Status of Women Committee on Oct. 17th, 2016

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

Do I have 30 seconds left? No?

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

If you can ask a question in 30 seconds and get an answer, go ahead.

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

On education in primary and secondary schools as well as in universities, do you have any thoughts on whether that's a place we need to start, since maybe some of these behaviours are developed or not developed before university?

[Julie Lalonde]

We do that work. We like to do that work.

It's extremely difficult to get into schools, in the province of Ontario in particular. However, we are big believers in it, particularly if you're doing work on street harassment with young people, 12-year-old or 13-year-old girls. It's important to do that work with them.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Very good.

All right,

Ms. Sansoucy, you have the floor.

[Brigitte Sansoucy, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I would like to thank the three witnesses for their presentations.

Ms. Lalonde, thank you for telling us about these truly promising practices.

Ontario adopted the Sexual Violence and Harassment Action Plan Act, 2016. Under this new act, it would be easier for a woman to leave an apartment when her safety is threatened. Do you think policies like this should be available to all woman across Canada, no matter which province they live in?

More broadly, I put the same question a little earlier to the other panel that appeared before us. Is it important to have mechanisms to share the various promising practices that exist currently and to share them among everyone working in the field of violence against women? As far as the federal government goes, is it important that we be able to distribute them through a policy and to create a strategy that would make it possible to share these provincial strategies or strategies supported by community organizations?

[Julie Lalonde]

To the first part of your question, my answer is yes.

I'm one of the people who spoke to the media after Ontario passed the Sexual Violence and Harassment Action Plan Act. I spoke about my experience. I was a victim of domestic violence. I was trapped in a contract with my abuser because I left before the end of our contract. I can't even describe how the new act would have saved my life 13 years ago if I had been able to leave my house with a 28 days' notice. I think this practice could be easily applied across the country and would help survivors of violence a great deal.

To answer the second part of your question, I think women's organizations in Canada have been a sad sight in the past ten years. They have been competing with each other because they each had to find funding. They were not working together. Actually, people don't always want to share their ideas or problems because they are afraid of losing their funding. It's as if I said that I only have a small piece of the pie and that I don't want to share it with Maïra Martin, from Action ontarienne contre la violence faite aux femmes. We have to be realistic in this respect. The tendency to suspect that the other organizations are trying to take our funding still exists and is still preventing us from working together.

Have I answered your question?

[Brigitte Sansoucy, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Yes, absolutely.

Furthermore, all three of you raised the issue of funding.

Can you explain how important it is for non-profit organizations to receive predictable, stable and multi-year funding? How would this funding enable you to assist vulnerable women more directly?

Please answer in any order.

[Gabrielle Ross-Marquette]

Things would change if the funding became stable and predictable. Actually, if the office staff didn't have to spend two or three months a year completing funding applications, they could spend more time on the ground.

The other point is that various programs, including the Sexual Violence and Harassment Action Plan recently adopted by the Government of Ontario, often ask non-profit organizations and women's organizations to include people from immigrant communities, but there is no additional funding for that service.

Community organizations are often asked to take part in policy-making and in committees, to visit campuses or schools, with no additional funding. This work must be done with the core funding granted to us. We would benefit a great deal from having predictable funding that would enable us to hire staff, to improve our intervention capacity and to communicate with other non-profit organizations.

[Brigitte Sansoucy, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Ms. Martin, would you like to add anything to that?

[Maïra Martin]

To give you an idea, most of the francophone sexual assault centres (CALACS) in Ontario can only set aside one day a week for speakers to raise awareness about sexual violence, which is not enough. If we really want to fight against this type of violence, we clearly have to support survivors, but also focus on education and awareness.

To be able to focus more on outreach, our centres need to have access to more funding, which is really very important and necessary. As the general director, I have to prepare both the grant applications and reports. That's often a headache and it takes a lot of time and energy. Many community organizations don't always have that capacity.

The CALACS employees are social workers first and foremost, not administrators. They don't necessarily choose the right words to fill out the funding applications. Unlike in other organizations where the staff are more familiar with the words used in government bureaucracy and who obtain funding more easily, our CALACS workers have the skills to help victims of sexual violence, but their skills in completing effective funding applications are limited.

So it's important to keep that in mind when you issue tenders. To the extent possible, it's important to try to make them as simple as possible to complete and to access so that those who have the skills in their field, but not so much in writing, can also obtain funding for their organizations.

Something else that we are seeing locally and that worries us a little is the fact that a lot of funding is now given to organizations that are not necessarily familiar with sexual violence issues. It worries us to see that a portion of the funding goes to organizations that don't necessarily have the expertise in the field. It is extremely important for you to ensure that the organizations you are funding are familiar with the reality of violence against women. Our organization has 30 or 40 years of experience.

Together, we will be able to do an effective job.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Great.

Thank you.

The last 30 seconds will go to Ms. Vandenbeld.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Thank you.

Very quickly, Ms. Lalonde, as a local MP from Ottawa who took OC Transpo exclusively for over a decade, I applaud the work that you're doing. I know some of the issues first-hand.

The one thing we've heard over and over again is the lack of data. You have a tremendous amount of data. Is that publicly accessible? Would that be accessible to us as legislators, or to the federal government?

[Julie Lalonde]

The Cornell study that I mentioned is available. I can send it to you. They have it on the Hollaback! website, so you can also compare it with other nations and see where that's at. They are in the process of wanting to do another follow-up survey to see if things have gotten better or worse in the past two or three years.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Fantastic. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Excellent.

I want to say thank you to all of our witnesses for their time today. If you think of anything afterwards, after hearing the questions, that you want to send to the committee, I invite you to send that through the clerk.

We invite you to leave whenever you like.

We have two items of committee business to attend to at this point. We want to go in camera for this, so I'll suspend briefly.

[Proceedings continue in camera]