Status of Women Committee on Nov. 23rd, 2016

[Julie Neubauer]

[Inaudible--Editor] numbers of women. It's important to remember that these women are also survivors and also victims. The traffickers themselves are becoming much more astute and clever in their attempts to evade detection. They're recognizing that it's often in their best interest to have someone else do the luring and be actively involved on paper and in those types of activities, so when the police do come they are further removed from the activities.

In a lot of these cases where the females are the active recruiters, they themselves have been trafficked by these exact traffickers for years prior, and so it is a matter of self-preservation that they make that choice, they make that decision. There's a pecking order in a lot of the trafficking circles. If someone comes to them and says, “If you do this, you will have to sleep with fewer men”, they then become the bottom bitch, which means that they are then given a higher power within the group. For these young women who are struggling to maintain control and power and a sense of identification within their desperate situation, when someone offers them even that glimmer or glimpse of some sort of control, they will grab onto that desperately.

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

When we talk about victims coming forward, we had the opportunity to actually hear from a victim. It was really great, because she actually said she didn't want to be revictimized by going out and being the face of that campaign. We have to recognize that when victims come forward they expect results. What do we see when it comes to sentencing? I don't want to just look at that, but the correlation between people coming forward and not coming forward, and the end results when people are actually charged and sentenced. Do you have any information on that?

[Julie Neubauer]

I can tell you that I was recently at a presentation with Toronto's human trafficking enforcement team, and they have a lot of really good stats. When we began back in 2013, there was one conviction. Please don't quote me—I can provide this for you—I think there are six convictions on human trafficking-related issues. That could be in living off the avails, violence-related, transporting in person. There's a variety of different convictions they can acquire under the umbrella of human trafficking. When the police and the crown try to seek a conviction, they'll do so in a number of different ways.

You talked about survivors looking for results in their coming forward and being witnesses in these cases. So much of the work we do, that the police do, and a lot of the NGOs do, is the relationship and the engagement. Because their trusting attachments to normal, healthy patterns of engagement with other human beings has been skewed, it takes an enormous amount of time—

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

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

We'll go now to Ms. Malcolmson for seven minutes.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Thanks, Chair.

Thanks to both the witnesses for your work. It's hard, and it's vital, and we are going to rely on your testimony.

Because I only have a short amount of time, I'll start with a couple of yes-no answers. I'll start with Ms. Brayton. I appreciate some of my fellow committee members asking some of the questions I was going to ask, so that's good. We can save our time.

Ms. Brayton, do you have sufficient operational funding to do the work that the country is asking you to do?

[Bonnie Brayton]

No.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

We had earlier reports that indicated that domestic violence shelters are not sufficiently equipped to provide access for women with disabilities. Is that hampering access to domestic violence shelters for women who are vulnerable to violence?

[Bonnie Brayton]

Absolutely.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

I'm going to ask you a couple more, then we can get a bit more broad.

Do police stations and the justice system provide sufficient access for women with disabilities, such that they're able to get access to justice when they're victims of violence?

[Bonnie Brayton]

No.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

I'll maybe just point back to the one report we were able to find from February 2011 that the Vecova Centre for Disability Services and Research did. They described 75% of shelters having at least one building entrance that was wheelchair-accessible, and 66% provided wheelchair-accessible bathrooms, but the funding that was available was not sufficient to actually bring shelters up to full access, and this was one of the crunch points.

Has anything changed on that since 2011?

[Bonnie Brayton]

No; no meaningful change.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Thanks.

There was also a characterization in this report, which I thought was important to say. Maybe I'll just read the section:

Many women with intellectual disabilities, notably, have lived in institutional settings which segregate and exclude them from their family and community life. Being isolated and restricted from developing natural supports in the community only enhances women's vulnerability to violence.

Has anything changed since then?

[Bonnie Brayton]

No. There's a huge problem with housing and institutionalization of women and girls with disabilities.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Thanks.

Maybe I can switch over to Ms. Neubauer from Covenant House.

I live really close to where you provide your services, and for decades I've known you've been doing this vital work. Just last week the first national survey on youth homelessness was released. Because we haven't had any testimony on that side of things, can you describe for us a little bit more the link between domestic violence and homelessness? To what extent is escaping domestic violence sending victims into homelessness and in need of extra support?

[Julie Neubauer]

I apologize that I don't have the exact numbers of young people within that survey who report being forced from their homes as a result of domestic violence. I can tell you anecdotally that on any given night in our shelter, out of the 94 young people, I would hazard a guess that 85% of them would identify some sort of domestic violence, gender based or otherwise, that they've experienced in some form or another.

As I said, we have those stats. We collect data from our varying youth surveys throughout their time there, and that's something that I could provide to the committee, all the stats available, at your request.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

That would be great. We can use that in our final report writing. Thank you so much.

[Julie Neubauer]

What also happens is just the mere vulnerability of having them engaged and living in shelter environments continues to perpetuate that domestic violence, or makes them prey and vulnerable to the people who circle. As you know, because you live in the neighbourhood, the people who prey on the young people in the streets make them vulnerable to trafficking and other situations.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Yes. Thanks.

Perhaps I could finish with a question for Ms. Brayton. It doesn't have to be a yes-no answer. Thank you for working with me, though.

I so recognize that of the vulnerable women in the country, the disabled women's support community has been especially pressed to get that voice and to be invited into processes. Thank you for flagging that this is sorely lacking in the murdered and missing indigenous women and girls inquiry. I hadn't thought of it that way before, so thank you.

You have a voice here now. What would you like to see reflected in our final report? We'd love to echo the experience of your advocacy.

[Bonnie Brayton]

I can't state it strongly enough: it begins with recognizing that the resources simply aren't there.

The work we're doing through our current project on legislation, policy, and service responses affirms what we've known for a long time at DAWN Canada, and further affirms what women told us in the research we did from 2011 to 2014, that the systemic problems are part of how you can begin to address it, because women with disabilities will continue to experience violence at higher rates than any other women. That's a given. That's not going to change, in all likelihood, ever.

Given that they experience it at higher rates, I'm really urging you to understand that it must be a priority to assign resources to addressing this, and to addressing it at a systemic level back to the discussion we had at the beginning of the question period, about the fact that disability is this huge tsunami underlying what we're talking about in terms of violence against women.

In a study in 2014 on sex work in British Columbia, a qualitative research of 3,500 women sex workers who participated in this research, 35% of them self-identified as having a long-term disability before they became sex workers.

Again, I don't want to over-focus on one cohort or another. To be really clear, young women with intellectual disabilities, young women who are in institutions, are extremely vulnerable to abuse, through their caregivers or the fact that they're in transportation, or there are so many other things I could have covered. I tried really hard to focus today on what needs to be heard, which is how large in scale this problem is, to make clear that we are the largest minority group in the world.

In this country, disability is finally hitting the radar of everyone, but to be really clear, it has been a huge problem for a very long time, and there has been only one organization, my organization, focused on this work. You have seen us over and over again on this panel, and in all the years that I've come here, I haven't seen a single change. My funding has been reduced, year over year, since 2007. Year over year, my funding has been reduced, not increased.

I am here only because women with disabilities, despite our vulnerability, are the most resilient women in this country. I urge you all to hear me and to hear what I'm asking you to do, to be our champion, because we can't continue to do it alone.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Thank you very much.

We'll now go to Ms. Ludwig, for seven minutes.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you both for your excellent presentations and for the work you're doing to make such a difference in the communities.

My questions are varied, more so in terms of the research side, because so much of funding and programming is based on the research that is collected. You have both mentioned research studies. Could you tell me who has been funding those studies?

Ms. Brayton, you mentioned one study. Was that funded by the federal government, by a university and NSERC grant?

[Bonnie Brayton]

Are you talking about the sex work study?

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

Yes.