After all that drama, I represent an organization that has been in existence for over 30 years. We presently have three points of service in Quebec, which are an emergency shelter and two external centres. We also have a community outreach department where we go out actively and raise awareness on family violence.
We are also building a second-stage resource that will be our fourth point of service. We are members of the alliance of second-step shelters in Quebec.
I'm here today to speak about certain situations that we have seen from the trenches. We think that talking today about what we've seen will possibly benefit victims of violence, affect public policy, enact legislation and, hopefully, change societal perceptions on such violence.
I'm not going to go into it too lengthily, but we all know the effects of the global pandemic on women victims of violence and on women in general. They were the most affected. Certain issues, however, such as unequal access to services, lack of spaces in shelters, ineffective laws, not enough prevention programs or awareness of the issue of conjugal violence, as well as the minimization or normalization of conjugal violence all existed prior to the global COVID pandemic.
For immigrant women and women coming from ethnic cultural communities—which presents linguistic barriers—and for those with many children, the situation of attaining basic information, never mind services, became even more difficult. Their isolation was even more pronounced.
The increase in gender-based violence worldwide was not caused solely by the pandemic, but by the underlying factors that were already there, which have not been resolved. We would like therefore to propose a more global perspective on dealing with conjugal violence.
What do we mean? We mean that we want pertinent legislation that encompasses a broader definition of what conjugal violence is and that stresses the illegality of this violence. We do not want to go to the Criminal Code of Canada and extrapolate certain articles that refer to sexual and physical violence, because conjugal violence is a much deeper subject. It has traumatic effects for women and children, so we want the legislation.
We also feel that the prevention programs should be more analyzed. The statistics show that women going into shelters are younger and younger. This means that there are younger and younger perpetrators of this type of abuse, which means that societal perceptions regarding normalization of violence have not changed at all.
Finally, we want integrated services providing for more continuity for the victim, for the children exposed to the violence and for the abusers.
We would also like greater access to housing at all levels of the victims' timeline. There is a timeline to abuse, in terms of housing. It doesn't stop with the initial call to 911. First, there's the entry to the shelter. There's a huge problem there. I remember testifying before this committee a couple of years ago. Then, we had the issue of the second-step housing. It is a big issue. Thousands of women and children in Quebec are leaving emergency shelters. There are 500 spaces in the second-step housing. If we compare the situation to what we had, it took us 12 years to go into our second step that is presently being built.
We need a greater access to housing at the emergency and at the second step, as well as the social housing after. Two weeks ago, one of our clients came and she was very happy. She was happy because after four years she finally got her social housing unit with three children in tow. Obviously, there is a situation where this is lacking.
The other thing we want to propose is the granting of a certain status for women who are victims of conjugal violence. What do we mean by special status? The issue of financial dependency is a huge issue in conjugal violence cases. On the issue of autonomy, we're supposed to be guiding women towards autonomy and non-dependence. That's a huge issue as well. Giving the woman an allowance and a recognition of her status as a vulnerable woman who is a victim of conjugal violence.... Need I say that for immigrant women who can't speak the language, don't have a social network and don't have any means of support, this really is a necessity?
We would like to propose that this financial stipend be given to women who are victims of conjugal violence. It can tide them over the worse parts of the abuse, so that they can eventually become autonomous. This type of financial assistance should be given to all victims of conjugal violence, be they single women or single mothers with their children.
Finally, I would like the committee to believe me—please believe me because we work with the victims—that there's a huge potential for victims to go back to an abusive partner or to become homeless if they are left with no recourse, little money and no accessible housing to go to.
We thank the committee for hearing us. Thank you very much.
I should point out that I can answer questions in French.
I spoke only English because I was nervous and because my time was limited.