Status of Women Committee on Feb. 11th, 2022

[Dominique Vien, Conservative, Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC]

Let's make a note of that.

Ms. Kamateros—

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

I'm sorry, Dominique. I'm just so strict. I'm terrible.

Jenna, we're going to pass it over to you for two minutes.

[Dominique Vien, Conservative, Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC]

It's good that you are strict, Madam Chair.

[Jenna Sudds, Liberal, Kanata—Carleton, ON]

Thank you very much, and thanks to all the witnesses for being here.

I'll try to be brief.

Ms. Kamateros, near the end of your talk you mentioned the challenges for immigrant women. I wonder if you can elaborate on the barriers specifically to immigrant women refugees and indigenous women, and how that experience differs.

[Melpa Kamateros]

First of all, if language blocks are present, then the door of entry to any information, to any choice of action, to any option is automatically barred. That is automatic. She can't get into the CLSC. She can't go to the police station to make a report. She can't call a helpline. She cannot access a shelter, so what is the potential for the woman to access basic information and services? There's a huge inequality there. That overshadows and overlays the inequality we are talking about, gender-based violence that exists because of sex.

In terms of immigrant women who have no status, they have a hard time trying to get welfare. They have a hard time trying to subsist. The law of immigration takes precedence over laws pertaining to conjugal violence, and this is why we're referring to the need for a basic law and a more global vision on how we can deal with conjugal violence.

In a nutshell, that's what it is, and there is very often not too much support at the community level or at the family level. This is why we, as an organization, deal with the victims but we deal with the communities as well, because it's very important for the victims to take a stance and to go back to their communities, and for their communities to support them.

That is the issue for immigrant women. There is a situation of gross inequality, and they feel that in Canada they are strangers in a strange land.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you so much. We're now going to move over to Louise.

Louise, you have one minute.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair. I understand.

My question is for Ms. Brayton.

Ms. Brayton, I was struck by a number of things in your testimony. I believe you when you say that racialized people, immigrants, and those with disabilities, but particularly those with disabilities, experience these things more intensely because of the situation they are in. You talked about the difference between “accessibility” and “access”. What do you understand by “real access” for those people?

[Bonnie Brayton]

That is a complex question and it is difficult to answer it quickly—I see the Chair with her pen—but I will try to make a start.

Ms. Chabot, it is important to understand that the first thing to do is to strengthen the options for action that are open to women with disabilities. You can see today that I am the only person here to represent women with disabilities, yet we represent 24% of the female population and we are the group most affected. There has to be a Canada-wide presence of women with disabilities, as activists, experts and researchers. We need a place at the table.

Thank you very much for the question.

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

My pleasure.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thanks so much, Bonnie.

We're now going to move back to Niki.

Niki, you have one minute.

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

Ms. Brayton, I have a quick question around housing.

How urgently do we need the federal government to invest in housing for people living with disabilities, affordable housing, and social housing? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

[Bonnie Brayton]

I appreciate the question, Niki, and I know you trust me enough to let me pivot a bit here, because I'm going to do that.

I was trying to make the point earlier about the instruments of hope that everybody who is part of this committee and the entire Parliament have before them. These are the housing strategy, coupled with the national action plan and the child care plan.

It's important to take a step back and ask, “Treasury Board and cabinet, can we carve off some money and start to look at demonstration communities that actually use the money collectively?” We keep siloing everything off, and we're not building real solutions. We're not going to build them off the backs of these women's organizations and shelters. We have to take social responsibility across it and not download it onto women's shelters and transition houses. It's time for us to take a step back and do the big-picture thing.

As I said, the instruments of hope are in front of us. It's time for us to get serious.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Awesome.

Thank you so much to our panellists. I hate cutting it short, because all of you are bringing so much information.

On behalf of our group, I would really like to thank Bonnie, the organization grouping sexual assault help centres in Quebec, as well as Melpa, for joining us today. It was wonderful to have you.

We are going to take a bit of a break, so that we can get the second panel on and get their mikes checked. I would ask everybody to return for 1:59 p.m.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

I would like to resume today's committee meeting.

Welcome to all of our panellists.

We are resuming our study regarding intimate partner and domestic violence.

Joining us for our second panel we have, as an individual, Sherilyn Bell, psychologist. From the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women, we have Jane Stinson, research associate. From the Canadian Women's Foundation, we have Karen Campbell, director of community initiatives and policy.

To start today's meeting, we'll be providing each of you with five minutes to provide your opening remarks, and then we'll be going on to our round of questions from our MPs.

I will pass the floor over to Sherilyn.

Sherilyn, you have five minutes.

[Sherilyn Bell, Psychologist, As an Individual]

Good afternoon, Madam Chair and committee.

My name is Sherilyn Bell and I am serving as a witness today in my capacity as a retired high school guidance counsellor with 30 years of experience both in the private and public sectors, and currently as a psychologist in private practice in Montreal. My remarks today are based on my professional experience of working with teens between the ages of 12 and 17.

Today I will speak about the more subtle but no less damaging areas of teen relationship violence, which involves control, manipulation, coercion and intimidation, which can take place in both in-person relationships and online relationships.

In my experience, while most teens, including young teens of 12 to 14 years of age, are easily able to identify what constitutes a physically or sexually abusive intimate relationship, there are still challenges to be overcome for many teens, and especially young teens, to easily identify the components of unhealthy intimate relationships that involve manipulation, control and intimidation, especially when they, themselves, find themselves in such a relationship. It is not uncommon for some young teens to misinterpret manipulation and control as care and love, which can then result in the non-recognition of a dysfunctional relationship.

In terms of online violence in teen relationships, with the rapid advancements in technology in the past several decades, the Internet has provided easy access for some teens to insult, denigrate, manipulate and coerce their relationship partners in a public, explicit and scathing fashion. In addition, many of the perpetrating teens will attempt to veil their identity by creating accounts under different names or by accessing and using other teens' social media accounts. Due to the layer of perceived anonymity that using a fake account provides, the language, comments and images that get posted are often much more severe than any comments that would be delivered in an in-person scenario. In terms of the victims, the results of such an online attack can be devastating. Embarrassment, humiliation and shame are common emotions expressed by victims, often resulting in a significant decrease in victims' personal, social and academic functioning.

While controlling and manipulative in-person teen relationships can sometimes be directly observed by parents, which then allows the parents the opportunity to address and perhaps intervene in the situation with their child, it is important to note that parents are often completely unaware if their teen is either a perpetrator or a victim of online violence. Out of fear of the potential consequences, teens will often try to hide this information from authority figures, and it is often only brought to the attention of an adult when the victim or friends of the victim perceive the victim as needing help and/or protection.

According to an online article authored by Deinera Exner-Cortens, an assistant professor at the University of Calgary, and Wendy Craig, a professor at Queen's University, published on October 19, 2021, one in three Canadian adolescents between the ages of 11 and 18 experienced dating violence in 2021. This statistic indicates that there is still much work to be done to address the problem of dating violence in teens. Within this same article, the authors remind us that teen dating violence is both a Canadian public health problem and a children's rights issue.

There are existing Canadian resources available that provide information on this issue, such as the Canadian Centre for Child Protection. In fact, the Canadian Centre for Child Protection has an excellent online resource booklet entitled “Self/Peer Exploitation—It's Not OK: A Resource Guide for Families”, which provides detailed information on this issue for parents and teens, along with suggestions to prevent and/or deal with an incident after it has occurred. I would be curious to know how widely aware most parents and teens are of this resource.

Based on the remarks that I have presented to you today, my recommendations to the committee are, first, that more resources subsidized by the Canadian government be developed to address and provide information and support for teens concerning healthy versus unhealthy intimate partner relationships; second, that more funding be provided by the Canadian government to existing organizations that address the issues of control, manipulation and coercion in young teen intimate partner relationships; third, that awareness campaigns on this issue be expanded for both parents and teens; lastly, that further information, awareness and prevention programs be developed for preteens, as well as for the parents of preteens, so that children and parents are more adequately educated on the topic of teen intimate partner violence before their children enter the teenage years.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you so much, Sherilyn.

Now we're going to pass it over to the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women.

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

[Jane Stinson, Research Associate, Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women]

Thank you very much.

Good afternoon. Thanks for the opportunity to appear here before you. I am a research associate with the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women.

I'd like to begin by paying respect to the Algonquin people, who are the traditional guardians of the unceded and beautiful territory on which I live.

Last year I worked with women from over 40 organizations to develop the national action plan on violence against women and gender-based violence. I think you heard about it earlier this week from Lise Martin, the executive director of Women's Shelters Canada.

Today, my comments draw on the research we did for that national action plan, and they're informed by a feminist intersectional lens that focuses on those who are most marginalized and in greatest need.

I want to focus on the importance of a national public transportation system to prevent, respond to and mitigate intimate partner and domestic violence in Canada. Transportation systems help prevent domestic violence by providing women access to jobs and the incomes they provide. They give women and gender-diverse people a means to escape intimate partner domestic violence. Finally, they help mitigate the experience of domestic violence by providing access to support services, which may be in another community.

Recommendation 20E of the national action plan final report calls for the federal, provincial, territorial and municipal levels of government to create a system of transportation across Canada that prevents and mitigates gender-based violence.

I want to thank this committee for its 2019 report on systems of shelters and transition homes, where you recommended government action to fund transportation for women fleeing violence who have no access to shelter services in their communities. It was important and we need you to recommend further action on transportation now.

The situation has gotten much worse since that 2019 recommendation. COVID has contributed to higher rates of domestic violence, as you've already heard. Also, access to transportation systems has worsened, especially for those in rural, remote and northern communities.

For example, victims of domestic violence were hurt by Saskatchewan's decision to cut its Crown corporation bus service, the STC, which had provided vital transportation between communities in the province. A study there found that 37% of survivors of sexual violence in Saskatchewan identified the lack of transportation as a barrier to access those services and supports after STC was cut. It was a good model and something that should be replicated elsewhere.

On top of that, Greyhound ended its private bus service—in some parts of the country earlier, but other parts in 2021. That made a bad situation far worse throughout the country, especially for indigenous people in remote communities.

As you know, Canada's north has vast distances between communities. Women are often forced to hitchhike or use taxis, ride sharing, Uber, or private vehicles to get out of town or between towns. All those options present risks of gender-based violence.

The report on murdered and missing indigenous women and girls called attention to how the absence of safe and affordable transportation systems contributes to the violence and murder of indigenous women. They also recommended that all governments ensure that adequate plans and funding be put in place for safe, affordable transit and transportation systems.

Women need transportation systems within their community, between communities and between provinces. It doesn't exist now. The federal government needs to provide leadership to both invest in transportation infrastructure and create the incentives for other levels of government to do so. I really hope that this committee will call for more government action.

I've outlined three recommendations for you to consider.

The first recommendation is the long-term, 10-year goal of the national action plan, which is to build a pan-Canadian safe, accessible and affordable transportation system.

The second recommendation is a shorter-term one to get there. It's to establish a federal task force to tackle gender-based violence in transportation and transit, and to provide direction for a system that's needed.

The third recommendation is to encourage the funding of women's groups that are addressing gender-based violence related to transportation, to provide that grassroots push, identification of the problem and identification of solutions, and to amplify the work of this committee and WAGE in addressing the problem.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you so much, Ms. Stinson.

We're now going to move over to the Canadian Women's Foundation and Karen Campbell, director of community initiatives and policy.

Karen, you have five minutes.

[Karen Campbell, Director, Community Initiatives and Policy, Canadian Women's Foundation]

Thank you, and good afternoon. I'm Karen Campbell from the Canadian Women's Foundation, joining you today from London, Ontario, on the traditional territories of the Attawandaron, Anishinabe and Haudenosaunee peoples.

The Canadian Women's Foundation is Canada's only national public foundation for women and girls, and one of the 10 largest women's foundations in the world. In partnership with the Department of Women and Gender Equality, we have provided the women's sector with $45 million in pandemic emergency funds as of September 2021, and we're in the process of distributing the next allotment.

Thank you for the invitation to speak to this urgent question.

In 2018, StatsCan reported that every six days a woman is killed by her intimate partner. We know from the excellent work of the Canadian Femicide Observatory that femicide is on the rise, with 160 femicides in 2020, or an average of one woman or girl killed every 2.3 days. They also note that 92 women and girls were killed in the first six months of 2021, 14 more killings than in the same period in 2020, or close to a 20% increase.

This trend is unsurprising to those working with survivors. Whenever communities are under stress, whether from climate-induced disasters, economic downturns or public health crises, GBV rates increase. In our context, this increase has been recognized globally and named “a shadow pandemic”.

Inattention in emergency planning to the predictable increase of GBV has had disastrous consequences, particularly for women and gender-diverse people who are further marginalized by race, indigeneity, sexuality, disability, immigration status or geographic location. The pandemic shines a light on the systemic root causes of all forms of GBV, including intimate partner violence, IPV.

IPV is more than a private or household issue. It is a product of gender inequality, colonization, systemic racism, enableism and the ongoing oppression of marginalized communities in Canada. Indigenous women experience the highest rates of IPV and are killed at nearly seven times the rate of non-indigenous women. Women with a disability are three times more likely to experience violent victimization than those who do not live with a disability. Statistics on these and other populations can be found in our full brief.

There is a significant lack of data on IPV as experienced by Black and racialized women and gender-diverse people, and on how IPV affects women living at the confluence of several groups, such as Black trans women or racialized women with disabilities, presenting important challenges in understanding levels of violence across populations. However, the numbers we do have reveal that IPV and GBV are deeply connected to the systemic violence that confronts women and gender-diverse people every day.

To improve protections for those living in unsafe homes, we must acknowledge the gendered nature of the mental health impacts of the pandemic and its associated restrictions. We need to better understand how job loss, food insecurity, fears of contracting the virus, and social isolation have contributed to the rise of GBV.

Youth-serving organizations report youth spending more time online, where the risk of tech-facilitated violence is a concern. They're witnessing increased suicidality and substance use and the challenges young people face in forming healthy relationships grounded in consent culture in this context.

To eliminate barriers to leaving unsafe environments, we must focus on those bearing the brunt of the economic and social effects of the pandemic: women, trans and non-binary people who are marginalized by race, immigration status, age, ability and socio-economic status. To escape violence, women need an adequate and equitable income, access to housing, affordable child care, and safe and reliable transportation services.

Chronic underfunding of the GBV sector has left survivors at risk. These underfunded and oversubscribed services have seen increased demand and staff burnout. The pandemic shows us that the sector has no surge capacity to deal with crisis impacts and that significant gaps persist in services for the most marginalized. Service providers report that clients are coming to their doors with more complex needs, disclosing more extreme forms of physical and sexual violence. The complexity of cases, combined with barriers to in-person access, is yet another drain on an overtaxed and women-dominated workforce.

To prevent IPV, we need to work on the ground. In addition to the GBV sector's needs, support is required for grassroots groups that are doing the important work of building consent culture and challenging gender norms. Much of this work happens with young people, racialized people, elders, and even men and boys. Many of these groups are ineligible to receive charitable donations under CRA guidelines. Reforming the rules governing the charitable sector to ensure that these groups are resourced is an important step towards ending all forms of GBV.

Importantly, public policy needs to target root causes. Overemphasis on criminal justice responses only scratches the surface and ultimately criminalizes those most in need of relief from the systemic injustices they already face. GBA+ must be embedded in all policy instruments, and they must be grounded in the lived realities of the most marginalized women, trans and non-binary people.

Thank you for your time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you very much.

Panellists, we'll now go to the six-minute question and answer period. I will put up a reminder at the one-minute mark.

Michelle Ferreri, you have the floor for six minutes.

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

Thank you so much. I hope everyone can hear me okay.

I want to take the opportunity to thank the first panel of witnesses as well. They were so passionate and amazing. Everybody's doing great work.

I am going to direct a lot of my questions to our first witness, Sherilyn.

I loved what you had to say. I wish I could spend six hours with you, if I'm honest. It's really important work...and your lived experience of what you've done as well in working with these teens. I couldn't agree more with all your calls to action. As a mom, I'm very interested in this as well. I've experienced a lot of what you talked about.

I would like to talk about what you would recommend. You talked about educating teens. We've talked a lot about this in this committee. If your benchmark of an unhealthy relationship is unhealthy, you don't know any different. They don't know that difference. When they finally start to maybe see it, what methods of education can we use to educate preteens and teens that they will trust? We know they're not going to listen to a teacher who stands at the front. It's a peer.... What do you recommend to help educate these kids?

[Sherilyn Bell]

Well, I do think that prevention is key. I think you're absolutely right when you say that their benchmark depends on what they know or their perception of what normal is. If not their teachers, then maybe, I don't know, bring speakers into the classroom to just discuss in more detail the subtleties of what makes a relationship unhealthy.

I mentioned how some teens can confuse care with manipulation. I certainly have seen that. It is subtle at times. If they say, “My partner is texting me and wants to know what I'm doing every minute”, that's a red flag for a professional. The teen might say, “Oh, isn't it nice that they care so much about me that they want to know what I'm doing every minute?” So—

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

I'm sorry. I hate interrupting you, but I have such a short time and I want to get everything in.

I think there is a catch-22, because when we talk about social media and what you brought up, it's so critical. We know that it could be a double-edged sword. Could we use that same tool that they're so addicted to in order to help educate them about what a healthy relationship is?

[Sherilyn Bell]

I'm sure we could.

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

That would be one thing I would ask, or look into, but the other question is on the parents aspect. This is a really important point that you brought up. Again, I've been on the receiving end of this. Your child could be part of being a perpetrator or being a recipient of this, and you are completely oblivious to it.

What would you recommend in terms of educating parents so they're not nagging that child but building trust? How do we help parents recognize these signs?