Status of Women Committee on March 25th, 2022

[Pamela Cross]

I'm going to answer your question in a slightly different way and say that without those additional elements, any criminalization of coercive control would not work. We still need to do a little more thinking to make sure we have everything in place before we move to thinking that criminalization is the way to go. Therefore, a sort of half-yes is my response to your question.

That has certainly been the experience in jurisdictions that have criminalized coercive control. In the places where a huge amount of money was dedicated to the kinds of programs, accountability and training that you've talked about, criminalization has worked better than in those jurisdictions where those measures were not in place and where funding wasn't available.

It's also the case that it has been the most successful in jurisdictions where there has been a high level of consultation with survivors and with those who work with survivors.

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

Thank you, Ms. Cross.

Do you have any comments on Quebec's establishment of a specialized court for sexual and domestic abuse?

[Pamela Cross]

Something like that tribunal, again, is an important piece of this mosaic or quilt approach that we need to meaningfully address violence that happens within families. Specialization is critical. As the comments I made earlier indicate, the professionals who are generally in front of criminal courts and family courts are generalists. They don't know enough about this, so specialization is really important.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you so much.

We're now going to pass it over to Leah.

Leah, you have two and a half minutes.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you so much, and thank you to the witnesses today.

My question is for Pamela Cross.

I know that you chaired the justice and legal systems working group. One of the recommendations from the working group was “[i]mproved immigration pathways that protect vulnerable immigrants, especially women, from precarious living conditions, exploitation, and abuse” by ensuring status for all.

Something that I'm a big supporter of is immigration status for all, and prioritizing permanent residence for survivors of GBV in Canada. Can you expand on the impact of status for all in addressing gender-based violence?

[Pamela Cross]

When a woman comes to Canada and doesn't have stable status in the country, it places her in ongoing jeopardy. If she's in a relationship where her partner is abusing her, or even entering a relationship where she will be abused, she's in this holding pattern. Until her status here is determined or until she knows that she can stay, she has difficulty with things like employment. She may have difficulty with housing. If there are children, they are going to feel that they are not in a stable situation.

Whether she's coming here to flee an abusive relationship in her country of origin, or whether she's here and the abusive relationship is also here, stabilizing her legal status in Canada is important. It's sort of like housing, in the way that Keri talked about so eloquently earlier. Without some of these foundational pieces of stability, women are living in situations that expose them to more abuse and make it much more difficult for them to move past that trauma.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Building on that, we know that women are most often responsible for unpaid care work, meaning looking after children, parents, and family members, which is another important argument for a guaranteed livable basic income.

Do you think a guaranteed livable basic income, in addition to current and future programs and support, including housing with rent geared to income, would assist women to flee from violence?

[Pamela Cross]

Absolutely.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

With the permission of the committee, I am wondering if the chair can ask a few questions.

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you. We have a couple of minutes left, so rather than trying to go the entire round....

Thank you so much to both of you for being here today. It's really important that we have these discussions.

I would like to start with Pamela, if you don't mind.

One thing we talked about is intergenerational trauma. For me, it's about where we nip it in the bud, and I'll focus on youth. What are some of the things you have seen that may be great, whether it be education or programs, and that may help with trying to get away from having violence against women? What types of programs do you think are necessary for our youth when it comes to this type of behaviour?

[Pamela Cross]

I agree with you, absolutely. We need to nip this in the bud. We need to be raising children who, from very early in their lives, understand that conflict resolution doesn't have to mean that one person wins and another person loses. Happy relationships are where two people have a relatively equal balance of power.

I don't know why we're not talking about this from day care and up. It seems to be a forbidden topic, as though talking about it is going to make it happen. In fact, talking about is going to stop it from happening.

It's great to get kids into programming once the fact that their family has violence in it comes to the surface, but let's do this. Let's bring in the experts. Let's bring in counsellors from shelters, counsellors from sexual assault centres, and others, to talk with children as young as three and four about what a happy, healthy relationship looks like, and to give them the skills they need to engage in that kind of relationship themselves.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Carrying on with that, Keri, I'd love to hear your comments as well. This will be my last question.

Keri, can you expand on your thoughts on that when it comes to education and trying to prevent this right from the very beginning?

[Keri Lewis]

I would agree with everything that Pamela said.

It goes back to this idea of how, in order to prevent violence and to respond to violence appropriately, we need all systems understanding the dynamics of violence and abuse. I think there has been some progress made in terms of the school curriculum. There are small sections on unhealthy relationships, but as Pamela said, that starts later on, in grades 7, 8, 9 and 10.

I think we could be having conversations with younger kids in preschools and giving them those skills to talk about their feelings: giving them the words they need to describe anger and what to do with that anger and what some of the options are, and teaching them about the concepts of power and privilege in relationships. These are all things that kids can understand. I have four kids myself, and we've been talking about these things since they were young. They get it. They're so smart. They should be here talking to you.

Kids are amazing. I think it is really important that we turn some of our attention to that prevention work and getting kids at younger ages to understand these issues and concepts.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you so much.

Thanks to both of you for taking the time to answer my questions as well. On behalf of the status of women committee, I'd like to thank both of you for coming here and giving your testimony today. We wish you all the best.

If there is any additional information or documentation that you can send our way that would benefit us.... Perhaps you may see a program that is really beneficial, and you'll say, “Hey, I think the people at the status of women committee need to see this.” If you can send anything, that would be wonderful.

We're going to suspend the committee for a couple of minutes and get started once again at two o'clock with the second panel.

Once again, Keri and Pamela, thank you so much for being part of this important study.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

We are back with our second panel.

I would like to welcome our guests today on our second panel for our important study on intimate partner violence.

From the Moose Hide Campaign, we have David Stevenson, who is the chief executive officer, and Paul Lacerte, who is still trying to get on, who is co-founder and national ambassador. From WoodGreen Community Services, we have Yordanka Petrova, who is senior manager of the homeward bound program.

I would like to welcome you.

For the opening statements, you each get five minutes. When you see me start swirling my arm in the air, if you could start winding up, that would be wonderful.

I'm going to pass the floor over to David Stevenson.

David, you have five minutes for your opening statement.

[David Stevenson, Chief Executive Officer, Moose Hide Campaign]

Thank you. I'm not sure if Paul will join us, but if he does, you'll hear from him as well.

My name is David Stevenson. I'm calling in from the Lekwungen-speaking people’s territory here on Vancouver Island. It's an honour to be here.

Sekoh to everybody and thanks for inviting us to say a few words. I'm the CEO of the Moose Hide Campaign, which is a campaign that started along the Highway of Tears in 2011. Paul, who will join us in a minute, and his daughter Raven were hunting along that highway. It's their traditional territory. Their ancestors have hunted there for thousands of years, and when they got a moose, as they have done every year, they were inspired to take the hide of that moose and tan it, and cut it up and offer it to friends and relatives in their community who would agree, if they wore the hide, to promise not to do violence against any women and children in their community, and to honour, respect and protect all women in their lives and in their networks.

This was, of course, prior to the real awareness of the MMIWG issues that Canada has been plagued with. It was before the #MeToo movement and really before the TRC and reconciliation got going.

I'd like to point out that this was a moment that Canada needs to stop and think about. Here is an indigenous father transitioning his knowledge and wisdom, and his traditions and his language, to his daughter, and that was the exact moment that the residential school systems were designed to disrupt and to eradicate, that moment of transition of culture from one generation to the next.

That moment is also a moment when we see the power of culture and the power of the use of our collective ability to come together in cultures and design cultures and keep cultures alive and create new cultures, and that's what the campaign is about. It's very much about a focus on using an indigenous medicine, as we like to say, for the benefit of all Canadians and specifically for a very deep and troubling social and spiritual illness that Canadians suffer from. That's the illness of the confusion that violence is somehow a way to achieve some kind of goal.

Men are brought up in a culture in Canada, and many places in the world, where it is not obvious that you do not physically harm women and children. As a matter of fact, many men are brought up to think that this is one of the tools in their tool belt of how to move forward in life and how to achieve whatever it is they're looking to achieve.

The Moose Hide Campaign started at that moment as a call to action for all Canadians to stand together and draw a line in the sand. There was a time in Canada when drinking and driving was kind of okay. It wasn't great but it was okay. We didn't worry about it too much and there was a big grey zone there, and if you got pulled over you might get sent home or something like that. Then Canada decided no, that's offside.

That's not something we're going to achieve through the current tools of government. There are no laws or policies that somebody is going to write that all of a sudden will end violence against women and children in this country. What there is is the moral leadership.

So we ask for that in our engagement with government and all Canadians. Those are not necessarily the tools of government, but it's the leadership of government to say that this is an issue that is a priority to us. It's an issue that we want to focus on and take a stand against, visibly. We believe this is an issue, like all burdensome psychological issues, that can't be left in the dark. We hope that this campaign shines a light into that darkness and that we create the social connectivity and the social expectation that we conduct ourselves and that men hold themselves and each other accountable for a standard of interaction that they would like to see with their own daughters and their own mothers and their own sisters and themselves.

It's the result of a lot of confusion and a lot of yet-to-be-developed expectations, so we were glad to hear folks talking about youth. We have our Moose Hide Campaign Day, which is a virtual celebration. It will be on May 12 this year. We invite each and every one of you, and all of your networks, to join that event. We have about 250,000 people signed up. Close to 200,000 of them are in the K-to-12 system and we invite them to come and watch the day. We have the Governor General saying some words and Murray Sinclair saying some words.

What we're trying to do is set this issue above other issues. It's not just another issue among issues. It's not just a good idea that we work together to end violence against women and children. Violence against women and children is completely preventable. There's an experience and a set of values that we need to walk and talk.

We hold this day as a day of ceremony. We invite men and boys to fast with us for the day, so we get beyond this “It's a good idea” and “Yes, I feel this is the right thing to do” to “Oh, I actually have to deepen my personal experience and my personal commitment to take a stand.” We believe this is a muscle that has atrophied, if it ever existed, and it's a muscle we can collectively build together.

It's not everything. It's not going to solve all problems, but it's enough to say we collectively stand together on this issue. It's not simply a virtual signal, and it's not a badge of honour. It's a badge of our collective inability to provide a safe country for all Canadians.

That's the work of the campaign, and I'm happy to talk about any other aspects of it that you would be interested in.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you so much.

We're now going to move to Yordanka, for five minutes.

[Yordanka Petrova, Senior Manager, Homeward Bound Program, WoodGreen Community Services]

Thank you, Chair.

My name is Yordanka Petrova, and I am the senior manager of the WoodGreen Community Services homeward bound program.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you to the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women for this invitation to address your study.

WoodGreen Community Services is one of Toronto's largest social service agencies, serving 37,000 people each year, across 40 locations.

As a leader in social innovation, we appreciate the focus of your study. Intimate partner and domestic violence is a social problem with structural roots, such as gender inequality, fear of retribution and accepting the emotional, psychological and physical abuse by the partner due to normalization of male superiority by our society.

Pathways to gaining economic independence through advancing women's education are often complicated by issues such as lack of affordable housing, low child care availability and affordability, and the need to access loans in order to pay for a post-secondary education, which automatically leads to incurring debt.

Intimate partner and domestic violence experienced by women and girls is attributed to a wide range of financial and social structural barriers. Thus, efforts need to be coordinated and focused on bridging the gaps between the siloed systems.

The WoodGreen Community Services homeward bound program is a program model that eliminates barriers preventing women from leaving unsafe environments. It was launched in 2004, and it is the first of its kind in Canada. The homeward bound program provides homeless or inadequately housed single mothers, approximately 80% of whom have experienced violence, access to four years of transitional housing, child care, mental health and family counselling, post-secondary education, and sustainable employment with the help of our industry council.

Coming from a variety of backgrounds and experiences, the women we help are united in the hope for a better future. They work hard to pave their path to sustainable employment, permanent housing and a positive, violence-free future for themselves and their children.

Included in our materials is a reference to an external study that details the impact of the homeward bound program in numbers, one of which is social return on investment: for every dollar invested in homeward bound, approximately six dollars are created in social and economic value. Also, 94% of the program graduates are safely housed upon completion. The employment rate shifts from 6% on entry to 87% within five years after graduation.

WoodGreen shares this model through affiliate partnerships with Peterborough, Halton Region, and Brantford. We have also worked with the Ontario Federation of Indigenous Friendship Centres to share learning and adapt with indigenous cultural considerations. WoodGreen Community Services supports policy, partnership and initiatives that will strive to empower vulnerable women and address intimate partner and domestic violence in Canada.

Based on our extensive experience with traumatized women and children, we would like to put forward some recommendations: core and operating funding to support longer-term programs with wraparound supports, focused on addressing the systemic financial and social structural barriers experienced by women and girls fleeing domestic violence; financial support for longer-term affordable and independent housing opportunities available to women and girls fleeing domestic violence versus temporary solutions, often through the shelter system; procedural improvements in the family court system when going through divorce, child custody, access, child/spousal support, with stress on proper resourcing of more effective legal representation to avoid retraumatization and further abuse; as a preventative measure, more focus on the perpetrators versus those on the violence receiving end, and support for research, recommendations and evidence-based approaches regarding educational and intervention practices.

Thank you so much for your attention and for this opportunity to address you today.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you both for your opening statements.

We're going to start our first round of questions. Each party will receive six minutes.

We're going to start off with Michelle Ferreri. You have the floor.

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

Thank you so much.

Thank you to both of our witnesses today for being here. I really appreciate your time on a Friday. I think you need to send us those lovely little pins, so we can wear them in Parliament on May 12.

I want to quickly ask you, Yordanka, to clarify where in Peterborough you're helping. That's actually my riding.

[Yordanka Petrova]

It's in partnership with Peterborough Housing Corporation.

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

Okay. Perfect.

[Yordanka Petrova]

Yes. They have a building. I'm not familiar with the address in particular, but it's part of their housing fund.

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

Fantastic. Thanks for clarifying that. I'll come back to you in just a second.

I want to go to David, if I can.

I find what you're doing really interesting. You point out that it's not virtue signalling. One of my favourite quotes by Mr. Rogers is this: “anything that is mentionable can be more manageable.” When we start to talk about it, education equals awareness equals change.

I'm curious, though, about what the next steps are. I like that you're starting this dialogue and this conversation. If you could clarify it again, what age group are you starting with? You declared it was particularly men and boys. Is that correct?