Status of Women Committee on Sept. 25th, 2024

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

Thank you, yes, email. I'm sorry. I should have said that.

I've been in this place for too long now.

Second, if I can just get a show of hands, how many of you would like to see coercive control criminalized?

I see one, two, three, four, five.

Christy, you do not have your hand up. Okay.

I didn't see.... Did we lose the deputy chief?

Deputy Chief, did you put your hand up as well?

You did, okay.

Christy, I'm going to try to come back to you to see what that is, or maybe you can put it forward later.

I'd like to go to the deputy chief again, if I can.

When we look at prevention, because I think that's a big piece of this, and especially when you talked about the calls, the 26 incidents a day.... My local police chief showed me on a board the calls that he was getting, repeat calls to certain addresses. It was confidential information.

I asked, “Why is a 10-year-old on your repeat call list?” He said, “Because that's a child that was in the home during an intimate partner violence call.”

I can see the deputy shaking his head.

What training are you getting for intimate partner violence? I spoke with a parole officer last night who said that they aren't getting any training.

[D/Chief Nick Milinovich]

Thank you for the question.

Again, just to clarify, yes, absolutely, I would love to see coercive control as part of the Criminal Code, but as a tool and probably with a broader assessment of where the gaps are. Without that, I don't see that it will have the desired impact.

Specific to the training, the training that we've developed is trauma informed and is really done in partnership with our community partners. We have here a unique model. It's one of the largest, centralized, off-site intimate partner violence units in the country. It consists of 24 different partners, all of whom are experts in the space. They're providers who have identified the type of training that they feel our police officers should have. Traditionally, policing has a very proprietary approach, where we try to tell the community what we think is best and how services should be delivered.

We've moved away from that here in Peel. We rely heavily on our partners to help develop that training, identify training that we should be participating in and work on really the.... It's an opportunity for the community to provide those perspectives.

I'll give you an example. Again, I want to go back to the unit because I do think it's important. The imagery of a police officer who's dressed like me in Peel, responding to and case managing a call, doesn't exist in Peel. We have, I believe now, almost 20 languages represented in our intimate partner violence unit who work with service providers. We have a tremendous amount of diversity in that unit. In fact, it's one of the most diverse units that we have, responding to the community in their need. We even have survivors of intimate partner violence who have had their own experiences.

I really think that is one of the crucial things. You need an advocate who understands and is interested, engaged and willing to defend our survivors out in the community. For training, we have an endless number pieces. I don't want to take up too much time.

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

Thank you. I appreciate it.

When I brought up the 10-year-old, what I was trying to get at, too, was the long-term impact and the prevention end. If children are growing up watching IPV or are part of multiple calls, the likelihood of their going on and having unhealthy relationships is critical.

I'm going to try to get in two questions in my short amount of time.

Meseret, I would love to see your recommendations on financial literacy for kids in high school. So many of them don't know any differently—whether they're in a coercive control or financial control situation. If it's implemented throughout the education system.... I think understanding financial autonomy could be very beneficial.

Christy, how do you help children who have been exposed to IPV break those patterns of unhealthy relationships?

I'm pretty sure we're out of time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Shelby Kramp-Neuman]

Could one of you wrap it up in about 25 or 30 seconds?

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

It's Christy I'm looking for.

[The Chair, Conservative, Shelby Kramp-Neuman]

Christy.

[Christy Dzikowicz]

These are difficult things.

I want to clarify this: I didn't put up my hand not because I'm opposed to criminalizing coercive behaviour but more so because I hesitate to put too much weight on criminalizing more behaviours when I believe we're not yet equipped to effectively respond to the Criminal Code violations we have already.

To your point, Michelle, we see kids coming in who are witnesses to violence and to their parents being assaulted. If you talk to our forensic interviewers, they will tell you these are the toughest interviews. They listen to kids talk about significant harms they've faced. Watching their parent being harmed shakes children to their absolute core and takes away their sense of safety.

I think it's finding ways for us to more effectively respond to the crimes we have—using prevention and other things. Criminalizing is for when we can start getting ahead on effective responses for kids.

[The Chair, Conservative, Shelby Kramp-Neuman]

That's great. Thank you.

Emmanuella, you have about five minutes and then some.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to all of our witnesses for being here with us today.

This is for the Toba Centre for Children and Youth. I'm sorry. I don't know how to pronounce your last name, so that's what I'm going to call you for now.

You spoke about creating safe pathways for victims to come forward. I'm wondering if you can speak to us a bit more about some of the barriers that currently exist, and specify changes you would recommend we make so that these barriers are no longer in place.

[Christy Dzikowicz]

Thanks very much for the question.

I'm speaking specifically from the lens of a child advocacy centre. These exist in most major cities across this country. I'm also speaking for the sexual assault centres and survivor centres that exist for adults who experience this. These types of environments are being created as soft landings that are inclusive of our criminal justice partners, law enforcement, child protection and all of those very critical responses that we're all very invested in. I think we all want to see criminal justice happen successfully when it needs to happen, and to see offenders prosecuted.

Our types of environments create pathways where kids can come forward, and where other vulnerable people can come forward and feel safe walking through the doors. They would not necessarily enter a police station to make a report, or go to a hospital, sit in a waiting room and be triaged through several people. They can come into a space where they're supported by victim advocates from the very beginning of reporting and throughout that journey. Then we can pursue justice and hopefully see some success. With or without that successful prosecution, they have support that's ongoing.

Environments like ours, I think, are critical. Creating more environments like this across Canada is critical for young people and adults. That's what I mean by “safer pathways”. A lot of our first nations communities and newcomer populations have had very negative experiences with some of those systems—not just in Canada but also in countries of origin. We need to embed those responses where they become critical, wrapping them in a community care environment and acknowledging the systemic racism and experiences they may have had in the past.

It's ironic, but we need professionals like law enforcement to help. Most of the folks working in these specific spaces are phenomenal human beings. That doesn't change the negative experiences someone may have. When you've experienced that type of negativity and those are the very people you rely on in your time of need.... We need to change that pathway.

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

Thank you.

There's a lot of work to be done before criminalizing it, although that's obviously up to the government. We don't know what we're going to be recommending yet. There will for sure be talk about bringing forward legislation that surrounds coercive control.

What type of language would you recommend we use? A lot of the witnesses we've heard from speak about intimate partner violence and coercive control. A lot of the witnesses here today spoke about children and how they often experience coercive control, as well. I know that's a bit more difficult, because children are the dependents of their parents. They depend on them financially, and there's a lot of stuff we have to be careful about.

What would you recommend there? Would you say “family violence”? Would you say “intimate partner violence”? What type of language would you use around that?

[Christy Dzikowicz]

I mean, for us, “interpersonal violence” captures it very well, right? It captures it for children, for youth, for intimate partners. “Interpersonal violence” in all these family relationships, romantic relationships or otherwise is fairly inclusive of those.

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

Does any other witness have a comment on that? No? Okay.

Are any of you aware of any other countries that have criminalized coercive control?

[Meseret Haileyesus]

I'm sorry. Just a little bit....

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

Are there any other countries that have criminalized coercive control that you are aware of?

[Meseret Haileyesus]

Australia tried. Of course, it's already passed, I think. However, I also mentioned in my statement that, in the past, because of the racial inequality and discrimination, it was affected, you know—aboriginal society. I can raise Australia, maybe.

[Jeanne Sarson]

Scotland has coercive control as a law, a criminal law.

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

Okay. So, I guess we'll look further into that rather than asking specifically, unless you have some. Do you...? I think it's too big of a question right now to ask. However, if you have any information that you would like to table to the committee—you all know the definition at this point—please feel free to do so.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Shelby Kramp-Neuman]

Thank you.

At this point, we have finished the second round. We did gavel in at 5:19, so in order to go into our committee business, I'd like to start around 7:03 or 7:04.

That being said, we do have a window of about five or six minutes. We will not get through an entire round. Would you like to stop there, excuse our witnesses and just go right into committee business, or is it the will of the committee to commence a third round and get...?

I think I'm seeing that we're just going to.... You know, we've had a tremendous amount of testimony at this point. Unless I'm seeing or hearing otherwise, we will excuse our witnesses.

Thank you so much for your testimony today. We certainly appreciate it.

We'll just wait a few minutes, and then we will go into a closed session.

[Voices]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Shelby Kramp-Neuman]

[Proceedings continue in camera]