Status of Women Committee on April 12th, 2016

[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?