Ms. Tiffany Pyoli York at the Status of Women Committee

Every day in the victim services office in Sudbury, we get a call for a case of intimate partner violence, domestic violence or human trafficking. Often either the shelter beds are full, or a human trafficking victim doesn't fit their mandate or their policies and procedures, or they are too high-risk—they cause an increase in security risk for other people staying in the shelter. What happens is that our victims and survivors of human trafficking are going to a low-barrier shelter instead of a domestic violence or intimate partner violence or human trafficking shelter, and that's only going to get worse.