Status of Women Committee on June 15th, 2017

[Eva Nassif, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

Yes, of course.

[Ellen Frood]

I understood the question, but I'm not comfortable answering in French.

[Eva Nassif, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

No problem.

[Ellen Frood]

We have a drop-in centre. In the drop-in centre, we distribute substance use materials and also do training for naloxone and treatment with it. We have staff trained in that area.

Oftentimes, we'll have young people. Most recently, I heard of a 13-year-old young woman who came in looking for harm reduction supplies. We had the opportunity at that time to counsel and to refer her to somebody who might help her with addictions.

All of our staff are aware of it and do refer and help families in terms of offering the services and referring. Aside from our drop-in centre, we don't have any resources directly connected to substance use and addictions.

[Eva Nassif, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

Ms. Davis, does your organization provide services like this?

I'm just wondering if your organization has any resources to help women with drug addiction, especially with the recent opioid crisis that's going on.

[Anne Davis]

Many years ago we looked around, and on Vancouver Island, Nanaimo to the north of Vancouver Island, there were 45 beds for men for recovery from addiction. There were none for women. We opened one or two addiction recovery beds in our transition house, which was a bit challenging. Two or three years ago we opened a separate, free-standing, 12-bed house for addiction recovery.

As my colleagues have referenced, we come from a trauma-informed perspective. We recognize that very often the root cause of addiction for women is trauma. Very often it is violence and sexual assault. We have detox and we have a recovery program for women who have completed detox so that they can stay for a while. We have a couple of suites—we would like to have many, many more—for women who are transitioning from the recovery program and just really getting their feet back under them, looking at employment and looking at moving on in their lives.

Yes, all of the program is delivered from a feminist perspective that understands the history.

[Eva Nassif, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

Thank you.

Ms. Taylor, do you have anything to add?

[Anne Taylor]

I think what Anne Davis spoke about is something that we'd like to see in Nanaimo. Even though we are a bigger centre, we actually have very limited resources available. We also understand that addiction issues in the women we're working with are really part of the complexities that exist when someone has experienced violence in their home over maybe decades. It certainly is a gap, yes.

[Eva Nassif, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

My next question is for you three. Which strategies would you recommend to our government to prevent women who have been mistreated or have experienced spousal abuse from returning to the same life, and instead to encourage them to fight these situations so that they can leave that misery?

[Ellen Frood]

The wait time for people going into rehabilitation is very long. It's a very, very long list. I would suggest that we need greater resources directed to rehabilitation resources to help people who are dealing with substance abuse issues.

From a staffing perspective, again, it's a funding deficiency. The drop-in centre I referred to had over 7,000 individual people come through the centre. I should say individual “approaches”, because it could be the same person more than once in a day. When you consider that there's only person in the drop-in centre, we're seriously underfunded and understaffed to accommodate the need to work with substance issues. It's a funding issue yet again. There's a gap.

[Eva Nassif, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

My next question is again for you three. It concerns women who have a disability or who have a disabled child, which accentuates their status as victims of spousal abuse. Do you think that there's a correlation between these women and regular women who are victims of spousal abuse?

[Ellen Frood]

Yes.

[Eva Nassif, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

Could you give us some numbers about the women who use your organization?

[Ellen Frood]

No, sorry.

Families with those who have with handicaps and disabilities in their families can be tied completely to the home without the resources and the ability to get out and access services. If there's domestic violence added on top of that, you basically have a shut-in. You have somebody who is staying, keeping their life in danger.

Increasing services for families is required for respite, or however you want to talk about it, in terms of increases for individuals with disabilities, or older children with disabilities, to enable them to be out in the workforce rather than stay at home and depend on social services.

[Eva Nassif, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

I don't know if I have much time left, but perhaps you can provide a brief answer to my question. It's about the justice system.

We all know that few women turn to your organizations to report that they are victims of spousal abuse. Do you think the justice system needs to be reformed to include stricter penalties, and training for men and boys? Could you tell us what our government should focus on, besides all the subsidies we give to help women? You see the cases on the ground. What can you suggest?

[Ellen Frood]

I think we have to speed up the process. There are too many wait times. Women are being revictimized by wait times in the judicial system to get their family status changed, support, and custody. Our system is too slow and it hurts people.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Good.

Now we'll go to Ms. Kusie for five minutes.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

First of all, I just want to congratulate the entire committee. This being only my third meeting here, I can see the weight and the complexity of the issues you're dealing with. I'm reminded of that with every passing meeting. So, congratulations to the committee.

Of course, as a Conservative the role of the family is very important to me, but I also recognize that the family, perhaps historically, but certainly in the present day, is broken in many regards. I have a son. Listening to the testimony today, as a mother I would like to ask both Ms. Davis and Ms. Taylor the following. What is the one piece of advice you would give me in regard to raising my son so that he is not a part of this pattern that we've seen in society, and in humanity for what seems forever?

Ms. Davis, please.

[Anne Davis]

Well, I suspect you're off to a good start. You're a woman with a leadership role.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

That's kind; that's generous.

[Anne Davis]

I think it's very important for boys to see women taking roles in leadership and exercising power in a fair and just way.

I would say that it's important to have a conversation about women and violence whenever you can, and when there are opportunities for male mentors, I think that's important, too. But I just think it's important for it to be something that we all talk about with our youth.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you for that.

I loved your example of the CFL. I'm a huge Stampeders fan, coming from Calgary, and I'm very inspired by that example, so thank you for providing that today.

Ms. Taylor, what is your recommendation, please, to me as the mother of a son?

[Anne Taylor]

I would build on what Anne is saying. I think it's about opening the conversation and opening it sooner than later.

I think the fact that you're asking the question is already.... I'd be optimistic with your son.

But I think it's really having those sometimes difficult conversations, because I've heard from a lot of moms that they don't want to talk to their sons about violence, about consent, about these things that they don't really want their sons to have anything to do with. What we would say is that we need to have those conversations, because he is seeing it, he's picking up on all kinds of things. If it's not in his school or in the neighbourhood, it's online. What young boys are seeing online is really.... I can't even find the right word for how alarming it is. How boys see women and girls, how they see relationships, how they see marriage and family are the kinds of conversations you want to open up so that they will talk to you about their questions and their confusion. When they say, “I see you doing this at home, mom, but then I see something else happening in my school”, that's the kind of conversation you want to open up.

I can't underline how much we need to talk about consent. We need to talk to our young boys about consent, not just our young girls.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you very much for that. I genuinely appreciate that.

In regard to your comments as to what they see online, I think that's another study entirely, Madam Chair.

Ms. Frood, you strike me as an incredibly profound person. I was very moved by your remarks at the beginning that 45 years ago your mother was a member of NAC. In your opinion, at the fundamental root of it all, why is it that we are still here after what appears to me as an investment of millions and millions of dollars over decades? Here I note that there was a further announcement of funding this week by the present government, as recognized by my colleague Ms. Vandenbeld. Why have these issues not gone away?

What is at the root of that, please, in your opinion? I know that's deep. I know that's profound.

[Ellen Frood]

Do you want me to be polite?