Status of Women Committee on Feb. 8th, 2022

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

I'd like to call this meeting to order.

Pursuant to Standing Order108(2) and the motion adopted on Tuesday, February 4, 2022, the committee will resume its study on intimate partner and domestic violence in Canada.

Given the ongoing pandemic situation and in light of the recommendations from public health authorities, as well as the directive of the Board of Internal Economy on October 19, 2021, to remain healthy and safe the following is recommended for all those attending the meeting in person.

Anyone with symptoms should participate in Zoom and not in person. Everyone must maintain two-metre physical distancing, whether seated or not. Everyone must wear a non-medical mask when circulating in the room, and it's recommended that you keep your mask on at all times, even if you're seated. Everyone present must maintain proper hand hygiene by using the hand sanitizer at the room entrance. Committee rooms are cleaned before and after meetings, and we're asking that if you're leaving your seat you wipe the seat off as well, just to help out for the next person.

For those participating virtually, I would like to outline a few rules to follow.

You may speak in both official languages, of course. For all the people who are on here today, just to ensure you know, there are translation services on here. Go to the interpretation and choose your language. Before speaking, please wait until your name is recognized. Just as a reminder, please make sure you put your booms down, too, so that it's easier for us to understand you in getting things controlled.

I will remind you that all comments should be addressed through the chair. When speaking, please speak slowly and clearly, so try not to speak like me.

Before we begin, I would like to inform members that the committee received a report in one official language only, from Women's Shelters Canada. Because the report is quite substantial—about 400 pages—the translation bureau will not be available to provide a translation of the report before the end of the study. Nonetheless, I believe it's important for all the members to have access to this report and for the committee to take it into consideration for this study.

I would like to seek the approval of this committee to have the executive summary of the report translated, which is about 10 pages.

Just as a little more information, Lise Martin has provided us an excellent document that was just recently written. This document of about 150 pages has information, a bibliography, testimony and footnotes. There are a lot of great things in there.

I believe that if we were to ask for the executive summary, we'd be able to get that translated. By doing it as part of the committee and saying that we need at least this part translated for us, that would be good. Then, for us, we could on our own be able read the rest of the report. Officially, it was received in only one official language, but this is an exceptional report that we should be looking at.

I'm just going to ask the committee this: Is it the will of the committee to proceed to ask them to take the executive summary and to translate it on our behalf, so that we are able to have this to add to our study notes and to our report? Can I get a show of hands?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Happy joyful. Clerk, you have your marching orders. If you could ensure that we get that done, that would be wonderful.

Before we welcome our witnesses, I'd like to provide this trigger warning. We will be discussing experiences related to violence and assaults. This may be triggering to viewers with similar experiences. If you feel distressed or you need help, please advise the clerk. I think that's really important for all the witnesses, all of the people who are on these panels, the questioners, and us as members of Parliament. Let's just be recognizing that these are very difficult discussions that we are having, so let's always try—although it's never going to be light-hearted—to be compassionate, especially to the people we're speaking to.

On today's first panel, I'm really excited to welcome the Sudbury Women's Centre and Giulia Carpenter. If I pronounce your name wrong, please correct me.

From Women's Shelters Canada, we have Lise Martin. Welcome, Lise.

Also, from West Central Women's Resource Centre, we have Lorie English.

Each of you will have five minutes. I have my beautiful little watch here right now. I will start the winding up for you, but we're asking all of you to try to stay within five minutes, especially since time is so crazy right now.

I'm going to pass it over to Giulia for five minutes.

You have the floor.

[Giulia Carpenter, Executive Director, Sudbury Women’s Centre]

Good afternoon and thank you, Madam Chair.

My name is Giulia and I'm the executive director of the Sudbury Women's Centre, which is located in northern Ontario. The Sudbury Women's Centre offers a safe place to support women in their journey, in getting from where they are now to where they want to be. We've been helping women in our community for over 40 years.

Like all organizations in Canada, we know that the number of domestic violence situations has increased over the years. This pandemic has created a spike in intimate partner violence as we've seen an increase in financial and mental health strains on the family due to COVID. These lockdowns meant many women were unsafe in their own homes, with fewer ways to escape the atmosphere of abuse and control. According to a spokesperson from the Sudbury police, from March 17 to May 26, 2020, Sudbury police fielded 367 domestic dispute calls, which is an increase of 7% since 2019. We'll learn the exact numbers only when reporting is published and when women come forward with their stories.

As I stated in the beginning, we offer a safe place for women to escape what is happening in the outside world. In 2019, we saw an average of 150 to 250 women access our centre per week. That could be attending a workshop that we have, using computers in our library, or getting some free clothing for themselves and their children.

Once the pandemic hit, we followed the public health regulations and closed the centre. We continued to offer support for our clients virtually, over the phone, or met with them at the centre to do curbside pickup for some of their basic need items. Due to the closures, women did not have our centre to visit during the day and get away from their abusers for a couple of hours, to sit with staff and do safety plans.

In 2020, we were physically open for six months and we still saw over 2,700 women seek our support. We did our best to keep up with the demands of our clients and the staff capacity that we had.

We know there are so many other women who are trying to access our services or others within the community. Collaboration has become an important element for us, and this pandemic really showcases the importance of working together and supporting one another.

Our staff mental health has also been an important element in terms of learning to handle the pressures of COVID in their own lives and dealing with burnout.

In the last bit of time, I want to share one story from our community, told via The Sudbury Star, our local newspaper. This is not a story from one of our clients; it details one abuser's dealings with domestic violence, not in just one incident but in three separate intimate partners over a span of a year and a half, as well as violence towards children. This one story shows the need to increase support in our community for intimate partner violence and mental health support for women and children, and to support staff who are helping these clients.

In September 2020, the abuser and his partner became separated. The abuser came to the woman's home, used physical violence on the woman, her son and his teenage daughter. He pulled out a switchblade, put it to his daughter's throat and pushed her head in towards a wall. The abuser told his partner that he was so mad he could seriously hurt his teenage daughter.

In May 2021, the abuser was in a new relationship with a second woman. She called police to report that the abuser had beaten her and she had fled to a friend's residence. The abuser had grabbed her hand, pushed her head into the wall, and put his thumbs into her eye sockets. He proceeded to verbally assault her while choking her.

In October 2021, a third woman called police, reporting that the same abuser was upset that she had ended their relationship, and that he had been harassing her through social media and texts.

It was brought up in court that the abuser had suffered from emotional and verbal abuse as a child, as he had seen domestic violence in his own home. This is a cycle that needs to be broken, as the children he has abused now need that help.

One of the women wrote in a victim statement, “Because of these offences, I haven't been able to sleep at night; I can't open my windows at all because I am afraid to do so. In my home, I feel that someone is looking in through my windows.... I am afraid to leave my home. I am afraid he will be outside the door. I can't trust anyone....”

In closing, the Sudbury's Women Centre is a non-profit charitable organization dedicated to providing information, referrals and support services to women who've been impacted by violence and/or difficult life situations. I'm confident in the investments by the government to address intimate partner violence in reports, and that within organizations we will create that positive change that we're looking for. It will take time and collaboration with other organizations, but I do see this happening.

We're committed to serving the needs of women in our community, to create and maintain a safe environment that is inclusive and respectful of diversity.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you very much, Giulia. That was well done.

We'll now pass it over to Lise Martin, from Women's Shelters Canada.

Go ahead, Lise. You have five minutes.

[Lise Martin, Executive Director, Women's Shelters Canada]

Thank you very much for this invitation.

Women's Shelters Canada brings together 15 provincial and territorial shelter organizations representing over 600 shelters across Canada.

The COVID pandemic has challenged us all on so many levels. For women and children living with violence, the anguish is indescribable. As reported by the Canadian observatory on femicide, last month alone 20 women died by femicide. That is one woman every day and a half. These are not merely statistics. Last week, her name was Ashley Wadsworth from Vernon, B.C.

The first point I'd like to make is that intimate partner violence, domestic violence and gender-based violence are non-partisan issues. My plea to you today is to always keep this front and centre in your deliberations. No one is immune to intimate partner violence and domestic violence. They do not discriminate.

However, there are differential impacts. Certain groups of women face much higher levels of violence. Among them are first nation, Inuit and Métis women, women with disabilities, racialized women and trans women.

I will focus on two roles of Women's Shelters Canada. Firstly, it is the organization that oversaw the distribution of COVID emergency funds to shelters. Secondly, it is the organization that, since its inception in 2013, has been bringing together civil society organizations to advocate for a national action plan.

March 13, 2020 is one of those dates that is etched in our memory. Within a week, we were in discussions with WAGE on how emergency funds could be expedited to shelters. We realized this was a huge undertaking, and as a team of six we knew our world was about to turn upside down. We were, however, compelled to take this on, as shelters were in dire need of these supports, and we knew we could deliver quickly and efficiently.

There was and is no partisanship in this exercise. All shelters had access to the same amount of funds and all were contacted at the same time. By April 4, 2020 funds started flowing to shelters. In 2020, Women's Shelters Canada transferred $36 million to shelters across the country. The average per shelter was $99,000. Many shelters could not have remained open had these funds not been provided.

[Technical difficulty—Editor] commitment [Technical difficulty—Editor] in 2021. Women's Shelters Canada is in the process of distributing $81 million to shelters for response and recovery.

Collaboration between civil society organizations, between civil society organizations and government, and between the federal and provincial governments has made it possible for women and children to continue to access services throughout the pandemic.

On behalf of shelters and transition houses, I'd like to thank the federal government for its leadership in providing these emergency funds to GBV services, and for recognizing the life-saving work they accomplish day in and day out. As we move, hopefully, out of this pandemic, we are looking to the federal government to show this same level of leadership and to provincial governments to show this same level of collaboration, in order to move forward with the national action plan.

In January of 2021, working with over 40 GBV experts from across the country, we embarked on a massive and highly ambitious four-month project to develop a framework for Canada's national action plan.

Why do we need a national action plan? Simply put, the levels of services and protection provided to women and people of marginalized genders should not depend on their postal codes.

One of the questions we answered was this: What will it take for Canada's national action plan to be successful? It will need to have independent oversight and evaluation; billions, not millions, in investments; an all-of-government approach; co-operation and coordination between federal, provincial and territorial governments; the voices and experiences of those most affected at the centre; and systemic solutions for systemic problems.

The end product of this project was a comprehensive report, which we are tabling for the committee in the context of this study, that provides a ready road map for the national action plan and its secretariat.

During last Friday's session, the question was asked about the plan's 10-year timeline, which seemed to be long. A NAP is about systemic change. Systemic change takes time, and Canada's national action plan must be developed in a way that will allow it to bring this change, regardless of which government is in power.

We owe it to the 44% of women who will experience violence at one point in their lives and to the hundreds of women and children who lose their lives each year as a result of domestic violence.

Let's not forget that domestic violence is a non-partisan issue.

Thank you so much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you so much, Lise, and thanks for watching my pen. You guys are awesome.

I will now pass it on to Lorie English with the West Central Women's Resource Centre.

You have five minutes.

[Lorie English, Executive Director, West Central Women’s Resource Centre]

Thank you and good afternoon, honourable members of Parliament and distinguished colleagues.

Thank you for the invitation to present to this committee today.

My name is Lorie English, and I am the executive director at the West Central Women's Resource Centre.

Our centre is located in downtown Winnipeg, and we've been providing supports to women and gender-diverse people throughout the city for more than 20 years. One of the critical services we provide is supporting people who have experienced gender-based violence.

Gender-based violence is one of the most pervasive health risks to women and gender-diverse people in Canada. It also has one of the most underfunded responses to a health risk. Evidence has demonstrated that intimate partner violence is dramatically under-reported in Canada. Only about a third of women report violence to police. As a result, our ability to gather data and to respond to the enormity of this problem has been limited, but here is what we do know.

On average, it takes seven times to successfully leave a violent situation. This is due in large part to the lack of a sustained response to experiences of violence. The lack of resources, once the crisis is over, often leads women back to violence.

We need supports that both respond to the immediate crisis and assist women and gender-diverse people to rebuild their lives once they've exited violence.

The impacts of gender-based violence are tremendous. Victims often experience chronic illness, stress, increased problematic substance use and increased mental health conditions. Children who are victims of violence can see negative impacts with their health and development and are increasingly likely to become involved in violent relationships later in life. Men who are perpetrators of violence have often previously been victims of violence and therefore need to heal their own trauma as part of the work to break the cycle.

In addition, gender-based violence contributes negatively to the social determinants of health, including increased levels of poverty, housing insecurity, food insecurity, job loss and unemployment. It is one of the leading pathways for women and gender-diverse people into homelessness, and that homelessness is one of the key reasons that women return to violent situations.

When violence and housing insecurity intersect, our systems are woefully inadequate. Our homelessness sector is not equipped to deal with GBV. Much of our GBV sector is not equipped to deal with the complications of homelessness or of working with people who use substances or have complex mental health issues. Neither sector is adequately supporting members of the 2SLGBTQ+ community. The result is that those who are most vulnerable are often the most underserved and left with literally no safe options.

We also know that COVID-19 added further barriers to women accessing safe and appropriate supports. The important and critical public health measures of restriction and isolation have exacerbated the stressors facing those at risk of violence. This increased stress has resulted in an increased likelihood of violence within relationships at home and within intimate partnerships.

For many years, Manitoba's rates of violence against women have been the highest in the country, and they are twice the national average. We are in urgent need of significant and sustained investments in addressing gender-based violence. In order to be effective, we need intersectional approaches to violence prevention and recovery.

Currently in Manitoba, populations that are particularly underserved are indigenous people, newcomers, people with disabilities, 2SLGBTQ+ women and gender-diverse people. These are the greatest areas of need, because indigenous women are two and a half times more likely to be victims of violence than non-indigenous women. Newcomer women are more vulnerable to domestic violence due to economic dependence, language barriers and lack of knowledge about community resources. People who identify as lesbian, bisexual, trans or gender-diverse are three to four times more likely to experience intimate partner violence.

Almost all of the women we work with tell us that one of their greatest barriers in accessing supports, as well as in their desire to report, is a lack of cultural safety, yet our gender-based violence sector nationally, and especially here in Manitoba, remains woefully underfunded and has been for decades.

We urgently need to implement critical principles of harm reduction in our shelter system, but we can't until our shelters are adequately funded to have more than one or two staff working at a time to ensure safety. We need to be able to respond to the demanding need for violence recovery supports, but we can't when caseloads of GBV workers creep higher while their wages remain lower than any other essential service. We desperately need responses that go beyond the 30-day shelter stay, because when women exit without a plan that includes income and housing, returning to the cycle is often their only option.

We need to treat gender-based violence as the critical health crisis that it is and work to eradicate it with the commitment we would to any other health crisis.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Fantastic. You guys are right up and on board.

Thank you so much to our three witnesses.

We're now going to move over to questions and answers. Today we start off with a six-minute round. I'll put my finger up at five minutes, and that's just reminding the person who is questioning that they have one minute left to get a question and answer out there. At five minutes I'll be giving you a mark, and for anybody else, a minute out.

Our first round starts off with Michelle Ferreri, Marc Serré, Louise Chabot and then Leah Gazan.

Michelle, you have the floor for six minutes.

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

Thank you to our witnesses today. I couldn't agree more about this being a non-partisan issue. I'm happy to be on a committee where we all agree on that one, for sure.

There are lots of distressing stories coming out here, and COVID has absolutely magnified an underlying issue that we had long before this pandemic.

I'm curious about how the funding is allocated or how it would help you. What I'm hearing is there are almost two tiers. You have to manage and support these women and their children when they come to you. How much more funding do you want for prevention?

Our first story from Giulia was about that systemic trauma from the abuser. Do you feel like your shelter is in a state of sustaining and helping in the crisis mode, or would you like to do more in terms of prevention and helping, with funding?

[Giulia Carpenter]

We are a centre that provides resources and support for our clients. We collaborate and partner with various other shelters that are here for women in Sudbury. The prevention element is having support staff there to be able to provide support for the women coming in. Due to COVID, we have to make sure we have a client coming in and working with our staff one on one, and there are some people who aren't coming in for a week or so. By having extra support staff, we could help out in those types of elements.

Some of the prevention elements would be working in collaboration with other organizations in our community and on an evaluation type of piece. If we could get some research done, that would be able to help for the future.

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

I'm curious if you're able to work with employers. I think that's a big barrier when you're a woman in that situation. You're talking about the increase of poverty and socio-economic issues. Do you have partners who work with you to find an employer and get them back on their feet with work?

[Giulia Carpenter]

Yes, we work with [Technical difficulty—Editor] partners within our community, and we help some of our clients to get....They may not have been in the workforce for a couple of years, for whatever the reason may be, so we make sure that we have the resume support and go through the job process with them. We also help them get the training at that partner organization, as well as work within our centre with a paid program.

It is being paid through the other organizations as well as through ours, so we do a fifty-fifty on the wage and help them get the money and experience they need.

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

I just lost my whole train of thought there. I'm so sorry about that, guys.

I had a great question there, and it just left me. I apologize for that.

I'm going to let Laila take over for me, if that's all right.

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

Part of our study is studying the legislative experiences of different states and countries.

I'm going to start by asking the question to Ms. Martin from Women's Shelters Canada. On the legislative side, are there any jurisdictions we should be looking to that are perhaps doing things that are either innovative or cutting edge?

[Lise Martin]

In terms of the national action plan, we've often looked to Australia. In Australia they have recently completed their first 12-year plan. They divided it into four three-year plans in order to constantly be re-evaluating what they were doing and adding to it. Obviously, they have not eliminated gender-based violence in the 12 years, and they are in the process now of working with civil society organizations and their provincial governments to develop Australia's second national action plan.

For us, it definitely is a model, because it included civil society organizations throughout. We feel that's an important part of Canada's national action plan, to have an independent advisory council working side by side with the secretariat.

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

Fantastic.

I was wondering if any of the other panellists had any jurisdictions we should look to or any legislative solutions that exist.

[Lise Martin]

In terms of the story that Giulia talked about, what came to mind was Clare's law. Clare's law was first adopted in Saskatchewan. It's recently been adopted in Alberta and I believe in one of the Atlantic provinces. For me, that's an example of what Canada's national action plan can do, provide the same levels of services across the country, with provincial governments coming into agreement that there be clear—

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

I don't want to interrupt, but I see the chair's pen, so I was wondering if anyone else had anything quickly to add. Otherwise we can get to that in another round.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Laila, we'll have to get back to it in another round. Sorry.

We are going to pass it over to Marc Serré.

Marc, you have six minutes.

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you so much to the three witnesses.

Just your five-minute opening remarks were really detailed [Technical difficulty—Editor] set the stage for our study.

I have a question for the three witnesses, and I'll start with Lise Martin.

First, I want to thank you for the leadership of your organization in distributing the $100-million COVID funding rapidly, within days of a fiscal year, to women's shelters. I heard a lot in my riding in Sudbury and West Nipissing on how beneficial that was. Also, I want to thank you for your support in getting the $200 million to the shelters in a fast and expeditious way.

My question to Lise—and then I'll ask both other witnesses too—is this: When we talk about these leverages that we provided with the $100 million and the $200 million, how has that leveraged participation with the provinces? When we talk about core funding from the federal government and we talk about funding from the provincial government, how is that [Technical difficulty—Editor], and has the federal funding supported your member agencies in trying to look at some of those services? The flexibility is important, so I don't want to pinpoint. I want to let you leave the money open. Can you talk a bit about the criteria, how fast the money was? Is that supporting some of the provincial partners to help play a role here with the federal government, leading up to the national action plan?

[Lise Martin]

The funds were definitely flexible. It really was up to each shelter to decide. As we know, the situation varies so much from region to region across the country, so shelters were able to spend the money on PPE in the early days, on alternative accommodation, on transportation. We all know that in rural areas there's virtually no public transportation, so that can become very costly.

This is one of those situations where it differs from province to province. I can say, for example, that the Saskatchewan government did not offer any additional funding to its shelters. For Manitoba, if they did, it was minimal. Again, it's a patchwork across the country.

To my knowledge, no shelter closed during the pandemic, and the shelters have said that had this funding not been made available, that could not have happened.

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

Ms. Carpenter, thank you for the work you do in greater Sudbury and with the partners.

For the COVID funding and the funding you received from the federal government.... I know you received some of the human trafficking funding, close to $400,000. How is that helping the centre but also leveraging? I heard, in Ontario, the province came to the table with the federal funding. How is that supporting you in moving forward those recommendations, going back to the national action plan?

[Giulia Carpenter]

Definitely the federal funding amounts for the human trafficking, as you brought up, have given us the ability to communicate and work with other agencies in northern Ontario. We're working with six other communities with their local coalitions, which is wonderful because we're now able to create a pathway with all of these six communities to be able to help and support women affected by human trafficking. That has definitely helped us.

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

Ms. Carpenter, you mentioned the support for children and the money you receive from the federal government, or some of the funding on the provincial side. What are your recommendations to look at families and children?