Thank you.
Thank you for the work of this committee and the invitation to present today.
The BC Society of Transition Houses is a provincial umbrella organization. That means we provide support, training, resources and advocacy to the network of 100 transition houses, safe homes and second-stage homes across the province. We exist to support the vital, direct service they provide, and to ensure their experience and expertise informs government legislation, policy and resource allocation.
We are a founding member of Women's Shelters Canada, who testified to the committee at an earlier session.
Violence against women is an ongoing public health and safety crisis. At its worst, it ends lives. I also want to acknowledge the important work of the Canadian Femicide Observatory, which is tracking the murders of women and girls in Canada. Up to August 31 this year, 106 have been killed.
I also want to acknowledge the work of those who have been campaigning to highlight the disproportionate violence against indigenous women and girls, and those who are testifying to the national inquiry into those who are missing and murdered.
Specialist violence against women's shelters and transition houses, as distinct from shelters whose primary focus is on the issue of homelessness, are a specific and crucial part of the response to address men's violence against women. As this committee has heard, how we refer to shelters that respond to violence against women varies greatly across Canada. In British Columbia, they are referred to as transition houses, safe homes, and second-stage homes.
Transition houses provide first response emergency safe shelter to women and children. Safe homes in rural and remote locations provide short- term shelter. Second stage homes provide longer-term accommodation, typically up to 18 months, to women who may not be fleeing immediate abuse, but who still require continued support and safety.
As you are hearing today, transition houses provide much more than a safe place to stay, as important and life-saving as that is. They provide vital services and resources that enable women and their children to recover from their experiences of violence, and to rebuild safe, self-determined and meaningful lives. For example, anti-violence staff provide emotional support, safety planning, assistance with navigating the legal, health and social assistance systems, and support in planning for their future housing needs. They were practising trauma-informed work before that became a widely recognized term, and they provide a range of sensitive, thoughtful and innovative programming. Trauma-informed yoga classes are one example. They also initiate research into traumatic brain injuries from intimate partner violence, for instance. Many are also involved in awareness raising and education activities to prevent future violence.
This is specialized, complex work, which has its foundation in a grassroots feminist movement, inspired and informed by the lived experience of women themselves.
BC Housing funds the women's transition housing and supports program in British Columbia to a total of $34.6 million annually. BC Housing has recently concluded a detailed review of these programs, and will be releasing its report shortly.
These programs have not received an increase in their recurrent operational funding for a decade. In recognition of the impact of the crisis in affordable housing on women fleeing violence, there has been some recent much-needed and appreciated investment in new second-stage housing by the Province of B.C. However, this sits alongside the static funding—which is, in effect, declining funding—of the existing ongoing programs providing emergency responses to violence against women.
There is a clear gap in transition houses' capacity to meet the demand for their services. Around 75% of requests for services cannot be accommodated, according to the annual snapshot surveys carried out by Women's Shelters Canada. Furthermore, the gap exceeds the simple calculation of fewer beds than needed. The level of need experienced by women accessing transition houses is frequently acute and complex because of the co-occurrence of substance use, mental health concerns, immigration status, poverty and a range of additional health issues.
These issues are commonly a result of, or exacerbated by, the violence and abuse perpetrated against them. Transition house staff are doing complex work with limited resources in buildings of diverse sizes that are in various states of repair, and with assorted facilities.
For transition houses in rural and northern communities, the complexity of their work is compounded by limited community resources and referral options. Such communities are also heavily impacted by poor public transportation, made worse by the discontinued Greyhound bus service. Without safe and affordable transportation, women may have little choice but to remain with their abuser. The absence of affordable transportation also increases the risk that women may use less safe ways of travelling, such as hitchhiking. This can result in horrific outcomes, as we know from the fate of so many missing and murdered indigenous women and girls along the Highway of Tears in northern British Columbia.
As a result of deficiencies in operational funding and because the nature of this complicated cross-sectoral work, which is widely misunderstood or confused with that of other sectors, the largely female workforce doing this work is significantly underpaid in comparison to those working in allied sectors.
In line with the stated objectives of this committee’s study, BCSTH makes the following recommendations. First, the federal government has a leadership role to play in addressing violence against women, which includes the work of VAW shelters and transition houses. This should extend beyond the scope of its current strategy to prevent and address gender-based violence, which has no timelines or objectives. The development of a whole-of-government national action plan that addresses the root causes of men’s violence against women and includes the—