Thank you very much.
I'll introduce myself. I research violence against women, so that's my area of expertise, but I also chaired our sexual assault task force, which was called together in 2013, before much of the publicity had come out on this topic across the country. We ended up developing a policy that was passed by our board of governors in June 2014. I'm going to speak a little about the key concepts in that policy.
It's currently being revised again because it's an ongoing process, but the key tenets, as we saw, were a statement about zero tolerance and universality, because a number of institutions started talking about policy and saying it would only apply to students and, as far as we were concerned, that would have sent precisely the wrong message. The problem with sexual violence extends far beyond university campuses. It finds expression there, but the problems are much wider. Any policies must be universal. We can't target particular populations.
We also need to improve care, compassion, and accommodation, the treatment of people who've experienced sexual violence, something that Nicolette talked about quite eloquently. Part of what we did with our task force was to develop a series of materials for educating faculty members and staff who have to respond as front-line individuals when people disclose. We also wanted to build in policies that would hold offenders accountable and, at the same time, ensure due process.
Ultimately, the most important thing we're trying to do is not to punish those who have perpetrated, but to eliminate the problem at its root. That is much more difficult than simply setting policy. Policy is exceptionally important because if we don't say zero tolerance, people think we tolerate. The universities and colleges, in particular, are important places for us to have stand-alone policies, because this is where our young people, our leaders of the future, are developing their ideas about how the world should work, and we need to say very clearly, respect for one another is a key part of how we envision our nation working.
Ontario has now said that all universities and all colleges must have stand-alone policies. We should be doing that right across the country; it shouldn't be restricted to Ontario.
To me, there's a broader picture. What is the role of the university as an institution in eliminating violence against women? I think we have a particular role, not simply in policy. Our policy measures could be enhanced through federal challenges to the provinces to all create stand-alone policies, but our role is greater than simply policy, because the role of the university is as a leader in itself. This is a place that we look to for research and education, and our focus at the university and college level should be on educating our next generation about respect within our communities.
How do we do this? We need campaigns to educate bystanders, to talk about responsibility, so people understand the impact of sexual violence. Most people do not understand how harmful sexual violence is. If they understood, they wouldn't joke about it, and we still have pervasive rape jokes in our society. If people understood, they wouldn't talk that way. How do we create programs that will be accessible to all and that will be required of all going through the university and college system?
I would strongly agree with Nicolette that a broadly required course in social justice would be a wonderful thing to have a mandate for right across the country, because these should be our national values. Don't we want respect and tolerance? It goes beyond the issue of gender. It's not just women and girls who can be targeted. We need to look at transgender communities and vulnerable peoples across the board. We need to think about the fact that the most extreme expression of this right now is finding its form in missing and murdered indigenous women.
We need to understand those intersections, and we need to talk about them. We need to talk about every one of our citizens as equally valuable, whatever they are doing, and how they are living.
If we don't have those conversations at the university level, our leaders won't have them and we will not change our society. We need to have mandatory social justice training at the university and college level. We need to have mandatory training for our faculty and staff at the universities and colleges in the interim, because if they don't understand it, they can't teach it.
We need to put a lot more money into research about violence against women, violence against children, and violence against other vulnerable populations. If we're not researching it, we don't understand why it happens. The most important twin roles of universities are education and research. We have cut back on research at the federal level. The cutbacks have been extreme in the last few decades, therefore not allowing for the kind of critical thinking about the role of policy in making social change that is necessary.
We need greater funding to target areas in which we want social change and to target research to find solutions so we can make those changes now and not 40 years from now. I believe it can be done; I really do. I think Nicolette got to the heart of this as well when she said that when people hear a real life story, they understand the harm in what is done when people experience sexual violence. I'm talking about the whole range of sexual violence from sexist comments to rape or even rape and murder or rape resulting in someone committing suicide as in the case of Rehtaeh Parsons.
The whole range is harmful, but the wider society fundamentally does not understand that. You very clearly saw a lack of understanding of that in the commentary in the newspaper about the Jian Ghomeshi case. People thought it was funny. It is not funny. These women had been seriously harmed. We have to get to the heart of a society that says we can laugh about this stuff, that we can joke about it, that we can minimize the harm that's been done to people.
Putting a human face on research and education is really key and critical, but it's going to be pretty difficult to do any of that if there isn't the budget for it. Universities are already strapped: our buildings are falling apart. Unless there's real investment in making change, it's going to be really self-limiting.