Status of Women Committee on Nov. 19th, 2018

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

The NDP was disappointed that the federal government didn't go all the way to its UN commitment for a national action plan to end violence against women. They said that they would do a federal action plan instead—much more narrow—and focus on federal agencies.

One of them was StatsCan. They would get their house in order, they said, before following the UN commitment to do the national work with the provinces in creating a coast-to-coast-to-coast plan.

Can you talk with us more about the piece that StatsCan might be taking on to gather more knowledge about the front-line groups? They're the ones who are delivering the service. When women are turned away, are you able to tell whether it's because there aren't enough beds, they couldn't pay their rent, there aren't enough workers to carry the service?

[Kathy AuCoin]

Under the federal strategy regarding violence against women, we have received funding from Status of Women to carry out three critical surveys. One's the survey of safety in public and private spaces. It looks at various forms of abuse, including sexual violence, and whether it meets the criminal threshold, as well as inappropriate behaviours, whether they happen in a public place or a private space. We ask questions about shelter access and whether or not they've accessed services.

Two other surveys look at sexual misconduct or inappropriate behaviours among post-secondary students. The third one is within the workplace environment. In addition, with the new shelter survey currently in the field, we will be looking at whether women or even men or LGB community members were turned away. We will be looking at questions of capacity under that survey, and again this spring.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Thank you.

I'm going to shift to a different area in the time I have remaining.

Because of the news reports during the week that we were away from Parliament about forced sterilization of indigenous women, I'd like to ask the committee to call the minister to speak to this. I have a motion to propose. I know this is just now a notice of motion, but I'm hoping that the committee members will consider waiving the notice so we can vote on it and actually go ahead and invite the minister.

The motion reads as follows:

That pursuant to the Minister's mandate for a “renewed, nation-to-nation relationship with Indigenous Peoples, based on recognition of rights, respect, co-operation, and partnership” and the government's commitment to Article 7(2) of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the Committee ask the Health Minister—

I've written “Health Minister”, but it could as well be Indigenous Services if that's more appropriate.

—to appear no later than December 2018 to brief the Committee on the government’s efforts to immediately end the practice of forced and coerced sterilization of Indigenous women; that this meeting be no less than one hour in length; and that the meeting be televised.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Pam Damoff]

Just to clarify, do you want to see if we have unanimous consent to waive the rules to deal with this now?

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

That would be ideal. Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Pam Damoff]

I do believe it's the Minister of Indigenous Services.

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

Since some of us are here filling in for regular committee members, I would prefer you wait until the next meeting so they can see the motion. Not being a regular member of the committee, I think it would be best to wait until the next meeting.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Pam Damoff]

That's a no.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

I'll just suggest to my colleague that this committee will not be meeting other than in camera for some weeks, so that was my rationale.

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

That's not my problem.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Understood.

If you are saying that there is no unanimous consent, then that's clear.

Then it's a notice of motion. I hope we can vote on it at the next opportunity we have when we're not in camera.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Pam Damoff]

Thank you. You still have 30 seconds. Do you have anything else for that time?

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

No, that's fine. Thank you. I appreciate that.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Pam Damoff]

Emmanuella, you have seven minutes.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you so much for being with us today to answer our questions.

Obviously we know that not even close to the number of women who actually experience abuse and who should be seeking help in shelters actually do reach out for help. A lot of them are hiding. A lot of them don't come out, and a lot of them are considered to be under hidden homelessness.

I know that we're discussing the data that you collect from shelters and from people who are seeking services in shelters, but what do you suggest we could do, or you could do, or we collectively could do in order to gather more information? While someone might not want to show up at a shelter, maybe if they were asked the question on a paper, even if their name was associated with it, they might be more willing to admit it.

While I'm suggesting something myself in my question, what do you suggest that we could do in order to help improve our data on this issue?

[Kathy AuCoin]

I'm trying to be thoughtful, and being a statistician and a data person and someone who's worked on family violence issues for 15 years, I'd suggest a survey of women who've stayed in a shelter, perhaps. From our data, we know women are coming back, and that becomes, from my perspective, a revolving door. If they've come to a shelter and they've stayed for two or three months, and then within a year are coming back, a need has not been met or they are still highly vulnerable, so look at those women to ask what they needed to move to the next level of security and to find a secure home.

We know from the general social survey on victimization that very few women who are victims of intimate partner violence use shelters, but from that large sample that we're using, maybe some of them had extended family or maybe they were fortunate. Those who used shelters—and I'm sure you've spoken to managers—are the ones with the greatest needs. Those are sometimes women going from their apartment with green garbage bags and two children on a bus to a shelter. Those are the most vulnerable people. From a data collection perspective, I would suggest doing a survey of those women in shelters to really get a sense of what their needs are to transition out of that cycle from a policy perspective.

That's just my opinion.

[Yvan Clermont]

I think to address the dimension of what you were raising about those not always seeking services from a shelter, I believe that the survey of safety and private and public space will bring us insight or more information about those who have not sought services from shelters, but were victims, and see why they did not do this. This new survey will bring us new data. It's only then, when we start analyzing it, that we'll see if we still have an important information gap on that issue.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you very much.

You also mentioned that in the new survey that's going to be coming out in April of 2019, you're going a lot more into detail about which people are receiving these services. However, we know that many of them are turned away. Every single witness we've spoken to has told us that they have to turn away more than they can accept. Are we collecting any data on who is being turned away?

While we know that a lot of it is due to alcoholism or drug abuse, we don't know if there are other things at play here such as racism, homophobia or anything like that. Can you maybe speak to that a bit?

[Kathy AuCoin]

Again, in redesigning the shelter survey, we consulted with provincial and territorial transition home associations, academics and NGOs, and the focus really was, from their perspective, that most turnaways were for reasons that we already had, such as alcohol and drug abuse.

There was some concern for the transgender population, and that came out in our consultation. Some shelters don't have the capacity to manage transgender, because their core group is females. We are collecting more data along those lines because we saw it as a gap and something that was prevalent.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

That's it for me. Thank you very much.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Pam Damoff]

Jim, you have two minutes left. Does anybody else on that side want to take two minutes?

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'd like to thank the witnesses for coming out today. You brought some very interesting statistics.

There's one question I want to ask you, and then I keep thinking maybe I shouldn't ask you, but I will leave that towards the end.

I'm finding your graph number 3 very interesting. I'm either confused or I'm going to be shocked at what your answer is going to be.

According to the 2014 GSS, 6% of women who were victims of spousal violence in the provinces reported that they had contacted or used a shelter, transition home....

That's what you say on that line. Then you're telling me that we have 12,058 beds across Canada and that 51% of the women were turned away, and I'm trying to do the math here.

It's already shocking that we need 24,000 beds. We know that. That tells us that right off the bat, but what it tells me is that it's only 6%, and if 6% is 12,058, where am I missing the math here, folks? It's a little confusing to me. Either we're drastically under-bedded or there's a lot more going on there than we realize. According to your statistic, it's telling me that there's a lot more going on than we really realized. Can you answer that?

[Kathy AuCoin]

The General Social Survey asks Canadian men and women if, in the past five years, they have been a victim of some form of intimate partner abuse. It can be a range of behaviours from uttering threats to slapping or some sort of physical abuse, and that person is counted. It might have only been one experience. Would they have left their home or their partner because of that abuse? Often it's not the case. When we collected the data from the GSS, we found that it's only in the most severe instances that women leave and seek a shelter. Not every woman—or man, for that matter—in a situation of abuse in their relationship will go to a shelter. They might leave their relationship and go to family members or friends.

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

That 6% is not really in relation to that graph—

[Kathy AuCoin]

That's correct.