Status of Women Committee on Oct. 3rd, 2016

[Andy Lou Somers]

Yes. I believe with this kind of issue you need to have the community-based groups dealing with them on the ground level.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Okay.

Do you guys have anything to add before we wrap up?

[Alicia Raimundo]

I would just encourage you to also think of the Internet as a community. While in some communities there are those being harassed face to face, by people who know them, there have also been large harassment campaigns where they actually don't know the women and have never met them. They're hacking their phones and releasing documents, never even having met these people. I was doxed by someone who doesn't even live in the same city as me and has never met me.

I would really consider working with the social media sites to ban more of these individuals in a faster manner and figure out a better solution, because you can ban one account and three more are operating the next day. I would say that for the communities where the youth are harassing each other and they know each other in person, it's important, but that's not always the case.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Madam Chair, those are my questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Excellent.

We'll go to Mr. Genuis for seven minutes.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Thank you very much for all the presentations.

I was thinking a little bit about this whole question of education. C.S. Lewis said that education without values is about as useful as making people into clever devils. You were talking about education. What are the limits of education in terms of helping people learn empathy? Some of you suggested that you thought that was effective in some cases, but obviously in some cases the problem isn't a lack of information or a lack of understanding, it's just people not caring enough about the other person's response.

I'd be curious to hear everyone's reaction to that.

[Lisa Lachance]

Alicia and I were talking a bit about the fact that we are all learning how to be online together. There's a whole spectrum of behaviour online that ranges from hopefully appropriate to degrees of inappropriateness. People's interactions with each other are often not appropriate, and there is a line where it becomes violence and requires a different response. With that in mind, I think prevention education programs in schools or community organizations could target the creation of greater feelings of empathy.

There are two caveats I would put in there. First, we want to ensure that we're promoting healthy relationships and that anti-bullying and cyber-violence programs are evidence-based. There are a lot social-emotional learning programs out there, but very few of them have a strong evidence base. This is a plea for evidence-based programs. Second, we need to think about when those aren't going to work and what the appropriate sanctions are, because there are times when the behaviour won't be changed by those types of programs.

[Alicia Raimundo]

I think it is really looking at what the laws look like in this space for this new age. The things that were said to me, if someone had said them in person, the cops would not think twice about arresting him. Somehow, putting it on an online space made them perceive it as less real, but the fear was real for me. I changed my number and I moved. We should realize that we need to consider what this is like. I had a friend who was trying to press charges against her online harasser, but he was using every court date as another way to harass her. In the end, she had to drop the charges and change her name. I think we really need to consider what the harassment laws look like in a space like this.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

The message is that the education piece is important, but there are certain individuals and certain cases where it goes beyond that.

I want to talk about the criminal law and how it enters into this. We use different words: harassment, cyber-violence, bullying. At the end of the day, we're talking about highly criminal activity.

To start with the folks on the phone, could you share a little bit about what the response was from the police in the cases you looked at? If people are sharing nude photos of minors online, that's obviously a very serious criminal offence. What has the response been? Does there need to be a stronger response from law enforcement? Is that part of the problem?

[Nancy Beth Guptill]

Is that being directed to East Prince Women's Information Centre?

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Yes, maybe they could start and then I could come back to the others.

[Nancy Beth Guptill]

In speaking with police and with school officials, we have found that there is definitely a gap within the policies and legislation. When you look at it, you wonder whether the activity is truly criminal and if it reaches that level of requirement. That's where the issue becomes a problem.

In March 2015, it could be that people were not aware of the new cyber-bullying laws that are out. We feel there needs to be a full review at the provincial level, with people reviewing the new legislation and seeing how it applies, particularly within the school system. We're finding that if something happens and the school is left to deal with it, quite often this happens on the school grounds and they're not calling in the police. There are no set policies within the public education system. They're left to deal with it on their own. It's only in extreme cases where the police are called in. Then they have to make sure that it's meeting the Criminal Code. What they're telling us is, in a lot of cases, while there is severe harm being caused, it's not within the definition of a Criminal Code offence. They're not able to hold the people accountable. The youth themselves are saying we need new legislation to fill these gaps so that people can be held accountable provincially and federally.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Could I just clarify that? I'm trying to understand what you're saying. Obviously, there would be some cases that would fall into a legal grey area or where new legislation in needed. A lot of the cases you talked about, somebody sharing or threatening to share a nude photo of a fellow minor, are clearly illegal. Surely the issue there is more one of enforcement than it is of law. Maybe you could clarify that. Maybe I'm not understanding.

[Nancy Beth Guptill]

Sure. Here's an example. At school we met with different guidance counsellors who are actually counselling girls who are found in this situation. What ends up happening is the girl comes in and shares her experience. You would think that the guidance counsellor would immediately bring in the police or engage the principal. Sometimes, they'll let the youth decide where they want to go with it. If the youth says, “Please don't engage my parents; I don't want to tell the police,” then they feel that because there's no policy or protocols in place they don't want to break the trust of the girl, so they're there to counsel and help the girl through what she's dealing with.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

That's your time.

We'll go over to Ms. Malcolmson for seven minutes.

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

Thanks to all four of you so much for your work. It's very powerful, and you're able to transmit it to us well.

To the women from East Prince, you were talking at the beginning about the grant that you received at the perfect time to do this project and scope out needs and demands in your area. That was in 2014, right?

[Andy Lou Somers]

Yes.

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

I'm curious. What happens next? How badly do you need operational funding and that predictable ongoing multi-year funding as opposed to the peak-of-the-project-oriented funding?

[Andy Lou Somers]

We need funding badly. It was great to get the project because we had done all the workshops on little grants through our provincial women's secretariat, which showed us there needed to be a lot more work done. We were grateful when the call for proposals came out from Status of Women and it fit right in with the work we had been doing. But now that we're just ending it this fall—it ends in December—and we have all these things that need to be done, how is that going to happen? Yes, we need to keep working on it and keep bringing all these issues forward, but at this point we haven't received any funding to do that.

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

Were you able to get to the point of developing the strategy as well as doing the needs assessment?

[Andy Lou Somers]

Yes, we developed strategies from the needs assessment, based on the recommendations we heard from the community consultations and focus groups and online surveys. We reached over 5,000 people ultimately, and got a lot of good feedback. Now we're really eager to keep it going and we're seeking funders to help us.

[Nancy Beth Guptill]

If I might add, part of what we did was we went back out to the community stakeholders and we shared the strategy with them. For instance, we just met with three provincial ministers who are very interested in the work we're doing. Now it becomes a matter of who has the money to carry this forward.

[Andy Lou Somers]

We're non-profit and we do not receive any core funding. All the money that we use to operate, and we're fully operational, we raise ourselves.

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

Thanks.

I'm going to switch to CYCC now.

I'm interested in your work around the mental health fallout of online bullying and what your experience is as a network that touches a lot of different organizations around whether women across the country have equal access to the kind of mental health support that they need.

[Lisa Lachance]

I don't have exact stats in terms of women who identify that they've experienced cyber-violence and their access to mental health services. In general, I would say that young people don't have access to the mental health support they need. It doesn't matter whether you're in a large urban centre or in a rural area in Canada, access to services remains a huge issue. In many cases, young people, especially under the age of 18, might not know how to access services. They might not think they can access services without their parents' knowledge.

If I can just jump back to the previous member's questions around police, justice, and schools maybe not responding to experiences of cyber-violence, I just don't think we should be surprised. A woman reporting an actual physical sexual assault is often called to account for her behaviour. In these cases, young women may also feel that they've broken certain rules or laws by sending nudes under enormous pressure or in whatever context.

I think that also will prevent young women from seeking support because in their head they can do their own analysis of, “I did something wrong too, and now this is what I'm getting.” In society that's the message people give: “That's your fault; you engaged in this.”