Status of Women Committee on Oct. 24th, 2018

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Awesome.

Welcome. It's good to have both of you. Of course, Ms. Lepko from Lethbridge, I'm happy to have you here in Ottawa.

My question is going to Jennifer. You used the phrase, “We need to...teach, rebuild, and empower.” You've chosen some really strong words, and each of them is significant.

Would you be willing to lead us through what each of those means? When you say we need to teach, we need to rebuild and we need to empower, what would that look like?

[Jennifer Lepko]

Absolutely.

First, we need to teach individuals a bunch of different skills. When people have experienced some sort of trauma or come from a traumatic experience, they're living in a survival mode and they don't necessarily look at what's happening around them. It really is about what is happening right here, right now. We need to be able to give them the skills they need, and it's going to be very individual as to what types of skills they need to move forward. It might be learning about how the violence has affected them. It might be learning how to cook a meal that isn't just a quick and easy get-away type of meal. We need to provide skills, actual real-life skills.

On rebuilding, we need to rebuild this individual. As I stated earlier, they've been stripped down. They've had their decision-making processes taken away from them. Abuse is about power and control, so they're starting fresh, and it's about how we rebuild that individual so they know they are capable of making these changes, learning these skills, moving forward, and doing it on their own.

As for empowering, each of us needs to be empowered. We need to have purpose. We need to feel like we're valued, and that's how we're going to make it in our life. It's about those opportunities of being empowered.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Could you maybe talk a bit about the partnerships that would be involved in being able to pull off something such as that?

From the federal government flows funding that comes through the province, through the municipality, and then finally now you have your small chunk that's left over. As an organization on the ground, is there potential for partnership with private industry? Is there potential with not-for-profits or with faith organizations, just caring individuals who want to come in and volunteer? What does that practically look like in terms of the delivery of services on the ground?

[Jennifer Lepko]

Partnering is very crucial, especially when you come from a non-profit world. It is something that you have to use to survive. By all means, we partner with a number of agencies and organizations within Lethbridge to provide these services.

As a YWCA, we offer multiple programs within the umbrella of the YWCA. We see the impact that each program has on these individuals, because we do offer multiple services in one location. It's those wrap-around supports, and that's what these individuals need. When we're in a location such as Lethbridge, we're able to have those relationships with our other partners that we can connect with and do that warm transfer. It's very nice to be able to have those within the building. You know these people and they don't even necessarily have to leave the building in order to access these services.

All of these pieces are crucial. We need to be able to have them learn about employment. Because we don't have enough funding to provide staffing to help support them with that, we need to access other organizations that might provide that. As with anything, if we had the people power to provide the supports, which is funding, we'd be able to do a much more holistic, wholesome support from one area.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

For sure.

I would like to return to the topic of transition housing, and maybe each of you can comment separately on this.

Ms. Lepko, you mentioned, of course, that it's lacking in our community.

Ms. LeBlanc, I missed part of your presentation and I apologize for that. I'm not sure if you referred to it at all.

From my estimation, that is a really key component. We don't want individuals to reside in a shelter as a long-term solution, so that transition housing is really important. Ideally, we'd want people to move along the housing continuum to a place where they're in independent housing that is safe and secure, where they feel empowered to live a life of dignity, worth, value and significance.

Maybe each of you can comment on that for a moment.

[Kristal LeBlanc]

In our rural community, we didn't have any transitional housing. We had two second-stage units. What I spoke about was our $4-million campaign that we've been doing for quite some time.

It is all transitional housing; it's just at different stages. Across the country, there are stage 1, stage 2, and stage 3. Stage 1 is anywhere from 30 to 90 days. That's the variety we were speaking of. Sometimes it's 21 days, depending on how busy it is. Stage 2 is up to a year. It can be extended to two years. Stage 3 is really, at that point, helping her transition out into regular subsidized housing or independent market living.

[Jennifer Lepko]

Yes, it's crucial to have those stepping stones.

One of the biggest things, which often gets overlooked when we think of transitional or second-stage housing, is the safety mechanisms that need to be put in place. In many cases, these women and children are being hunted, and buildings are not made to protect them. The individuals who are hunting them are very smart and can manipulate all sorts of situations. Therefore, not only do we need to put the supports in place, but we need to make sure that there is adequate safety as they move forward.

As I said, fleeing violence is the most dangerous time for women and children. We need to be very cognizant of that and make sure that we are putting the safety pieces in place as well—and yes, to eventually go beyond that. The reality is that some may never be completely safe without those safety mechanisms put in place for them, and we need to invest in that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

You have four more seconds for a quick question.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Oh my gosh, I have only four more seconds.

Ms. Lepko, really quickly here, we're without that transitional piece. What would an ideal scenario look like in our context?

[Jennifer Lepko]

An ideal scenario would be money to build a building. We don't have the space on our site. We need investment in capital and investment in the operations to provide the support, along with the investment in security pieces. That would be built into the capital piece.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you very much.

We're now going to move on to Jenny Kwan.

You have your seven minutes, and you have the floor.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Thank you to both our witnesses for their excellent presentations.

Both of you mentioned the need for the three stages of housing—first, second, and third—and I think you explained quite clearly why that is necessary. Just to impress a point on the committee about the lack of those services, it was mentioned—I think you mentioned it, Ms. Lepko—that 2,094 women were turned away. What happens to them when they're turned away?

[Jennifer Lepko]

We often refer to it as our turnaway rates. When someone comes to us and we do not have that safe bed, we sit with them and we safety-plan with them. We look at other safe options. We also connect them with our outreach team. Our outreach team will continue to work with them from that day onward, trying to access somewhere safe they can be, whether that's in the city or in another city. They will give them the resources to other community agencies that may be useful, try to seek some funding for housing, look for housing, and all of those pieces.

We connect them, but the reality is, if they're showing up in the middle of the night battered, bruised and bleeding, with their child standing right there crying, and you have to tell them you do not have a space for them, that's probably one of the hardest things that our staff ever have to do. It's just a reality. Where does that individual go? Typically they return and often pay the consequences for returning.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

For communities and even for organizations like yours, without funding, you're not able to provide that necessary support for women and children who are fleeing violence, and this is their outcome.

I come from British Columbia. I come from Vancouver, so we have a variety of supports in place, but, even then, we run into that situation where there are no beds available. I'm very cognizant of the fact that in rural communities there are simply no services available. In their situation, the risk and the danger that the women and the children face are just unimaginable, but that is their reality each and every day.

If you had your wish, your dream, to say to the government that you need X, Y and Z to be done, what would you say to them? Should the government be looking to make sure that rural communities have first- and second-stage housing, that you have core funding, for example? I don't want to put these words in your mouth, but maybe you can tell us. What is it that you need?

[Kristal LeBlanc]

I think that core funding is always going to be something that women's organizations are going to fight for across the country. I'm sure I'm not the first to say it, nor the last in this committee study, because at the end of the day, we can't do our jobs effectively if we don't have that core funding. The amount of bugging and pushing in trying to get a small grant to operate our first transitional housing in a rural community is unbelievable, when we were turning people away.

Perhaps someone else who has been a witness at the committee has already mentioned it, but when the adequate supports aren't there for wraparound services, we know that statistically women will come to a shelter and leave seven to eight times before they leave for good. Perhaps if we had that core operational funding to get the job done right the first time, we wouldn't have that statistic of them coming and going. Not only does that impact them for their trauma and the long-term consequences, but think about what it's doing to child witnesses.

First and foremost, it's core funding, and doing what's being done today, listening to experts who work in the field and deal with clients. We were told year after year that there was no money. We got to a point where a woman came to see us and she was in extreme danger, but we couldn't offer her a bed because we just didn't have one. She chose to go back home. She thought she was safe to do so, but she wasn't. He shot at her repeatedly through the house and if it wasn't for her child, she'd be dead today.

We built our building from that consequence, saying that we have to do something, and it's going to be hard, but we can't keep going with the status quo.

[Jennifer Lepko]

I think, again, that's key. We need that investment from the federal government. Safety is a right. We all deserve to be safe, and the women and children's voices are not being heard. They're the ones who are being pushed under the table.

We're hearing a lot about the opioid crisis. We're hearing a lot about housing and the homeless population. The majority is identified as male, but it's not. Women are homeless, too, and it looks very different for women. We need to recognize that we're not looking at the place where it needs to come from. We need to look right from the source, which is, again, women.

We also need to be adequately funded. It's not just about funding. Our staff are among the lowest-paid staff, and they're helping people live. They're helping human beings. We need an investment in the capital to build more space, effective space. We need to be smart in our design. We need adequate funding to employ our staff. We need to make sure that the services are there for our clients.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

I have less than two minutes left, I think.

I wonder whether, after the committee meeting, you could provide a submission to this committee to give some examples of what adequate funding looks like, so that we could actually have something. Would it be your recommendation for this committee, with the budget coming up, that this be in budget 2019, with no more stalling and saying, “It's not me, but the provincial government” or someone else, everybody else except for us? We all have responsibility; let's get on with it.

Could you do that for us, please?

[Jennifer Lepko]

Absolutely.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

I want to touch on something else. I think I still have one minute.

I come from the non-profit sector. I dealt with a woman fleeing violence, a Chinese woman who didn't speak English very well. We didn't even have access in Vancouver to that language capacity. She went back to the abuser.

Maybe you could expand on that, the crucial supports that are necessary for the cultural differences and the language capacity.

[Kristal LeBlanc]

We need translators and people who can help us connect with people from different cultures. I'm in a rural community in which the vast majority of people who are working in the fish-processing plants are from different cultures. It's hard enough as it is to connect with a survivor, because we're never going to say that we truly get what they've gone through, but an additional barrier is created when the cultural barrier is there. We need those wraparound supports as well.

[Jennifer Lepko]

Absolutely, we need to invest in those.

It's not just about their ethnic culture, but the culture they come with, whether from their family or wherever, and their attitudinal belief about where they stand as individuals in their pecking order. Again, it's really about meeting them at whatever point they're at, educating them, teaching them their value and their worth so that they can move forward and have options.

It's not about us making decisions for those individuals; it's about providing them the options, so that even if they do leave, they know they have a place to go.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you so much for the work you do.

[Kristal LeBlanc]

Thank you.

[Jennifer Lepko]

Thank you.