Evidence of meeting #68 for Status of Women in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was million.
A video is available from Parliament.
5:30 p.m.
NDP
Leah Gazan NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
Please don't apologize for swearing; I swear frequently. I know it's shocking to the committee, but I do swear the F-bomb quite frequently.
5:30 p.m.
Conservative
5:30 p.m.
NDP
Leah Gazan NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
I'm glad that you shared that. First of all, I want to acknowledge your space as a space of frustration. I feel that quite often in this place, especially coming from the community that I come from.
That's what I've been really pushing in this committee: When we conflate sex work, sex trafficking and child sexual exploitation, nobody is looked after. It actually places people at risk and it totally washes away story, place and experience. I want to honour you for that, and I think you said it better than I ever have, ever, in this committee.
I want to ask about one of your programs. I looked on your website and I want to ask about the fact that you use horses to heal trauma.
5:30 p.m.
NDP
Leah Gazan NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
Can you talk briefly about it? I want to ask another question, and I have questions for Bonnie as well.
5:30 p.m.
Chief Executive Director, Courage for Freedom
We actually started these programs because we had no responses in our chair's community to address this in 2018. We had already worked in the trauma area, seeing over 5,000 children and youth through our programs. The hole in the bucket was getting bigger when it came to human trafficking.
We went on a journey and visited Wounded Warriors on the west coast and got their protocols. We did our research with Dr. Jacqui Linder and.... I have too many cohorts and colleagues to list. They are the whole reason that we are successful with helping a survivor self-direct to find their own agency in order to make decisions about what they want to do—to either exit or keep themselves safe.
We don't empower anybody. We assess people through the horses because they're the number one trauma resolver. It's funny to see a girl who's been in intercity trafficking walk down the driveway to our barn. She has her nails and hair and she says, “Oh, they stink.” Then we watch the horses respond and tell the girl that she's safe enough in the community. They hold space and help her ground, even if it's for two minutes. We know from the psychology behind this that it allows her neural pathways to start to reconnect through the frontal lobe and the cerebral cortex so that she will have the capacity to mitigate her own risk in the future.
5:30 p.m.
NDP
Leah Gazan NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
Can you send more information about that to the committee? I'm just so interested.
5:30 p.m.
Chief Executive Director, Courage for Freedom
I have tons.
You can look up Dr. Jacqui Linder as well, because she also supports this.
5:30 p.m.
NDP
Leah Gazan NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
I have limited time and important questions for you again.
I have a question for Bonnie, picking up on what you said.
You spoke about agency, Madam Brayton. I want to read from—
5:30 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, DisAbled Women's Network of Canada
Just call me Bonnie, Leah.
5:30 p.m.
NDP
Leah Gazan NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
I'll call you Bonnie.
I'm going to read from your Parliament brief. You say, “Multiple factors, rooted in systemic ableism and other forms of oppression, make girls, women, and gender diverse people with disabilities, especially those from historically marginalized groups (i.e., racialized, Indigenous, 2LGBTQ+, and those living in poverty)” more at risk.
We talk about agency, but in society not everybody's given the same agency. I would put ableism within that category. It's that members in the disability community, through an ableist lens, are not given agency. How does that impact safety?
5:30 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, DisAbled Women's Network of Canada
It's almost a redundant question, even from your perspective, Leah, because that's exactly the point. In terms of agency and in terms of lots of the situations that put women with disabilities at risk regarding agency, I think that's important to understand.
Again, a human rights framework is an equity framework. It needs to understand that what each woman needs to be safe is different.
When I was speaking on the committee to your colleague from Quebec about the use of the words une femme en situation handicap, I think it comes right back to that, really. The French word for a disabled woman is a woman who is disabled by her environment, essentially. I really want to make that point. Systemic ableism is about all of the things we aren't giving to women and girls with disabilities for them to have agency. We live in an ableist society.
5:35 p.m.
NDP
Leah Gazan NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
Yes, we do, 100%.
I have one last question that I'm going to ask to both of you.
We spoke about funding. I've been pushing hard. We have a national violence prevention strategy, but funding is not going out the door. The groups who are made most vulnerable by systems, as I call it, don't get the money.
Your organization, in terms of survivor voices, is survivor-led. That's something that came out in the national inquiry.
You mentioned, Bonnie, about your group. How is the lack of funding impacting the safety of women in the community?
It will have to be very quick—Madam Franklin, and then Bonnie.
5:35 p.m.
Chief Executive Director, Courage for Freedom
It means that sometimes we have to say no—and I don't. Sometimes I put myself at risk.
5:35 p.m.
Chief Executive Director, Courage for Freedom
It's travel, accessing girls, making sure their needs are met when they can't fill out applications or the funding has run out for something.
I think the committee needs to take a look at how funding is allocated. If it's only through the law enforcement lens or through those victim lenses, then it's very difficult to deliver. It doesn't go to the survivor. It actually is funded by the agency. Sometimes that money is being spent and the survivor doesn't even know it, and then is told there's no more money for their mental health.
5:35 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Karen Vecchio
Leah, with your permission, I'm taking the two minutes that you're getting later and I'm adding them to these two minutes, if that's okay.
5:35 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, DisAbled Women's Network of Canada
There are a couple of things.
I want to say something that I'm sure all of you are thinking about, which is, of course, that one of the most important things that this government can do is pass the national disability benefit to lift as many women and girls as possible out of poverty.
It's the national disability benefit, because when you're talking about funding and poverty and all of the things that lead us to a place where somebody becomes exploited or becomes trafficked, whether it's sex trafficking or labour trafficking—whatever type of trafficking it is—it is about that same magic word. It's the “agency” word.
I was going to say that in terms of funding to address this from a disability or an intersectional perspective, it is absolutely about starting to think, again, in terms of the national action plan. There is a way we have to dismantle it, and it's not going to happen overnight. We have to think about this across the life-course, because we know that it starts with girls in the case of girls with disabilities.
As I said, in terms of the funding question, Leah, it's a complex one because it's a complex problem.
May 18th, 2023 / 5:35 p.m.
NDP
Leah Gazan NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
I have a solution. I have a bill, Bill C-223, to put in place a guaranteed livable basic income. When we're talking about agency, I'll be ramping up my campaign, FYI.
Do you think a guaranteed livable basic income is important if we're really going to deal with the issue of human trafficking head-on? It's a yes-or-no answer.
5:35 p.m.
Chief Executive Director, Courage for Freedom
Yes, it's one of the things in my brief.
5:35 p.m.
NDP
Leah Gazan NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
Okay, so it's yes from Madame Franklin.
Madame Peters, is it a yes or a no?
5:35 p.m.
Educator, As an Individual
I'm going to say no, because you need to deal with the demand of the sex buyers.