Status of Women Committee on Nov. 20th, 2024

[Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu]

Thank you for your question.

You're absolutely right. To my mind, the error was made at the outset by the Supreme Court, which should have established guidelines for framing the most serious crimes, particularly sexual assault and murder. In Quebec, three individuals were sent home, without being tried, after killing two women and a man.

It's absolutely intolerable in Canadian society to send murderers home without being punished. What's insidious in all this is that those individuals don't show up in the crime statistics. To be included in the statistics, an individual must have been charged and found guilty. However, in Canada, approximately 60,000 criminal cases have been dismissed as a result of the Jordan decision. That's a huge number. Parliament must review this matter because there's nothing worse for the victims of criminal acts than to see criminals returned to their homes without suffering any consequences.

As I said earlier, the number of femicides increased 60% from 2019 to 2022. Sixty per cent of those murders were committed in a domestic violence setting, and nearly 75% of the perpetrators had criminal records. Any failure on our part to take a harder line and solve the problem that has been caused by the Jordan decision, as a result of which perpetrators are sent home, will clearly be a way to trivialize violence against women.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

As you said, it's really important to deal with this issue of the right to a fair trial addressed in the Jordan decision, and I think this is a factor in the public's loss of trust. There's a connection between the reasonable-delay issue and the loss of public trust in the judicial system. What do you think about that?

[Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu]

I've frequently dealt with police and correctional officers in pursuing my mission over the past 20 years, and what I've observed for many years is disengagement. When a police officer arrests someone because he has attacked a woman, and that person winds up at home following the trial, that doesn't do much to motivate the officer. The same is true of correctional officers.

These types of crimes mustn't be trivialized, but sentencing someone to serve time at home does precisely that, at least for the victims, if not for the government. You're right: The foundation of our judicial system in Canada is victims' trust in the justice system.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Unfortunately, 2024 got off to a bad start for me when I heard the sad news of the first femicide of the year, which occurred in Granby, in my riding. I met the family of the perpetrator of that femicide this summer.

I'll soon be meeting with a Granby police officer who's responsible for investigating crimes against women and who wants to speak with me. Since you mentioned the disengagement of police officers, can you suggest any points that I could raise to establish a working relationship when I see him?

[Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu]

That's not an easy question. It's very hard for police officers to intervene in domestic violence cases, particularly when the arguments and assaults are about the children.

Police officers' two main missions are to intervene in domestic violence cases and mental health issues. Some officers tell me they take up 80% of their duties. They're the toughest cases because the officers deal with couples who are fighting and, in 90% of those cases, the aggressor is the man.

I consider police officers' work admirable.

What I would tell the officer you're going to meet is that he should ensure his work doesn't undermine his mental health. I'm sure that, by the time he goes home at night, he has spent his entire shift with people who fight each other. Encourage him to seek help should he need it and to focus on good mental health because it isn't easy to resume the same work in the same circumstances every morning.

[The Chair, Conservative, Shelby Kramp-Neuman]

Thank you.

MP Gazan, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you, and thank you to all the witnesses for coming here today. It's good to see you again, Senator.

Thank you, Esther, for sharing the story of your family, and thank you, Madame Auger-Voyer, for doing the work that you do. It's difficult work.

I just want to point out before I start asking questions that I think we're all here because we want justice. Sometimes we have different opinions on how justice is arrived at, but I think the goal is the same: to get justice. I want to honour difference, but we also have a similar goal in all of this.

I want to start with you, Madame Auger-Voyer.

Your testimony was a little bit different. One of the things you said is that carceral responses do not work. I know from our study of the red dress, particularly pertaining to indigenous women, that a lot of women won't go to the police because we have a history of either being over-policed or under-policed. We also have experiences with systemic racism within the justice system overall, which is what Bill C-5 tried to address. I'm certainly not an expert on it, so I don't really want to speak to Bill C-5 at all, but I know that was the intention of it.

I want you to speak a little bit about the carceral responses and where that opinion comes from for you.

[Valérie Auger-Voyer]

Ninety-four per cent of sexual assaults are not reported to the police, and, for intimate partner violence, only about 20% are reported to the police. We really need to take a step back, I think, and look at where the survivors are and where they are going. They're going to family members and community-based organizations, but not necessarily to the criminal justice system.

We've been focusing for years and years on tweaks to the criminal justice system and how those are going to fix gender-based violence, but they haven't and they don't. It's also a reactive approach, so it happens after the violence has been committed, and it's often a punitive approach.

When you talk to survivors, you find out that generally they want accountability. They want the violence to stop and they want to prevent the violence from happening to someone else; they don't necessarily want punishment.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

This is where I'm at. By the time the police are involved or the courts are involved, it's usually too late.

I'll give you an example. I'm ground zero for MMIWG. That's where I come from. I live two blocks away from where the women that we're currently searching for in a landfill were taken by a serial killer. Both women were staying in a shelter, meaning that they didn't have housing. They did not have a livable income.

Prevention, a guaranteed livable basic income and housing.... In Winnipeg, we've never spent so much money on police. We have an extremely high police budget. This is not changing the gender-based violence that is at crisis levels in the community I represent.

You're right that most of the women have a distrust of the justice system. They go to community organizations.

I'm going to ask you a couple of questions.

Why is it critical to properly fund frontline community organizations if we're serious about saving lives?

[Valérie Auger-Voyer]

Thank you for bringing that up.

We believe that we need to refocus our efforts upstream on prevention, on services and on rehabilitation. The Mass Casualty Commission report made it very clear that we need to decentre the carceral responses and really shift our efforts to community-based responses.

I can say more on prevention, if you like.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Yes, please.

[Valérie Auger-Voyer]

We really need a multipronged approach, and there are three things things that would be a good start.

First, fund services for survivors so that they have somewhere to turn when they need support, and they could do safety planning.

Second, change the narrative on gender norms and rape culture, starting in schools with comprehensive sex education that covers consent, healthy relationships and all of those things.

Third, address the economic disparities through things like basic income. These disparities enable violence to thrive in the first place, so look at housing, income, mental health, etc.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you so much.

You also mentioned that the national action plan funding is not sufficient. This is something that I noted when it was put in the budget. It's great to see it in the budget, but it's not sufficient, and it's over a number of years. How is not adequately funding gender-based violence prevention costing lives?

[Valérie Auger-Voyer]

I can tell you that there are lots of gaps in the national action plan, although it is a promising mechanism. I want to say that. It was decades in the making, and it's a promising mechanism for the federal government to invest in the work that's happening on the ground. Twenty-five per cent of that money is going to prevention, but it's not nearly enough. We need billions, not millions.

Just as an example of the gaps, there are very few sexual assault centres that even receive funding through the national action plan. Depending on the province and territory, it's a patchwork, again, of who's receiving funding. A lot of them are not, at the moment, and those that are tell us that it's insufficient.

[The Chair, Conservative, Shelby Kramp-Neuman]

Thank you.

Unfortunately, you're out of time, MP Gazan.

At this point, I'd like to welcome MP Roberts. You have the floor for five minutes.

[Anna Roberts, Conservative, King—Vaughan, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to all of the witnesses.

This is a very difficult situation that we face as a country, because not only are we failing the victims, but we're also failing the families by not taking this seriously.

I want to go back to what was said earlier, which was that it's up to the Parole Board to make the decision on whether to allow the French and Mahaffy parents to testify. That's not correct, because under section 6.1 of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act,the minister can intervene to allow the victims to speak at the parole hearing. I want to make that clear. It is possible that it can be done by the minister.

I say that because my question to you, Esther, is about your aunt. She would be very proud of you. I'm sure she's looking down from heaven and saying, “Thank God for you,” because this situation has to stop. We have to get tough on criminals. That's not happening.

If we get rid of Bill C-5, given that this catch and release approach is not working—it's putting women in danger—do you think that this would be a start in protecting women?

[Esther Uhlman]

Yes, I do. In my aunt's case, when he was charged previously, the system focused on him. He plea bargained, and he got a really light sentence. He was commended for his rehabilitation. He was in therapy. They said, “He's doing such a great job,” and to the victim they basically said, “It sucks to be you.”

The issue with everything that I'm hearing right now is that the focus is on rehabilitating the offender and giving him or her—usually him—hope, but what about my family? What hope do we have? What hope does my aunt have? She's dead. She's gone. We can focus all day on rehabilitation and stuff, but had he been in jail, this wouldn't have happened. She wouldn't be dead.

[Anna Roberts, Conservative, King—Vaughan, ON]

I agree with you. If you do the crime, you do the time, especially in this world today. We've been studying this situation for many months now. We have to change the law.

Senator, I want to go back to something that just came out, or maybe it's been out for a while.

From 2015 to 2019, police services in Canada reported 115,859 sexual assaults. Of those, 98% were classified as level 1. Nine out of 10 of the victims, 89%, were women and girls.

How can we continue to protect the women and girls in this world, in this country, if we can't make the time fit the crime?

[Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu]

First of all, there isn't just one way to protect women; there are many, including the electronic bracelet and therapy for men. For 20 years now, the courts have required men with drug and alcohol problems to undergo therapy, especially young men convicted of their first crime, and it works. We have to do the same with violent men: we have to send them to therapy.

The problem is that, for the past 20 years, we've been dealing with the consequences of violence against women. We conceal them and let the men go free, but that has to be reversed, we have to let the women go free. When we conceal the women and fail to punish the men harshly, the women are imprisoned by their fear, at home. The men must be required to undergo therapy, and the women must be given tools to protect themselves. For every man who's released pending trial, there's a woman who's imprisoned by fear. We now have modern tools such as cellphones and electronic bracelets. Judges need only make use of them.

In the case I discussed with you, the Candiac case, the man killed his wife one hour after being released. However, you passed Bill C-233, which incidentally was introduced by a Liberal member, under which a man released pending trial under section 515 of the Criminal Code may be required to wear an electronic bracelet. Our judges are poorly informed about this. I'm trying to understand why they aren't aware that these tools exist and why men who promise to kill their wives are released without being monitored. They must be monitored, and we have the tools to do it.

[Anna Roberts, Conservative, King—Vaughan, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Shelby Kramp-Neuman]

Thank you.

Lisa, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

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

I will say on the record that I too am very concerned that so many court cases are not being heard because the courts can't hear them in time. I covered criminal court as a journalist for more than 20 years. I've done stories about the courthouse in Halton Region and how inappropriate it is. Lawyers don't want to go there. It's full of mould. Judges don't want to hold cases there. The province was supposed to rebuild it, and then decided not to. These problems are ongoing, and I wish there was more investment in that system.

I was also very interested, Ms. Auger-Voyer—I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing your name correctly—in what you said. I'll see how many different things I can get to.

First off, you talk about how data collection is one of your main goals and one of your main recommendations. I know you've been funded through the department I represent, Women and Gender Equality, to do just that, collect data. Would you please tell us more about that project and what you hope to get out of it?

Also, when you said only 6% of survivors report their sexual assault, it occurred to me to ask how we can go about collecting this data when so few women are even coming forward to say that they've been affected.

[Valérie Auger-Voyer]

Yes, that's a good point, but I think StatsCan uses self-reporting as well, not just police reporting, because for sure the police data is very skewed.

In terms of data on femicides, at the moment Statistics Canada's homicide survey does not capture data on femicides; it only collects some variables related to gender and risk factors for femicide, and that is one huge gap. When it does collect data on these things, it can collect whether sexual assault happened at the time of femicide, but it doesn't capture a history of sexual violence, for example, and it also does not capture underlying socio-cultural or systemic factors, only individual factors. We really want more data.

At the moment, the data collected by the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability is basically collected by death review committees, which are essentially made up of volunteers or people from the sector who are doing this on the side. They're using whatever information is available to them, so it could be media reports. I think we can all agree that those will be incomplete.

They don't have access to autopsy reports, for example. We want data on whether there was sexual violence during, before or after the killing, for example, and what type of violence was present, and then disaggregated data on different populations and the relationship between the sexual violence and the population group—for example, older women, as we said earlier.

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Thank you for that. It's still a big work in progress, then.

I know you're also funded for another project under Women and Gender Equality. Just for the record, we know there are gaps and that more than half a billion dollars is not enough to support all of the women's centres across the country. We are expecting the provinces to come back with an accounting of how they've spent that money by next month, when it will be one year since those agreements all rolled out.

Your second project has to do with coordinating among organizations, I believe, across the country. Can you tell us a bit more about that?

[Valérie Auger-Voyer]

With regard to the national action plan.... I'm sorry; could you clarify your question? What do you mean by “coordinating”? Do you mean just in our work in general?