, As an Individual

Jacquie Bushell

Often the women in abusive relationships are not granted the opportunity to have credit. For example, they have extended credit on their husband, secondary credit cards. They don't have their own credit.

4:20 p.m.

President and Chief Executive Officer, Mortgage Professionals Canada

Paul Taylor

Right.

To respond directly to the question, it might be smart for some group such as CMHC, which provides mortgage insurance to folks who have the smaller down payments, to potentially provide products that are specifically tailored to individuals who can show that they've been victims of this type of abuse, violence, and in addition to some of the traditional underwriting criteria regarding credit scoring or just down payment, to make particular allowances or buffer their credit specifically for those folks to help them transition into something that would provide a family unit for them to transition out of those shelters.

4:20 p.m.

Conservative

Martin Shields Conservative Bow River, AB

That goes back to what I mentioned to Mr. Richter.

When we talk about wraparound services, if we have people in the shelter system, how do we build that wraparound service so they get to that point? That's where I'm going in the sense of transition. If we don't have the wraparound from where they enter a system, for whatever reason—abuse and all of the things we might have said—how do we get them to that point? Where is that end product if we don't have the wraparound in connection between that end and this beginning? That's the point, in the sense of where I was going.

4:25 p.m.

President and Chief Executive Officer, Mortgage Professionals Canada

Paul Taylor

Recent changes made rental vacancy rates really tight in a lot of areas of the country, too, which has just increased overall costs of living for people. As an individual with children finding a place to live, any sort of assistance that can be created through the insurance mechanism, which really is supposed to be the social portion of the financing world, specifically targeting this group of disenfranchised individuals would be a very welcome addition to that structure, I think.

4:25 p.m.

Conservative

Martin Shields Conservative Bow River, AB

Mr. Richter, one more time, you have said there is no homogeneous group.

One of the groups we have more of, and I'm familiar with, is the newcomers in our communities. Do you see any differences in that sector as our communities have changed over the last decade? Is there anything there that has created changes for what you have to do in providing services and what we need?

October 17th, 2018 / 4:25 p.m.

President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness

Tim Richter

I'll answer that question, but I also want to address the earlier point about staying focused on domestic violence shelters. I take the point of the focus of the committee, but the fact of the matter is that the people in those shelters are all homeless. It's important to think about the people in the system—the people in the shelters—and not just the structures themselves.

In terms of new Canadians, yes, I think we're starting to see more of that, especially in Ontario and Quebec. It's not an area that I have specific knowledge of. I do know that new Canadians, migrants and undocumented people are finding increasing barriers. We have to be mindful. One of the things the committee can explore is what the regulations are around immigration and whatnot that would trap women in marriages because they can't move on.

4:25 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Karen Vecchio

Excellent. Thank you very much, Tim.

Bob, we have about three minutes, so you can fill in those three minutes.

4:25 p.m.

Bob Bratina Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, Lib.

I'll try to. Thank you.

I'm glad you mentioned, Ms. Martin, your final point. Mr. Richter brought up a similar one. We men should go out and meet with women and visit shelters. I was a downtown city councillor in Hamilton. Mr. Serré, my colleague, was also a councillor, and we do a lot of work at the council level.

Frankly, I was very disappointed in the community housing that was available, because the transition out of the shelter.... Women are in Phoenix Place in Hamilton and different places, and at some point they're going to have to leave. Quite often, because of the mortgage issues and all that, they will go into a city-owned building. Those buildings are not the best situation. I saw vulnerable senior women living next door to drug activities and all kinds of things.

Do you see a continuum here that we could exploit with our municipal backgrounds to encourage better responses?

I'll tell you, when I was on that housing board, they would argue about how they could turn the empty units over more quickly so that they wouldn't have so many vacancies, as opposed to the issues, personal issues, facing women who were living in very quiet desperation.

4:25 p.m.

Executive Director, Women's Shelters Canada

Lise Martin

I agree there is a role in terms of the mortgage piece, and you've made valid points for a certain number of women. The reality, in terms of the focus of this study, for women in shelters is that most of them would go into social housing. That really is the crux of the problem. There is not enough social housing, and it's not necessarily safe.

I think that's why we would like to see the expansion of second-stage shelters. These are apartment units. The housing first model has often not worked for women fleeing violence, just because of definitions of episodic homelessness. They're not necessarily on the top of the list, although I do know of a few case studies where this has been adapted. I think it really is around this expansion of the social housing piece.

The national housing strategy has indicated that 25% of all investments need to be dedicated to women. We've asked CMHC how that's going to be measured and with what kind of transparency. We don't have a sufficient or a satisfactory response to that. I think we'll have to keep on measuring that.

The end game is that we need more resources in this. Tim has made a lot of valid points. We also consider that women in shelters are homeless, but we do have to increase the amount of investments that we dedicate to this issue.

4:30 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Karen Vecchio

Excellent. Thank you very much.

I have one point of clarification, Lise. You talked about maximum stays in shelters and the fact that some provinces have them and some provinces don't. Could you identify which provinces don't have a limitation on how long somebody can stay? In the provinces that do, what is their time frame? If you don't have that top of mind right now, could you send that data in?

4:30 p.m.

Executive Director, Women's Shelters Canada

Lise Martin

It's in the “Building a National Narrative” report. The two provinces that don't have limits are Ontario and Quebec.

4:30 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Karen Vecchio

All right, fantastic. Thank you very much.

I would like to thank our panellists. Tim Richter, thank you very much for being on video conference. Lise Martin, Paul Taylor, and Jacquie Bushell, thank you very much for all of the information.

We're going to suspend for about two minutes so that we can go in camera.

[Proceedings continue in camera]