Status of Women Committee on March 29th, 2022

[Lisa Crawford]

Hi, Michelle. Thank you so much.

It's such a complex issue. Yes, funding helps, but I find that getting Cut it Out education, which is the education that we provide.... It actually came from the United States, in Alabama. Then it got to Western University, and then it came to Alberta.

Jodi and I are certified to train salon professionals in it. The salon industry is a really unique industry. We are touching people. We are in very close contact. I think we all know the situation where somebody tells their barber or their hairstylist everything about their life. We have such a unique position, but we really need to get this Cut it Out education put into our cosmetology curriculum, because, as far as I'm concerned, this is about health and safety.

Through the Cut it Out education, we're also taught that by giving incorrect advice, which is fairly common to us day-to-day citizens in what we think is just a normal conversation, could actually put people in a grave amount of danger. I think that's where we need to start. We need to really focus on education, but then funding. Definitely secondary housing is obviously crucial.

To answer your question, Michelle, before the bruises start, we need education.

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

A great answer. I couldn't agree with you more, Lisa. Thank you so much.

I'm going to jump over to Kim.

Kim, thank you so much. I'm proud to have you here today from my riding.

I'm curious, Kim. We saw this week some pretty shocking violence come out of mainstream media at the Oscars. When you look at toxic masculinity and trying to help men recognize signs of poor self-regulation, or how to regulate their emotions, how big of a play do you think that is? Should the federal government be looking into our role in investing in young men?

[Kim Dolan]

That's a great question, Michelle.

Isn't that really the crux of the issues that we're talking about? The episode at the Oscars was certainly shocking. The public debate that's opened up is also very interesting.

I think the need for prevention and education can't be underestimated. We know that we need more supports for women; we know that more women are experiencing gender-based violence. When I started this work in 1988, we believed we were going to end violence against women and child abuse. It's pretty simple: Just don't do it. Apparently it's not that simple.

I think we need to double up on systems of prevention and education while we are still helping women who are experiencing violence. I think that's a big investment.

I believe that we could change in one generation how our boys and our girls imagine themselves. I think we do our kids an incredible injustice. We rob our boys, our girls, our gender-diverse children of innate humanity and empathy, and their joy, with systematized, imposed gender roles and permission for toxic masculinity to continue. It's tough.

Mitch, I was listening to you talk about your program. It's really tough to first have those conversations with men. There is a lot of risk in that, because it makes a lot of guys feel really uncomfortable.

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

Thank you, Kim.

I don't want to downplay what Mitch is doing. You're amazing, but these two ladies were from my riding, and I only have so much time.

If you want to add to that, Mitch, I think it is important that we really look at the root of the issue. I've always said that we often want to raise our girls to be in defensive mode, but what can we do to raise our boys to recognize proper behaviour and to understand what is consent, and focusing more on that? What are your thoughts on that?

[Mitch Bourbonniere]

I totally agree with that. We need to teach our boys at a very early age to be able to express themselves, to honour their emotions, to have deep respect for the life-givers—their sisters, their moms, their aunties—and that has to start at a very early age through education for sure.

I agree with everyone.

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

Thank you.

If I have 10 seconds left, I would love Lisa to share a story of something she didn't know but learned as a result of the Cut it Out program education.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Lisa, you have 15 seconds.

[Lisa Crawford]

I learned that a lot of things we say, like “Just leave him; just go”, actually puts them in so much more danger and then they're never going to speak to us. They're never going to trust us enough to communicate with us when we could be their only person.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

That's good. Thank you so much.

I'm going to pass the floor over to Anita Vandenbeld.

Anita, you have the floor for six minutes.

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

Thank you very much.

Thank you to all our witnesses. I have questions for all of you, but I'm going to start with Ms. Dolan.

You mentioned, of course, that along with having an intersectional lens, we cannot do anything policy-wise unless we can measure it. You emphasized data.

Could you talk a little more about what is absent in the data and what would be ways that we as parliamentarians, as government, could ensure that we are getting that intersectional data so that we can actually take action?

[Kim Dolan]

Thanks so much. It's a great question.

Having that data would be really helpful so that we would know how many sexual assaults there are and we could estimate how many women experience domestic violence. Stats Canada collects a lot of really great information. However, if we want to make real change, we need to establish markers, possibly through the social determinants of health. I think it's a great framework, because this is a health issue for everyone. Then we need to establish guideposts along the way, not targets.

I'm pretty specific about my language. Canada's report card mentions “targets”, which is interesting.

Once we establish those guideposts, we'll be able to measure whether we are actually turning the dial on things. We cannot in women's services do this alone. This is an intersectional issue that requires all of us, at micro, macro and meso levels, throughout our entire country to take ownership, to step forward and have tough conversations with folks who are afraid of talking about violence and that vulnerability. It's tough to imagine a new script if you haven't seen one modelled.

The data that we need is how are we actually making change and how do we track that?

For instance, in Ontario, at our organization, we received provincial funding to establish a court support program. It was before I arrived there two years ago. What we were asked to measure, or to track and report on, was how many women we provided support to. That's very interesting, but we also know that the court support program was doing a lot of work that would prevent women from asking a lot of questions of the court office, which wasn't in a position, as Lisa mentioned, to respond necessarily to those questions. They needed better go-to persons.

We don't have any data that shows us what's the return on investment when we have good court support workers who can connect women across the community to services they need. It's lost data for well over a decade. It's those kinds of really tangible things we need in order to make change and track it, and then make some decisions about how to do a better job, learn from our big mistakes and be willing to take huge risks.

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

That's very hopeful. Thank you.

My next question is for Mr. Bourbonniere. First of all, thank you for the testimony today, because it is absolutely vitally important that we are including men in this conversation. I have often said that stereotypes, socialization and gendered norms of behaviour impact men as much as they impact women. Young boys are just as stifled as young girls when they are expected to fit into certain normalized moulds.

Could you comment a bit on how we start at a young age to make sure that we are not creating those kinds of gender norms that result ultimately in toxic masculinity?

[Mitch Bourbonniere]

Thank you for the question.

I think it's just using our education system to teach all our children about diversity, diverse gender roles, diverse sexuality, respect, kindness, love and all of those good things. We need to train our educators to be able to speak to our children about that.

We also need to train up and support our parents to be able to have those conversations with their children.

As a government, as policy-makers and as helpers in this field, we need to support those who are closest to the children, which are the parents and the educators.

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

Thank you, and thank you very much for the work you do.

I have only one minute and my last question is for Ms. Heidinger and Ms. Crawford.

I admire tremendously that you've taken a very unique space in hair salons, where you're really frontline when it comes to potential safety access for many of the victims and survivors.

You mentioned something about the curriculum and making sure there is training to ensure that people know how to respond and intervene properly. This goes along a little with the kinds of things we've heard on bystander training and I know this is something you're doing in a private manner.

What could we do in terms of legislation to that effect?

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

You have about 20 seconds to respond.

[Lisa Crawford]

I'll be totally honest here that this is not really my area of expertise. We need to somehow get it put into the curriculum when we're educating in cosmetology school. I don't really know where that would lie.

Jodie, maybe you could weigh in here.

There's a need. I've talked to the Alberta government about it, but federally is where it needs to be.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

I'm going to just take this opportunity and actually pass it over. We can come back to Jodie in a moment, but I'm just going to pass the next six minutes over to Andréanne Larouche.

Andréanne, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I would like to thank the witnesses, Ms. Crawford, Ms. Heidinger, Mr. Bourbonniere and Ms. Dolan, for their involvement in society and their dedication to this cause.

My first question is for Ms. Dolan.

We have learned on the committee that organizations everywhere in Canada that operate shelters for women victims of spousal violence are not able to meet the demand, because of the rise in spousal violence cases. That phenomenon has been exacerbated by the pandemic. In the summer of 2020, when our committee met urgently to study the impacts of COVID-19 on women, we were already seeing disproportionate effects.

What is the situation with the services delivered by your organization? Do you have to decline to help victims because of the rise in cases of violence?

[Kim Dolan]

Thank you for that question.

COVID presented so many challenges for many of us. For a while we were required to reduce the number of shelter beds that were available to women in our community. Our area has a small urban and a large rural area. In the northern parts of our region, the population density is two or three people per square kilometre, which means they don't have access to travel or services that are readily available. The challenges were such that we needed to get creative. The pandemic invited us to be creative about many things that we were doing.

The heartbreak and some of our realities were that if our shelter was busy, in non-COVID times, we were able to contact other shelters and ask them if they had room. We would be able to provide transportation for women to go to other communities and bring them back when we had more shelter beds available. That also wasn't possible.

Those things were combined with the rural realities for many women at a time of tremendous uncertainty. I often asked myself and our staff how a woman experiencing the uncertainty of gender-based violence can imagine leaving when the outside community is going through such uncertainty itself. I think many women stayed because it was just too much, so they had to amp up their coping strategies.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

The impacts have been different in urban and rural areas during the pandemic. We have also heard a lot about that on this committee. The pandemic has exacerbated the situation for women in rural areas. It is somewhat this that you are telling us.

What could the federal government do to support you more in what you are calling for? How could the federal level help you, more specifically, to address the problem you seem to be facing: the difficulty of being a woman victim of spousal violence in a rural area?

[Kim Dolan]

Some of the actions that the federal government employed fairly quickly in the pandemic helped in making more money available to shelters so that we could implement new ways of connecting with women. We are learning a lot.

I will be in touch with Lisa about the Cut It Out Canada program. I've always thought that hair salons and massage therapists were safe places for women to go, especially if people don't want to talk about things, but what we also learned was that we needed to go virtual. We needed to update our technology, because we didn't have the technology to have safe, secure meetings online.

We learned a lot about safety planning, and we also came up against the reality that many people across Canada don't have access to reliable Internet technology. I think one of the sustainable development goals of the UN is to have the entire world connected by 2030.

Canada, there's your challenge: Get us connected.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Yes.

You gave a nod to Ms. Crawford and the services she offers. In fact, I would like to address her and make a comparison.

In Quebec, we have something equivalent. People in certain occupations are raising their awareness so they are better able to recognize signs of elder abuse, for example, or signs that a person is thinking about suicide. Those people are, in a way, an advance guard.

Ms. Crawford, isn't it that same model that you are applying with employees of spas or hair salons, to help them identify the signs? It's exactly that, isn't it?

[Lisa Crawford]

Hi there. Thank you so much for your question.

Yes, that's exactly right.

Another thing I'd like to address here quickly is about Cut It Out. When Jodi and I went to get trained to teach others about this, there were about 20 of us in the room. There were only three hairstylists in the room. The rest were police officers. I know that this is catered towards a salon, but any industry can use this. If it's against elders—which just breaks my heart—yes, this definitely could be utilized.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

You have 20 seconds left.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

In rural areas, however, the challenges are different. I imagine you also find that there are differences between urban and rural areas, Ms. Crawford.