Status of Women Committee on April 19th, 2016

[Fraser Valentine]

How does that happen?

[Anju Dhillon, Liberal, Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC]

Yes.

[Fraser Valentine]

It happens with visa officers.

This is the spousal sponsorship class or the family reunification class. We know that fraud is an ongoing concern overall. The incident rates are low, but it happens. Visa officers, who are the decision-makers on those files—it's a delegated authority from the minister in the legislative framework—have specific training to detect if this might be a case of marriage fraud.

How they do that is a bit science and art. A lot of this is their own experience in looking at files. When you work with visa officers and you see them going through immigration files, they can detect patterns. If they suspect that this might be a fraudulent relationship, they ask more questions. They ask for more documents. They'll talk with enforcement agencies, such as the Canada Border Services Agency, and they could choose to bring the applicant in for a face-to-face interview to ask further questions.

[Anju Dhillon, Liberal, Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC]

Okay, perfect.

I'll let it go back to Ms. Sahota.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Going back to the line of questioning that I had for all of the different departments, are you receiving data from the various sources that you provide funding to and that have programs and services in their communities...for the aboriginal communities as well?

I thought some of the numbers seemed a little surprising when I heard from Stats Canada as well last week. Is there input and information that you're receiving after—?

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Sorry, that's your time.

We're going to go for our second round.

We will start with Ms. Vecchio, for five minutes.

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

Thank you very much for appearing today.

This may be a difficult question to ask because it may be more statistical, and I assume this would go to the justice department. I am wondering whether you know what the conviction rate for sexual assault and rape would be, as well as intimate partner crime. Is there any way of getting information on conviction rates when it comes to that kind of data?

[Nathalie Levman]

There's no doubt that the attrition rate is significant for sexual assault cases, and I assume that is what you're getting at, but I would prefer to defer to Statistics Canada, because they're the people we turn to when we look at conviction rates. I imagine that my colleague has their deck here and is looking for what they provided to you last week.

Generally, in terms of what statistics are available on these different types of offences that fall within the violence against women and girls parameter, I would like to mention.... I'm not sure whether you're hearing from the RCMP, but the Human Trafficking National Coordination Centre keeps some data that I think you might find very interesting concerning the prevalence of human trafficking as well as the types of venues in which it occurs. We know that it's predominantly sexual exploitation of young women and girls in Canada, but they can provide you with more information on it as well.

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

That's fantastic.

Were you able to find anything? I didn't think there was anything in the deck.

No? That's all good.

Given the request from my great colleague, is there a way we can request that kind of data through you, or do you want us to go directly to Statistics Canada? We can do that as well.

[Nathalie Levman]

We can follow up with Statistics Canada.

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

That would be wonderful.

There you go, my friend—any time.

Going on to public health, the committee has heard that when kids are exposed to gender-based violence, they are more likely to be re-victimized. In 2014 the Public Health Agency, PHAC, reported that they had allocated $112 million each year to 250,000 children's programs. Has that money been seen to have a measurable impact upon reducing re-victimization of young women and girls?

[Kimberly Elmslie]

Thank you very much for that question.

I believe you're referring to the investment in the three children's programs I talked about earlier, just to confirm the figure of $112 million annually.

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

Yes.

[Kimberly Elmslie]

Okay.

The data we gather on those programs, because they are for very young and vulnerable children, have not in fact looked at victimization and violence in terms of longer-term impacts.

It's a good question that you're asking, and it's a timely one, because at this point in the evolution of our children's programs we are looking at what data we need to be collecting in the future, and since we know that many of the women coming into these programs are the victims of violence and that therefore their children are being exposed to violence, we're looking at that data collection.

Thank you for that comment. We'll definitely incorporate it into the work we're doing now.

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

That's wonderful. Thank you very much.

This is to INAC. In 2014 it was reported to the committee that between 2008 and 2014 there was an investment of $261.1 million in the family violence prevention program to provide shelter services and fund prevention activities.

As a committee, we recognize the importance of this funding for women leaving violent situations, but how can we ensure that the women are not re-victimized? Are there any aspects of the shelter funding or work that aid in preventing re-victimization of these women and children?

[Paula Isaak]

Thank you for your question.

Yes, our family violence prevention programming has a couple of aspects. There is the shelters piece, but there's also prevention programming. That's proposal-driven: communities and organizations give us proposals for prevention programs—exactly the type of thing you're talking about—in order to create culturally relevant programs in their communities, both on and off reserve, so that they can try to prevent the victimization and the re-victimization of indigenous women and girls.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Thank you.

WSe go over to Ms. Vandenbeld for five minutes.

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

Thank you very much to all of the witnesses. Especially I thank you, Ms. Blackell, for talking about the various Criminal Code provisions there are, especially section 162.1 on the non-consensual distribution of intimate images, and also about criminal harassment and the definition of consent.

My question is this: to what extent are young women, especially girls—I'm thinking of 13- or 14-year-old girls—aware of these criminal provisions?

I'm very pleased that Mr. Valentine said that new immigrants are being given, through the settlement programs, awareness training about their rights and the legal rights that they have. I think there was also a mention that under the victims' fund there are workshops for young women on campuses. I'm especially pleased that one of those campuses is Algonquin College, which is in my riding of Ottawa West—Nepean.

What about young women who are not new Canadians and are not on campus, especially high school students who might not realize that if somebody is following them home from school or texting them with threatening texts they can find some kind of redress through the Criminal Code? Particularly to do with the section 162.1, is there an attempt to create awareness among those young women?

[Gillian Blackell]

Thank you for that question.

Like our colleagues at INAC, our grants and contributions fund is also application-based. We do fund a number of organizations that work in this area, such as the Canadian Centre for Child Protection and Kids Help Phone. A number of different organizations are well situated to conduct this kind of outreach to this particular target group to raise awareness. We are regularly in touch with them for ideas for projects. They often come to us for funding for specific projects in terms of raising awareness among young people.

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

I guess I'll ask the same question of the indigenous affairs department. Are there programs that would raise awareness of legal rights, and what kind of redress is available?

[Paula Isaak]

In the last few years, that has been a preoccupation not only in the federal government department but in the provinces and territories as well. Last year there was funding to the National Association of Friendship Centres to do a pan-Canadian awareness mobile platform. It was designed to provide, through a mobile platform, information targeted to indigenous women and girls, but largely to a younger audience. That's still evolving, but they did create a mobile platform.

At the latest round table, as I mentioned in my remarks, all the provinces and territories did agree on the need to create a pan-Canadian awareness strategy. Right now, in fact, that's a very live discussion among the federal government and provinces and territories around developing that strategy going forward, and around what that looks like. It's very much top of mind right now.

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

For both on reserve and off reserve?

[Paula Isaak]

That's right.

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

Okay. Good.

Would these kinds of programs, in all the departments, include things like the definition of consent? Are these the kinds of things that are included? I know that cyberbullying is an area where there really hasn't been a lot of study, but is there an attempt to talk about cyberbullying, to have an awareness on that, and to gather information back through the research on what's actually happening?

[Paula Isaak]

For the pieces identified for indigenous women and girls, the content for a pan-Canadian awareness strategy has not yet been designed. That remains to be seen. There'll be more discussions with the national aboriginal organizations on that.

Right now the mobile platform that the NAFC has up is a little less legally based. It's focused on a lot of sharing of information. The idea is that it will evolve: where do you get services, how do you get help, and those kinds of pieces. It's not quite there yet.