Status of Women Committee on Oct. 19th, 2016

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

I call the meeting to order.

We are resuming our study of violence against young girls and women with the discussion of date rape on campus.

Today, we have as a witness, Daphne Gilbert, who is an associate professor in the faulty of law at the University of Ottawa. With her is Elizabeth Sheehy, also from the faculty of law at the University of Ottawa.

We also have Danika McConnell, who is a representative of the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations.

By video conference from Newfoundland we have Bilan Arte, who is the national chairperson of the Canadian Federation of Students.

We are going to start with our regular rounds of speeches and comments, and then we'll move to questions.

We'll begin with Daphne. You have five minutes.

[Daphne Gilbert, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, Common Law Section, University of Ottawa, As an Individual]

Good afternoon. Thank you for inviting me to speak with you today.

I was co-chair of the committee that drafted the new sexual violence policy at the University of Ottawa, which was approved by the board of governors in June 2016. I thought I'd use my time to describe the animating features of our policy and offer some thoughts on the balance that we tried to strike. We tried to incorporate best practices from both the United States and Canada.

My colleague Elizabeth Sheehy and I have written on the subject of violence on university campuses, and we teach a course at the law school on sexual assault law.

I first want to acknowledge that our policy was drafted in the wake of some high-profile incidents at the University of Ottawa that prompted our president to strike a task force on respect and equality to make recommendations on how to combat sexual violence on our campus. It was also helpful to have a provincial government that passed legislation in March of this year that mandated that all universities in Ontario enact stand-alone sexual violence policies. The legislation left the design of those policies to each institution.

The University of Ottawa's policy is guided by two overriding themes: the promotion of a survivor-centred response to sexual violence and the safety of the space in which we work, live, and study. I'll give you a brief overview of how we breathed some life into those principles.

First, on the creation of a safe space, we worked hard to create a policy that did not replicate a criminal justice process. We felt it was important to distinguish the university context and offer both a distinctive process and effective remedies that work for our community.

Survivors of sexual violence can file a formal complaint at any time, so long as the alleged perpetrator is a member of the university community. Membership is defined in the policy to include faculty, students, and staff, so it's a comprehensive policy.

We created a special position, a sexual violence officer, housed within our human rights office, to act as a resource person during the whole process. An important and controversial feature of our policy is that almost all formal complaints must be investigated by an independent external investigator. This raises serious resource questions for the university, but we thought it was important as a due process protection for both parties to the complaint.

We have a review committee that comprises three trained representatives, and they take in the report of the external investigator, as well as written responses by both parties. The review committee must have an in-person meeting with each party, but those meetings are held separately. The two parties do not meet face to face. There is no face-to-face encounter and no opportunity to question each other.

The review committee makes a finding on a balance of probabilities as to whether our policy has been breached, in other words, whether there has been an incident of sexual violence, and it makes recommendations as to the appropriate consequences.

Written reasons for the decision have to be produced and given to both parties, as well as to the person who is tasked with implementing the recommendations.

The consequences are considered safety measures. They are not punitive consequences. They are meant to ensure that both the complainant and the broader university community are safe and feel safe in their work, living, and study situations.

A second guiding principle of our policy is that it is survivor-centred. In addition to the formal complaint process, we are committed to enhancing resources to support survivors on our campus, regardless of where their assault took place. We have partnerships with local community rape crisis centres that work on campus now to offer confidential support to complainants. We collect data on the number of incidents, the choices survivors made in coping, and the resources they sought.

The sexual violence officer will coordinate training for students, faculty, and staff on bystander intervention, positive consent culture, and healthy sex education. So far, over 300 senior administrators and leaders, including our entire board of governors, our senior administrative staff, and all the deans on campus, have received training by a rape crisis centre on how to receive disclosures of sexual assaults and what constitutes consent in law. Our policy makes equality its core foundation and expressly references rape culture.

In closing, while we expect that the University of Ottawa will tweak its policy as implementation unfolds, I am proud of how we came to a feminist, broad-based consensus that involved all of our constituents: faculty, staff, students, unions, and the senior administration.

I am happy to address any questions.

[Elizabeth Sheehy, Professor, Faculty of Law, Common Law Section, University of Ottawa, As an Individual]

Thank you, Daphne.

In my five minutes I'd like to focus on legal responses to sexual violence on campus. As you are no doubt aware, Ontario and B.C. have passed laws requiring post-secondary institutions to develop, in consultation with students, policies and protocols for sexual violence on campus, including developing complaint mechanisms and providing information to students about due process rights and other rights, such as rights to representation and appeal processes. Manitoba, as you probably know, is also poised to do the same.

In this evolving legislative context we can expect to see the other provinces follow suit, so I want to briefly touch on what I see as three threats to the development and implementation of sound law and legal policy in this regard.

First, two of the three provincial laws require universities to consult only students, not other designated groups such as women's anti-violence advocates. Only B.C. contemplates the possibility that other groups may have significant expertise and/or investment in the issue so as to require their inclusion in policy building.

While it's laudable that provincial governments are legislating that student voices be included in devising responses, as they must be, there are serious problems with the legislation. The laws give no indication as to which students or groups must have a voice, or who's input should be valued. Universities are free to consult with individual students or groups of their choosing.

Many student groups have taken a position opposing rape culture, but not all articulate a feminist commitment. Some have voiced opposition to policies that implicate any sort of discipline for offending parties, and others are downright hostile to measures supporting women against male violence on campus. Even those students and groups who are politically aligned with supporting sexual violence policies may not have the expertise and long-term commitment to developing, maintaining, and refining campus responses.

The knowledge base of the women's anti-violence movement that has been theorized from decades of experience—what's been tried and failed and where current resources and struggles are focused—may be lacking. It's simply not possible to develop optimal responses to sexual violence on campus without the expertise of women's front line anti-violence activists.

Second, the provincial government's decision to leave development of the details of sexual violence policies to individual institutions adds to the volatility of this political and legal situation. Most institutions seem to be simply tacking on a sexual violence policy to their pre-existing student codes of conduct, or harassment and discrimination policies, neither of which have any track record of successfully responding to sexual assault.

The results of the tack on approach are confusing and contradictory and, as may be predicted, women students are already instigating complaints to provincial human rights tribunals about university policy failures. Furthermore, the issue of campus sexual assault sits within a much larger political and legal context, in which men accused of sexual violence are aggressively contesting campus adjudications of responsibility by seeking judicial review and arguing that they're due process rights have been violated.

The pattern has emerged powerfully in the United States where universities are being sued by lawyers representing aggrieved male students who have been found responsible for sexual violence and disciplined by academic sanctions, such as suspension or expulsion. Many of these claims have failed, thankfully, but others have resulted in settlements by universities wishing to avoid the glare of litigation, and some have actually been successful in court.

Although the provincial laws require that sexual violence policies articulate what due process measures will be provided, the fact that universities are free to pick and choose among them means that there's a potential for considerable variance among the universities, making them even more vulnerable to legal challenge that will weaken the integrity and finality of university processes and decisions. The lack of uniformity also means that it will be difficult to build expertise across universities and among those charged with administering these policies, increasing further the potential for litigation.

Third and finally, the presence of campus-based men's rights groups will only increase the risk that the effectiveness of these policies will be undermined. Men's rights activists have launched campus campaigns at the University of Alberta by removing and replacing anti-rape slogans on posters with rape-apologist messaging. They've also targeted a well-known feminist professor whose research and leadership focuses on sexual assault.

One men's rights group, the Canadian Association for Equality, CAFE, claims to have set up student groups on 16 campuses across the country. CAFE has the benefit and status of a charitable organization under the tax laws of Canada. Their activities have focused on hosting anti-feminists as public speakers whose talks are focused on repositioning men as the victims of women's violence and minimizing women students' experience of sexual violence. It seems likely that they, among others, will seek to oppose and upend university sexual assault policies.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Thank you, that's your time.

Now we go to Ms. McConnell, for 10 minutes.

[Danika McConnell, Representative, Canadian Alliance of Student Associations]

Good afternoon, Madam Chair, committee members, fellow witnesses, and members of the gallery.

My name is Danika McConnell. I am the president of the Students' Association of MacEwan University, in Edmonton, and a member of the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations, CASA.

On my campus I've been an active member on the institution's sexual violence prevention education committee and I've also been identified in campaigns focused on sexual violence policies and consent education.

I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak before this committee on behalf of CASA and our 21 member associations, representing over 250,000 students from across Canada. I want to begin by giving a general overview of CASA's approach to research and advocacy, as this may be the first time any of you have interacted with our organization.

CASA is made up of student unions and associations from across the country. We focus our work on issues pertaining to post-secondary education at the federal level. Our approach to advocacy is rooted in evidence-based research and is driven by the work of our student members. Being a member-driven organization means we take the issues that are identified by our student constituents and bring them forward as advocacy priorities when meeting with federal decision-makers.

In that context, it should make sense that CASA has become deeply engaged and invested in the issue of sexual violence on post-secondary campuses. That is what I'm presenting on today.

My hope is to convey to you the reality of the situation on the ground and to identify current deficiencies at the institutional and national levels. From there I intend to provide this committee with solutions that CASA believes the federal government and this committee have at their disposal in order to tackle this complex issue.

Not a day goes by when this issue doesn't cross my mind as both a student leader representing thousands and as a young women in the post-secondary environment. As you can tell from what I've already expressed, this is an issue that I'm deeply invested in. Given the appalling numbers I will share with you soon, it should come as no surprise that I myself have been directly affected and forever changed by sexual violence. Details aside, one could assume the profound difficulties and challenges this created in completing my education. I consider myself one of the lucky ones, as I have a robust support system in my life. Despite the challenges, I understand from those close to me and the students I represent that this outcome is often not the case. Many women face the heartbreaking and very real circumstances of continued abuse and victim blaming, and many do not complete their education because of it.

While all of the above is valid and an experience sadly not unique to students much like myself, I want to ensure I provide you with empirical data in order to illustrate the severity of the issue facing students across Canada.

A recent report by METRAC reveals that four out of five female undergraduate students report having been the victims of dating violence, and that 29% report having experienced a sexual assault. We know that women represent over 93% of the known survivors, and men represent 97% of the known attackers. We also know that 82% of sexual assaults are committed by someone the survivor is already acquainted with. From 2009 to 2015, more than 700 sexual assault cases were reported on university and college campuses across Canada. Experts believe the number of unreported cases is much higher. Regardless, it is clear that every day, female students are sexually assaulted or harassed on post-secondary campuses in Canada.

Sexual violence on university and college campuses continues to be a persistent and concerning issue across Canada. In recent years the issue of sexual violence has dominated the media, shining a spotlight on the lack of preventive and survivor supportive responses from post-secondary institutions. These revelations would be shocking if they weren't all too familiar to my fellow students and me. Too often, administrators prioritize their institution's reputation over the safety and well-being of their student body by refusing to address these issues. The examples of this are overwhelming with recent cases at Brandon University, the University of British Columbia, Dalhousie University, and many others. The common thread among these situations is that these institutions either had a sexual violence policy that failed to adequately support the students involved or simply didn't have a policy at all.

Sexual violence policies need to be clear and student-centred so that all those involved understand the steps to be taken when pursuing a case of sexual violence. For schools with policies, the process's timelines and outcomes are often unclear to students trying to use them. Too often, these policies, when put into practice, are focused on preserving the reputation of the institution instead of the well-being of the students. In one recent case, survivors of sexual assault were required to sign a contract that stipulated they were not to have contact with other persons involved and they were not to discuss what happened with anyone but a counsellor. If they broke those stipulations, they faced suspension or expulsion. This is unacceptable.

CASA believes institutions must create policies that are wholly centred on students' well-being. The best way to do so is to generate policies in consultation and collaboration with students on campuses.

Another worrisome fact is that most institutions have no official stand-alone policy to address incidents of sexual violence on their campuses. Many schools simply slot their sexual assault and harassment policies into a broad student code of conduct. This past March the CBC found that out of 100 Canadian post-secondary institutions, only 12 had stand-alone policies. This, again, is simply unacceptable.

When policies are buried within a larger document, they are often general in nature and difficult to implement consistently. Additionally, such policies are not generally communicated well to students, making the process confusing. Cases of sexual assault are already dramatically under-reported, so it is crucial that institutions provide clear, accessible steps for reporting and responding to a sexual assault claim on campus.

What makes this lack of clear policy more frustrating is that institutions are already doing this work in a number of different areas. There are a number of examples of this, but alcohol policies are one that is easy to compare. The vast majority of campuses across the country have policies that dictate drinking expectations for students on campus. Recently, 25 schools signed onto the Canadian Post-Secondary Education Collaborative on Reducing Alcohol-Related Harms Project Charter, examining harms, collecting data, and sharing best practices. This imbalance in policy emphasis must be rectified at the institutional level if we are going to begin to address the issue of sexual violence.

Before I provide this committee with CASA's proposed path forward on this issue, I want to underscore why we believe institutions have an important role to play in addressing sexual violence.

First, campuses must actively address this issue because that is where sexual violence is taking place. It's happening in residences, on-campus bars, and in surrounding neighbourhoods. Institutions have a duty of care and an obligation to provide students with the quality educational and social experience they advertise.

Second, effective policy in any context needs a framework in which to work, and in this case post-secondary institutions are that framework. This reality has already been acknowledged in provinces, as we just heard, like Ontario and B.C., where universities and colleges have been mandated to create stand-alone sexual violence policies and reporting structures.

While CASA is fully aware of the limitations of the federal government on the issue of on-campus sexual violence, there are steps that can be made. The previous minister of status of women, Dr. Leitch, received a report entitled, “Options for Action on Sexual Violence Against Women on Post Secondary Campuses”, which was delivered to her on March 30, 2015. Within that brief the minister was provided with three options: one, that the government host a round table to highlight best practices, including from the Status of Women Canada-funded projects, which would help to highlight action to date and identify potential future work; two, that a letter could be sent from the minister and the status of women committee to Universities Canada to encourage it to undertake work on a common reporting guideline and framework for sexual assaults on campus; and, three, or that a letter be sent to some 80 university presidents encouraging them to continue to address the issue on their own campus. The letter could also discuss best practices and the need for a common framework for collecting and reporting data.

CASA asks that this committee accept those recommendations put forward by Status of Women Canada, and include them in its report. Moreover, CASA believes the federal government should expand the general social survey on victimization in order to measure crime on campuses, including sexual violence, assault, and harassment incidents. In essence, CASA is calling on this committee and the government to use their influence to urge post-secondary institutions to do more on the issue of sexual violence.

In closing, let me just say thank you. Thank you for allowing me to speak to the issue of sexual violence on post-secondary campuses. It is an issue that I, along with student leaders across the country, care deeply about. Thank you for your commitment to taking on this issue. I wish this committee luck in its work. It is so very important.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Thank you so much.

We now have our video conference.

We will hear from Bilan Arte. Welcome. You have 10 minutes.

[Bilan Arte, National Chairperson, Canadian Federation of Students]

Thank you very much.

Good afternoon, members of the committee and fellow witnesses. First and foremost, I'd like to thank you for inviting me. I'm on campus today, as you can tell. I'm joining you from St. John's, and I'm on campus at Memorial University, speaking to students about our most recent national campaign for free education.

I'll start with an anecdote. While on campus talking about barriers to accessing post-secondary, I've heard time and again from the students I've had conversations with not only here but on campuses across this country as we promote this national campaign the importance of understanding the pervasive nature of sexual and gender-based violence on our campuses as being just as much of a barrier to accessing post-secondary.

With that, I'm going to start my address this afternoon with some facts.

We know that today, young women between the ages of 15 and 24 experience higher instances of sexual violence in Canada. A survey recently conducted by Statistics Canada found that the police report that the rate of violent crime against women in this age range was 42% higher than the rate for women age 25 to 34 and almost double the rate for women between the ages of 35 and 44.

It is important to know within these statistics that women from marginalized communities are disproportionately affected by sexual and gender-based violence and according to 2014 statistics from Statistics Canada, we also note the rates for sexual assault experienced by aboriginal women are more than double those for non-aboriginal women. This survey also found that queer people, trans people, people with disabilities, racialized people, and immigrants experience much higher rates of violent victimization, including sexual violence.

Because our campuses are part of a society that makes up these statistics, it's evident to us that sexual violence is prevalent on colleges and university campuses. When surveyed, we know that four out of five undergraduate students at Canadian universities report experiencing dating violence and 29% report an experience of sexual assault.

We also know that women are at a higher risk of experiencing sexual assault within the first eight weeks of classes. In terms of statistics, this number largely underestimates the prevalence of sexual violence and highlights the issue of under-reporting. Some of these barriers to reporting include issues such as revictimization, the prevalence of victim blaming, and the justice system. The personal financial risks of litigation and the emotional strain of a trial keep many survivors from reporting.

Because of this reality, since 1981, the Canadian Federation of Students, which unites more than half a million students across this country, has worked with its members from coast to coast to raise awareness and develop best practices to respond to and combat sexual violence. The federation draws on over 30 years of experience to propose the following recommendations on how the federal government can best address sexual violence on Canadian campuses.

Our first recommendation is to introduce legislation that mandates all post-secondary institutions to have stand-alone sexual violence policies. These policies must be survivor-centred and must be developed through a student-serving process. We draw on examples such as Bill 132 in Ontario, which mandates all post-secondary institutions to establish a stand-alone sexual assault policy that is essential to ensuring that all institutions have clear processes to respond to and address incidents of sexual violence. This legislation must provide students with recourse if their university or college does not have or has not properly followed a sexual violence or a gender-based violence policy.

To ensure the effectiveness and legitimacy of the policy, institutions should be mandated to first, identify and include key stakeholders, particularly students, student groups, and providers of victim support services, including local rape crisis centres. Second, it must also review the policy at least once every two years and/or as issues arise. To support the development and implementation of these policies, the federation recommends that the federal government work with all provincial and territorial governments to establish post-secondary sexual violence support divisions. These provincial and territorial divisions would be mandated to allocate funding for sexual violence prevention work, collect and disseminate data about sexual violence within post-secondary institutions, and hold individual institutions accountable to both their campus communities and the broader public.

The federation also recommends that the federal government establish a permanent standing committee on sexual violence in post-secondary institutions in order to facilitate communication between the provincial and territorial divisions, set standards for data collection on sexual violence, and ensure that there is a clear, national vision to end sexual and gender-based violence in Canada.

Our second recommendation is on the creation of a sexual violence support resource fund. Our federation recommends that the federal government create a sexual violence support resource fund to fund initiatives to combat sexual violence at post-secondary institutions. This would ensure an equitable funding distribution, and the fund would have two envelopes, one for students and campus groups, and another for faculty staff and university and college administrations. This fund would be available to students, campus groups, faculty, staff, and university and college administrations for the purposes of education, training, and to develop and strengthen resources to address and respond to sexual violence. The intention of this fund would not be to alleviate institutional pressure to direct resources towards ending sexual and gender-based violence on campus, but instead, the fund would allow those with limited access to funds, such as students or those who are otherwise unable to pursue these important programs, to help end sexual and gender-based violence on campus.

Our final recommendation is to develop a national public education campaign on sexual and gender-based violence awareness and prevention. While our previous recommendations have focused on addressing sexual violence on campuses, our federation understands that rape culture and the normalization of sexual and gender-based violence need to be challenged more broadly and more directly in order to create campuses and communities in our societies that are free from sexual and gender-based violence. A public education campaign should be created to make information and training about sexual and gender-based violence, consent, and bystander intervention accessible to all. To be effective, information should use accessible language, be communicated through a variety of different mediums, including online. It needs to be intersectional and acknowledge the varying experiences of gender and sexual-based violence, and it must be inclusive. In order to ensure that post-secondary institutions are doing their part, we must ensure that this information is communicated to and understood by those within universities and colleges. Post-secondary institutions should be mandated to hold mandatory consent education programs for all staff, faculty, and students within the first eight weeks of each new academic year.

The effective implementation of these recommendations, supported by Status of Women Canada and this committee, would help to ensure that the universities and colleges from coast to coast are taking meaningful steps to combat sexual and gender-based violence on our campuses.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Thank you, Ms. Arte. That was excellent.

I was requested by the committee, if it's possible, that you send those recommendations to the clerk. We would love to have them.

[Bilan Arte]

Absolutely.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

We're going to start off our seven minutes of questions, and we'll start with my colleague Ms. Ludwig.

[Karen Ludwig, Liberal, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Thank you all for your very informative and great presentations. Certainly for all of us looking at post-secondary education, sexual violence should be an issue for all of us to be worried about.

You've addressed a lot of it, but my first question is actually around the data collection and reporting. You said that in Ontario and B.C., and soon to be Manitoba, there will be mandatory programming. But the CBC reported only 12 of 100 universities. So, although we've been told it's mandated, the reality is only 12 of 100 universities are actually working in that regard. How do we make changes in that area to ensure they actually are following through on the mandates?

[Danika McConnell]

We are sitting around this table. I think right now the government has a lot of influence that can be brought forward simply by recognizing this is an issue and vocalizing it. There were a lot of surprised faces in this room when we really broke down the statistics on just how early it actually can occur. I think right now you're in an incredible position to bring it forward, in a matter of influence, and mark this as a priority.

[Karen Ludwig, Liberal, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Thank you.

Daphne.

[Daphne Gilbert]

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.

[Karen Ludwig, Liberal, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

What I heard from all of you was that there is definitely a lack of consistency in data collection. Therefore, it's not reliable.

[Daphne Gilbert]

That's right.

[Karen Ludwig, Liberal, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

That's certainly an issue.

There's also the stigma associated with a university having such high rates. They may have better reporting statistics, but that fact is very hard to justify to the general public when mom and dad are trying to work with their child on where to send them off to school.

Thank you for all that.

You said four out of five report being victims of dating violence, and 29% report sexual assault. Those are definitely astounding numbers, as is the fact that it's happening within the first eight weeks. I have a couple of questions around that.

First, are you working with or are you familiar with any programs in the high schools as the students are getting prepared for post-secondary? How much work is being done there? Is there any bridge between the two?

Second, I can only say from my own children having gone off to university that typically, any type of information is given during orientation week, which is the first week. There's a lot going on that week, and I don't think it's ever reintroduced. Has that been your experience as well?

[Danika McConnell]

I can certainly speak to your latter question about making sure that the awareness of these services is long-standing and not just around in the hustle and bustle of the first week. Students can take in only so much information. There's quite a learning curve. Post-secondary campuses in themselves, aside from what we're discussing today, are complex and very new to so many. It can be an exciting time with a lot of information flowing through. I think there are a lot of really great examples all the way from Nova Scotia to my institution where there is a firm precedent to make sure that once the excitement settles down in September, students still realize what kinds of resources are available to them. It's all about setting that standard and making sure it's known, and then evaluating those best practices and seeing how they can be adopted campus to campus, because not one single post-secondary institution is like another.

[Karen Ludwig, Liberal, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Great, thank you.

The other question I have is about the marginalized groups.

Bilan, you talked about marginalized groups within universities. Often if someone doesn't have a clear path to university or to college, and maybe they're the first ones to attend, they could be at a higher risk. Their parents or their communities have put so much into them and expect so much. Is there any correlation between that and a lower likelihood of reporting?

[Bilan Arte]

Thank you for the question.

I don't have any particular data around first-generation students, but I think some of the data from Statistics Canada tells us that marginalized communities, specifically students who come from racialized backgrounds, immigrant backgrounds, or some of the other groups that we mentioned, can be particularly disproportionately affected by sexual and gender-based violence on campus. We know that reality because we understand the intersections of not only sexual and gender-based violence, but other issues in our society, mainly racism, xenophobia, and other items that compound those experiences for those marginalized communities.

I think this goes back to our third recommendation, in which we talk about creating public education campaigns and we discuss the importance of providing that information through various different mediums. When I say inclusive, I'm also talking about the importance of using accessible language that can perhaps be translated. For example, on a lot of our campuses, there's also a high number of international students. How do we start to have conversations about consent education in an environment that has people besides English speakers? We understand that doesn't always translate into what that extended education could look like for students whose first language may not be English.

I think that—

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

I'm sorry, that's your time on that question.

We're going to go to my colleague, Ms. Vecchio, for seven minutes.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Hi, and thank you very much. All of you have been extremely interesting today in giving great information.

On my way here, Anita and I discussed the makeup of this group and how having met at the table is so important. Elizabeth, you had talked about the anti-feminist activist groups that are out there. It's just astonishing that we have those trying to take us backwards. What have we tried to get them on board and saying that this is not working, or what has the relationship been with those anti-feminist activist groups. Has there been any relationship building at all, or trying to get them to be part of the picture?

[Elizabeth Sheehy]

On our campus, there's been quite a hostile relationship between that group and the student federation. Many of the student groups actively oppose those men's rights groups. The student groups are doing their best, but I don't really know...I'm not really sure what kind of reconciliation is possible with those groups given that what they're really interested in is insisting on denying the reality of women's experience of sexual violence. I'm not sure how to work with them really. Sorry.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

No doubt. I just know Anita and I were talking about that when we have men sitting at the table. We sort of sympathize what's going on, but the men seem sometimes very shocked, and that's why I was wondering what we can do to try to pull them in to make them part of that conversation. Another part—

[Elizabeth Sheehy]

I think the bystander program might do some of that—