Status of Women Committee on Oct. 30th, 2024

[Dominique Vien, Conservative, Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC]

It reminds me a bit of what we call sentinels. More and more community services are being developed in our rural areas. Sentinels go and knock on the doors of seniors, for example, to ask how they are feeling and make sure everything is fine.

Ms. Gagnon, Ms. Ferreri spoke earlier about Bill C‑75, which was passed. It allows violent, abusive men to get parole. We realize that this happens often. Mr. Betts also talked about it earlier. He would even like to see the legislation amended.

Do you see cases like this on a daily basis? Does it happen that, when women come to tell you what they are going through, you realize that they are victims of men who should be in prison or who have a history of violent behaviour?

[Karine Gagnon]

We do see that on a daily basis.

Sometimes charges have already been laid. Afterwards, either the offender was released on a promise to appear following a police investigation, or he was detained and released after a bail hearing.

[Dominique Vien, Conservative, Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC]

After they are released, do men ever commit another act of violence against the women you help?

[Karine Gagnon]

Yes, it does happen. People often fail to comply with the bail conditions imposed on them, unfortunately. This is not anecdotal. These are not isolated incidents.

[Dominique Vien, Conservative, Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC]

Can I assume that, like Mr. Betts, you would like to see the legislation reviewed?

[Karine Gagnon]

Yes, that could be one possibility. That said, we have to consider another factor. You may find it strange for me to mention this, since our mission is to work with victims of violence, not the perpetrators.

When the police intervene, it tends to be unsettling for perpetrators of violence. This is no ordinary day for them. It is a good time to direct them to resources that can help. It's very important to do that, because it is impossible to put all perpetrators of violence in jail. It's not going to happen, unfortunately, because there are too many of them. In addition, the criteria for keeping a person in detention are not always met.

The police need to use the intervention to refer perpetrators of violence to help services. It has to be done quickly, and they should be subject to rigorous follow-up.

[Dominique Vien, Conservative, Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC]

Thank you.

My time is up.

[The Chair, Conservative, Shelby Kramp-Neuman]

Lisa—MP Hepfner—you have the floor for five minutes.

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Thank you, Chair. You can call me Lisa. That's no problem at all.

Thank you so much to all the witnesses for being here.

Lenore, we go back decades. I think you were always my go-to expert on gender-based violence. You've led Hamilton in this area for so long. I feel like I have too. I covered a lot of criminal court. I think about Holly Hamilton all the time. I watched her car get towed away with her body inside. I think about Tania Cowell. I think about all the things I saw and heard during those trials. It breaks my heart to this day.

Julie and Lenore, you've both spoken about bystander training. Even with all my experience and even with personal experience with this, I have seen incidents of domestic violence in the streets and I've hesitated to intervene or do anything because I'm afraid of making the situation worse for the woman.

What's your advice? How do we move forward as bystanders to support other women?

[Lenore Lukasik-Foss]

Thank you so much, Lisa, for your kind words.

I think there are many things we can do. I think the biggest thing is helping people learn about the things they can do. As Julie mentioned, bystander intervention has a five-D approach. We don't have time to do the bystander training today, but there are excellent resources and literature on how we intervene so that we don't escalate it. You're right that we don't want to make things more dangerous for the woman.

I think there have been some promising prevention campaigns. For example, Neighbours, Friends and Families was seeking to intervene and teach those skills to community members. I certainly know that on campus at McMaster University we work hard so that students can try to figure out how they can navigate these situations and also not get themselves harmed. We want no one to have any further harm because of our interventions.

It sounds maybe a bit boring, but it's about education. It's about making those services and programs available for people so that they can learn and so that they know that it is all our problem. This is not a women's issue; this is an “us” issue. I think it really, truly, takes all of us to end gender-based violence. We can make a difference with our interventions.

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Julie, when we're talking about stalking, this committee has just finished studying coercive control. Our government is looking at legislating against coercive control. Would you consider stalking a form of coercive control? Would that be covered under this legislation?

[Julie S. Lalonde]

Not entirely, no. There are changes we'd like to see to the Criminal Code around criminal harassment, but that wouldn't necessarily be covered by coercive control legislation.

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Lenore, in all your years, have you seen a change in reporting in terms of the number of women who are more likely to come forward? Have you seen a change in awareness about gender-based violence?

I know that you said the laws have become better but that the situation has become worse. Can you give us more insight into that?

[Lenore Lukasik-Foss]

Yes, I can, absolutely. I can say this from a stats perspective but also from my lived perspective of having worked with survivors.

We know there are waves of information and awareness. I can talk about #MeToo. Things dramatically changed after the #MeToo movement, when we had so many more survivors of sexual violence in particular coming forward. We could start talking about things that we weren't talking about as a community and a culture. I know there are waves of change.

I know that domestic violence is much more commonly reported to police and that folks are coming forward, but we also know that the vast majority of folks still do not talk or tell anybody about this. We know that this is one of the crimes that is increasing. Despite other violent crimes decreasing, femicide is increasing. That's a scary trend.

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

I don't know if we have enough time, Julie.

I've been following you for many years on social media, and I thank you for all of your work.

You've also faced enormous hate and attacks on social media. Can you talk to us about what sort of real-life impact this has?

[Julie S. Lalonde]

I'll go very quickly.

I can't speak in public without a security detail, even though I'm just a random lady from Canada. I'm a white woman with a Canadian passport who receives an enormous number of death threats for trying to talk about violence against women in a Canadian context. You can just imagine how folks who don't have the privilege I do are not speaking.

That's one of the more difficult things to measure—the collective silencing of people. They see someone like me being threatened and think, “I would never want to be in her shoes. I'm not as protected as this woman is, and she's being treated this way.” We need to recognize that this has a tremendous impact on our ability to even talk about these issues.

When my colleagues from White Ribbon are speaking, for example, and it's a little spicier than what I'm saying, they get, “Thank you so much for talking. It's great that men are talking about this.” Then I'll say something so banal compared with what they did, and I need to be escorted back to my car.

I'm a tremendously privileged person, so we need to think about who is not able to be in my chair because it's not safe enough for them to speak. That's a problem you should all be concerned about.

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

It doesn't stay online. You're physically—

[Julie S. Lalonde]

Yes, I've had people threaten me to my face at events and—

[The Chair, Conservative, Shelby Kramp-Neuman]

Thank you.

[Julie S. Lalonde]

It goes off line very quickly.

[The Chair, Conservative, Shelby Kramp-Neuman]

Thank you.

Next is MP Larouche. You have two and a half minutes.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Lalonde, for the work you are doing to raise awareness. Your answer to the question about violence is very helpful.

I'm going to go back to the issue that Ms. Hepfner raised about online violence. I will turn to you, Ms. Gagnon and Ms. Huet, to find out what you're seeing in the CAVACs, or crime victims assistance centres.

We are looking for ways to combat femicide. However, at the end of your last response, you addressed the issue of prevention. What tools can we use to raise awareness and prevent online hate, so we can say when misogynistic speech has gone too far?

What are the repercussions of influencers, people who belong to the incel movement and others making online comments that fuel misogyny? Ultimately, doesn't this lead some men to adopt increasingly violent behaviours, even to the point of femicide?

[Karine Gagnon]

Actually, prevention and awareness are not part of the CAVAC mission, which is to intervene once the damage has been done, unfortunately. However, we can see that social media and the hate speech it spreads certainly contribute to violence against women.

That said, it is also a manifestation of something that exists and is openly espoused on social media. Hence the need for prevention and awareness. We need to dismantle the thinking that leads to these behaviours being perpetuated.

The imbalance in male-female relations obviously goes way back. Still, I would say that things are changing slowly but surely.

We feel that legislation to control this kind of online speech could certainly help reduce violence. It would also send a clear message that this kind of speech and this view of women are not tolerated in our society.

[The Chair, Conservative, Shelby Kramp-Neuman]

Thank you.

MP Kwan, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much.

I'd like to turn my two and a half minutes to Ms. Huet and Ms. Gagnon.

Given your experiences with the CAVAC program , what would you say are the top recommendations or lessons learned that the federal government can take away from from the program? If you can frame that by way of recommendations for this committee, I would really appreciate it.