Evidence of meeting #122 for Status of Women in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was data.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Director, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Statistics Canada
It is contextual information, and you are right. Those beds can serve—
Conservative
Jim Eglinski Conservative Yellowhead, AB
You mentioned during your presentation, Yvan, that it stopped in 2014. Why? We could have had two years of data there. I wonder if you could clarify it for me.
Director, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Statistics Canada
That's a very good question.
The reason it was stopped in 2014, first of all, is it was a survey conducted every two years. The year before that was 2012, and now it was 2014. There were some methodological issues with the survey at the time, so it was decided to take the next two years to do a very thorough redesign of the survey, both in the sampling frame we're using to make sure that we have the right number of shelters and that we contact our contact person in each of the provinces and territories to see that we have a very good sense of all the shelters in existence, and also to redesign content, because the content of the 2014 and previous iteration of that survey was starting to be old and not necessarily well tuned to the new realities. We only had to do either a redesign or a collection. We used it to do a redesign. Now it's in collection in 2018. We jumped one cycle, and we're releasing it in the spring.
Conservative
Jim Eglinski Conservative Yellowhead, AB
Again I'm going back to graph 3, where we talk about the different provinces, the number of shelters, and total beds of 12,058. I think from the data you've given us, 51% are turned away. Is that in relation to this, or is that something different?
Assistant Director, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Statistics Canada
I want to go to the slide to clarify it.
Assistant Director, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Statistics Canada
In 2014 we chose one day to look at the characteristics and ask our shelter managers how many women and children were there. There were more than 7,000 on snapshot day, and on that day 300 women and 200 children were turned away.
Assistant Director, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Statistics Canada
Yes, and 56% of the 300 women and 200 children were turned away because of capacity issues. More than 7,000 women and children were at the shelter that day. On snapshot day, 500 women and children were turned away for various reasons. Some of them were for alcohol issues or mental health issues or they were on a no-admit, but 50% of those who had been turned away were turned away because of a capacity issue for those shelters. You might have been okay in Toronto—lots of room—but it was in New Brunswick on that one day.
Conservative
Jim Eglinski Conservative Yellowhead, AB
Thank you very much for that clarification. Do I have any time left?
Conservative
Conservative
Jim Eglinski Conservative Yellowhead, AB
I think my question is very relevant to everybody here.
Of the stats you gave us here, again on page 3, do you have a breakdown so we could get the difference in the rural situation? I'm a rural member of Parliament. We have urban members here, and I know most of the urban communities are fairly well served. I know a lot of our rural areas aren't. Do you have the statistics to give us the difference later on?
Assistant Director, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Statistics Canada
I'm thoughtful because I believe the locations of shelters are often confidential. From working on different groups, especially in rural areas, I know some women might leave their community for their safety. I will explore and see what I can do.
November 19th, 2018 / 5:20 p.m.
Conservative
Jim Eglinski Conservative Yellowhead, AB
Thank you, and thank you, Madam Chair, for giving me that opportunity to slide that in.
Sonia Sidhu Brampton South, Lib.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you all for being here and answering our questions.
I want to go to your slide number 1. You said that assaults are highest in territories and Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Is it because of fewer shelters? When we are asking the question on assault rates, are we mentioning the reason the stats are high in those territories?
Director, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Statistics Canada
These incidents are violence reported to the police and collected through the Uniform Crime Reporting Survey. They basically follow the trend of increasing east-to-west general crime rates, which are always higher in the west and in the territories—much higher in the territories. Therefore, it's mostly about what is being reported to the police, but not about shelters or the number of beds.
Brampton South, Lib.
At that point, when you are redesigning the sampling and the questions, are you adding in the reason and whether it's crime-related or violence-related? Are you designing that question in the survey?
Director, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Statistics Canada
The Uniform Crime Reporting Survey is not in redesign as a source for depicting those trends of increasing crime rates from east to west.
The reasons can be explained by the demographics, basically, and this is what we have seen. It is well-established trends or differentials between provinces and territories that we had been observing over several years, which keep persisting.
Brampton South, Lib.
Thank you.
We are hearing that there are 41 shelters for women and children living on-reserve across provinces and Yukon, but how are you collecting the data on the women who do not live close to one of these 41 shelters?
Assistant Director, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Statistics Canada
The data that we would be getting for our shelter survey would be coming from the shelters in Yukon, and it would be the women who would be using those surveys. If Yukon females were leaving the community and going to another shelter in another province, we would get that information, but I would have no way of knowing whether they moved or not.
We did some consultations when we were developing the survey of safety in public and private spaces to see if we could capture that information, but it's really hard for survey managers to start asking for a lot of detailed information from residents, because they have a relationship. As a result, we were unable to get at that information.
That said, using the police data and our General Social Survey, we still have a better sense of where the highest rates of intimate partner violence are, and again, working with our victim services directorates, we'll know the volume of residents in the Yukon who are accessing victim services, including victims of sexual assault and domestic violence, as well as the shelters, but it would be an aggregate count.
Brampton South, Lib.
Are you engaging social workers as well? Social workers have a lot of data on their clients too.
