Status of Women Committee on Oct. 29th, 2018

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

I call the meeting to order.

Good afternoon. First of all, I would like to apologize to all our wonderful witnesses who have held on. I recognize that we're an hour behind, and I do apologize for the loss of your precious time, especially as we recognize from this study that the work you do is so sensitive to time. I was going to read my comments in French, but I first want to make sure that everything's going well.

We're going to be merging these two panels. Each group or each individual will have seven minutes to present, and then we'll be starting our rounds of questioning.

Welcome to the 118th meeting on the status of women.

The committee is resuming its study on the system of shelters and transition houses serving women and children affected by violence against women and intimate partner violence.

We have all our groups here. I am pleased to welcome Megan Walker, from the London Abused Women's Centre, who is the executive director. From Windsor-Essex Transgender and Allied Support, we have Jayce Beaudin-Carver, executive director. Donna Mullen and Marilyn Ruttan are appearing as individuals. That is our first group.

Joining them today we have Grace Costa, general manager for Eva's Satellite, on video conference. From SAVIS of Halton, we have Alma Arguello, executive director, and Tara Setaram, who is the crisis counsellor for human trafficking.

We're going to start with Megan Walker for seven minutes. Megan, you have the floor.

[Megan Walker, Executive Director, London Abused Women's Centre]

Thank you so much.

The London Abused Women's Centre provides advocacy, support and counselling to women and girls over the age of 12 who are experiencing violence from their intimate partners in sex trafficking or prostitution, harassment in the workplace, or harassment by other means.

We are a non-residential service. We believe very much in supporting prevention, which is of course much easier to address than it is to respond to the issues that women face on a daily basis.

We are not a Housing First agency. We believe that Housing First is really restrictive. We propose “women first” instead, and making sure that we listen to the needs of women and have appropriate services available for them as needed.

It's a very difficult time for women right now. Between January and August, we saw 106 women murdered, almost exclusively by men. Of those 106 women in Canada who were murdered, 33 were killed by their intimate male partners, and 70% of them were killed in their own homes. We know that the most dangerous place for women is not in a back alley but in their own homes. We have to work to change that.

We have a major issue with referring women who require shelter to shelters. Shelters are overflowing. We are now transporting some women and paying to accommodate them in agencies across the country. That shouldn't be.

Women are arriving at shelters with their children and with their clothes in the trunk of the car, but they can't access those shelters. It creates an extremely dangerous situation for women and girls. We are very concerned about the lack of shelter space.

We also know from a Housing First perspective that in the municipality of London, Housing First means that every woman gets into a home and not a shelter. We are now seeing the beginning of the end of Salvation Army shelter beds for men and women, because they are going to have to close those beds over the next three to five years to accommodate the principles of Housing First.

It's very difficult for women and girls to access housing, even when they have rent supplements. Through the provincial government's trafficking fund, we have been given rent supplements of up to $600 a month to give to women who are leaving trafficking. Combined with the city and the Ontario Works allowance, they have around $1,100 to $1,200 a month, yet there are problems, because a one-bedroom unit in London is $847 a month; a two-bedroom is $1,055; and a three-bedroom is $1,193. As you can imagine, there's very little money left to spend on food, clothing, or care for your children when you're in that situation.

We also find incredible discrimination by landlords against women who are being abused or trafficked. Many women are turned away by the landlord, even when they find a home they can afford. This is very difficult for us, because those women then are literally left homeless. They have no shelter bed and no accommodation in an apartment.

We are fundamentally supporting a recommendation that goes to the source of the problem, which is that male violence against women is an epidemic. If we were talking about violence in any other format except against women and we knew that 106 women were murdered this year, largely by men, with 33 murdered by their intimate partners, all bells and whistles would be going off. If it were an epidemic with respect to a flu or SARS or anything like that, we would be taking immediate action, yet for some reason we still continue to minimize the lived experiences of women and pretend it doesn't happen.

It's time to get our heads out of the sand and realize that we all have a role to play, especially government, in preventing women across this country from being murdered, particularly when they're being murdered by a man who is supposed to love them, and in their homes, which for most of us is the safest place we can be.

That's our first recommendation: we want the Government of Canada to recognize this as the epidemic it is.

Further, we want the government to respond to this epidemic by including full core funding for all services that are helping women live their lives free from violence and abuse.

We want to see major public awareness and education programs so that future generations of girls and boys grow up knowing that this is wrong, that the value women and girls have is not from the attention paid to them by boys and men, but in fact from who they are as people.

We want men and boys to know, growing up, that being macho is no longer something that we talk about. In fact, what we talk about is being a man who considers women to be human beings, to be respected and loved and cared for.

We also want to see a heavy investment in prevention. As I say, I think if we can see the results of one woman being alive today because of preventive action, we've done our job. We need to do that with much more frequency and with a much greater investment.

I also should say that we do provide service to many trafficked women. Overall last year we provided service to 6,000 women and girls, and of those, 1,400 identified as being prostituted and trafficked. We have no safe house anywhere in the region, and these women don't want to go to shelters, where it's like a flophouse where they have to go and leave, and go and leave. They also don't want to be in a domestic violence shelter, because their needs are so different. They want their own space, a place they can call their own, where they are safe from their pimps.

In your discussions around shelters, we would like to see that you are also including safety for sexually exploited and trafficked women and girls.

I did it with one second to go.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

You're fantastic. Thank you very much.

Jayce Beaudin-Carver, you have the floor.

[Jayce Beaudin-Carver, Executive Director, Windsor-Essex Transgender and Allied Support]

I want to thank the committee for asking me to participate in this important conversation regarding the state of shelter services for women and children.

I was confused by my invitation to address all of you here today. Yes, I am a woman who has worked in the women's homelessness sector, and yes, I am a woman with lived experience. However, the only narrative I can provide for you today is from the marginalized perspective of the most underserved community in Canada. I am the founder and executive director of Canada's only transgender and family support centre, based in Windsor-Essex.

Our agency is completely unfunded by any level of government, and operates solely by donation and contract services to other organizations. I'm also a transgender woman who has experienced homelessness, and I have first-hand knowledge of the barriers faced by my community when attempting to access services.

This year, for the first time, the Windsor community added gender identity, with transgender being one of the options, to the list of questions asked during the Point in Time Count. Even though our community chose to gather this information, no level of government requests this information outside of the binary choice of male or female for any sort of data collection. The administrators of the count were surprised to see that 3% of the community identified as being part of the trans community.

To the larger community, 3% may not sound like an alarming number, but we know trans-identified people are still afraid to self-identify for fear of not being able to access gendered services and of what they may experience when accessing those services.

Having worked in a women's shelter, I know these shelters are always at capacity, and in Windsor we actually have just 12 beds for single women. This has required shelter operators to be creative and use crash mats to accommodate additional women above what they are funded for.

For trans women who are accessing emergency shelter that is already at capacity, asking for any kind of accommodation to feel safe in and accessing that vital service is impossible. Our community is also one of the only ones I've ever heard of that does not have a family shelter program and does not use a motel program, which most communities use as an overflow program.

We know that there is no research currently that can give accurate statistics on homelessness and domestic violence in trans communities. There are very many systemic reasons for this. Even if shelters are asking about gender identity in an inclusive way at the service level, we know our government is not requiring shelters to actually keep statistics on trans people accessing services.

The most accurate portrayal of the needs is found in the Trans Pulse Project done in southwest Ontario. Even when studies are completed, they lump trans identities in with lesbian, gay and bisexual groups, which do not face the same barriers to access as we do. If we continue to research and keep statistics only on the LGBT community as a whole, we will never have an accurate portrayal of the barriers faced by the most marginalized of our community.

Trans women are still being turned away from women's services every day, although it is illegal to do so. We are still being told that our presence in women's services is triggering for cisgender women who have faced violence at the hands of men. Trans men who have faced violence are being sent to men's homeless shelters, and many report experiencing sexual violence while staying in these shelters. Many of these instances go unreported to authorities and to shelter staff because they are aware that this is their only option for a place to stay.

We hear them, though. We see them come into our centre, hopeless and without options. They are not just stories to us. These are our friends, people we share common experience with, people who matter.

Non-binary people are bring forced to choose either male or female when accessing any services, as our communities will still only serve people within the binary concept. Not only is this a disservice to our community, but it also does not give an accurate portrayal of the needs of marginalized people who require access to these services. Because our government does not ask about gender identity, we will never have a real understanding of the needs of our community. This means that our government will continue to fund women's beds and men's beds, instead of safe beds. After coming out, many of us lose our support systems, our families, our jobs and our homes. The trans community has a 43% suicidality rate.

In a country with laws that are so progressive in observing the rights of trans identities, why are our systems still set up to only serve cisgender people? Because our systems are not set up in a way that is inclusive of trans identities, 92% of trans-identified people are too afraid to access public spaces.

Seventy-seven per cent of the people in our community experience homelessness at some point throughout their transition, but they stay in dangerous living situations for longer periods of time to avoid accessing services, and 40% of our community members do not access emergency health care or residential addiction services when needed.

Our organization has been in operation for a year. We got the keys to our drop-in centre on May 1, 2018. Of course, there are no concrete statistics that supported the opening of a transgender-specific centre, which also means that we were unable to secure funding for operations or services.

What I believe is that if you build it, they will come. Since our opening, we've had 1,500 visits to the centre for various reasons, such as our food bank, clothing bank and counselling services, but most of all for advocacy support in gaining access and accommodations for services in the greater community that feel safe.

I am disappointed that in 2018, I still have clients calling me to report being pulled out of bathrooms at shelters for using the wrong bathroom, being forced to share accommodations that match their ID, or feeling unsafe in accessing the shelter system. They would rather sleep in the doorway of my centre until we open and catch some sleep there.

I'm appalled by the need for me to call shelters and advocate for why it is appropriate for our client to access that particular shelter and what their duty under the law is to accommodate that person. How comfortable would any of you be in having me call for you to access a shelter, where you know that I first had to argue for your right to be there? How would you be able to trust the staff, administration, or even the environment, knowing that you would not even be allowed to be there unless someone advocated for you first?

Even recently, I had a client report that their accommodation under the code, which we advocated for, was removed. They were returned to a bed that does not match their lived gender after breaking a minor rule.

Accommodations are not rewards; they're required under our law for safe access.

Some of these very things that I bring to you today are part of my own story and the stories of many of those in my life. Many other marginalized populations have been a target for additional funds and resources to change their outcomes and lower staggering statistics; the trans community is tired of being erased in service delivery.

Our people are dying, and it's time for this to stop.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you very much. That was an excellent presentation.

We are now going to move over to Donna and Marilyn, for seven minutes combined.

[Marilyn Ruttan, As an Individual]

We would like to thank our MP, the Honourable Dr. Kellie Leitch, for the invitation to be here today.

My name is Marilyn Ruttan. I'm a real estate broker, and I've owned and operated the RE/MAX office in Wasaga Beach for the past 29 years. Donna Mullen is a mortgage broker in Wasaga Beach—

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

I'm sorry, but could you reduce your speed? The translation is having a wee bit of an issue catching up with you.

[Marilyn Ruttan]

Yes, I do talk fast.

Donna Mullen is a mortgage broker in Wasaga Beach and has been in business for the last 25 years.

I was originally asked if I could come and discuss before your Standing Committee on the Status of Women the accessibility of single women affording their own homes, and access to housing for women.

I quickly messaged back to state that single women are not coming through our doors anymore to buy homes—

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Marilyn, go a little bit slower, please.

[Marilyn Ruttan]

—especially since last January, when the new mortgage stress test was introduced. It is difficult enough for a two-income family to qualify, let alone a single woman or a single woman trying to get back on her feet after having been in a stage one shelter or a stage two shelter situation. Women can't buy a home without first qualifying for a mortgage, and the big banks are not at all accommodating or welcoming.

I asked if I could bring Donna with me so together we can give you a picture of the challenges that women are facing. Donna and I are both hands-on in our respective careers, and we deal directly with the end consumer on a daily basis.

We received a follow-up email from the committee with the request to tie in with your study on the network of shelters and transition homes serving women and children affected by violence against women and intimate partner violence.

Donna and I started brainstorming. We gathered as much information as we could, and then we interviewed several women. We interviewed a woman who worked at our local shelter in Collingwood, which is called My Friend's House, and who has worked for the past 25 years in the Collingwood office of the Ontario Works assist program. As well, we interviewed local counsellors to discuss the new social housing construction projects that are under way in Simcoe County.

Donna and I have a few recommendations that we feel, if implemented, could help transition some women, maybe even just 20%, out of stage two shelters—

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Marilyn, please go just a little slower.

[Marilyn Ruttan]

—to make room for women who are in stage one shelters.

Donna is going to recommend some necessary changes to a few CMHC programs that would help more women to be able to buy homes.

[Donna Mullen, As an Individual]

My name is Donna Mullen, and I'm a third-generation survivor of domestic violence. I'm also a survivor of a human rights case, which started in 1992, due to having asked questions. The human rights case was worse than any physical violence that I'd ever had happen to me previously.

I'm going to get right to the goods. Marilyn and I are—

[Marilyn Ruttan]

We've taken a lot out.

We realize there are a lot of great programs, at least in Simcoe County, to help women who are in transition and living in stage two shelter housing, but there seems to be a disconnect between the women who wish to buy a home—maybe 20% or 25 % could be moved—create security, and build equity for their future and accessing a mortgage broker and real estate agent who understand the sensitive issues. This disconnect applies to both sides of the equation.

As realtors, we can further our education through various online Canadian and American training courses to earn designations and certificates. There are all kinds of them, such as senior specialist or accredited buyer specialist. You can get a certified Internet professional, and they've just come up with a new one called “at home with diversity”. There are many more, but there are no designations or accreditations for sensitivity training and necessary mentoring that would teach real estate agents and mortgage brokers what they need to know to specifically help women coming out of adverse situations.

The course should include teaching real estate agents and mortgage brokers ways to navigate all the programs currently available through CMHC, the provinces and their local county—

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Marilyn, I love your energy. We're so much the same.

We're going to have to go a little more slowly.

[Marilyn Ruttan]

Okay.

We think we could come up with a program that would help. Donna has a lot to talk about with regard to the qualifications. The course could be created jointly by the women who are currently counselling women in phase two shelters, mortgage brokers and real estate agents. We could bring it out right across Canada and hope that in every community, someone would be able to help.

I'm going to let Donna go ahead.

[Donna Mullen]

Right now, when you apply for a mortgage to buy a home, the rules have never been so stringent and inconsistent from lender to lender. I started working in the banks in 1982, when rates were 20%, so I've been through every crash.

To rent a three-bedroom home of low builder grade, generally with no finished basement and no extras, in Simcoe County, the average cost is $1,800 to $2,000 per month. This can be replicated throughout the country, based on population. A woman could buy a three-bedroom home for between $359,000 and $399,000, and costs would be similar to rent. This confirms “needs” versus “wants”. You cannot build a low builder grade home on a fully serviced lot that has no finished basement and no ceramic tiles, marble or granite for less than $350,000 in this country.

We looked at the employment base in Simcoe County and the average wages based on a health care professional—RN, RPN, newly graduated, 90% women—personal support workers, and manufacturing jobs that are connected to the auto industry.

The RPN and RN are starting at $28 per hour. There are no benefits, and your job status is casual. Please remember that term in this committee: casual status of employment. A PSW's starting average is $18 per hour. There are no benefits, and your job status is casual.

The car manufacturing plant in Alliston is on perpetual contract hire. The average starting wage is $18.92 per hour, and we just gave $1.1 billion in forgiveness to Chrysler.

The auto glass manufacturing jobs start at $16 per hour. The average starting wage when working for the municipality or county is $18 to $20 per hour, and it's not easy for women to get these jobs.

The hospitality industry is our biggest employer in our county, Simcoe County. Since tips were paid, the waitress has not claimed them on her tax return. This type of job allowed the women to get out and work while the man was at home. There was no day care and usually no stress with the man at this point.

This cash allowed the woman to pay for gas for the vehicle, extra groceries and extra things for children, and maybe save some cash for her to be able to get out of an abusive relationship. This cash could not be tracked by the man. These waitresses and bartenders take a lesser wage than minimum wage because they get tips.

I understand now that CRA has been looking into auditing the registers to see how much a waitress is being paid via a debit card or Visa. This is not an area that should be a priority to CRA. There are many bigger fish to fry in our country beyond scrutinizing the women who work in this industry.

When a woman is leaving a spouse because of abuse, assets are involved, such as the home. The woman is generally entitled to 50% of equity upon separation or divorce. She may also be entitled to spousal support and child support. Upon separation or divorce, she is also allowed to have her child tax benefit recalculated.

You're going to cut me off, so I've got to get into some recommendations.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

I'm going to have to cut you off now. It's—

[Donna Mullen]

We would like to make sure recommendations come to this committee, so we would like to table a report.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

What we'll do is make sure all of that information gets around, but we do have to move on to our next set of witnesses, if you don't mind. I'm sorry; the time goes so quickly.

We will ask that it be translated, if you would like to table the rest of your document. What we can do is ask for it to be translated and then we can circulate it to the committee. I see that there were 18 pages or so.

[Donna Mullen]

The rest of the report we would like tabled as well, in the whole binder.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Okay. She's got that.

[Donna Mullen]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Grace Costa is the general manager for Eva's Satellite, and she is on video conference.

You have seven minutes, please.

[Grace Costa, General Manager, Eva's Satellite, Eva's Initiatives for Homeless Youth]

Eva's Initiatives for Homeless Youth is an award-winning Toronto-based organization to provide shelter and transitional housing for young people ages 16 to 24 who are experiencing homelessness. Our hope is to help them reach their potential and lead productive lives.

Eva's Place is a 40-bed emergency shelter and the home of the family reconnect program. Eva's Satellite is a 33-bed emergency shelter that focuses on harm reduction for youth who are substance users and are dealing with mental health issues. Eva's Phoenix is townhouse-style supportive housing for 50 young people. It provides educational and employment programs as well.

Charity Intelligence selected Eva's as one of Canada's top 10 impact charities. Eva's serves homeless young people of all genders. They become homeless for many reasons. However, it is clear that young people face systemic difficulties when impacted by violence against women and intimate partner violence; they seek supports from youth-servicing shelters and transitional housing providers that are ill-equipped to help them.

There are a couple of research points that I want to highlight that show the intersectionality between homelessness and gender-based violence.

The first one is that evidence shows that the majority of young people experiencing homelessness come from homes with high levels of physical, sexual and emotional abuse; interpersonal violence and assault; parental neglect; and exposure to intimate-partner violence. The lack of safety in the streets may cause young women to stay in living situations where they are at risk of gendered violence as well. Young men typically outnumber females in youth-serving shelters. It's a two-to-one ratio, more or less.

Evidence supports the view that many young women stay in violent situations because the streets feel much more unsafe. Homelessness exposes young people to extremely high risks of violence. They are nearly six times more likely to be victims of violent crime than the general population, and they are targeted more than anyone else for all kinds of violent crime, including sexual assaults.

LGBTQ and two-spirited youth, indigenous youth and youth who become homeless at a younger age are at the highest risk for violence. Homeless young people are especially vulnerable for being trafficked as well.

Covenant House Youth, the Field Center for Children's Policy, Practice and Research and the Loyola University Modern Slavery Research Project of 2017 found that 68% of youth who had either been trafficked or had engaged in survival or commercial sex had done so while homeless.

Other information they found about high risk was that one in five of all cisgender women experienced a situation considered to be sex trafficking. LGBTQ youth accounted for 36% of the sex trafficking victims. Youth with a history of involvement in the foster system accounted for 27% of all youth engaged in the sex trade and 26% of all youth who were labour trafficked.

The Canadian Women's Foundation, in 2014, noted five factors for experiencing sex trafficking: being female and young, being poor, having a history of violence or neglect, having a history of sexual abuse, and having low levels of education. Other risk factors included the lack of local employment opportunities, being migrants or new immigrants and/or having low levels of social supports, being indigenous, being homeless, living in care or group homes or foster care, being involved in substance use or mental health issues, and having a history of criminal justice system involvement and gang association.

Youth shelters and transitional housing need support to increase capacity. In general, federal funding programming toward youth-serving shelters and transitional housing is very low. In Eva's case, we receive very few direct federal supports, even though we are one of the largest youth-serving shelters and transitional housing providers in Canada.

Young people escaping gender-based violence come to Eva's on a regular basis. These include those who face this violence themselves or are exposed to it at home. Adult women's shelters may be unavailable to them because of their age, because they are unaccompanied by a parent or a guardian, or because they don't know that they can access them. As well, in our experience when we have tried to access those beds, there is no space for them, even in Toronto where there are a lot more resources.

Even though young people come to service providers like Eva's, we do not often qualify for funds for gender-based violence alleviation, federal or otherwise. This presents a serious barrier to young women in particular, because it means we cannot reserve a shelter or transitional housing space, and most days or nights we cannot find them support from Eva's, because we are at capacity.

We're not certain about the hidden figures of young people who stay in situations of gender-based violence for fear of the streets. However, approximately 2,000 youths are homeless in Toronto each night, of which 600 are found in shelters or transitional houses and 123 are at Eva's. We know this means that young women may require youth shelters and transitional housing beds to escape gender-based violence but cannot access them.

Shelters are often the last place funders consider for meaningful programs, yet it is in the shelters and with the staff there that many young people disclose experiences of violence and trauma and reach out for support.

In the shelter we witness what so many young people need in terms of what we call “life skills”, but it's so much more than that. In our shelters, we meet young people where they're at, and slowly, ever so slowly, they begin to open up about years of violence, and we often have to transfer them to someone else in the community for support. When we do so, we often shut down that very young person, leading them back into the old patterns of shame, fear, isolation and denial.

For us doing this work, it is more than clear that places like Eva's and other youth and housing providers need government funding, not only to provide spaces to assist young women but also to maintain teams that have the experience, skills and sensitivity to support those young women escaping gender-based violence.

Thank you.