Status of Women Committee on Feb. 11th, 2022

[Sherilyn Bell]

If the child doesn't tell you directly that something is going on, sometimes you notice it in their functioning. You can see that they're a little bit off. They're maybe a little bit more withdrawn or seem a little bit more anxious. Any kind of subtle change in their behaviour could be an indicator that there's something going on.

I think a lot of the parents are just not aware of a lot of the stuff that's going on. They don't even have the basic education. In a lot of cases, the kids know more than the parents do. Even the 12- and 13-year-olds know way more than the parents do.

Again, I think an awareness campaign for the parents about all of the subtleties and what's going on in this age group.... For kids starting high school and getting their phone for the first time, I think parents need to really be made aware of some of the paths their children can go down, sometimes unwittingly.

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

You have had access to tools that work, simple things that happen in a family that contribute to positive communication and having both doors open for a parent to talk to a child and for a child to talk to a parent. What are your biggest recommendations in terms of those tools?

[Sherilyn Bell]

Well, I think trust is key, and it's built from a very young age. I think parents really have to be willing to take all of their own emotions, feelings and thoughts, kind of put them on the side a bit when dealing with their children and really try to stay calm and open and understand—or try to understand—what their children are saying, from their perspective, and really just sort of support—

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

Would you say things like family dinners are important, where people are putting down their phones and actively listening to each other?

[Sherilyn Bell]

Absolutely, yes. That's good old-fashioned stuff.

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

That's great—and bedtime stories.

Thank you so much.

[Sherilyn Bell]

You're welcome.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Okay. We're going to pass it on.

Emmanuella, you have six minutes.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I would like to thank all of the witnesses for their great testimony today and for being here to answer our questions.

My questions are going to be a little all over the place. I've been thinking about the root causes of this type of violence, and I really want to get to the bottom of why and to the different types of dynamics that play a role here.

Is anyone able to answer the question of whether cultural communities—and I'm not talking about indigenous women per se, but cultural communities or immigrant communities—face higher levels of violence than white communities or communities that aren't necessarily from immigrant backgrounds? I don't know if anyone has a stat on that.

No? Okay.

The reason I was going there is that some of our panellists earlier, and Ms. Bell now, mentioned that more younger women are getting into relationships where they face violence. One in three young girls between the ages of 12 and 14 is in a relationship where she may experience violence. Also, Melpa Kamateros, in previous testimony, said that younger people are the ones seeking help in shelters right now.

Coming from a cultural community myself, I know that dating in our teens is frowned upon, so it's not necessarily allowed. Based also on my experience as a teacher, I feel that a lot of young people I knew who were from cultural backgrounds weren't necessarily the ones who were dating.

Ms. Bell, in your experience, what would be the reason...? If younger and younger people are coming out with these types of issues, and we're trying to tackle it from the root and not allow this type of violence to continue later on, what are some of the things that you think people can do?

First of all, what are the signs to look out for? Obviously, you mentioned three of them. Also, what types of programs can the federal government put into place? We obviously don't deal much with education, but what types of programs can we can put into place that would fund these types of initiatives to help end those signs, let's say, early on?

[Sherilyn Bell]

Those are good questions. Let me think about it.

I mentioned in my talk that booklet from the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, the resource booklet for the families, and I did read through it. It's about 35 pages long, and it's really excellent. As I mentioned before, I was doing a bit of research to talk to you today, and in all my years of practice I never really knew that this resource was there. If I hadn't gone looking for it....

That's why I mentioned as one of the recommendations that there are some really good tools out there, but more awareness is needed, I think, about what already exists. That's something to think about. In terms of what the federal government can do, you have some Canadian tools out there, and maybe you can think of ways of getting people to be more aware.

What else did you ask?

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Actually, I see that Ms. Campbell has her hand up as well, and I want to give her an opportunity.

[Karen Campbell]

Thank you.

I'm sorry. I was trying to find my way to my mute button to answer your question on populations and statistics.

I can look for some statistics for you, but we do know that immigrant women may be more vulnerable to intimate partner violence, for a lot of the reasons Ms. Kamateros spoke to in the previous panel: economic dependence on their partner or relatives, language barriers, a lack of knowledge about community resources, and immigration and refugee system rules related to spousal partnerships. These can make people afraid to come forward. As well, when it comes to that second generation, as you've identified, there are challenges young people have in talking to their parents about these things.

To the point Mrs. Bell is raising about what resources there are, and to your question about what the federal government might be doing, the Public Health Agency of Canada has partnered with the Canadian Women's Foundation in the past on teen healthy relationships programs, and worked to build the field of teen healthy relationships as a violence prevention mechanism.

We have an ongoing project to try to bring those best practices together, while looking at marginalized communities to make sure everybody is represented in those. There is a good pool of resources out there, and it would be nice to see that kind of thing continue.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

I was going to ask about intersectionality, but you just answered that question. That's what we're going to be looking at in the next budget, as well.

I have less than a minute left, so I just want to take the time to thank you all for the important work you do. Mrs. Bell, I actually had the chance to witness the work you did for a decade of my life. You personally impacted the life of a family member of mine, so thank you very much.

[Sherilyn Bell]

You're very welcome. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you very much.

Thank you for adding that, Emmanuella. It's great knowing that those persons in the community are out there helping our families and everybody else. So thank you so much.

I'm now going to move over to Louise Chabot.

Louise, you have six minutes.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you for your testimony, ladies. It is all the more troubling because it is now 2022.

Feminists have been fighting to get rid of this for many years. In my opinion, we have to recognize that we still have major problems to solve.

I would like to talk about the forms of coercive control.

Mrs. Bell, you talked about teens. In Quebec, we currently have a major advertising campaign that illustrated the controlling behaviour that a dominant male exercises over his wife. It can be through psychological violence, verbal violence and motions that are just short of physical violence, without actually going that far. The goal of the campaign is to show that the problem exists. Women often have difficulty reporting that kind of violent situation because they don't have bruises or marks on their face.

We are told that the root causes of the problem must be tackled, and exercising coercive control is part of that.

How can we come to grips with that, so that this kind of situation does not end up in physical violence, sexual violence, or women being murdered?

With teens, we could work along the same lines. Perhaps they have seen their parents display behaviour like that, which they then reproduce or normalize.

My question goes to all three of you. How can Canada and the provinces act in concert?

[Sherilyn Bell]

I could start, perhaps.

I know that education is governed provincially. I am glad to hear that something exists in French about the coercive control and manipulation. I am wondering more about what that program is. I'm also wondering if it's available in English for the English sector.

I think that it's fantastic. I think the prevention lies in educating the students in the upper-elementary years and the parents about these more subtle aspects before they have the electronic devices in their hands and they're on these accounts. It is really about education and building awareness of what is out there, what is appropriate use and where it sort of starts to slide into inappropriate use. It's really to try to make sure that the students have a clearer idea of what inappropriate versus appropriate use is.

In terms of relationships and what is healthy and unhealthy, I think you really hit the nail on the head when you said that sometimes they're seeing what's going on at home. Often what they're seeing is their normal. It can perpetuate in their own relationships as they start to develop them.

A key area is to start to get the kids thinking about what's appropriate, even if it might be something different from what they're living.

[Jane Stinson]

If I could jump in, I'll be brief.

I think it's really important to think about the opportunities that people have to leave relationships where there is coercive control going on. I will go back to things like the importance of stable employment as a foundational thing. The federal government plays an important role there, in terms of both its direct job creation as the largest employer in the country and the example it can set for others. I think addressing things like precarious employment is important.

I'll stop to give my colleague a chance.

[Karen Campbell]

Thanks.

I would just add, Ms. Chabot, that you are correct. People have been talking about this for decades. We've been advocating for years for what we need to see. The sector knows what it needs and has told the government what it needs a lot of times in different formats.

The national action plan to end gender-based violence is there. It needs to be implemented urgently. It needs to be funded to the highest levels to get these things in place.

The same goes for the national action plan to address our national crisis of missing and murdered indigenous women. The road map is there. We just need to follow it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

You have about 20 seconds.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I agree that everyone must leave a relationship where coercive control is being exercised, but I feel that we also all agree that we have to give them the means to do so.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you so much.

I'm now going to pass it over to Niki.

Niki, you have six minutes.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill—Keewatinook Aski, MB]

Thank you very much.

Thank you so much, everybody, for your powerful testimony.

I'm very pleased to be here replacing my colleague Leah Gazan for today's session—as the committee is quite familiar, given the work I was able to do a number of years ago in terms of the status of women—and seeing familiar faces like yours, Jane, and others earlier today. Thank you so much for being here.

Ms. Stinson, I want to go to you. You highlighted some very key findings around access to transportation and access to employment. I want to highlight just how critical that is. I represent a northern riding; I live in a northern riding. In western Canada, we were the first to lose Greyhound services. While there have been some initiatives, nothing has fully replaced what we lost, and that's a big problem. It is probably best documented through the Highway of Tears, the vulnerability that northern and indigenous women face when they don't have access to safe transportation. I really appreciate your raising that. It's not a reality that's understood in the same way by anyone living in an urban centre, that's for sure. I appreciate that you raised those two areas.

I also want to highlight another key theme that many of you have raised, the need to access housing. We have a housing crisis in our country. It is particularly acute in first nations and in northern communities, but it truly is a full-blown crisis across the country, both in terms of supply but also in terms of access. Increasingly, access to safe housing is out of reach for so many Canadian women, even many who are working, given the reality, as you pointed out, Jane, of precarious work, etc.

I'm wondering, Ms. Stinson, if you could talk a bit about how urgent it is for the federal government to move on housing and invest in housing, all kinds of housing. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

[Jane Stinson]

Yes, it's extremely important. Housing takes up such a big proportion of a person's income. It's supposed to be one-third, but I think for many people it's half if not more. It's out of reach for lots of people. It's the lack of housing and the instability that exists that also contribute to violence. If you're, say, couch surfing, if you're relying on staying at friends' homes, if you're in a precarious housing situation, you're more vulnerable to violence, or if you're in a rooming house and things of that nature. Yes, inadequate housing is extremely related to gender-based and intimate partner violence.

As with transportation, the federal government plays a key role. We saw it with child care. I think child care is an amazing example of seeing the leadership of the federal government creating conditions. In that case, it should be not-for-profit, which is extremely important for a lot of services, especially for child care. The federal government plays that key leadership role of saying, “There's money here. You meet certain conditions. Let's work together to develop a system.”

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill—Keewatinook Aski, MB]

I also want to give Ms. Campbell the opportunity to share any thoughts on housing and Mrs. Bell, as well, if she has anything to add.