Status of Women Committee on Feb. 15th, 2022

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

Are there stats?

[Dr. Katreena Scott]

Oh, yes.

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

If you could table those stats with the committee, that would be spectacular.

I'll go to a totally different space here. In the missing and murdered indigenous women calls to justice, 5.24 gives the recommendation to “call upon the federal government to amend data collection and intake-screening processes to gather distinctions-based and intersectional data”. I'm wondering what StatsCan has done to implement this call to justice, if anything.

[Lucie Léonard]

I can respond to this one.

We're working very closely with CIRNAC in terms of the federal pathway in response to the national inquiry. There are different calls for justice, as was mentioned, as part of this committee. We've tackled one in particular in terms of moving forward with the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police to have more consistent reporting mechanisms and information on missing indigenous women and girls, 2SLGBTQQIA people and other missing persons. This was one of the calls to justice.

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

Thank you. I appreciate that. But I am asking about that specific call to justice. Has anything been done by StatsCan to increase that intersectional lens on data collection? If you don't have the answer at the tip of your fingers, you're more than welcome to table an answer with the committee.

[Lucie Léonard]

Yes, we will table more information. As you know, we do have a specialized centre on indigenous statistics. We're doing some work.

I don't know if Kathy wants to comment on that.

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

Thank you.

I would like to share the rest of my time with Madame Vien.

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

I would like to thank all our guests for being here today.

Good afternoon, colleagues.

I have some questions for Ms. Scott.

Ms. Scott, is there help for violent men and boys in Canada?

Do rehabilitation programs work? Maybe we would have an answer if we had statistics about the number of repeat offenders.

And is a child who was a victim of violence or witnessed violence in their family at greater risk of becoming a victim or aggressor?

[Dr. Katreena Scott]

Let me take those in reverse order.

Absolutely, adversity in childhood, including all forms of violence, losing a parent, or having a parent who has a major mental health problem or a substance use problem or who's incarcerated, is associated with later victimization for women and perpetration for men. It's both for both, but more often it's perpetration for men and victimization for women.

In terms of relapse, yes, we do have information. We don't have as much information as I think we need. We know that when abuse is identified, somewhere between one-third and two-thirds of men go on to not engage in any subsequent abusive behaviour. We know that about one in five engages in subsequent abusive behaviour, often very quickly, often more severely, and often within the first six months.

We know that a range of change does happen. Yes, change does happen, but there are people for whom that change doesn't happen. It's been recognized that their engagement with systems afterwards—that could be any range of systems—predicts less reassault.

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

Ms. Scott, to conclude, can you tell us quickly whether we have enough services for violent men and boys in Canada?

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Mrs. Vien, excuse me—

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

Pardon me, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

I'm sorry. I'm going to have to interrupt because we are past the five minutes. I am sorry about your time.

On the question that Dominique just asked, if there is a possibility of any written reports coming in on that, that would be greatly appreciated.

I will now pass the floor over to Anita.

Anita, you have five minutes.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

My first question is for you, Ms. Léonard, although if others wish to answer, they should please go ahead. It's pulling on something you said, and I want to make sure I heard it correctly. Very often, for obvious reasons, we look at men as the aggressors or the perpetrators, but in your testimony you said that 17% of men have faced physical assault at some point in their lifetime.

My question is twofold. First of all, in their lifetime, what would be the breakdown of how many of them would have faced that in childhood, perhaps, or in a conjugal relationship? The other thing I'm wondering about is this: Since so much of it is self-reported or reported to police, is it possible there could be an under-reporting as well because of social norms and stigma? The perception of men and strength may be something that would cause many men not to be reporting to police or in the surveys that you're doing.

Thank you.

[Kathy AuCoin]

Madam Chair, that's a great question.

Seventeen per cent of male respondents said that in their lifetime they had experienced some form of intimate partner violence, and that was from the age of 15. You are correct. Many victims of intimate partner violence do not report to the police for a number of reasons: shame, feeling that it won't be taken seriously, concerns about disentangling the financial relationship or children who are involved. In addition, we also know that men are reluctant to turn to police for a multitude of reasons.

Every year we publish a lot of data from police-reported statistics outlining the number of men and women who were victims of intimate partner violence, and we can look at the data from police and determine whether it was a same-sex relationship or an opposite-sex relationship.

We insist on monitoring the impact of intimate partner violence on both sexes, because they're both at risk, although women are at greater risk for more severe forms of violence and, sadly, more lethal violence.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Thank you very much for that answer.

To follow up on that, there would obviously be other groups that would be less inclined to self-report or to report to police, particularly if—and I noted many of the witnesses talked about norms—they're in a group where perhaps something is normalized, violence might be more normalized, and therefore they might not even consider that what is happening to them is violence or abuse. In particular, I'm looking at financial and economic abuse where, particularly depending on age groups, older women but others as well might think that a man controlling their finances is normative and not something that would signal abuse.

Could you talk a little bit about the limitations of self-reporting in terms of data and how to ensure that people understand—I noted that teens were mentioned—what abuse is and what things to look for if something's happening to them so they are able to identify it as abuse in order to be able to report it?

[Kathy AuCoin]

Again, that's a wonderful question.

When we try to measure financial abuse, we ask a series of behavioural questions—rather than simply asking if they think they're a victim of financial abuse, which means the respondent has to label what they've experienced as abuse. In fact, what we say is “controls your income” or “restricts your access to your income”, and when we look at those behaviours combined, then we label it as financial abuse.

Similarly, we do that for physical and sexual assault behaviours. We had 28 different forms of abuse, and when someone checked off “yes”, then we classified them as being a victim. In fact, we believe that if we had simply asked if they thought they were a victim of emotional abuse, they would have probably said no. Again, there are a lot of cultural norms, as you said, and whether they think this is just the norm.... Thinking about child maltreatment, if they grew up in an environment where that was accepted, then—

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

You have 15 seconds, Anita.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

I'm sorry; I wanted to make sure the professors got a chance to answer as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

I'll give 15 seconds to the professors.

Go for it.

[Dr. Katreena Scott]

One thing I would say is that, yes, there are absolutely limits in self-report data. I think it's important that we combine self-report data with information from communities, qualitative information and police report information in all cases. There are some pretty clear trends and findings.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you so much.

We're now going to turn the next five minutes over to Christine.

Christine, you have five minutes.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair. I thought I had two and a half minutes, but if you are giving me five minutes, I will be happy to take them.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Sorry, Christine, I am taking two and a half minutes back. Yes, you get two and a half minutes.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you.

I would like to go back to the limits of self-reporting too. One limit that comes to mind is the fear of getting caught when you are on a data capture site.

I would first like to know whether there are ways to encourage self-reporting. For example, if you are filling out a survey on a Statistics Canada website, would it be possible for the page not to appear in your search history? Would it be possible that after you have had to close the page quickly, another one opens automatically, for example, a page showing the weather forecast? I know that happens for some reporting sites.

I would also like to know whether there is a way of following up confidentially, so that the person who fills out the survey can then go and get the necessary resources, in all kinds of assault cases.