Madam Chair, vice-chairs and committee members, thank you for the invite to speak today on the challenges women in rural communities face.
I am representing Central Alberta Victim & Witness Support Society. We're a non-profit society providing direct support, information and referrals to victims of crime and tragedy. We are housed at the Blackfalds RCMP Detachment. Our organization serves a rural population in central Alberta, including large portions of Red Deer County and Lacombe County, an extensive geography of 2,000 kilometres.
Between August 2019 and August 2020, we provided 2,046 hours of direct victim support, 453 hours of court support, supported 1,226 victims, of whom 361 were victims of bodily emotional trauma due to family violence, and 290 were victims of rural crime, where we are seeing an increase in guns being the weapon of choice. These are our two largest file components.
The more common challenges we see women in our rural communities face are access to shelters and counselling, affordable and accessible child care, affordable housing, affordable transportation, access to food, sustainable and dependable Wi-Fi and Internet infrastructure, and assuredness of their safety at home. Although the current pandemic has increased the organization's capacity to reach more clients by going virtual, the Wi-Fi and Internet infrastructure is not there to support this demand in rural communities. Our vulnerable population often does not have data packages on their cellphones to enable typical Zoom calls.
Some women in rural communities, and I quote, “feel stigmatized about being a redneck, and not feeling comfortable accessing resources in the city”. It takes a lot of courage to reach out and ask for help. Too often they do not have a choice of where they go to access supports, for example, the food bank. If they need to access the food bank, it has to be a local food bank that services their area, whether it works for them or not.
The vulnerable women in our rural communities are often victimized further when trying to access emergency shelters, for example. They are expected to uproot their lives, after already being traumatized and many times assaulted, to travel to whichever urban centre has the available bed. This has been a huge factor in getting vulnerable women and children out of domestic violence situations. No regard is taken for them in their personal lives and relationships. It is purely a case of, if you need to access an emergency shelter, you must access the one you are sent to by Alberta Works in an urban centre.
Those in rural communities have additional barriers in accessing services only available in urban centres, such as government offices, courthouses or specialized medical services. Many do not have transportation available to enable access, and all services predominantly are only open regular hours.
Rural crime is another major concern for women in our communities. They do not feel safe in their homes and struggle with more and more anxiety when their partners are gone to work or they are home alone in the evenings or nighttime. Their mental health is suffering. Too often, funding and services are routed to larger towns and cities and nothing is available for struggling families in rural Alberta. Many urban organizations receive funding for outreach programs to support those in rural communities, but many times the rural population must travel to those urban centres to access and they are often not adaptable to different challenges in their communities.
There is an inequitable distribution of funding. Rural communities need to build their capacity to support their community members. We need to stop victimizing victims further. Funding needs to be equitable between urban and rural communities. Take, for example, victim service units. Our rural unit is capped at $150,000 per annum, funded by Justice and the Solicitor General, but up to eight urban victim service units receive double that amount. We cover a larger geographic area and we respond to all calls requesting support. Some urban communities have specialized response teams available, for example, a domestic violence response team and sexual violence response team. Those victim service units don't respond to those calls, domestic or sexual violence, in an urban centre.
The messaging this is portraying to rural women is that they are not valued the same as their urban counterparts. They must endure more challenges to access resources while also having to leave their community to do so. By connecting with the women in our community when they are victims of crime, we assist them in bridging the gap from hurt to hope while strengthening their relationships with our community members and their belief that they are protected, they are seen, they are heard and they are valued. We are often the only connection they have.
We would strongly recommend keeping funds for rural communities in those rural communities themselves. Build their strengths where they are needed most and help them feel safe in their own homes.
Thank you.