Status of Women Committee on March 25th, 2022

[David Stevenson]

Yes. There's definitely a focus on men and boys. We invite every Canadian from all along the gender continuum to participate in all aspects of the campaign, as well as all cultures. It is an indigenous-focused innovation for the benefit of all Canadians.

We have a team—well, two people—working on K to 12. We also have quite an active ground game right now in post-secondary institutions.

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

Fantastic.

[David Stevenson]

We see this as a systems change. We work with large institutions. As a matter of fact, Indigenous Services Canada has just seconded an individual to our team, who will then go across departments and agencies to try to bring the message out to folks to join.

On the day, we have some capacity building. It's a day when we'll have the event and some capacity building and live interactive workshops, so people can use it as a professional development opportunity.

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

Thank you for that.

I think what's interesting.... I'm curious to know how you integrate this, if you have people with lived experience. I like what you said at the beginning, that in some families it is the normal base. I like how you used the drinking and driving example. In some areas, especially more rural or cut-off areas in our country, perhaps it is the social norm. That's how you deal with it.

I'm curious where you're directing men. Sometimes, when we open up these conversations, they can open up a wound. They might say, “Wow, I'm actually one of these people contributing to this. I didn't realize how damaging my behaviour is. I was just doing what I was taught.” Where are you directing them? What resources do you have to help them go on a journey to correct it and unlearn that behaviour?

[David Stevenson]

It's a great question.

I think you might have asked...or I'm going to answer a question that you may or may not have asked and then directly answer that one. We have a Wise Aunties Council, made up of women, most of whom have experienced some very significant.... They have a lot of depth, if you will, of experience in this field. They will guide and make sure we're staying....

We are very consciously saying that this is an issue where men need to show up and support, and not jump in front of a parade. We have to be very cautious to make sure we're supporting a larger conversation across Canada.

As for men's resources, what we do is specifically try to work with larger organizations if we can. We put our effort into that. We ask that organization, for instance the federal government, what supports they as an institution have in place, before we start this journey of asking them to raise this and show executive profile—

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

I'm so sorry. I hate cutting people off, but we're always in this rush.

[David Stevenson]

That's fine.

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

What I'm trying to get at is, what are the support systems? I love that you recognize that you need to have them in place before you open up the conversation.

What's working? What programs do you find are working when they get to this moment of “Wow, I need help”?

[David Stevenson]

Unfortunately, there are not a lot of them. There are very specific ones. There are ones like Warriors Against Violence in Vancouver and the Change of Seasons programs in Vancouver, which are often for adjudicated folks, but there is not a cadre of programs and services at the ready.

We find guys who will go, “Oh, this is something I need to think about more.” There's a lot of capacity, I think, for people to just get to that first step. Once they're there, there are a lot of supports in communities. I find men will hold each other and support each other in these conversations.

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

Yes, navigating the system is often the hardest part. From where we sit at a federal level, your work is extremely important, because you have to get to that point. You don't know what you don't know, and I think your campaign is critical to getting to that point.

I guess what I'm looking to hammer out from you, if I could, is the kind of program you think could be in place to help these men. What does that look like for you?

[David Stevenson]

Again, I'll go back to our work in indigenous communities. I don't do this through the campaign itself, but I used to work in this field, very specific programs that are designed for and root for indigenous men and boys. They seem to be very culturally based, locally based, rooted programs, services and initiatives to bring them back to their culture and bring them back to an inner sense of agency and purpose. That's really critical.

Then we found just straight-up counselling, just men being able to turn the dial a bit and go, “Wait a second, there are other behaviours I can do? These emotions can go in different directions?” Those kinds of basic understandings are really important.

I would say, going back to—

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Excuse me, sir. I'm going to have to cut you off, because the fact is that we do have to go to another round.

I want to welcome Mr. Lacerte to our panel. He is here with Moose Hide as well, and he's just been able to join us.

I don't know if you received your headset or not. Did you receive that, by any chance?

[Paul Lacerte, Co-Founder and National Ambassador, Moose Hide Campaign]

Yes, I received it, but I don't have a way to connect it to my system, unfortunately.

Will this sound work okay for you folks?

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

We will do our best, and if there are any problems, I'll let you know. I just wanted to check in on that.

What we're going to do now is switch it over to Emmanuella Lambropoulos.

Emmanuella, you have six minutes.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'd like to thank all of our witnesses for being with us today to answer some of our questions on this really important topic.

I'm going to begin with Ms. Petrova.

You spoke a lot about the existing financial and social barriers that block women from escaping violence in their homes. You also mentioned a couple of recommendations that you want our government to really look into, and this is the perfect place to be able to do that, because we're after recommendations.

I'm going to give you an opportunity to elaborate a little bit more on the four you named, whether it's addressing the systemic financial barriers.... Could you be a little more specific as to how we can do that?

At the end, you mentioned focusing on the perpetrator rather than the victim, so you could go into a bit more detail on that as well.

[Yordanka Petrova]

Sure. Thank you for the question.

Really, I'm here to present the homeward bound program as a really good example of a model that addresses both social and financial structural barriers. I think previous witnesses recognized that it's never a one-faceted problem when it comes to partner violence. Women and girls who flee those violent situations face multiple issues. If in the community there are no tools they can turn to and feel they can trust so that they can actually flee the violence and feel safe, they won't leave the relationship or the environment they're currently in.

In general, if you are a woman who is experiencing abuse and you would like to move on with your life, often it's not just emotional abuse. It's also economic and sometimes physical abuse. Women experience different types of abuse. If they're economically dependent, the first thing they need to consider when moving out of the relationship is finding affordable housing.

Previous witnesses talked about the difficulty of locating affordable housing nowadays. That's why in the program we try to tackle those issues. One of the recommendations, if I can explore and expand on it a little bit more, is core funding for those comprehensive model programs that address not just providing immediate shelter to flee the abusive and violent situation but also providing opportunities so that this person can actually tackle the barriers and improve their education, have more permanent housing for themselves, particularly when there are children involved, and have employment opportunities, not just survival jobs but opportunities that will provide them with economic self-sufficiency.

Really, that's the recommendation. It's to look holistically at the situation. These women usually face not just one barrier. It's not a one-silo type of problem.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

I have another question. I'm not sure if you'll be able to answer it. If you can, let me know.

We heard on the previous panel that many women are often turned away when they do seek help. When they get to a shelter, there's not enough space available. This can be very dangerous for these women. They're already taking a huge risk in leaving. Depending on the situation, it could be a very dangerous one. It could be a matter of life or death. Oftentimes they're turned away with nowhere to go.

This also has a lot to do with coercive control. There are a lot of things that cannot necessarily be proven when things do happen. When it's not physical abuse and there are no bruises on the body, or there's no way of proving the abuse, oftentimes it's very difficult for a woman to actually go and seek help with the police or with anybody.

Do you have any thoughts on that? Do you have any recommendations on how we can make it so that women are empowered in a way where they're believed and they're actually given tools that don't work against them, in the end?

[Yordanka Petrova]

Absolutely. It's a very difficult and complicated situation. On one side, they are fleeing a controlled environment. One problem is that shelters do not have sufficient space in terms of really giving a safe environment for all women who need it. That's one side. On the other, the setting in the shelter system is limited space, shared space, with almost controlled curfews and so on.

We're talking about women who have experienced a lot of trauma and who just need space to recover and regroup from those experiences. That's actually why many of them return to the relationship, because they do have shelter, but they don't have the economic supports. They don't have any sort of idea as to what they do next or where they go next or where they turn.

I'm not sure if there's really a very fast type of resolution. That's why there's the second recommendation. Longer-term, affordable, independent housing for those women and girls who experience domestic violence would be a first step as a resolution. Then it would be providing them with the necessary supports in place to either progress their education and complete post-secondary education or have linkages to the labour market or employers so that they can secure the employment to be financially independent.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

That's excellent. Thank you so much.

We're now going to turn it over to Maxime.

You have the floor for six minutes.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I want to start by thanking the witnesses here this afternoon.

My first question is for Mr. Stevenson and Mr. Lacerte. Mr. Stevenson, thank you for your opening remarks.

According to the Quebec national institute of public health, “indigenous women face a higher risk of experiencing domestic violence and face more serious forms of violence than non‑indigenous women.” In addition, indigenous women are “over‑represented as victims of homicide at the hands of a dating partner.”

Mr. Stevenson and Mr. Lacerte, why is violence against indigenous women more common and more serious than violence against non‑indigenous women?

[David Stevenson]

I'll offer it to you, Paul, if you'd like to say something.

[Paul Lacerte]

Greetings. My sincere apologies for arriving late due to technical barriers with my system here. There was no disrespect intended to the committee. My apologies, and thank you to the staff for their support.

I would say, first, as the father of four visibly indigenous women and as a first nations man who grew up right along the Highway of Tears—the Highway of Tears runs right through our Carrier First Nation's territory—the statement and the statistics that you cite are the lived experience of indigenous women in this country. For those of us with visibly indigenous women in our families, we know that those statistics apply not just to indigenous women who are vulnerable or who have high-risk lifestyles.

The question that you raise, the “why”, has some deep roots at an institutional level in this country. The presence of systemic racism and statutory racism has affected and specifically displaced indigenous women and disrupted the matriarchal systems that we had in place. That persists today in every system. As you know, for example, in the month of January, the percentage of incarcerated women in Canada who were indigenous exceeded 50% for the first time. So we have indicators showing that we are going in the wrong direction in terms of how incredibly marginalized, unsafe and unsupported indigenous women are in relation to other women, and certainly in relation to Canadians writ large.

These challenges that result in our women being murdered, being abducted and going missing are intergenerational. They are systemic. They are statutory and regulatory. One of my late recommendations here regarding systemic barriers inside our policing systems, including within the RCMP, is for indigenous women to be seen through a lens of respect and equality and not to be seen through this narrative that they are less than and/or often intoxicated and/or not to be trusted and not to be taken at their word, as the previous speaker mentioned.

Part of our theory of change in those broad contexts is simple. It's to increase ceremony in whatever way makes sense for those systems, and to call forward—

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Lacerte, I must interrupt you in order to ask more questions. Please feel free to submit briefs if you want to provide additional information.

Access to resources is a very important issue. The evidence shows a significant lack of resources to assist indigenous women across the country. This issue was exacerbated during the pandemic.

Can you talk about the barriers that indigenous women who are victims of intimate partner violence and domestic violence face when trying to access different types of assistance and support services?

[Paul Lacerte]

Yes, absolutely. I think the first is the nature of our communities. For indigenous women who are living in first nations, on-reserve communities, as you've heard, services are already stretched, and there is an incredible absence of most of the services that are available to folks in urban communities. Therefore, there is either an absolute absence or an extreme limit in terms of residential services and protective services for indigenous women living on reserve.

Leaving is a really challenging prospect for a lot of indigenous women who are in vulnerable positions in their home community because it means leaving their extended families. Extended family is a core value and something that is a very high priority for indigenous women. It means leaving their home and often leaving their kids, leaving access to elders and so on. Those are some unique challenges, yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you very much.

We're now going to move over for the next six minutes to Leah Gazan.

Leah, you have six minutes.