Status of Women Committee on Nov. 19th, 2018

[Eva Kratochvil]

Is it possible to make a recommendation as well?

When you're looking at indigenous women, you should invite indigenous women survivors, especially those who do not have their children and who have lost their children due to being in domestic violence. Actually, they didn't lose them; they had their children taken from them.

Could you include those voices at the table? Those are the voices I hear on the phones when I'm not able to bring them into shelter, and they're having their children removed from them because they can't be safe. I would appreciate that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you very much.

You have the notice of motion, so that's been done.

We'll move forward. We're continuing.

Bob, you have the floor for seven minutes.

[Bob Bratina, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, Lib.]

Thank you very much.

Thank you all. This is really fascinating and troubling.

I come from a municipal background, so we worked as councillors—and I was the mayor of Hamilton—from the ground up seeing these issues. As an example, Mission Services had a building they were going to use. I suggested to them that they sell it, which they weren't inclined to do at first, but they did sell that building for $700,000. They said, “Well, we sold it. Now what do we do?” We found them a surplus building that was actually better for $350,000. This is 2008-2009, so prices have gone up, but the point is they were able to manipulate their assets to get a better outcome.

What I would ask you all is whether you have a relationship with a municipality, and whether they are knowledgeable and aware. They have things like vacant buildings, properties and so on, that may become useful to you.

I'll ask Dawn first, and then Eva, and then Anita.

Dawn, do you have a relationship in Nanaimo with the municipality, and does it work to your benefit?

[Dawn Clark]

We do. Actually, our current transition house sits on city property, so we have a 99-year lease with them. We own the actual building, but they own the land. We've had that relationship with them since 1993, and we pay a dollar a year for the land.

[Eva Kratochvil]

You know what? I'll make this very personal, and I'll take it back to a time in Ottawa because this is where we are and this was my hometown. Often there are suggestions of empty buildings, and I look around my community and I see in Windsor there are vacant buildings, and I sometimes question that.

I also believe that women and children deserve the best quality of services and that it should not be a building that is in disrepair that is somehow made to be somewhat better, so I appreciate when it's good.

I will use the example of Ottawa in 1983-1984. We had Ottawa's finest move to their brand new building in 1983 on Elgin, and, as a result, the 60 Waller building, the old police station, became the homeless shelter, the emergency shelter, for women and children, where I resided from just before Christmas until February of the following year in 1985. It was in disrepair and eventually it was torn down, I think. The new Ontario gallery stands there.

In terms of it being a place where you put women and children, we were in a small room that was quite possibly, I gathered, an interrogation room with windows so high they were unreachable, cement planks that had little foam mattresses on them, and a steel toilet. I'm not sure that this was the best venue for a child to be in in terms of a homeless shelter, so I would seriously have you look at those solutions and what they mean in different communities. When you do it well, that's great, but I think we're—

[Bob Bratina]

Yes, the point isn't to find roofs. I'm against the notion that all we need is to put some roofs up and everybody's happy. What I'm talking about, though, is that if we're going to create a government program, an investment program, how can we maximize the assets so that we can address so many needs across the country? We've heard from people all over Canada.

[Eva Kratochvil]

We don't need warehouses for women while they wait for housing. What we need is housing for them.

[Bob Bratina]

What I'm talking about is the need to put a program together so that this doesn't happen, and that's why I'm saying we need a relationship with the cities to help us all work together to have that better outcome. Please don't get the idea that I want to put people.... We had that in Hamilton, and it was disgusting. The places, the city housing situations, were terrible, because there was indifference on the part of the people managing it, and that's why I'm here today: It's because I don't want to see that anymore.

Let's go to Anita. In terms of off-reserve shelters, because there's on-reserve and off-reserve, do you have an idea of the off-reserve situation for indigenous women? There are so many, and we have a large population in Hamilton. Are you conversant with that situation?

[Dr. Anita Olsen Harper]

First of all, there is such a distance between the municipal level of government and on-reserve services, or reserves period. Reserves are federal jurisdiction, and many are in isolated areas. Not only is the municipal government sort of the bottom level of government, but there's also the provincial government that's kind of sandwiched in between for first nation shelters. We really have very little to do with municipal governments.

[Bob Bratina]

Off-reserve, I know in Hamilton we did a shelter with federal funding for indigenous men, homeless men on the street, so let's go to the on-reserve situation. How do you get space created for women on the reserve?

[Dr. Anita Olsen Harper]

The shelter building movement on reserve happened mostly in the early 1990s, so about 20 or 25 years after the mainstream women's shelter movement happened. That was funding through CMHC, and that was for the physical structure itself. When the structure was finished, the band was told, “Okay, there's your shelter; now run it.”

There were no steps that the band could take so that this could be done in an organized and efficient way. There was a lot of hit and miss and trial and error at the very beginning, but it's a lot better now. The National Aboriginal Circle Against Family Violence, for example, has done studies, and we help the directors to implement policies and to share best practices with one another across the board.

There are a few new shelters that have just opened up recently, such as in Nelson House in northern Manitoba. Usually there are—I don't know—three or four new shelters every five or six years, so considering there are over 600 first nations across Canada and only 40 shelters, we really can see that the reserves are very underserviced in that area.

[Bob Bratina]

That's strong testimony. Thank you for that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you very much.

We're now going to start on our second round. We'll have time for two sets of questions. Jim, you're on the floor for five minutes.

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to Dawn, Anita and Eva for the work you do with your different societies and associations. I spent 35 years as a policeman, mostly in aboriginal policing, and the service that you provide is so great. I remember, so many years ago, that there was just nothing. I remember calling my wife in the middle of the night, saying she should take the kids into our bed because I was bringing some people home. That's what you had to do in a lot of the rural communities, because there was nothing there for them. You had to look to protection.

You've all spoken. I think you're here because you see a need for us as a federal government to get involved. I believe you are so correct.

I'll start with Eva, then go to Anita and finish with Dawn. Of the funding you get today to operate your facilities, how big a percentage would you say is federal, provincial, or local community-driven, be it either fundraising or through municipal grants and stuff like that?

Are community agencies such as policing, social services and medical professions aware of the services you do, and do they work with you fairly closely, or do we need to do a better job to ensure those agencies assist you?

Thank you.

Go ahead, Eva.

[Eva Kratochvil]

In our community, the majority of the funding for Hiatus House, luckily, is through the federal government. The balance is provincial, not municipal. The municipality funds homeless shelters. That's part of what I believe the divide is. It's so poorly funded at the municipal level that you don't want to associate with it.

As to how we work collaboratively with the other agencies supporting us, they absolutely do. They provide referrals to us on an ongoing basis.

The sad fact is they also know we're running beyond capacity all the time, so they sit with us and try to figure where to send this woman tonight, a woman who's been severely assaulted. Police are involved. She's had to be turned away. This just happened to me not that long ago, working in the night. I had a woman with a four-month-old baby. I tried Sarnia, Chatham, Strathroy and London. How far away does she have to go to get a shelter bed?

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

I got the picture. I think we get the picture. I just want to give everybody a chance, Eva.

Anita, would you comment?

[Dr. Anita Olsen Harper]

Thank you.

On reserve, 100% of the funding comes from the federal government. There are proposals that are written by the executive directors of the shelter for individual needs—child safety seats, for example. Sometimes it means accessing little individual pockets of money. It often means that.

Are the community agencies working with us? Yes, they are, and I appreciate what you have done to help abused women and children. Meegwetch.

[Dawn Clark]

We don't receive any federal funding. Most of our funding is through the provincial government, through BC Housing's women's support program. Probably about 10% to 15% of the funding we receive is through private donations. We are constantly writing grants to support the work that's done at the transition house.

For instance, our crisis line, which is the first point of contact for women wanting to access services, is not funded, so we fully fund that crisis line. It's essential to women coming into the house. That's just an example of where we're underfunded and need to be funded.

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Okay. I'm up in five seconds.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

That's fine. You've done a great job.

We're going to move on to Pam. Pam, you have the floor.

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

Thanks, Chair.

Following up on my colleague's question, every organization that has come here has talked about the need for core funding. I'm not disagreeing at all, but if you're going to run women's shelters—and we all hope they're going to go away, but they've been here for 45 years—and if a government provides core funding, then, as we're seeing in Ontario, where programs in social services are being decimated, you could easily have all of it disappear.

How do you make it easier for you to access grants, or whatever it might be, with the knowledge that governments change? If we were to provide core funding to you, in time you could have a new government come in and take it all away, as has happened in Ontario. Then you're really in trouble.

Eva, you're shaking your head. I'm wondering if you have any thoughts on how to make the grant process more useful for you. How can we deal with that?

[Eva Kratochvil]

I'm not a grant writer. I'm front line. Looking at that as a survivor, though, just because the government changes, we don't get rid of fire, ambulance, and police. Why aren't we an essential service?

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

Something I was thinking about was that any funding seems to come from Status of Women. I'm wondering if it should actually be coming through Public Safety. Instead of thinking of this as a women's issue and funding it through Status of Women, which has very little money, should it actually be shifted over to a totally different way of thinking and be moved over to Public Safety?

[Eva Kratochvil]

For me, you don't say, “Well, sorry, there are too many fires. You're out of luck today. There's no fire assistance for you. We're not coming to your burning house. ” It's the same thing with police calls.

If we're an essential service, we're not going to say, “Sorry, no bed for you tonight.” We have adequate services for what is needed across the country; I think it needs to be an essential service. That's just how I see it.

It must be complicated.

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

I wonder if any of the other ladies have any thoughts on that.