Status of Women Committee on Feb. 8th, 2022

[Giulia Carpenter]

We work with some organizations within the Sudbury community. One of the women's shelters actually provides a program for boys around the junior high age for that education piece. We also work with other organizations that work with children specifically, as well as with men. We try to provide those resources and support to each of the organizations that would be best suited for them.

We don't have a cookie-cutter plan for all of our clients. It's very customized to their needs.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you so much.

I believe it's Sonia Sidhu's turn.

Sonia, it's two questions for you guys, okay?

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses for joining us today.Thank you for your leadership in helping all women.

Ms. Martin, you said that a third of women don't report any kind of violence, and racialized women and some groups are experiencing it more highly than others in their lifetime...even though it's likely they experience it at similar rates. Can you tell us what programs or strategies you use to raise awareness of the supports available to racialized women?

You also talked about an app. That app is very good, but for the people who cannot access that or who have a language barrier, is there any strategy for them?

[Lise Martin]

Maybe Lorie can answer this as well.

Again, it's a hodgepodge across the country. In Ontario, specifically in Toronto, there are good interpretation services available. As well, in Quebec they have SOS violence conjugale. In a place like Manitoba, they're few and far between.

These are the things we want addressed through a national action plan.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

You can ask a second question.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

To any of our witnesses, the committee is looking not only at how to respond to intimate partner violence but also at the root causes. Budget 2021 announced $55 million to help organizations increase their ability to prevent and address the root causes of gender-based violence.

From your experience, what interventions are the best at minimizing women's risk of violence early on?

[Giulia Carpenter]

On our end, we really see the mental health aspect and the support for the children who are witnessing domestic violence in the homes. In the story I stated, he saw domestic violence in his home growing up. It's that continuation.

If we're able to create that mental health support for the kids, and any other support that they're needing, it may nip that in the bud, as you say. That will help for the future, and we can slowly see the numbers go down.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Awesome. Thank you so much.

Louise, you have time for a question. I'll pass it over to you, please.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Ms. Martin, it could take 10 years for a national action plan to be put in place.

Perhaps a plan already exists in other provinces, but, in Quebec, as part of our national strategy to combat spousal or intimate partner violence, we are looking at using tracking bracelets.

Do you feel that tracking bracelets could be a short-term solution? The device could be implemented all across the country. In fact, a bill to combat spousal violence was introduced in the Senate last year.

[Lise Martin]

It is one device in a toolbox. It is one tool among others. As I said, it is very important to have everything in place. Before we start using electronic bracelets, we must ensure that the police have the training and the skills they need and that they are able to respond to the alarm signals.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

That is certainly the case in Quebec.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you so much.

Leah, we're going to pass it over to you for the last question for the panel.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

My question is for Ms. English. You spoke in your presentation about the need to use harm reduction approaches when looking at the shelter system for women and gender-diverse individuals leaving intimate partner violence.

Could you speak to that? Why is there a need, and are there current gaps in the system in terms of harm reduction approaches to address this crisis?

[Lorie English]

Absolutely.

A common response to experiencing gender-based violence is increased substance use. Women cope with trauma in different ways. We also know it leads to complex mental health challenges in many people who have experienced prolonged trauma. We know that's a result of gender-based violence, yet our systems are not yet set up to support women with those complex needs.

Many of our shelters in Manitoba are funded to have one or two staff on at a time. If we have only one staff member working an overnight shift, we can't think about implementing harm reduction approaches so those vulnerable women are well served. The end result is that they have no safe places to go, and those are the ones who are most likely to be victimized again.

When we talk about harm reduction, we're not just talking about training staff and providing additional supplies and supports; we're also talking about a funding model that allows the staff to be adequately resourced so they can include harm reduction as part of their trauma response to women who are exceptionally vulnerable.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you so much.

On behalf of the committee, I'd like to thank the three witnesses today. Thank you so much to Giulia Carpenter, Lise Martin, and Lorie English for coming here and sharing with us the information on this very important study.

We are going to ask the witnesses to leave, and we will be resuming in a few moments as the new witnesses come on. If everybody could stay tuned, we'll be back up in a couple of minutes.

Thank you, witnesses, you were awesome.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Good afternoon to all of you. Sorry we started a few minutes late, but we had votes, so we're trying to make the best of it.

Thank you so much for joining us on this important study. We're looking at violence against women, which is something on which all of you have so much information to provide.

I would like to welcome, as our second panel today, the London Abused Women's Centre and Jennifer Dunn; La Fédération des maisons d’hébergement pour femmes and Manon Monastesse; and SOS violence conjugale and Claudine Thibaudeau. Thank you so much for coming in today.

Each of the panellists will be provided five minutes for opening statements. You'll see this lovely little pen giving you a sign to wrap up in 15 seconds, and then we'll be going to our rounds of questions.

Jennifer, I'm going to start with you, for five minutes.

[Jennifer Dunn, Executive Director, London Abused Women's Centre]

I would like to thank the committee for having me here today.

My name is Jennifer Dunn, and I am the executive director of the London Abused Women's Centre.

The London Abused Women's Centre is a feminist organization located in London, Ontario, that supports and advocates for personal, social and political change directed at ending male violence against women and girls. Over the next few minutes, as I talk about our work, I will be referring to our centre as “LAWC”.

LAWC is a non-residential agency that provides women and girls over the age of 12 who have been abused, assaulted, exploited and trafficked with immediate access to long-term, trauma-informed and woman-centred counselling, advocacy and support.

As I speak to you today, I am thinking about and remembering 17-year-old Vanessa Bol. LAWC honoured Vanessa during the first annual “Shine the Light on Woman Abuse” campaign in 2010. Vanessa was shot to death by Emerson Dominguez in 2003. Vanessa left behind her mother, her father, her sister and her baby. She had her whole life ahead of her, but instead it was taken from her at the hands of her ex-boyfriend, after they broke up.

During LAWC's last fiscal year, over 4,600 women and girls were provided with individual counselling and group support. This includes over 800 women and girls who reported being trafficked or who were at risk of being trafficked. During this same time, LAWC also answered over 5,000 calls for support.

LAWC would like to acknowledge the importance of this study, but would like to suggest that collectively we cannot study violence, support, protection, preventative measures, education or even international legislative experiences without identifying that the issue at the root cause of the concern in this study is men's violence against women and girls.

In nearly every province and territory, women and girls are more likely than men to be victims of physical or sexual violence. It takes an enormous amount of courage for women and girls who are being abused, assaulted or exploited to come forward for help, and when they do, the experiences that women and girls report to organizations like LAWC are often very traumatic, so much so that it can affect their cognitive abilities, leaving them in a state of being unable to properly navigate life.

Never has it been more important to listen to the voices of survivors of men's violence against women and girls about the impact of violence in their lives and about the failure of the system to address their needs. It is common that women and girls who have experienced violence will struggle with lifelong impacts. Impacts can include physical and mental health conditions such as depression, post-traumatic stress, sexually transmitted infections, absence from school or work, and social isolation.

When speaking about young women and girls specifically, patriarchal and sexist messages are taught consistently through media, online, school and even in families. The media plays a powerful role in teaching girls that their primary worth comes from being sexually desirable to men, while boys seem to learn that it is acceptable for men to have and maintain power and control over young women.

Young women aged 15 to 24 are five times more likely than women aged 25 and older to have been physically or sexually assaulted. Young women and girls between the ages of 12 and 21 are at the highest risk of being sexually exploited, groomed and lured into the sex industry, often by traffickers who are their intimate partners. That is why it is very critical to include sexual exploitation and trafficking when addressing the needs of survivors of intimate partner violence. LAWC is currently actively providing service right now—today—to 104 young women and girls under the age of 24, and the youngest girl we are providing support to right now is 13 years old.

The London Abused Women's Centre believes the work must start with the goal of shifting the social culture that normalizes men's violence against women and girls for future generations. To that end, we propose the following recommendations to the committee for the purpose of this study.

Number one is for the Government of Canada to commit to the development of legislation to end men's violence against women and girls in all of its forms. This includes amendments to the Criminal Code to identify violence against women, intimate partner violence and family violence as a specific category of offences separate and distinct from other forms of violence to better protect victims and survivors.

Number two is for the Government of Canada to work in collaboration with each province and with violence against women organizations to develop a national mandatory violence against women school curriculum for all levels of education, from kindergarten to high school.

Number three is for the Government of Canada to commit to ensuring that there is an appropriate level of core funding for violence against women organizations like ours that provide support.

The truth is that women and girls are at risk for no other reason than the fact that they are women and girls. We know for certain that changes in legislation, education and funding will improve supports and protection for women and girls in our country.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you so much.

I'm sorry, Jennifer; I started doing my windup. We're trying to keep everything so tight, but thank you for your awesome comments.

We're now going to pass it over to Manon Monastesse.

Manon, you have the floor for five minutes. Thank you.

[Manon Monastesse, Executive Director, Fédération des maisons d’hébergement pour femmes]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Good afternoon, everyone.

My thanks to the members of the committee for inviting the Fédération des maisons d'hébergement pour femmes to appear today. My thanks also for your commitment in combatting violence against women.

The federation is made up of 37 shelters across Quebec. We shelter thousands of women and children. We also provide post-shelter services, together with external and [technical difficulties] services. Our community involvement includes awareness and prevention. We represent federation members at various parliamentary committees and government working groups. We are currently involved in the implementation of specialized courts in Quebec. We are working on pilot projects in 10 of Quebec's 17 administrative regions.

The government has a very strong desire to combat violence against women. It is important to emphasize that the specialized courts will hear not only cases of spousal violence, but also cases of sexual violence. This is a great innovation. It will result in a much more detailed examination of violence against women.

The Fédération des maisons d’hébergement pour femmes is the only provincial association whose members take in women, not only as the result of spousal violence, but also for family violence, human trafficking, sexual exploitation, forced marriages and so on. However, the federation's mandate is basically focused on all kinds of violence against women.

We have also worked with the Government of Quebec, which is currently reviewing family law. It wishes to include a legislative framework that recognizes and responds to spousal violence. In so doing, it recognizes the definition in the Politique d'intervention en matière de violence conjugale, which has been in existence in Quebec since 1995.

We have submitted our fifth five-year action plan, which sets out a number of recommendations in various areas such as prevention, psychosocial response or [technical difficulties], meaning everything related to [technical difficulties] spousal violence and other forms of violence.

All departments—

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

I am sorry to interrupt you, Ms. Monastesse.

We're being advised that the sound from the interpreter keeps cutting out.

Does she need to slow down? What works best?

[Manon Monastesse]

Okay. It's because I have five minutes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Clerk, are we okay to continue?

[The Clerk of the Committee, Ms. Alexie Labelle]

The sound is cutting out in the room. We are told that on Zoom everything is okay. They're trying to work on it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

I know that Leah, Sonia, Laila and Michelle are all in the room. Are they missing a lot?

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

I understand French, so it's no problem for me, Madam Chair.