In Ontario, the universities have until the end of this year to come up with their stand-alone policies, and all of them have to have a data collection component to them. There is a provincial committee that is trying to work out best practices on that data collection. It's very controversial. Universities are very reluctant to collect data, because those that do it will end up reporting high incidences of sexual violence, and then get a bad reputation as being a place where rape happens on campus, when we know that actually the opposite is true, and that the universities with the highest reporting rates are the ones that are doing the most to combat the problem
At the University of Ottawa, we faced that controversy and we faced resistance to trying to get uniform data collection practices, so it's a big challenge to make sure that all of the universities take the same approach to data collection. The United States has tried to do that with federal legislation, such as the Clery Act, which has a certain reporting structure. There are huge fines for not reporting. There are fines for trying to hide or cover up sexual assaults on campuses. That would be the ideal, for all universities to have a uniform reporting requirement and very clear guidelines as to what has to be collected.
On the ground it's difficult, because students in particular will disclose in a whole number of ways, and they don't all choose the same place or person to disclose to. Front-line faculty often get disclosures, but students will also go to counselling services, to protection services, or off campus to rape crisis centres.
Trying to get the data can be a challenge, but uniformity is the best. It's the key.