Status of Women Committee on Sept. 25th, 2024

[The Chair, Conservative, Shelby Kramp-Neuman]

Thank you.

Next, I would like to welcome Anita.

You have five minutes.

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

Thank you very much.

There is such a wonderful panel with so much information that I wish I could ask you all questions, but I really do want to focus on the financial and economic abuse.

Meseret Haileyesus, I will be directing most of my questions to you. If there is time, I'll go to some of the others.

I know that the Canadian Centre for Women's Empowerment is really avant-garde. It was the first centre in Canada to even get statistics and research about financial or economic abuse.

One thing that you've testified before this committee before—and in this context I think it's very relevant—is that often women who are suffering from financial or economic abuse are not self-aware that this is a form of abuse and that it's happening to them, sometimes until many years later.

I think we've seen this similar thing with coercive control because it's not defined and it's not publicly visible. If someone hits you, you know that's abuse.

With coercive control and financial abuse, how do you get around that, when you have people who are suffering from this who might not even realize it themselves, especially when we're looking at the Criminal Code and looking at formalizing things?

[Meseret Haileyesus]

Thank you so much. I think that's why we are asking to have a national day. Having a national day would really help us to raise awareness.

What we have seen, sadly, is that our victims don't even know if they are experiencing economic and financial abuse because finance is taboo, especially in racialized cultures. Domestic abuse is also taboo. There is power and control, so as a tactic, abusers usually use that power to isolate and control them. That's why we have also mentioned having a national day.

Victims don't have a good understanding and even service providers sometimes don't, according to our statistics. It's very tricky.

This is a huge opportunity for abusers to perpetuate and to control others financially. However, once the victim moves out, they experience the impact of economic and financial abuse. Plus, as you know, the system is not designed to protect victims. Again, that's another form of systemic violence for racialized victims.

I think that in terms of legal proceedings, awareness is the most important thing to teach women. When we teach, we need to make sure that it is inclusive. It should be trauma-informed and culturally sensitive because talking about the economy and talking about finance is a very sensitive matter, which relates to trauma. That's why my organization right now has a trauma-informed approach to empower women because it's very triggering even to speak about that.

The other thing is that we need to conduct more research on coercive control. That would be a very good segue to mitigate the impact of financial and even economic abuse.

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

You're suggesting more research and more awareness.

[Meseret Haileyesus]

Yes, but the research must be aggregated data. Sadly, we don't have a lot of data.

We want to know how many indigenous people are impacted by financial abuse, as well as those who are Black and racialized. This is very important.

I was also asked about this and I didn't answer that question, but this form of violence affects everyone regardless of culture, race and identity. However, we know that Black and indigenous people, and even gender-diverse folks are at high risk because of the colonization and the history of what we've had in the past.

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

Thank you. Those are very good recommendations.

One thing we're struggling with in this study is whether or not this needs to be in the Criminal Code, and if so, in what way.

We've heard already you mention that it has to be trauma-informed if it is an offence, but then you said something about needing to see systemic change first.

What would be the precursors? What are things that you think need to be in place before we criminalize?

[Meseret Haileyesus]

That's a good question.

We don't work here alone, so it really helps to teach and educate our lawyers. Education is most important, not only for survivors, but for people who are in the justice system. It is the most important thing for them in that system to change what we have.

The second system change is, of course, that access to justice must be very simple and the relationship between racialized people and the police or the justice system has to be smoothed. This is the precondition we are asking of the government before we move to criminalize coercive control.

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

One thing that we've also seen about women who stay in these abusive relationships or go back to them is that financial abuse is, as you've said, probably the number one thing.

Is that the case and how does that impact coercive control?

You have 10 seconds left.

[Meseret Haileyesus]

Yes. From our consultations, when women experience domestic violence, they don't talk to police right away for many reasons. They don't talk to neighbours or family members because of the shame, the trauma and the guilt.

What we learned is that right away, most of them go to the bank and they have to make sure that they have enough money to leave that relationship. Unfortunately, our system—the financial sector—is broken. Of course the service is not integrated, so women prefer to stay at home because of this situation we are dealing with.

We have seen that finance is one of the reasons women go back to abusers.

[The Chair, Conservative, Shelby Kramp-Neuman]

Okay.

That's excellent.

Andréanne, you have two and a half minutes.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Thank you.

I get the feeling that some witnesses have left the meeting because it is getting late, but I will still ask my next question. I see that Ms. Fortin from Juripop is still here.

In my first round of questions, we got a good explanation of the blind spot in civil law and the importance of including the concept of coercive control in the Divorce Act. You did a good job of explaining how it affects families, an aspect we tend not to think about. My colleague asked you a question about one of your recommendations related to judicial training. I know you didn't have time to answer it, so I would also like to ask you that.

Can you take the time to tell us a bit more about how this could actually change our way of thinking about coercive control?

[Justine Fortin]

Thank you.

My colleague Ms. Gagnon had to leave the meeting at 6:30 p.m. She asked me to pass on her apology.

To provide any kind of training, you have to know what the issue is. Including a concept like coercive control or family violence in the Divorce Act while establishing a definition and limits is a good start. Then the people who apply those limits need to understand the concepts and the effect of family violence on a child, particularly in the case of the Divorce Act. In order to do that, they absolutely have to be properly trained. We are talking about judges, but also all professionals who work with victims and survivors of violence, including children.

At the moment, unfortunately, what we are seeing before the courts in Quebec is a lack of knowledge of the law and of concepts that must be taken into account, such as family violence, when a decision is made in the best interests of the child. There is no framework that really takes that into account. For example, in the case of allegations of family violence, as lawyers, we will be able to plead that violence has an effect on children and show a pattern of violent behaviour and deprivations of freedom, but the orders made will not reflect that.

In our opinion, this is where training will be essential for the people who make these decisions. They have a major impact on victims and survivors, especially when it comes to custody. This has long-term effects on every aspect of a victim's life, physically and emotionally, but also economically. Right now, there is a gap between the advances made in the legislation and what we, as legal experts, can use to assert the rights of victims, as well as the decisions rendered by the courts.

[The Chair, Conservative, Shelby Kramp-Neuman]

Excellent, and thank you so much.

Next is Leah Gazan.

You have two and a half minutes.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you so much, Chair.

I have a question for Madame Lafantaisie.

You spoke about how at the shelter you see all sorts of trauma, but you also spoke about the trauma experienced by children who are coming into the shelter and who are often abusive with the mother, just from modelling by the abusive parent.

What kinds of wraparound supports are required? Often when we talk about shelters, we talk about the victim, the first victim, but we often fail to analyze it as a family model. What kinds of wraparound supports are required for children, the children who are demonstrating impacts or vicarious impacts from the abuse of a parent?

[Linda Lafantaisie Renaud]

Well, I do know that in our district we have the child witness program, and our shelter offers it in French to children. It's an extremely well-designed program for children, and the mothers also attend, but they are in different locations.

That is one of the positive things that we do have for children, but the waiting list for children's counselling and trauma counselling is so long in our region that it's currently almost not available in their native language. That is another big concern.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

I—

[Linda Lafantaisie Renaud]

We need to give funding to these agencies to be able to provide....

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Yes, thank you.

Underfunding is certainly a theme of gender-based violence. Again, it's a demonstration of lack of political will.

Madame Haileyesus, we spoke before. One of the areas where there's a critical lack of funding is for Black organizations, particularly Black organizations that work in the area of violence—again, another demonstration of a lack of political will to deal with this crisis head-on.

Can you expand on that a little bit more for us?

[Meseret Haileyesus]

Yes.

There is a report. It was released in 2021, I believe. I'm not sure of the exact time, but it's in the middle of a pandemic. You can check it. It's called “Unfunded” and was published by the Network for the Advancement of Black Communities. It shows that less than 1% of Black-led organizations are funded. These are the statistics that we have.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

I want to end just by saying that we have the highest rate of violence—Black and indigenous women—yet Black women get less than 1% of the funding. Is that correct?

[Meseret Haileyesus]

Yes, that is the statistic.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Okay, thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Shelby Kramp-Neuman]

Excellent, thank you.

Michelle, you have five minutes.

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

Thank you so much.

It's so hard to fit this all in because there are so many witnesses with so many great things to say when we're talking about what we need to do better in terms of preventing coercive control.

If everyone's okay with it or comfortable, could you table to the committee what you believe the definition of coercive control to be?

I think that's going to be one of the key things out of this study. What does that look like to you? What is coercive control to you?

The next question I would ask, if I can—

[The Chair, Conservative, Shelby Kramp-Neuman]

I'm just going to interrupt you for one minute, Michelle.

What she means by tabling, for those of you who are not familiar, is to submit a written report to the clerk.