Evidence of meeting #27 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 students.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Eva Nassif Liberal Vimy, QC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I'll share my time with my colleague, Mr. Serré.
I also want to thank our witnesses for their informative presentations.
My question is for Ms. Chambers. I want to know whether a regulatory body has been established in the provinces to research the best practices needed to end the sexual assaults experienced by women on post-secondary campuses.
Professor, Lakehead University, As an Individual
No, there is not, currently.
Professor, Lakehead University, As an Individual
I don't think there's a plan in Ontario yet for a universal policy. The plan is that all institutions have to have their own stand-alone policy.
The universities are working to some degree and colleges are to some degree working together, but it will not be one policy for all, and it probably shouldn't be, because each institution is, to some degree, different. The way that Bill 132 is set out, the policies will lay out procedures for adjudication, and they'll talk about education on campus and about a number of things, and some of the issues are slightly different from one campus to another.
Also, as Professor MacKay said, universities don't like being told exactly what to do. Give them some scope to write their own policies. They'll be happier. They'll comply a lot better.
Liberal
Eva Nassif Liberal Vimy, QC
I thought it might be interesting because education is a provincial jurisdiction. That's why I asked this question.
Professor of Law, Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University, As an Individual
I would just add on that point the work I did with the Association of Atlantic Universities was very early on, but we were trying to get a more consistent approach to sexual assault policies, particularly on the issue of recording, and that is partly for another big issue around universities, how much of the response has to do with making universities a safer place for women and others who are victims and how much is public relations. It's not good public relations to have high sexual assault statistics; therefore, on either count—and sometimes you do things for the wrong reasons but they're so good—they want to get a definition that is more consistent.
If a particular university seems to have a very high rate, it may in fact mean that they have a very good reporting system, because of course this is grossly under-reported. They have done the kind of training. They have people who others feel comfortable going to and reporting, so they have very high statistics. Somewhere else that has a very poor system has low statistics, and people say, “Great, we should go there; it's a safe place.” It might be just the opposite, actually.
I agree with Professor Chambers that in general, there obviously needs to be flexibility to design unique aspects of it, but I think there can be parts of it that are fairly universal. Speaking of universal, there is the other point you made that maybe these policies should always apply to the whole community, not just students. Maybe all these policies should be accessible to people who need them in a very difficult time. Maybe you need to have some reasonably standard definitions of what is sexual assault. I think there can be both. It's like federalism. There are some national standards and there's provincial diversity, and I think you could do the same thing with universities.
Very quickly while I'm here, I had another thought, which may be a really bad one, on federal jurisdiction. I think one might make an argument that the crisis of sexual assault on university campuses is a big enough one such that it's peace, order, and good government under federal jurisdiction, although I won't make any friends provincially. It seems to me that in some ways it's a very strange argument, though maybe not so strange if you actually look at the statistics about how serious this is.
Liberal
Marc Serré Liberal Nickel Belt, ON
I wish we had more time.
I'll just make a comment. Obviously, when we look at high school, society, and young men, we need to really focus on that. I think a lot of the witnesses have indicated that in the past. We probably haven't done a good job of doing that. However, I'm going to leave that aside because now we have three of you from the university perspective.
We say there's a crisis and we heard earlier from the two representatives of Canadian student associations that they've approached the association of universities and colleges across Canada and there's no leadership there. They're not responding to the students. They don't want to look at it nationally.
What I'm looking at here, the more we get into it, is that there is Bill 132 in Ontario, and legislation in B.C. There's such a hodgepodge, and there's absolutely no leadership in many areas. We just had a $2-billion federal investment in universities and colleges, and I don't think one university or college made this a priority in its funding application.
You obviously are passionate about this issue. We'll do what we can also, but how can you play some leadership role to try to help us to get the Canadian universities and colleges association on board to recognize this as a national issue to move this forward?
Professor, Sheridan College, Ph.D. Candidate, gender and media studies, York University, As an Individual
To continue the social discussion, as authors, as writers, and as professors, we can certainly do our part to write to different magazines and newspapers and to advocate.
After Jian Ghomeshi and in light of Trump rising in the ranks with his commentary, it's becoming much more obvious that there has been a massive problem that has been swept under the rug. Even though these people are very negative in the attitudes they manifest towards women, in one way they've helped pull the cover off a major social problem and allowed some people who might have felt somewhat silenced before to talk about it more. Certainly, I think we feel that we have more of a social ear to write and to speak to, that is more willing to listen.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Marilyn Gladu
Thank you very much. That's the end of the time.
Thank you to all the professors. If you have additional comments that you would like to make, please send the information to the clerk. We would love to receive it.
For those of you on the committee, on Monday we'll be seeing more folks from the South Asian Women's Centre, the University of Victoria Anti-Violence Project, and Farrah Khan as an individual.
Have a great weekend and we'll see you next week.