Status of Women Committee on Oct. 20th, 2022

[Véronique Couture]

Yes, it's necessary. There is clear evidence every day of the damage done to women and girls by social media.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

We do need legislation on online hate content.

I'd like to come full circle on funding, which was discussed a lot in my first round. Can rising prices, inflation and the risk of recession be bad reasons for governments to shy away from investing more in health, including mental health? Is it appropriate to make budget cuts in this area?

[Véronique Couture]

On the contrary, we should move forward quickly.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

So, in your opinion, the economic crisis shouldn't be used to justify disinvestment in health, but rather to maintain investments in health despite the economic crisis.

[Véronique Couture]

Absolutely.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Excellent. Thank you so much.

Now we'll go online for two and a half minutes with Leah Gazan.

Leah, go ahead.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you so much, Madam Chair.

Because they're leaving, I have another question for Debbie and—

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Debbie and Jaime are out of the room. They're gone. Sorry.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Oh, I missed them. That's okay.

I'll move on to the testimony from the Kawartha Sexual Assault Centre.

One of the themes this committee has been hearing about over the past few meetings has been the impact of sexual violence and gender-based violence and the lasting impact of trauma that it has on women and girls who are survivors of this violence. One of the previous witnesses at this committee said that we would not be able to improve the mental health of young women and girls if we don't deal with the sexual violence.

Can you share your perspective on this?

[Brittany McMillan]

Yes.

Similar to what Debbie and Jaime stated, we need to educate people on the effects of misogyny and the patriarchy, making sure that those things are kind of at the forefront because, again, when we look at it, every single person is affected by sexual violence. If we're living with the fear of sexual violence or if we're living with the trauma as a survivor of sexual violence, we really need to get to the core and the root of the problem, which is the violence itself being perpetrated.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Just following up on this question.... We know that we need education, but going back, we also know that women or gender-diverse people who have experienced violence—there's been a lot of research on it—have lasting post-traumatic stress disorder that impacts their daily lives. Do you think there is enough support for women or gender-diverse individuals who have gotten out of violence to recover from the post-traumatic stress that it often causes?

[Brittany McMillan]

Absolutely not. If we look at just the sexual assault centres in Ontario, many of our centres haven't seen an increase in funding since the 1990s. With the #MeToo movement, for example, we saw rates of people requesting our services heighten, but we haven't been able to figure out a way to manage our wait-lists without increased funding.

We were a core service that was asked not to have a wait-list, but that's not a reality. Across Ontario—and, I'm sure, the country—that is a challenge.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you so much.

We're now going to start our third round, for five minutes, starting off with Anna Roberts.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Wow, I'm learning so much today. I have a couple of questions. I'm going to start with Brittany or Jordanne.

How many people do you serve?

[Brittany McMillan]

Right now, with the way we're funded, out of our core funding, that includes only four staff. I can pay only four staff under the core model. However, with a bunch of grants we chase—we are always asking for money and doing all these things—we have more than that.

Right now we have three full-time counsellors—one of them is funded with core funding. They serve about 30 clients each round, who get about 12 to 14 rounds of service, counselling sessions. Then we have two part-time counsellors, who serve Trent University, the university that is in Peterborough, as well as Fleming College. In a year, we probably see close to 200 people.

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

You do this on a $300,000 budget.

[Brittany McMillan]

Yes.

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

We need to learn how you do that, because that's really incredible. Congratulations to both of you. That's amazing.

I want to also ask Dr. Shanker something. Is he still there?

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Yes, he's there.

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

Dr. Shanker, I know you spoke to Michelle. You mentioned calming. I found that very interesting. I did some research on PTSD with veterans and on how service dogs or therapy dogs really help with PTSD. Do you have any studies on how service or therapy dogs, whatever you want to refer to them as, help with the same situation with young women and victims of sexual assault?

[Dr. Stuart Shanker]

You're exactly right. My older son is on the spectrum. The very first thing we did was get him a service dog. We now know that what the dog does is trigger oxytocin. Oxytocin shuts down the stress response.

The problem with PTSD is that the victim has what's called a kindled or heightened stress reactivity, so all kinds of things send them into hyperarousal. It's not just a simple fix—“Let's go get a Lab”—although, as the owner of a Lab, I can attest to their incredible benefits for calming an autistic kid. There are all kinds of ways. It's really a case that, for these women and kids, we want to give them as many different ways of triggering the oxytocin as we possibly can.

It's a great question.

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

One thing I also learned was that having a service dog helped reduce the medication they required for PTSD. It also helped them.... As we know, they are costly to train, but the advantage at the end of it is the money we're saving, both on health care and on prescriptions, and the benefit to the individual of not having to absorb all these medications when they have a service dog or therapy dog.

One example that was given to me was that of a veteran who was on suicide watch. He would have horrible nightmares about what happened. The dogs were able to wake him up and calm him down. Do you think that would be beneficial?

[Dr. Stuart Shanker]

You've done your homework, Anna.

What the medication does is suppress the physical symptoms of an anxiety attack. It slows the heart. It slows galvanic responses. It does nothing to stop the mental side. It does nothing to stop the stress itself. The dog does.

Here what we find is that the wonderful therapists, who have been talked about today, are triggering that calming system. Let me just generalize. We are seeing a generation now, a generation of teens and young adults, of both sexes, who do not know what calmness is.

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

I have 10 seconds.

Thank you very much.

[Dr. Stuart Shanker]

We need more dogs.