Status of Women Committee on Oct. 24th, 2018

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Good afternoon, everyone.

Welcome to the 117th meeting of the Standing Committee on the Status of Women. This meeting of course is in public.

Today, we'll resume our study on the system of shelters and transition houses serving women and children affected by violence against women and intimate partner violence.

For this, I am pleased to welcome our two panellists for today.

From the Beausejour Family Crisis Resource Centre, we have Kristal LeBlanc, Executive Director. If I've said that incorrectly, please make sure you change that.

From the YWCA Lethbridge and District, we have Jennifer Lepko, Chief Executive Officer.

We are going to allow each of you seven minutes.

We'll begin with Kristal. The floor is yours for seven minutes.

[Kristal LeBlanc, Executive Director, Beausejour Family Crisis Resource Centre]

I want to thank you for the invitation and the privilege of being able to share our experiences in providing services to female victims of violence and their children. I commend you for undertaking this study and caution you that the results and recommendations must include immediate action, as we are certainly at a time of crisis for the sector, and we are failing these women in many ways each and every day.

Women have long been the warriors and crusaders fighting for such services as shelters, sexual assault centres and domestic violence outreach services, to name but a few. In 2018, do we not think it is the time for others to join us in this fight?

When I began preparing for my statement today, I simply could not stop thinking about a quote from Evelyn Cunningham, an American journalist who extensively covered the civil rights movement. She said, “Women are the only oppressed group in our society that lives in intimate association with their oppressors.”

I'd like for each of you to keep this statement top of mind as you continue to understand the realities of our domestic violence shelter system across the country.

The Beausejour Family Crisis Resource Centre is a registered charitable organization located in Shediac, New Brunswick, whose mission is the elimination of family violence through intervention, prevention and education. The centre opened—

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Excuse me.

Can I have you slow down just a tad for our interpreters?

[Kristal LeBlanc]

Sure.

The centre opened its doors in 1997 with 1.5 staff. In 2017, with a staff of five, more than 2,000 interventions were completed, of which more than 700 were with victims of family violence; 78 of those were women, along with 32 children, who remained in the abusive relationship since our organization currently has no—that is zero—emergency beds.

Almost six years ago, in 2012, we began to reflect on the revolving door that was our service delivery model. Female victims would come to the centre for outreach services, but we had no beds. In our rural communities, there are more than 29 fish-processing plants, which employ the vast majority of our victims. As it stood, abused women from our communities had to go to the nearest urban shelter, which led to immediate job loss. Female victims were simply staying in the relationship or returning multiple times because it was too difficult to break free.

I began advocating for change locally but was told time and again that shelters in New Brunswick had not received an increase in over 10 years, and that there was no new money. One civil servant advised me that the day I would get a dime from her government would be the day they paid for her gym membership. Faced with this kind of resistance, the project was constantly delayed, and yet I continued to witness the devastating consequences of not offering housing supports.

Thirty-three women in New Brunswick are our “silent witnesses”—that is, women who have been murdered by their partners. I was not about to stand idly by and add another number to this list.

We are now coming out on the other end of a $4.2-million capital campaign called “Courage”, of which $1.5 million came directly from both the provincial and federal governments. It was not easy to secure, to say the least. I was never more aware that I was a woman in the working world than during the time I spent advocating for this project. I have been called such things as pushy, annoying and persistent, and I simply do not think I would have been so labelled if my name were Larry, Bobby or Joe. It seems that those working in this sector are also the subject of gender discrimination. As columnist Lois Wyse once said, “Men are taught to apologize for their weaknesses, women for their strengths.”

Our new facility will include, among other features, a provincial pilot model of a six-bed emergency relief wing divided into two three-bedroom apartments, as well as an increase in our second-stage housing units from two to seven. We put a nail gun to wood on October 8 and are in the middle of construction, with $600,000 left to raise. It has been the most valuable, albeit difficult, work we have ever undertaken as a grassroots community organization.

The question that women-based organizations are often asking themselves is why it has to be so damn hard. Women have been fighting since the 1970s for domestic violence services, and it's discouraging that this has not changed. There is, however, a beacon of hope in New Brunswick, as this past year domestic violence shelters in our province did receive a 10% increase, the first since 2010. Further, our provincial government supported a portion of our capital cost and will be providing an operational grant to help cover the cost of the emergency wing.

Much like other expert witnesses who have stood before this committee, I too must enforce that women across the country are not receiving comparable access to services since each shelter operates independently. This reality also makes it next to impossible to look at outcome measurements since services and supports vary widely across the country.

As pointed out by Lise Martin, executive director of Women's Shelters Canada, rural women are at an increased disadvantage since shelters in rural regions struggle to fundraise in a catchment area that has high poverty rates. Therefore, rural shelters are often limited in the supports they can provide.

Lack of funding and adequate services and spaces to meet the ever-growing demands of shelters for female victims is a reality in New Brunswick. Due to our aging population, more and more women over 55 are seeking shelter services, yet the original shelter system built in the 1980s was mostly designed to accommodate a younger generation.

Many of our female victims are turned away if they have complex mental health and addiction issues since shelters lack the capacity to deal with these issues. Furthermore, due to a large newcomer population, it can be increasingly challenging for shelter staff to accommodate the various linguistic and cultural needs because of limited resources.

I also urge the members of the standing committee to invite women with lived experiences to speak. While front-line providers can certainly offer you important insight on the realities of the sector, I would recommend that you also listen to the very women who wish to be truly free from violence.

In closing, I harbour the hope that one day soon the entire shelter system will be flipped on its head and that we will go boldly into uncharted waters, much like Interval House in Toronto did, the first women's shelter in Canada. This must involve a strong commitment from our federal government to invest heavily and consistently not only in capital contributions but, more importantly, in a cost-sharing arrangement with the provinces for core operational support. Domestic violence is a social disease, and it needs to be treated as such.

Thank you for your time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you very much, Kristal.

Jennifer Lepko is next, for seven minutes.

[Jennifer Lepko, Chief Executive Officer, YWCA Lethbridge and District]

Thank you.

Lethbridge is located in southern Alberta. We are a city with a population of just under 100,000. We are neighbours to the largest reserve in Canada, and per capita have one of the highest populations of immigrants and new Canadians.

The YWCA Lethbridge and District has been providing supports and services to southern Alberta for nearly 70 years. We specialize in domestic and sexual violence, housing and homelessness, crisis prevention and intervention, leadership and empowerment, and advocacy and awareness.

I would like to share some numbers: 6,490, 519, and 2,094. These numbers are from our YWCA Harbour House women's emergency shelter. Our outreach services provided support to 6,490 people in our last fiscal year; 519 is how many women and children we were able to provide safe beds for in our shelter; and 2,094 is how many women and children we did not have safe beds for.

The need in our area is great, and we do not have the resources we require to meet the needs in our community. We currently do not have transitional housing in our area, which is a significant gap. We are only subsidized by the government to run our shelter and require nearly $50 per day, per bed of donations in order to provide these services.

Statistics, although important, are just numbers. We are working with humans. Numbers and statistics dehumanize the individuals with whom we are working. We are talking about lives; we are talking about human beings. We need to remember that we are working with and supporting people, not numbers.

Imagine having to run for your life in the middle of the night to escape being beaten to death. For many, escaping is the time when they would be most at risk of losing their life. You show up at the front door of a shelter with nothing but the clothes on your back. You then have to share your story with complete strangers, and tell them about the horrors you have experienced, all the while blaming yourself for much of the abuse you have endured. You are then told that the shelter is full. Now what? You will likely return to your abuser, not because you want to but because if you had any other option you would have tried it before coming to a shelter.

Or maybe there was a bed available. You get shown to your room. It is a crowded room with six beds. You are now sharing your space with five complete strangers. You are safe, possibly for the first time in your life. Now you can take a minute to breathe, but not more than a minute, because you have only 21 days to completely reinvent yourself, overcome the trauma you have experienced, find somewhere to live, clothes for the next day, and so much more. By the way, you've been beaten, belittled, and made to feel that you have no value. You have no money, no friends; you feel like you are nothing and you have nothing. Now, go. I know I certainly wouldn't be able to do it, and I have resources and have not been subjected to extreme terror, trauma and violence.

I am sure you have heard the phrase, “Give a person a fish and they will eat for a day; teach them how to fish and they will eat for a lifetime.” That is what we need to do. We need to teach them and provide the time, support and resources for these human beings to restart.

The first thing we need is more shelter spaces, and along with that we need to ensure that there is supported transitional housing available for all shelters. We need to start at the beginning and teach, rebuild, and empower. The national housing strategy is a great start. It is investing in capital with the aim to build more affordable housing, but if you simply build more places to live and do not adequately support the individuals, there will not be success. There will be more empty, damaged houses.

We need to create homes. We need to walk alongside these individuals to provide them with the supports they need to succeed. When you moved into your first home, did you know when to take the garbage out? Did you know how to change the furnace filter? Were you gifted with the knowledge of how to cook a healthy meal? Did you have more than $30 left at the end of the month to feed your family?

Many of the individuals who are homeless or at risk of being homeless are living in survival mode. How do we expect them to understand all that it takes to live in and maintain a home when we don't provide them with the tools to do so? When someone is fleeing violence, their control has been taken from them, their ability to make decisions removed. They have been terrorized, and yet, we expect success in a short period of time.

What is required is programming that focuses on steps or stages: a step to heal from the bruises; a step to realize what just happened and to grieve what you have lost; a step to discover what the cycle of violence is and how it affects you and your children; a step to figure out what's next.

We need to provide safety and ongoing support. Just like children, they reach milestones and have to grow and develop. We don't expect them to do things before they are developmentally ready. When you have experienced trauma associated with violence, you are not developmentally ready to do the work required to start over again. We are forgetting the building blocks. Abuse is not an event; it is a process, just as it is a process to recover from the place that violence has taken a person. We need to teach them to crawl, to stand, and then to walk on their own.

The solution is that we need to invest in people. We need to make sure that shelters are provided with the necessary resources to provide that initial shelter, but also have the opportunity to transition them along their journey on a timeline that works for them. This isn't about deciding how long it takes. It's about empowering them to know they are capable and they are worthy. It's about starting over. This may seem very simple, but sometimes that's what we need to go back to. Just like when a child starts school, they don't start in grade 9 or 12. They start at grade 1 and build on the skills they learn at each step of the way.

What is needed? Support. But in order to be able to offer the support, what we need to do is invest.

Invest in the staff. By investing in the staff, we are able to effectively train staff, reduce turnover, provide reasonable wages, and support them through the vicarious trauma that occurs. They can't unhear a story. They live this life with their clients.

Invest in shelters. Shelters should not be rooms with multiple beds. Personal space and boundaries are one thing abusers take away from victims, and then we put them in a shared space. We need to invest in the physical space of shelters. They are not holding cells. They are places where an individual has an opportunity to regroup. We need to be strategic in the design of shelters.

Invest in people. We need to support individuals through programs that teach, understand, and empower. We need holistic programming that develops skills, from basic living skills to employment training.

Invest in supported transitional housing. Transitional housing should be available wherever a shelter is available. This is a crucial step in fleeing violence. This is where the growth and empowerment can happen. This is where they learn and grow.

Invest in the organization. Organizations know the work. They are invested in the people they serve. We need less filtering of the funds through multiple agencies. The organizations know how to most effectively meet the needs of the people they serve.

Again, this may appear as a simplistic view, but the solution is simple; it is support. Through support, we help people who have been broken to heal. By investing in people up front, we reduce the long-term costs. If we teach them to fish, they will eat for a lifetime.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Excellent. Thank you so much.

We're going to begin with our seven-minute rounds of questioning. We're going to start with Pam Damoff.

You have the floor for seven minutes.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, both, for being here, and more importantly for the work you're doing in both of your communities. What you're doing is very important, and I know you do a lot with a little. Thank you.

I'm going to start with you, Ms. LeBlanc. You mentioned that you do work with older women and women in rural settings. If you do as well, Ms. Lepko, please pipe in.

Quite often, rural and older women are overlooked when we're looking at this. I wonder if you could provide us with some specific recommendations aimed at that demographic.

[Kristal LeBlanc]

Absolutely. First, when it comes to how shelters are built, we need to take into consideration that we have women staying across the lifespan. That might mean that if an older woman is to feel comfortable to come stay at the shelter, she has her independent space so that she's not having to deal with little kids running around when she has gone through that stage of her life. Structurally, there are things that we need to take into consideration, and that's what we did with our new build.

Second, when it comes to programming, I think it's really important to tailor programming to women over 55. When I was doing my graduate work, we did studies on women over 55 and how shelters were adapting to older women. We were noticing that they'd love to, but they just didn't have the financing needed. We offer a support group in our community, and the youngest woman is 49 years old, so we make sure that the topics we're covering are exactly what they need for where they are at their stage of life.

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

Did you want to add to that?

[Jennifer Lepko]

I would love to just add that one of the things we see is that we're serving individual whose bodies are those of seniors. They need the supports of seniors because of the lifestyle they have been put through.

One piece that is a huge gap is the medical treatment. It's about being able to connect with services that offer the medical resources that we don't offer in a shelter. Again, in designing those shelters, we need to take this into consideration because, for somebody who has been abused significantly, their body needs that medical approach, and that's not in our wheelhouse.

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

One of the challenges we run into, as I'm sure you recognize—for example, with the national housing strategy—is that the money comes from the federal government and then it feeds through the province. In my area, it goes to the region of Halton, and then it eventually gets to the organizations. Up here, we have very little control over how that money is being spent. There's a logical reason behind that, because the thinking is that the municipalities and the regions know best what's needed.

When we're looking at the gaps that currently exist all across the country, can you focus on what we can do up here to assist you where you are? You mentioned operational funding being one of the things. Are there any other areas where you can see specifically that the federal government could step in to try to fill that gap?

[Kristal LeBlanc]

I do feel that by conducting this study and doing the research you are doing to better understand what's going on.... Perhaps when that transfer payment is done, there is still some say from the federal government.

It is a national housing strategy, and as much as the province should know—and they do.... One of our biggest challenges was that when we tried to get funding, both the federal and the provincial governments were claiming that it was their money, and it can't be both. That was a large challenge that we encountered for quite some time.

If there could be a bit more transparency there and we could still have some involvement from the federal government on how those funds should be disbursed, I think that would be important.

[Jennifer Lepko]

It's about eliminating some of those steps. I realize it's about engagement from all those levels. As an example, a few years ago, the federal government announced $39 million going towards housing in Alberta. When it hit our doorstep, we had our programming cut in half. We think that the money is going to the housing, but in Lethbridge, significant programming was actually reduced or eliminated altogether. We have these news articles going out to the public that we're trying to look for donations from them, and they're saying, “Well, you just got $39 million. Why do you need our help?” Where that $39 million is being filtered to is not necessarily where it needs to hit.

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

You need some accountability there as well, so that people can see where that money is being spent.

[Jennifer Lepko]

Absolutely.

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

We had DAWN Canada, the DisAbled Women's Network, here saying that 35% to 80% of women who are coming to shelters have had some kind of a traumatic brain injury.

Do you have any programs or screening for women when they come in to be able to deal with that?

[Kristal LeBlanc]

We'll screen for it, but programs...? No. It's lack of funding; it's not because we shouldn't be doing it.

[Jennifer Lepko]

We screen as well. We partner up where we can with additional agencies, but our programming is designed around the individual. When we offer programming, it is about building the building blocks for that individual, and if that is assistance with a traumatic brain injury, that can be supported by the same means. I'd say we're looking at a trauma in 100% of the people who are accessing our services.

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

You mentioned 21 days, that when someone comes in they're there for 21 days. Why is it so short? Is it funding?

[Jennifer Lepko]

A large part is funding, the need. You'll see 21days, 28 days. It does vary to some degree. The idea of the shelter is to provide that initial emergency support. Shelters are not just a band-aid. They're a very significant piece. They're about women and children being able to regroup and figure out what is happening next.

The need is for the supported transitional housing or second-stage housing that I talked about. We need stages in the development of this new person who is overcoming this trauma.

You will see a variance. It is largely due to funding.

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

The only reason I ask is that I think at Halton Women's Place, in my area, the women are there for about six months.

[Jennifer Lepko]

That would be more of a defined second-stage shelter type of placement, as opposed to an emergency shelter. Again, it's how it is defined and what services are in the area.

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

I think I'm out of time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

You have six seconds left.

Thanks very much.

We're now going to move over to Rachael Harder for seven minutes. The floor is yours.