Status of Women Committee on April 12th, 2016

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Good afternoon.

I think we will start even though we are still waiting for our friends from StatsCan who are caught in the security lineup, potentially being frisked. The good news is that they're with us until five o'clock, so we'll have plenty of opportunity to question them.

I want to welcome back our representatives from Status of Women, Linda Savoie and Justine Akman. We appreciate your being with us again.

Today we're going to be focusing on the topic we've decided to study, which has to do with violence against women and has quite a broad scope.

Linda, would you like to go first?

[Linda Savoie, Senior Director General, Women's Program and Regional Operations Directorate, Status of Women Canada]

Thank you very much.

We thought we'd just take the opportunity in a few minutes to set the stage by giving you a little bit of an overview of some of the work and the approaches that we've taken at Status of Women in dealing with the issue of violence against women and girls.

So thank you again for inviting us, and thank you for this work on this study, which will be extremely valuable.

As an agency, as I mentioned, we draw on a variety of approaches. For instance, as a centre of excellence on gender issues, we engage with partners to develop knowledge on a range of violence issues such as human trafficking, cyber-violence, engaging youth in violence prevention, engaging men and boys in violence prevention, and so on and so forth.

We also support organizations on the ground in terms of their ability to take action in their communities to eliminate gender-based violence. Through our commemorative events and our social media outreach, we engage Canadians to become part of the solution to reducing all forms of violence.

I thought I would speak a little bit more in detail to some of the policy work of our agency, as well as some of the projects that we fund.

To begin with, the policy process often begins with the development of issue briefs on both emerging and persistent issues such as sexual violence, and engaging men and boys. These briefs are used to enhance the collective understanding of the issues and they often point us to promising ways to address these issues.

This policy work also involves collaborating with key experts on knowledge sharing and networking events. At various fora, they bring the right players together to talk about how to make progress in advancing gender equality. For example, the agency has hosted events on cyberbullying as well as on online sexual exploitation in the lives of girls. Most recently one of these events was done jointly with the FPT Forum of Ministers Responsible for the Status of Women, and it focused on sexual violence.

My colleague, Justine Akman, will be pleased to provide you further information on our policy work.

As you are aware, our agency also offers project funding to address violence against young women and girls. Three clusters of such projects may be of greater interest to you for this study: those with a focus on the role of men and boys in preventing violence, cyber violence, and campus violence.

With respect to engaging men and boys, we have funded projects to develop the willingness and the skills of men and boys to play a role in eliminating gender-based violence in their communities. The early findings are encouraging and indicate that it must be done in partnership with women and girls. Another finding is that there is an appetite by men and boys to be actively engaged in eliminating violence against women.

Another group of projects that we funded addressed violence against young women on university and college campuses. Through these projects, we have learned ways to address safety for the young women who attend postsecondary institutions. I should tell you that these projects go beyond simply strengthening physical safety measures; they also look at the necessary reforms to procedures, policies and victim services.

As a last example, we are presently engaged in a number of projects that address cyber violence. These projects are demonstrating the growing significance of this issue for young women in Canada and the diverse forms that cyber violence takes: from name-calling to harassment, cyber stalking, spreading sexual rumours, threats, and the non-consensual sharing of sexual images.

Unfortunately, young women in Canada are faced with all these forms of violence.

There's a whole spectrum of issues that are now being examined as part of these cyber-violence projects. For instance, some are looking at how gaming companies can create inclusive environments; others are looking at how platform owners can provide a safe space for women users. Also, some of the schools involved in these projects are looking at developing policies that ensure that students are educated about appropriate online behaviours and that rules are in place to ensure safety.

To conclude, so as not to take up too much time but leave some for questions, this is an extremely brief overview of the ways Status of Women Canada addresses the issue of violence against young women and girls.

There are gaps. There are areas you may have a particular interest in exploring. For example, additional sex and gender disaggregated data would enable us to better understand the nature and the extent of gendered violence in Canada. Further work is also needed to better understand the contexts that contribute to different forms of gender-based violence, such as the role of social media, hyper-sexualization, and even the normalization of violence.

Of course, I know you will have the opportunity to tap into the expertise of stakeholders from outside government. We are confident that they will be able to point you to best practices that they have identified for responding to violence against young women and girls.

In closing, I want to thank this committee again for undertaking this study.

My colleague and I would be pleased to answer your questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Thank you. That was excellent.

I'm pleased to welcome Rebecca Kong and Yvan Clermont from Statistics Canada. We're happy to have you here today to help us investigate the issues of violence against women.

You have 10 minutes.

[Yvan Clermont, Director, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Statistics Canada]

Thank you.

I'd like to begin by thanking the members of this committee for the invitation to present the most recent data on the issue of violence against young women and girls in this country. I'm accompanied today by Rebecca Kong, chief of the policing services program, who is from the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, as I am. Ms. Kong will help me with some of the questions you may have. I also have another analyst here with me, Samuel Perreault, who will be here in case there are more specific questions regarding the general social survey on victimization, Samuel being the main analyst on this particular survey.

I'll be presenting an overview of certain key indicators relating to violence against young women and girls. In this presentation we'll be drawing from both police-reported data supplied by police services, as well as self-reported data on victimizations. As we know, many forms of violence never come to the attention of the police.

Before I start by talking about the results you're going to see on the graphs and the charts today, I'd like to draw your attention to our most recent statistics from the general social survey on victimization: violent victimization has declined between 2004 and 2014 by 28%. During this time period declines in both robbery and physical assaults were specifically noted, however rates of sexual assaults have remained stable over that same period. For the first time, in 2014 women in Canada had higher self-reported violent victimization rates than men. This trend is attributable to the fact that rates of sexual assault have not declined and that the majority of victims of this type of crime are women.

If you look at the first chart we have here, you're going to see results from a survey we did on victimization pertaining to more than 30,000 Canadians who reported on their experiences of child maltreatment at the hands of an adult prior to the age of 15. Approximately 30% of them reported being physically or sexually abused by an adult prior to age 15. Overall 27% of Canadian women stated they had been victimized as a child, with 22% stating they had been physically abused and 12% reporting sexual abuse, and a further 7% stating they had experienced both forms of violence as a child. It's important to note that more than 90% of the respondents said that the abuse they experienced as a child was never reported either to child protective services or to the police.

Another important factor that I would like to draw your attention to is, who is victimizing children? Sixty-one per cent of Canadians who reported experiencing physical violence as a child reported that the perpetrator was someone from outside the family, such as a stranger, an acquaintance, a classmate, or teachers. Females, however, were significantly more likely to have experienced abuse at the hands of a family member, that is 44% of females versus 16% of males.

Now to the next slide, turning specifically to sexual abuse experienced by girls under the age of 15, we also noted that they have experienced more severe forms of sexual abuse than boys have. For example, women were more likely to have reported being forced into unwanted sexual activities by an adult before they turned 15 than young boys were and 11% of women reported to have been touched in a sexual way by an adult. Again, this was significantly less for boys.

Now I'd like to turn to the next slide and share some information with you that is based on what is reported to the police, as this helps understand the types of violent crime involving girls and young women that come to the attention of the police. As we said before, many incidents of violence involving the youngest victims do not come to the attention of the police. When children and youth are victimized, particularly when it comes to very young and dependent children, reporting often depends on an adult bringing the offence to the attention of the police.

In 2014 alone there were about 53,000 children and youth who were victims of a violent crime, including common assault, sexual assault, and uttering threats, for example. Police report that victimization rates among girls and female youths were more than 20% higher than those of young boys and male youths.

The type of violence most often experienced by girls and young teens includes sexual offences, specifically sexual assault at level one, which is the least serious form of sexual assault, followed by physical assaults.

The next slide, again looking at police records, shows that more than 80% of sexual offences against children and youth were directed at females, especially those between the ages of 12 and 17. The distribution of age is clearly depicted on the graph here if you look at the dark blue bars. There were no specific patterns for boys. It's important to mention here that about nine out of 10 persons accused of sexually victimizing children and youth are known to the victims, and most often they are an acquaintance or family member. Accused persons were also more likely to be youths themselves.

If we look at the next slide, we look at another form of violence experienced by young women, which is dating violence. This graph shows the prevalence rates of different types of dating violence for both men and women. According to the 2014 general social survey on victimization, 10% of women who had dated during the past five years told us that they had experienced some form of dating violence. The abuse most often reported was being threatened or called names, at 8%, followed by physical violence at 4.5%, and sexual violence at 2%.

The next slide looks at criminal harassment, also commonly known as stalking. The chart illustrates the various forms of stalking and shows how men and women differ in their experiences in that regard. In the last victimization survey, 8% of Canadian women stated that they had experienced stalking that caused them to fear for their safety in the preceding five years. These types of stalking included receiving repeated obscene phone calls, having the stalker attempt to intimidate them or someone known to them, and receiving unwanted emails or texts. Women were more likely to experience stalking by a current or former intimate partner. For example, 25% of female victims of stalking reported that they were stalked by a former intimate partner.

Of note, between 2004 and 2014 we've noted a decline in the rates of self-reported stalking by 30%. But this was not the case for stalking involving the use of emails and texts, which has instead increased.

The next slide looks at cyberbullying. About 6% of Canadians 15 years of age and over who use the Internet were victims of cyberbullying in the past five years. Men and women were equally likely to report being victims of cyberbullying, however, women were more likely to report threatening or aggressive emails or texts sent to them only, while men were more likely to report that someone had used their identity to send or post embarrassing or threatening information. Not surprisingly, cyberbullying was more prevalent among younger people.

Finally, the most common cyber offence against female children and youth was child luring, followed by invitation to sexual touching.

The next slide looks at discrimination per se. Let's first say that compared to a decade ago in 2004 the proportion of both men and women perceiving discrimination on the basis of their sex has decreased by 24%.

However, gender differences still persist. In 2014 women were more likely than men to report experiencing discrimination or unfair treatment because of their sex. This was highest among women between the age of 19 and 24 years, 10% of whom reported discrimination.

Let's now turn to victimization experienced by aboriginal women, as the last section. The most recent results of the victimization survey revealed that violent victimization rates were especially high among aboriginals and also aboriginal females. For example, they recorded a sexual assault rate that was more than three times that of non-aboriginal women.

This slide talks about other risk factors associated with victimization. Victimization is linked to many social factors, as you probably know. Some of the most important we have observed were childhood maltreatment, having a mental health condition, and having experienced homelessness.

We noted that aboriginal men and women were in fact more likely to have been victims of childhood maltreatment, twice as likely to report mental health conditions, and more than twice as likely to have a history of homelessness as non-aboriginal people.

When we control for all that, and for age, gender, drinking habits, and drug use, the fact of being an aboriginal did not stand out as a characteristic linked to victimization. This means that for both aboriginal and non-aboriginal people victimization is explained by all these other factors and not by the fact of being an aboriginal. However, when it comes to women, aboriginal identity remains a contributing factor of victimization.

Lastly, I'd like to conclude on the most serious form of violence against women, homicide. Overall, the majority of homicide victims are males, but when we focused on homicide involving women we found that 16% of victims between 1980 and 2014 were aboriginal. The rate of homicides for aboriginal females is six times that of non-aboriginal females.

About nine in ten female victims of homicide were killed by someone they knew. If we look more in detail, the proportion of aboriginal female victims killed by a spouse during the period was slightly lower than for non-aboriginal female victims, but in contrast, the proportion of aboriginal female victims killed by an acquaintance was slightly higher.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Very good. This is super information. Thank you, Mr. Clermont.

Now we're going to start with our regular questioning, beginning with Ms. Damoff.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Thank you.

I'm going to be sharing my time with Ms. Nassif.

With regard to cyberbullying, I'm wondering whether there are any programs that currently educate both boys and girls from a young age, obviously age-appropriate but starting at younger ages and gradually developing the program as they move through high school, so mostly elementary and high school age.

[Linda Savoie]

Hitting a population of that very young age, because of the jurisdictional issues, tends to be squarely in the provincial realm of responsibility. Our programs tend to be for slightly older people. Our projects will have some impact on youth sometimes as young as 12, but our projects mostly work with youth slightly older than that, in their mid-teens and above.

It is difficult for us to have a presence in schools, which are the primary vehicle for elementary-age children.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

My concern, of course, is that by the time they're in their mid-teens, much of the education that needed to happen has not necessarily happened.

In this survey, what were the ages of the people responding? How old were the 30,000 people who responded in the survey? How old is the data related to their experiences?

[Yvan Clermont]

It's 15 years and over; therefore, we don't cover cyberbullying for people younger than 15 years old.

It's a sample size of about 30,000. The survey was run in 2014 as part of a cycle of the general social survey.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

What age would be the higher figure?

[Yvan Clermont]

There is no limit on age.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

You could, then, be 50 years old when talking about abuse.

[Yvan Clermont]

Yes.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

I would suspect that the numbers would change, if I'm self-reporting on what happened to me as a teenager versus being an 18-year-old and reporting on what might have happened in the previous few years. Have there been any statistics on just the younger demographic to see what their experience is?

[Yvan Clermont]

We do have those numbers.

Of course, when you're older and you look backward, there could be some telescoping factor happening about whether that had happened for real, or if it had happened before or after the age 18 or 15. I think it was 16 in that case. We do have the breakdown by age, and by age forward, and I think we can provide that to you.

Rebecca, you have some numbers there that we can probably share right away.

[Rebecca Kong, Chief, Policing Services Program, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Statistics Canada]

Yes. In terms of the persons who responded who were aged 45 to 64, 35% reported child maltreatment. In comparison, 22% of those between 15 and 44 reported child maltreatment. Those are the two age groups that we ran for the purposes of this discussion. We can give more detailed information if the committee requires it.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

I'd be curious about the examples on cyberbullying, if you were to take a demographic of 15- to 22-year-olds, to find out what the prevalence is, because cyberbullying didn't exist when I was a teenager. So there would be no self-reporting on that, is that right?

[Yvan Clermont]

Cyberbullying is measured as part of what has happened in the last five years. It's not before the age of 15. What we found, very broadly because I don't have the number at hand, is that being separated into two big different age groups, those below 35 years old who almost share the same prevalence of cyberbullying, and those above 35 years old. That's completely another group where the prevalence of having been victimized by cyberbullying is different, pretty much between those two age groups. We don't see much difference when we break down 17 years old and under but, of course, we don't have figures below 15 years old, so don't know what the pattern of victimization is through that channel.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Thank you.

Eva.

[Eva Nassif, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

Thank you for your presentation. Given the nature of the violence against young women and girls, in varying demographics, varying types of violence, varying factors that contribute to violence, it's difficult to find an effective way to improve the situation that will adequately meet all conditions across the country. Among some of the factors, economic and social well-being, mental and physical health, age, culture, lifestyle, all of these things need to be considered.

Do you feel that there would be any specific avenues to pursue that might be the most effective in addressing violence against women and young girls as a whole? Are there any success stories that you would share with us concerning the best and most effective way to address this?

[Linda Savoie]

Two types of projects that we funded have seemed particularly promising. Those that educate youth in terms of healthy relationships work with young girls and young boys or young men and young women and set out conversations about appropriate behaviours, appropriate ways to interact, what are healthy relationships. Those seem to have had some very good results with youth. Of course, the proxies, when you're measuring, are based on self-reported changes in behaviours. So to some degree it's going to be anecdotal and there are not that many of those projects that we have funded yet. However, a number of players across the country are funding some of these interventions with youth. Some school boards in some provinces are looking at developing those types of programs as part of the regular curriculum.

Another promising avenue is what I mentioned in the opening remarks. It's the engagement of men. The White Ribbon Campaign has been acting as a catalyst for us to create a community of practice amongst some projects that we are funding that all have as a goal to engage men and boys in the reduction of violence against women and girls. Their attempt at creating a community of practice has demonstrated that there's some very significant interest in engaging in a dialogue on this front and to take men who are not perpetrators but men who are actually bystanders and have a real interest, like the vast majority of men, in seeing reductions in violence against the women in their lives, has seemed again to give some very promising results. Again, we're dealing with proxies in terms of results. The indicators, again, are self-reported rapes, self-reported changes in attitudes and behaviours, so I think we need some longer-term examination of those and maybe more projects of this nature.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Ms. Vecchio.

[Justine Akman, Director General, Policy and External Relations, Policy and External Relations Directorate, Status of Women Canada]

Sorry. I might just add that the former iteration of FEWO did a study on best practices to reduce violence against women. It wasn't focused on the issues we're discussing today, particularly on violence that affects young women and these kinds of issues that we know a little bit less about that are the focus of this study, but there is a broad study that was done just in the last couple of years.

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

Just carrying on with the Status of Women, what results have you seen from engaging young people in projects to prevent violence against women on post-secondary campuses? Has violence declined at the post-secondary level? What are some of these best practices that you have seen? I'm looking at that. We've seen that in 2014 there were 22 projects funded. What was the net effect? Could you say that this has been an extremely positive change? Do we see an increase in change?

[Linda Savoie]

The campus projects ended relatively recently and again have resulted in a community of practice of past project proponents that are continuing this conversation. We're actually holding a conversation with them tomorrow to start identifying best practices that flow from their experiences delivering projects for a period of over two years. Some of the common approaches that these projects took are things such as increasing awareness and engagement, trying to involve youth from across the campus, and involving senior administrations, so there are a number of approaches that seem promising.

One thing that stuck out is the need for very specific policies that deal with sexual harassment, assault, etc., because if you are trying to deal with these forms of violence through a general policy of living well together or something of that nature, it doesn't seem to fit the bill for anybody.

There are some best practices coming out of these projects. To say there are net results in terms of reductions of violence, we would have to have proper data and a common reporting system across the country within a same university baseline and monitoring over time, which does not exist for the most part.

The province of Ontario is a trailblazer in this field and is moving leaps and bounds ahead of the rest of the country and may be providing us this type of data in the very near future.

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

You mentioned policies. Who would be the holder of these policies? Would it be the federal government, provincial government, or the schools? Who exactly would be setting that tone for the students?

[Linda Savoie]

The universities.

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

The university itself.

[Linda Savoie]

The institutions themselves. Many are looking into that. There are, again, leaders amongst the pack that are developing best practices. Those are the types of issues and successes that we're trying to document at this moment.

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

Excellent.

I'll go on to Stats Canada. In 2014, Stats Canada reported to the committee that nine in 10 sexual assaults were not reported. Has this number changed at all, and has there been any progress? If so, what was the catalyst that you saw here?

[Yvan Clermont]

I think we can look at the trend in reporting this type of offence, if it has gone down or up, but I don't think it has gone down or up. I think it has been quite stable over time.

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

With Stats Canada, do you see a clear relationship between awareness-raising campaigns and a reduction of gender-based violence, or, like you said, is it kind of just an even plateau right now?

[Yvan Clermont]

It's hard to establish a relationship between an awareness campaign, which is something happening more at the micro level, and things we observe at the macro level with 30,000 as a sample size. We would first have to ask if they had been in contact or had been touched by some kind of awareness campaign, and we don't ask that question in the survey, so we wouldn't know that.

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

Finally, to Stats Canada—this is similar to what Eva was asking—to what degree are socio-economic factors important considerations when examining gender-based violence?

[Yvan Clermont]

For victimization as a whole, we observed that one of the most important factors explaining victimization later in life was having been a victim of childhood maltreatment. Of course, age plays a factor too.

We looked at drugs habits, alcohol habits, and all these factors, and they all seem to play an important role in the likelihood of being victimized.

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

To go back to Status of Women, has any significant progress been made concerning cyber-violence since the appearance at the committee in 2014? At that meeting, it was stated that a number of projects were under way and fairly new. Have you seen any evidence or any discovery of best practices on this?

[Linda Savoie]

The projects are either close to the end or in their last year at this moment in time. Already we've seen that some projects have been able to engage platform owners, such as Facebook, to have conversations about measures that can be taken to increase safety of women online, particularly with that platform. There are clear inroads being made.

What does take time, though, is a project that takes place over the course of a maximum of three years. We'll typically spend close to a year engaging with those partners, building trust. At year two, I can say that we have some very definite results.

What's particularly interesting, though, and what we've received so far, is that these project proponents have conducted needs assessments and environmental scans by doing either focus groups with young women or surveys. They've reached out collectively to thousands of young women. It has confirmed for us the breadth and scope of the types of cyber-violence that young women in Canada are exposed to.

Those are the things I was alluding to in my opening remarks. The problem is quite significant in the lives of young people.

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

Once again, in the report from the special committee on violence against women, we saw clearly some very big stats. When we're dealing with violence against indigenous women, what is the best way to ensure that women feel comfortable reporting instances of gender-based violence to the RCMP?

[Justine Akman]

I'll speak from the point of view of Status of Women, the minister being very involved in the engagement process related to the upcoming inquiry on missing and murdered indigenous women.

It's something that was spoken about extensively by family members when they were engaged on this issue, how they were uncomfortable with the way various police forces—there are approximately 300 police forces across the country—dealt with indigenous families when they were made aware. It's an issue that I assume colleagues at the RCMP are seized with, given the sorts of comments that were made. How to actually address that is a much more complicated question that will be looked at in the near future, I am sure.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Ms. Malcolmson, you have seven minutes.

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

First, to the Stats Canada team—thanks for being here—our analyst noted that Stats Canada hasn't done a survey specifically on domestic violence since 1993. Is there any sign that it might be a renewed project for the federal government? What value would you give to doing such work again?

[Yvan Clermont]

I'll give a very short answer to that. If you would allow me, I would like to perhaps provide a more detailed answer later to the clerk of the committee.

Basically, I would say that the general social survey, which is a victimization survey, covers the role that the domestic violence or violence against women survey used to play in the past. Now we're measuring violence, and we're comparing to the other gender so that we can really establish a comparison. The violence against women survey couldn't do a comparison between men and women. The GSS, I would say, is a replacement for that type of measure that we had in the early nineties.

Rebecca was part of the history. I don't know if she wants to add something here.

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

Maybe for the sake of time, if you were willing to undertake to correspond with our analyst on that, we'd probably all benefit.

[Yvan Clermont]

Definitely we will.

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

Thank you.

As other colleagues have already alluded, #beenrapedneverreported is such a phenomenon. How can we look at these numbers knowing that they are so limited by the self-reporting frame that you describe? Is there anything we can do?

How much can we rely on these numbers? I guess that's really what I'm getting at.

[Yvan Clermont]

I can provide more information about the quality of the information we get from the GSS survey. This is a self-reported survey. Questions rely on thorough evaluation and focus groups. We want to make sure that we ask the right questions, in the right fashion, in the right order, with due diligence and good methodology. This is all done to get as much accurate information as possible.

When we ask Canadians about their victimization history, we also ask them if they had reported it to the police. In 90% of the cases, they had not reported sexual assaults or this type of victimization. They tell us if they have been victims. Is it possible that some people who have been victims don't tell us? Maybe, but I don't have this type of information. The GSS would probably be the best vehicle to collect that type of information.

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

To the Status of Women team, you mentioned the inquiry on murdered or missing indigenous women and girls. The last time the minister was with us, she alluded to a commitment to implementing some things early, not waiting for the inquiry, because there are things we know we need to do.

I imagine that the announcement on shelter funding on indigenous reserves was one of those pieces. I want to know whether these funds are operating funds or for construction. How are we going to sustain the services at a professional level?

[Justine Akman]

The question is best asked of the departments. ESDC, CMHC, and INAC on reserve are responsible for that funding. One of the principles behind the funding was that, by making so much more funding available to the provinces and territories for the construction and the wraparound services around shelters, they may be able to also make more funds available for the parts of running a shelter that are within their jurisdiction.

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

I have a bigger-picture question. We have an ambitious work plan for this study, and I'm interested in your department's advice at a general level. Are there pitfalls in spreading in every direction? Do you have any suggestions about making sure we're not repeating other recently conducted work?

[Justine Akman]

We talked at length about whether or not this would be a repeat of the best practices study. That was not the goal. It was Status of Women that put forward the suggestion for the study, and the goal was to shine a spotlight on some areas of violence against young women that we know less about, all aspects of the data, how to address them, and what information is out there. We wanted it to feed into the federal gender violence-based strategy that is part of our minister's mandate letter. Getting experts in front of the committee on those issues, I think, would be very helpful.

These issues of violence are not emerging or new. Street harassment, for example, has always been there. It is the ones that have never had the spotlight focused on them in quite the same way. I had an opportunity, for example, to work on forced marriage in the last couple of years. Because the government had not really focused on that issue to the same extent in the past, there were many concrete measures that the government was able to take to address that kind of violence and to engage other jurisdictions in addressing. This was the type of thing that we had in mind when we put forward this study. There are very concrete things to address each different form of violence that I think this committee might be able to shine a light on.

[Linda Savoie]

One area that has been very poorly examined is hyper-sexualization and de-normalization of violence in young women's lives. There's probably a bigger gap there than anywhere else in terms of what we have seen available.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Ms. Ludwig.

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

Thank you for an excellent presentation. I have many questions.

Throughout your presentations one of the areas that I found of particular interest was on self-reporting. When we look at the trend of young people reporting sexual violence or sexual offences, it seemed to peak for males at 14 and for females at 15. Why do you think that's the trend, because after that it started to drop off?

[Yvan Clermont]

I don't have specific answers to that, but I think it could be related to exposure to vulnerable situations, such as being mentored or in situations where perpetrators could be a coach, or a teacher, or whatever. That could certainly be related. I don't know, there might be a way of doing cross-tabulation to see if the type of relationship of the perpetrator with the victim could be one way to answer this question.

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

Do you have any idea why they chose to report? It's a scary situation to come forward and say that action took place. Do we know what gave them the courage to come forward and report that?

[Rebecca Kong]

We don't have that information. The data you're looking at is in terms of rapes and police reported sexual offences by age. It does peak at the mid-teens. In the police reported survey that we have it's basically information that we get from police records management systems. There isn't anything that allows them to record the reason they came forward. We do have detailed information around the incidence that might provide some insight in terms of the relationship, the age of the other individual, where it happened, and the location of the offence. We would be happy to provide that information to the committee.

I think Mr. Clermont did indicate that in terms of those teen girls, where we see high rates of sexual violence based on the police reported data, the perpetrators tended to be acquaintances. That's also the case for young boys of the same age.

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

I'm looking at it for the young people who went forward and reported. How did that parallel with police training and police response preparation? Was there significant training provided as well over the last 10 years for officers who are first responders when someone came forward?

[Rebecca Kong]

I don't think CCJS Canada can comment on that. We don't have any information on the training. I don't know if colleagues from Status of Women have more information, but there may be other organizations such as Public Safety Canada or Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police that might be able to comment on programming and training.

[Linda Savoie]

I would go in the same direction as my colleague and suggest that Public Safety would be a better interlocutor on this front to describe the types of police training. We know some of these courses definitely provide training of that nature, but they can speak to that.

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

Thank you.

On that theme of self-reporting, when people came forward and there was self-reporting, was it anonymous?

[Rebecca Kong]

In terms of the reporting to police, it wouldn't necessarily be anonymous if that's what you're referring to, or the victimization survey that we do.

[Yvan Clermont]

No it's not. The survey is conducted under the Statistics Act, which protects confidentiality of responses. That is made clear to the respondents of the victimization survey. When it starts, Statistics Canada conducts a telephone interview. We can provide the committee with all the methodology, which would go with the information that was asked previously about the likelihood to report and how it is done in the field.

Just to come back to one of the questions you had, I suggest we also provide to the committee the list of upcoming research or information we're going to release soon. There is a self-reported sexual assault study we'll be releasing by the end of the year, or maybe at the beginning of the winter. There could be interesting information for the committee here and also one on human trafficking that is going to be released next month. It's a small study though, very small.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Ms. Sahota.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Hello. Thank you for being here today.

I'd like to touch upon a little more of the statistics or information you may have on immigrant populations and violence against young women. I know a lot of the slides that you provided had aboriginal versus non-aboriginal. Are there future plans to do more collecting of data on that, and is there any information on whether Status of Women Canada has been doing any work on that? I know I heard a bit about forced marriages. The population of immigrant women here is over 20%. I think it might even be a lot higher, and we may not know the exact numbers, but it's definitely an important area that we don't have a lot of research on.

[Yvan Clermont]

We can look at what it is we're able to report on when we fall into a small category of respondents. Depending on the sample size and everything, race would be difficult to report especially for certain subgroups, but if we focus more on victimization at large rather than on a specific type of offence for which we could be victimized, we can look at what we have and provide to the committee some numbers about the immigrant population and those who have said they are immigrants to see if there are differences.

Samuel, I think you looked at that factor.... In fact, it would be less. The prevalence of victimization would be less among the immigrant population when we control for all other characteristics.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Okay.

What is the definition from Statistics Canada on immigration?

[Yvan Clermont]

It's born outside the country.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

We're out of time on that one. I apologize.

I understand that Status of Women had to leave at 4:30. We will give you an opportunity to make your escape and then we'll resume our second round of questioning.

Thank you.

We will start our second round of questioning with Ms. Harder.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you very much.

Just referring to the report here, on page 3, I'm just looking for a bit of clarification here. I'm looking at a chart with regard to self-reported physical and sexual abuse suffered during childhood. I'm just wondering if you could help me understand the third bar that is provided there, the lightest blue colour. It says that it's the total, and I just don't understand. It's the total of what?

[Yvan Clermont]

It's the total for both males and females for that type of self-reported physical or sexual abuse. The first set of three bars, the dark blue, would be the prevalence of physical abuse for females, and that is a bit above 20%. The physical abuse for males would be higher, at more than 30%, but when you combine both boys and girls, it would make about 26%.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Okay. This question was originally intended for the Status of Women, but perhaps you can shed some light on it as well.

I've been following the Ghomeshi case a little, and one of the things that I've seen is just how it's gone along. In my estimation, and of course this is my opinion, it would appear to me that it's actually devalued the stories of women and their victimization, violence committed against women. It's actually made a bit of a celebrity figure out of someone who potentially committed or did commit a violent or a sexual crime. I'm just wondering if you would see the same thing, and if there is something we could do as a nation in order to actually remedy that.

[Yvan Clermont]

I'm not sure I can answer that last part.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

I didn't think so. That's okay. I'll stick more to the stats, then.

One thing I've noticed is that aboriginal women and girls, of course, bear a disproportionate amount of violent crimes committed against them.

Have there been studies done in order to understand the root causes of violence that is committed against aboriginal women and girls? If those studies have been conducted, where would find them and what would they show?

[Yvan Clermont]

There is one coming up in a month from now. We're going to release an aboriginal victimization study at the end of June. We are going to publish in June a full report on aboriginal victimization, and look at the factors associated with that. Of course, within the limits of the information we have.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

It would appear that many of the challenges that are faced by the aboriginal communities are often blamed on the intervention of the federal government, whether past—as in much in the past—or perhaps even closer in timeline to today.

There's some of that and it is certainly related, for instance residential school systems, but also with regard to what was done with many aboriginal children in the 1960s, 1970s, and even 1980s, when they were taken out of their homes and put in the foster system and such.

Is there a way the federal government can be involved in bringing a solution to the victimization of aboriginals, without going about it in the same way that we have in the past? In other words, in the past it's been a bit of this top-down approach, or matriarchal, if you will.

How do we go about solving this issue without doing that again?

[Yvan Clermont]

If I may suggest, that would be a good question for INAC or round tables looking at that. I'm sorry.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Then we will move along.

Ms. Vandenbeld, for five minutes.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Thank you very much.

I want to go back to self-reporting or under-reporting, particularly under-reporting to police or authorities. There are media articles that show there are 16 universities that, in the last six years, have not reported any sexual assaults or had them reported to them. Another one says fewer than two out of every 10,000 students actually report sexual assaults to campus authorities. On cyberbullying, the 6% in your survey sounds quite low, just anecdotally from what we know day-to-day.

Do you think there is a significant amount of under-reporting? What would the reasons be for that? Is there a way we might remedy that?

[Yvan Clermont]

I will start the answer. I will invite my colleagues to jump in afterward.

Regarding cyberbullying and the prevalence that we were able to measure using the GSS survey, this was the first iteration of the GSS where we specifically asked these questions. In the next iteration in 2019, when we conduct the survey again, we'll probably see different numbers. I don't know. Maybe the questions are going to be tweaked differently, or we may have different questions, too, because this is an area that is evolving very fast with the technology, and we need to adapt.

In regard to what's happening on campuses, we can provide some information, certainly, regarding where these victimizations occur. We do have numbers that we can provide to the committee. With the GSS, it's very hard to see if, by using campus alone as a location, we would have enough information that would be reliable enough to publish. The thing we know is that when we compare students with non-students overall, and we control for age, there's not much difference in victimization rates.

However, the locations where we find that sexual assaults seem to happen most often are bars and restaurants. Private residences would come a close second. Commercial or office buildings are the third location. Of course, where these people have gotten to know each other before, that's another issue; this is only for the location where the victimization occurs.

We can look for more and provide the committee with some of these numbers.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Do you have any statistics when it comes to the under-reporting in regard to the reasons people give for not reporting? I'm thinking particularly of online violence.

I was speaking to a teacher and her young daughter, who is less than 10 years old—Ms. Savoie talked about the normalization of some of these things—and the daughter had shown her some texts she received and some Facebook messages. As a politician who's used to having things posted on my Facebook that are not pleasant, even I would have been very troubled with them, and this is a young girl of 10 who doesn't have the capacity to deal with that. Yet the answer from the teacher was that, well, there are no consequences.

I know that there are legal remedies. There are certainly legal remedies when it comes to criminal harassment or online violence, but there seems to be a lack of awareness of those remedies, even amongst teachers, and I wonder if that's been reflected in the statistics at all.

[Yvan Clermont]

Maybe I can start with the cyberbullying itself. You mentioned earlier that the numbers seemed low, but I'll give you a contextual piece of information here. It was only measured for people 15 and over; we don't have figures or numbers for children under that age. That is one thing.

On the reporting thing about cyberbullying and the reasons why it's under-reported, it's reporting to the police, not reporting to the victimization survey, because they're reporting it to us. There could be various reasons why. We could check the numbers to see if we can tell you why specifically they decided not to report to the police.

I don't know if my colleagues want to add something on the reasons for not reporting. Samuel?

For cyberbullying, we would not know why they didn't report it. It's only for the more serious types of offences.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

We're out of time.

We're going over to Ms. Vecchio, who I think is going to share her time.

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

Yes, I'll be sharing my time.

As Karen Ludwig indicated, it is very courageous when you report, but when a person makes a first report, do you gather any data on any violence or any sexual assault that may have taken place prior to that? When you are doing these studies or collecting this information, are there any questions asked to find out whether this person has already been sexually assaulted once or twice or violently?

[Yvan Clermont]

Yes.

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

Yes? An outright yes? Do you have any data on that as well? I think that would also give us an idea of what was unreported. Is that also indicated in any of your statistics?

[Yvan Clermont]

On the repetitive nature of the sexual offence I believe we do have numbers and we can provide those to the committee.

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

Okay.

[Samuel Perreault, Analyst, General Social Survey on Victimization, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Statistics Canada]

What we will have is the number of victimizations in the past 12 months, because we do ask for that. But if someone was victimized prior to that 12-month period then we will know, unless it was before the age of 15, because we also ask for abuse during childhood.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

I have question with regard to aboriginals.

I'm just wondering if you can comment on the statistics on the ability of the police to solve crimes against aboriginal women and girls versus non-aboriginal women and girls.

Is there a gap in the ability to solve these different crimes?

[Rebecca Kong]

We only have, as you saw from the deck in terms of the police report information, the aboriginal identity of victims for homicide incidents. That was part of our homicide survey.

In terms of the clearance rate there was not a big difference. I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, but I do recall the percentage point in terms of clearance rate was actually slightly higher for homicides involving aboriginal females.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

With regard to cyberbullying—and perhaps you cannot comment on this—I'm wondering, do we see a new form of bullying that isn't seen elsewhere, so it's exclusive to social media?

[Yvan Clermont]

As I've already mentioned previously, self-reported stalking or criminal harassment went down except for emails and texts being sent. And there was also identity theft when it came to young boys; it was more about that and sending compromising stuff, taking their emails. That would be a new form we've seen that is increasing.

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

I want to take this back to the reporting stage.

As we indicated, you said, yes, that all of that information is in the data—and you may not be able to answer this question, but maybe the data is available to us—do you find more people who are over into the teenage years report when there is a first-time abuse situation or do you find it's more likely that they report because this is something that is impacted by what they had gone through as a child as well?

Do you have that comparison available?

[Rebecca Kong]

Are you referring to reporting to police?

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

Reporting to police and things of that sort. Is there anything to show that people have grown, that this has happened and this is just who I am, or is it people for whom this has happened to them the first time and they say, I'm immediately going to report it?

Is there any way of getting data on that?

[Rebecca Kong]

In terms of the police-reported information we don't have an indication of whether it is the first time or not. We do have information, and I don't know if it would be useful to try to get at that question, in terms of the lag time between when the incident happened and when they decided to report to the police.

That might be an indication in terms of delay or comfort level of coming forward, but we can't assume that there was repeated abuse in between the incidents that they're reporting and when they reported.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Mr. Fraser.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Thank you very much, both to our witnesses and to our analysts for preparing a lovely report to brief us in advance. I found it very helpful.

When our witnesses from Status of Women were here earlier they mentioned that an area we don't know a lot about is hyper-sexualization. Are there any statistics that you have on hyper-sexualization of youth such as access to sexually explicit material?

[Yvan Clermont]

No, we don't have that information.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

There's nothing on the radar to seek information on that topic by any chance is there?

[Yvan Clermont]

Not that I know of. I can make an inquiry back at the office and see if there's something.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Thanks very much. That would be very helpful.

On the issue of campus violence, which one of my colleagues raised earlier, I find the under-reporting quite shocking. She mentioned that fewer than two in 10,000 students report being victims of sexual violence on campus and that 16 universities mentioned there were no incidents in the past six years, I think it was. I find that shocking, in my own experience of going to campuses in my home province and attending events about sexual violence against women. Quite frankly, I think that number is incorrect.

You mentioned that when you control for different factors there's no significant difference, you find, for students as opposed to non-students. I'm curious to know if you notice any kind of statistical difference between the types of violence. For example, we've seen a study in one of the briefing documents from the Canadian Medical Association that suggested that drug-facilitated sexual assault had an impact in over 96% of the time on women, and that predominantly the victims were in the age group from 16 to 24. Are there any other similar statistics that would reflect that age group, or potentially students?

[Yvan Clermont]

Once again, that's a very good question, but we would have to look back at the differences we could observe between students and non-students for a different type of victimization. We did it quickly for sexual assault. We didn't see anything when we were controlling for age, because age is intimately related to the fact of being students or not. We could look back and try to see if we can address more specifically the question you have on other types of victimization.

One of the data limitations we could have, though, is that when you run a survey with a sample...30,000 is big, but when you start looking at campuses and everything, it could be that we don't measure all the things happening on campuses because our sample would not enable it. If we go up to 65 years old, then the sample would be difficult to target and have a good representation in a very small subgroup of the population.

I'll look back when we're at the office and try to bring an answer to the clerk regarding this.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Certainly. A better place to look may be someone who has specifically examined the impact of sexual violence on campus, for example.

I'm curious to learn if the statistics you did present had any kind of a regional breakdown, if there's a difference between western Canada, Ontario, the Atlantic provinces, for example.

[Yvan Clermont]

Once again, when we do look at regional differences, we often have to combine types of victimization so we can produce reliable statistics, but we will provide those regional differences to the committee as well, to the level we can.

I don't know, Samuel, if you've observed anything very specific on victimization.

[Samuel Perreault]

For sexual assault specifically, we haven't seen any significant differences across the country. But as Mr. Clermont said, 30,000 for a sample is big, but when we get to sexual assault, which is not that frequent, it's hard to do a regional comparison because then we get into very small samples. We're able to get reliable numbers for the largest provinces, like Ontario, Quebec, or British Columbia, but for many of them we couldn't even release a number. For those that we have, there was no difference. For violent crime in general, usually it's a bit higher in the Prairies than the other provinces, and in the territories as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

All right, we're going to switch over then.

Ms. Malcolmson, we'll give you four minutes.

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

Thank you, Chair.

I think I missed your description of the actual survey collection. Are you phoning out? We certainly know from our campaigns it's harder and harder to reach people on the phone, young people especially. What's your way of getting around that? Does that lead you to question the quality of the data, especially for young people, which is where our area of focus is?

[Yvan Clermont]

Again, the mode of collection for the general social survey has been the same throughout the years for all cycles. It's a telephone interview, and 30,000 people responded. I don't have response rates, but after an unbiased response study we do conduct a search to see if there are specific groups for which we have lower response rates, and this would happen definitely. We do report on those data limitations, and we can provide the committee with those methodological considerations because we do have, as part of the study, the things we did to look at whether this could have an impact.

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

Without extrapolating in a way that's really beyond my knowledge, I wonder if the kid who is picking up a land line is going to be a different sort of kid, who maybe isn't online at all and doesn't have the opportunity to experience cyberbullying. It's just so rare that we get young people on the phone.

Do you share my concern?

[Yvan Clermont]

You see, it's a hybrid survey. There's always an e-questionnaire on the Internet too so they can reach them and follow them.

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

That's helpful to know as well.

I didn't get a chance to ask our Status of Women Canada colleagues about this, but in the presentation, this might have been before you arrived, one of the conclusions of the analyst from Status of Women Canada was that additional sex and gendered disaggregated data would enable us all to better understand the nature and extent of gendered violence in Canada.

Is that a discussion that you've had with your colleagues and are there any projects under way to develop the sort of data that the Status of Women Canada staff are looking for?

[Rebecca Kong]

Well, at Statistics Canada we always collect information on both genders. In terms of the police reported information, data we have on victims of violent crime though police reports, we would have everything available by the gender of the victim as well as of the accused. It is the same with the general social survey.

Does that answer your question or were you looking for something more specific?

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

Again, this is a request or a suggestion that the Status of Women Canada staff made. I was curious whether there were conversations already happening between your departments to get at the sort of data that they are requesting here.

[Rebecca Kong]

We regularly consult with our stakeholders in terms of data needs and priorities. We have definitely worked with Status of Women Canada in the past and produced reports specifically on violence against women. If that is something that they're looking for in the future, they know how to get in touch with us and have that collaboration together.

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

We can always initiate that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Ms. Sahota.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

I'd like to preface my comments by saying I think Statistics Canada does great work. It's really important that we collect whatever data we can and that we're bringing back the census. All of this is very important information for us to be able to do our jobs and service our communities appropriately.

However, I'm a little perplexed by some of the information I've been hearing today. In particular, I think there was a comment made that for aboriginal victims of homicide, the cases have been more frequently resolved than in non-aboriginal communities. I find that really surprising considering we have so many murdered and missing aboriginal women today. The numbers don't seem to add up in my mind.

I'll give you a chance to respond and then I have a follow-up question.

[Yvan Clermont]

I'll start, but then I'll let then the specialists on homicide surveys speak.

We don't measure “missing”. We only measure “murdered”, which is a big distinction. Homicide is probably the type of crime for which the resolution rate is the highest because there's huge effort put into investigations. Especially when the perpetrators are acquaintances or spouses, they're much easier to resolve. But we don't have statistics on missing people, and until we find a body we cannot conclude that there has been a homicide.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

My other question is regarding the immigrant populations I was talking about earlier. You were saying that there are lower rates of violence against young women in immigrant populations. Could the data perhaps be flawed? Could there be some issues with collection as we've been talking about such as language barriers or response rates? Some demographics may not be as responsive to answering surveys as others.

I would like your comments on that, and to know if the department is looking into ways of correcting some of those flaws, if there are any.

[Samuel Perreault]

Actually, yes, there is a limitation, which is the language of the survey. We survey only in both official languages. In the case of the immigrant population, it's true that we don't get some specific populations that could be more vulnerable because they might be more isolated because they don't speak one of the languages. Still, these are a minority among immigrants. We still think we capture most immigrants, and the numbers are much lower for immigrants. However, when we look at second generation, the numbers are no longer lower for second-generation immigrants.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Do you think there could be some cultural taboos or other reasons why people may not be reporting, whereas the second-generation immigrants are perhaps more used to the Canadian culture and system and know where to go to find services or are perhaps a little more vocal? I don't know. These thoughts are running through my mind, but your department specializes in figuring out these numbers. What are your comments on that?

[Samuel Perreault]

It's not impossible, but we don't know.

[Yvan Clermont]

Prior to any survey, we do focus group sessions where we try to invite different types of people to respond and see what could be caveats around the way we ask questions and how we address things to make sure that we don't bias the results. There are other international surveys on victimization as well. There's a huge community where we consult among each other. I'm not sure, maybe there are protective factors more than cultural biases associated with more recent immigrants about the likelihood of being victimized outside the household. But as statisticians pinpointing the protective factor and differentiating cultural bias in responding would be impossible.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Most of the statistics you presented were based on self-reports from victims. Do we have any statistics that identify factors about the perpetrators of violence, such as age, gender, socio-economic factors?

[Yvan Clermont]

Of the perpetrators?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Yes, of the perpetrators.

[Yvan Clermont]

For some types of violence we can have age and sex of the perpetrator, and for spousal we can have ethnic origin.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Would it be all right if we ask for you to provide that information to the committee?

[Yvan Clermont]

Yes, definitely.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Thank you very much.

During my last few questions you mentioned there were increased rates of violence in certain areas like the violent crimes on the Prairies and up north. Do you have a rural and urban breakdown?

[Yvan Clermont]

We did a report we published I think last June. It's on crime in the provincial north. Geographically speaking, we broke down each province between north and south. We've observed that northern Saskatchewan and northern Manitoba have higher crime rates, comparable to those of the territories. Here we're looking at crime rates as reported to the police, not victimization from self-reported into a survey.

There is a movement of crime rate increasing from east to west and south to north. That has always been, as far as I can remember, looking at those crime statistics.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

That is the end of our time with you. I want to say thank you to Samuel and Yvan and Rebecca. You are extremely knowledgeable and you answered our questions very well.

We will suspend for a moment for you to collect your things.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

We're back to committee business.

We have a little committee business that we have to do and then we have some time.

One of the things we need to do to be able to continue hearing witnesses and conducting business is approve a budget. You know a budget was sent out by the clerk today. I just want to give you some information. It's based on more than we expect we will need to continue to the end of the June session. That said, if we decide we need more funds, we can request a supplement. If we don't use the funds, we can return them. If we don't disburse them in the exact way that they're described, we have that flexibility to change our minds. The real importance today is to come out with an approved budget, and then we can adjust it as needed.

I'm looking for a motion to approve the budget as presented.

So moved by Ms. Vandenbeld.

Is there any discussion on the budget?

Ms. Harder.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

I'm just looking for a point of clarification. When I look at the budget, I see that it has allowed for three persons for Montreal and two persons for Calgary, etc.. This leads me to believe that the witness list has already been decided upon. Is that in fact the case?

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

No. This is imaginary, because the work plan has not been decided yet. We were unable to have the steering team committee meeting on the 11th and 12th, so we're actually having it on Thursday to decide what we will recommend. That will be brought back to the committee on Thursday to really decide. That's why I said that if any of these things aren't true, we can adjust them as needed. Also, if we decide that we need more money, we can ask for a supplement as well.

Is there any further discussion on the motion?

The motion is to adopt the budget as presented.

(Motion agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])

One of the documents that was sent out to you was prepared by our analyst, who, I must say, is doing a fabulous job. It's called “Conducting a Subject-Matter Study”, which is sort of like committee for dummies. It's very helpful to say what the elements are that go into putting together a study in order to come out with a report, so we can understand the timeline and the tasks that are involved. I encourage you to read that, especially before Thursday's meeting, because when we start talking about the work plan and the timing of things, that will be important.

Ms. Vandenbeld.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

I wonder if the library would be able to give this to the other committees as well, because I think this would be useful for all standing committees and special committees.

[Laura Munn-Rivard, Committee Researcher]

I could definitely talk to my higher-ups and check with them. It may depend on each committee's clerk and analyst combined, but I'll check.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

I think it's a great idea.

The other thing I want to remind you of is that Ms. Ludwig and Ms. Damoff are your representatives on the Liberal side. We have Ms. Malcolmson. We have me on the Conservative side. These are the people you need to give your input to for the Thursday meeting, because one of the things we'll be considering on Thursday is looking at the huge scope of violence against women.

Do we want to narrow and try to focus on something that we could come with an interim report for? If we are going to be picking witnesses and we don't have enough time to have them all, how will we prioritize the witnesses? How many meetings do we want to have for each study? Do we want the library to do the work plan and bring it to us, or do we want to work the work plan at the meeting? What about the deadline to receive written briefs from members of the public?

There's a number of things that we'll be talking about in the steering team meeting. Everything we talk about on the steering team has to come back to committee of the whole for your approval. It's just so much better if you have your input in to your representatives so that we can talk about it and not come with a plan that you won't like and that we'll have to revisit again at the meeting.

Ms. Malcolmson.

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

I have a suggestion or a request that I think might make this scoping a little bit easier. We have these six bullet points through the presentation that the Status of Women made and, helpfully, they gave us the written text. They referenced a number of areas that they have done work on or that they have projects for currently, for example, campus violence.

Stepping back to quite a few meetings ago when we had our huge wish list of multiple topics that we were referencing, it was really helpful to have the analyst's one-line description of a study that had already been done and in what year.

I would like to propose that we'd all be well served by having the same sort of advice from the analyst with these six bullet points, in conversation with the Status of Women team, because they did list a number of projects that are ongoing. It's not clear whether there's a report and not clear whether there's been a committee study. For example, they referenced hyper-sexualization as one area that hasn't been well studied, but I didn't get a chance to ask them about the other six bullet points. I'm hoping that work would be possible to commission.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

I believe our analyst can do that. My only question is timing.

How quickly do you think you can do it? Can you do it before Thursday?

[Laura Munn-Rivard]

I will try to have it for Thursday.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

All right. She is a superhero, for sure.

Ms. Vecchio.

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

It was mentioned during question period with our witnesses that there was going to be a report done on post-secondary violence and they're going to start that conversation tomorrow.

Can we request that the report be provided to the committee as soon as it is available and analyzed?

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Yes, for sure.

I also made notes as we were going along with the members of StatsCan. They mentioned a lot of different reports that were coming up or that were currently available, or data that they were going to send to the committee. We will do that follow-up as well through the analyst.

Are there other comments or committee business that we need to discuss?

Ms. Ludwig.

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

I have a comment and it is more of an observation from the presentations today.

To me, it clearly identified the gaps in the research. If the normalization of violence is as significant as they're suggesting, is the data reliable to compare it from five to 10 years ago?

The other question I would have loved to have heard, even the hypothesis, is with regard to the many elementary schools today that have cyberbullying programs. According to the data collectors, children under the age of 15 are not being studied.

How do we know that we're going to offer them the best services for cyberbullying if they're not included in any type of research?

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

That's absolutely valid. Are there other comments?

Seeing none, the meeting is adjourned.