Status of Women Committee on April 19th, 2016

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

In the immigration and refugee settlement, is there anything targeting the younger ones, the minors?

[Fraser Valentine]

As I was saying, there are programs offered pre-arrival that are done by the International Organization for Migration. They have sites across the globe. They have a workbook they offer to do this training. In that workbook, there is a specific unit on what they call cultural adaptation. It includes things like the roles and responsibility of the family, but there is also what they call “rules for teens”—having a boyfriend or a girlfriend, going to parties, the kinds of cultural practices that are and are not acceptable in the context of an overall rights framework in the Canadian context. That's provided to those families and young girls before they arrive in the country.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Thank you.

Now we'll go to Ms. Harder for another five minutes.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you very much.

In summary—to finish off my question here—how do we make it accessible for young women and girls to come forward with the abuses that are taking place? How do we provide access to the justice system, access to legal advice or guidance, and access to the health care system in a way that will not perhaps wrongfully expose them or make them feel more vulnerable than they already are? As well, how do we give them access to protective services?

[Kimberly Elmslie]

I'll jump in on the issue of the health system and the role it can play.

One thing that is important to note is that this area of work continues to mature and evolve in the health system. For many years, these issues of violence against women and girls were really considered justice issues.

The health system has increasingly started to come to the realization that these are very important public health issues, and you see it on the international stage with resolutions going to the World Health Assembly. From a public health perspective, the way to increase access and to bring young girls and women into the health system more appropriately is through the awareness-raising and the reduction of the stigma.

As we all know around this table, those things are longer-term societal issues that we address by working across sectors. We work in the health sector and we work in the community sector. It is in the community sector that most of the conversations with the appropriate cultural groups and the appropriate leadership and peers take place to start to reduce that stigma and then allow the health system to activate its role.

[Gillian Blackell]

We at the justice department also work with victim services at the provincial and territorial level. Some of them are delivered through the police services; others are court-based or NGO-based. We work in particular on trauma-informed and culturally relevant services. That is really important.

It is a key approach for victims' services to be able to assist the victims in bringing forward this information and to help them navigate the system without telling them what they should choose to do. Some victims may choose not to continue with the criminal justice system. As long as they have the information in front of them about a range of choices, that's the idea: to give them someone to help guide them in their journey.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Just to clarify, are you saying that there is someone on the ground, consistently, in communities to help these young girls and women navigate the system?

[Kimberly Elmslie]

In the case of health, it will differ by community, but there are many community organizations that we are funding federally to play just that kind of role.

Just to build on the trauma-informed concept, that's something that.... Through the funding programs that many of us are administering, we are supporting community-based organizations to expand their ability to work in a trauma-informed way. That will attract young people into community organizations and allow them to get on a track of being guided through either the health system or the justice system, or both—or many others, depending on what their needs are.

In terms of our funding programs, our focus from a Public Health Agency perspective is to get our money into communities so they can expand their reach and their impact. We see many communities across the country doing this work, but they need to have more resources to scale up their efforts.

[Gillian Blackell]

The responsibility, though, for the delivery of those services is provincial. We are supplementing it through transfers to the provinces and territories, and through funds, grants, and contributions to organizations. It will vary depending on the jurisdiction.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

I have 20 seconds. Okay.

Can you make a comment with regard to the dramatic increase in the violence against—

I am just going to fold right there.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Well done. It's over to Mr. Fraser for five minutes.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Thank you very much to all the witnesses. I found your testimony to be excellent and important.

The first question is for Mr. Valentine. In my prior career, I did a bit of work with people who had come to Canada through the caregiver program and were victims of violence in that context, with their employer or whomever they were working for.

My understanding of the program is that there is no longer a live-in requirement, but that you don't get permanent residency. You explained earlier that there are certain settlement services that are available to people who obtain permanent residency. Do you see this as a barrier or maybe a potential cause of increasing incidence of violence against women who come through the caregiver program?

[Fraser Valentine]

Thanks very much for your question.

Certainly the government was well aware that there were challenges with respect to the live-in requirement of the live-in caregiver program. As a result, the previous government changed that program, and that program ended.

There are, however, two new caregiver streams that have been created. Those programs still exist. The live-in requirement, as you said, is no longer a requirement. They do have a pathway to permanent residency, though. It is not the case that an applicant through that stream is not eligible for permanent residency. That is still the case.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Do you think, one way or the other, that creating or tinkering with the program to give permanent residency to people on arrival would be possible, and would it reduce the risk that these women face?

[Fraser Valentine]

It's difficult for me to hypothesize if granting permanent residency on landing would address that issue specifically. What we know from the research is that the live-in requirement and the power imbalance of that relationship in living in the home with the employer was one of the critical factors, and that was the one that was addressed through the reforms.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Thank you.

Turning to Ms. Isaak, thanks very much for being here. One of the stats you threw out was the fact that indigenous women were three times more likely to experience violence than the average Canadian woman. Can you discuss a bit the role that poverty plays in developing that statistic?

[Paula Isaak]

Thank you. Both Kim and I referred to that because it's a fairly shocking statistic, and it's a complex question.

I think poverty and some of the other social determinants do play a role in the vulnerability of women and girls and therefore their vulnerability to violence. I would say part of the strategy at INAC is to ensure we're investing in all those pieces that underlie those social determinants of health. That means education, housing, infrastructure, child and family services, and prevention services. The view is that all of those will support communities and increase the resiliency of these communities, families, and women, so that those statistics can ultimately be reduced.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Thanks very much.

Building on that—and this may be a question that impacts justice as well—I know the rates of incarceration for our indigenous population in Canada are sky-high, as we see when we look at the percentage of the Canadian population they make up, but when I see the statistic that they're three times more likely to be victims of violence, I might suggest that from the perspective of an indigenous woman they may not be over-policed but under-policed. Do you think there are any challenges with policing and the access to that form of social protection that indigenous women lack in Canada?

[Paula Isaak]

The policing services are provided by a mix of provincial and federal—through the RCMP—services across Canada, so it's difficult to generalize to say whether that is in fact a factor.

What we heard in the pre-consultation process for the national inquiry is that communities have very different circumstances across the country in the relationship between policing services and women who have been victims or survivors of violence, so I think it varies quite a bit. It's hard to give a concrete answer. I don't have the data for that.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

The final three minutes are for Ms. Malcolmson.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Going back to Ms. Isaak, I appreciated your reflecting that the origins of violence echo very much the special committee's work in 2014 around the root causes of violence: human trafficking, prostitution, drug addiction, inadequate mental health supports, systemic racism, and the ongoing legacy of residential schools.

Is the funding that we now have announced adequate to overcome all those root causes of violence?

[Paula Isaak]

I guess I would say the overall funding of $8.4 billion that the government announced is a start to that.

Is it adequate? It's difficult to say whether it's adequate. The demands are very high. I think certainly the funding will be able to address a lot of the housing and infrastructure situations across the country, K-12 education, child and family services. It's an important start and a significant investment.

Hopefully we'll see a decline over time in incidences of those factors that we're talking about that can lead to violence. It's a long-term process, and some of the outcomes of those intergenerational impacts of residential schools and other things will take some time to be resolved.

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

For the inquiry, has your department committed to fully fund participation by survivors and their families?

[Paula Isaak]

The budget announced $40 million over two years for an inquiry. Once the inquiry is launched, they will determine how they fund participants, depending upon the design of that inquiry. That remains to be seen.

I think we certainly heard that it's important that survivors and victims continue to be supported. They were supported through the pre-inquiry process to come to meetings and tell their stories. The intention would be to continue that type of support. They would be supported to do that.