Good afternoon, Madam Chair and committee members. On behalf of the Salvation Army, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to speak with you on the committee's study of coercive behaviour. We are honoured to represent the voices of the women and families we serve who too often have found themselves without a voice.
My name is Barbara Ridley. I'm currently executive director of the Sudbury Cedar Place women and family shelter in Sudbury, Ontario. Prior to this, I worked in community and hospital settings, providing training across the province on the subjects of women, addiction, mental health and trauma.
At Cedar Place we provide shelter to 28 women, children and families. Each night our beds are full. Nearly all individuals we serve have experienced coercive violence, children included. In our city, with a population of over 168,000, police respond to an average of eight intimate partner violence-related incidents a day. These numbers have climbed steadily since 2013, with the Greater Sudbury Police Service responding to 2,846 incidents annually.
When these incidents occur, the police call us. We do everything we can to meet the increasing demand on our emergency shelter. This represents similar trends across the country. The Salvation Army provides nearly 4,000 shelter beds nightly, with 439 serving women and 79 serving families across Canada. When a woman or a family arrives at our door, there is a unique history of trauma that arrives with them. Coercion is undoubtedly a part of their history. These acts become particularly egregious when children are involved.
I think of Mary, who finally had the courage to leave her partner after 10 years of extreme isolation from family and friends and continuous daily rants. How would you feel as a mother, hearing your partner call you a slut or an idiot every day in front of your children? These types of rants were coercive behaviour to ensure that she would stay. Sadly, she arrived at the shelter without her children, wrongfully believing she would not be able to financially provide for them. All she knew was that she feared for her life.
Coercion creates generational trauma. As the committee considers changes to the Criminal Code of Canada, we hope that a re-examination of family law is not forgotten. Children deserve their own legal protection. We would encourage the creation of a stand-alone law that further punishes the coercion of children through threats, manipulation, intimidation and isolation.
Concurrent with legal changes, there needs to be a substantial investment in an educational campaign, created and distributed in partnership with social and legal service providers, to empower individuals with the knowledge that such laws exist and how they can seek protection.
I think of Susan, who arrived at our shelter with a lack of knowledge about her rights and services that kept her prisoner within her own home. She represents the thousands of women who remain hopeless without knowledge.
It is an incredible act of bravery to seek protection from abuse. We must ensure that the act of reaching out in itself does not deter or retraumatize the individuals. Healing from coercive abuse requires long-term, continuous support services. Every step in this process increases the risk these women face.
The women we serve ask for the steps to be centralized for ease of access, safety and rapid response. Legal protections and survivor support services are critical, but they also represent that abuse has happened. The Salvation Army advocates for a root cause approach with increased investment in housing and social service provision so that dignified and appropriate services can be provided to survivors and families in a timely and robust fashion.
In closing, I would like to share the story of every woman and child who enters our shelter and has suffered from coercive behaviours. They're all hoping for a fresh start. The average length of stay at Cedar Place has grown from 16 to 53 days over the last five years. The lack of rent geared to income or deeply affordable housing forces individuals to move out into the community into shared accommodations. Ultimately, many of them return to homelessness. In the rush to find safe housing, many find themselves in financially unstable situations. They too return to homelessness.
The lack of appropriate housing demands swift and decisive action, with legislation requiring capital investment to mandate, grow and preserve deeply affordable safe homes, including rent-geared-to-income housing.
Taylor and I are happy to provide further details and answers to any questions that you might have about the needs and the trends across the community.
We want to thank this committee for the opportunity to be a part of this study, and we look forward to the members' questions.
Thank you very much.