Status of Women Committee on May 18th, 2023

[Bonnie Brayton]

I'm going to say yes. I'm not going to say it as a simple answer, but the answer would be yes. We need that first.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thanks very much.

We're now going to go on to our next round. I'm going to start off with Michelle Ferreri.

It's going to be four minutes, four minutes and then two minutes for Andréanne. Leah, I've given you your extra minutes.

Michelle, you have four minutes.

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

Thanks a lot, Madam Chair.

Thanks a lot, ladies, for being here today and for bringing your passion and your experience—and a bit of levity to laugh, because this is just so heavy. It's just such heavy topic, and I'm glad you brought up vicarious trauma, because it's a very real thing.

It's nice to hear you speak about equine therapy. We have an amazing place in my riding of Peterborough called The Mane Intent. I had to experience it, and it is powerful. It is powerful when we look at holistic treatment methods and helping a lot of survivors work through their crises and getting back to who they were.

This book, Cathy, is pretty great. I've had the opportunity to read a lot of it in a short amount of time. It's a great read. It's succinct, and I like how you've done it.

One of the things I'm really hyperfocused on is youth intervention and prevention—I see you've touched on it in this book—when we look at helping parents understand social media and how to talk to our kids. We've seen great success in some of the education programs. My youngest—I've talked about this before—in grade 8 is being educated, and through his education, it's helping that intervention.

What can you share with the committee about your research and work in terms of the prevention end of things and social media? What do you think we need to do?

In particular, I'm looking for a very specific answer, which is if you think we should change the age of kids on social media.

[Cathy Peters]

Absolutely.

I think the U.S. surgeon general just said that people shouldn't be on the platforms at 15 years of age. He has young children and he's very concerned.

I am a prevention educator. That is the big piece that is missing countrywide. As an educator, I've been working in this space for 45 years. In the last 10 years, really, it's almost turned into full time, and I even get flown into indigenous communities to educate and to educate parents on how to keep their children safe, but I try to keep everything very simple.

I say there are five points. Let's raise awareness—that's big—and then there's prevention education, intervention, active collaboration—let's all collaborate together—and reducing the demand.

I am very focused on the demand. I don't want to miss that piece. It is the buyers who are causing this problem and who perpetuate sexual exploitation.

The number one question I ask when I present.... I've been presenting to a lot of high schools lately. The number one question they ask is, “What is a healthy relationship?”

They're hooked on pornography. They hate it and they know it's not what a healthy relationship is, but that's where they're going for their sex education, so I talk about what love looks like, and they have no clue. I will hear boys, in particular, saying, “Ms. Peters, we're hooked on porn. We don't know what a healthy relationship looks like.” That is really a key piece when I'm presenting to high schools.

With the indigenous communities, it's similar. They're just not getting anything to counter the pornography. We have such a hypersexualized, toxic environment online, and we really need education in that space.

I just met with Senator Miville-Dechêne, and she has the age verification in process for access to porn.

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

Yes, it's a powerful bill.

It's a difficult conversation, and I don't think I have the amount of time I need. Leah wants 30 minutes and I want about two hours, to be honest with you, to do—

[Kelly Tallon Franklin]

I think you also need to loop into your conversation the new sexy, AI, because that is the most concerning thing. After being at the United Nations in March and working through this with UN Women, I think that Ontario has a great strategy. There is education across the board for this, but not one single one of the 500 survivors I've worked with who actually knew what this was was able to keep themselves safe. I believe in peer education and adult education, concurrent to what my colleague Cathy is working on.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you so much. I'm sorry; you're done on that.

I'll pass it over to Anita for four minutes.

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

Thank you very much.

I'd like to start with Ms. Brayton.

There's some good news. We just got word that Bill C-22, the national disability benefit, passed the Senate today. You mentioned that in your testimony, so I'm pleased to have seen in the middle of this committee meeting that it was posted.

I want to say to Ms. Brayton that I am very happy you are here speaking to this committee because of everything you described about women and girls with disabilities being invisible, and particularly that those who are intersectional with disabilities being invisible. You're the first one who's testified before this committee who has specifically talked about that. I'm very pleased you're here.

We know what the problems are, and.... I'll give you a few minutes, and then I do have another question. Can you tell us really quickly what the solutions are? When we're doing our recommendations as a committee, what should we be recommending?

[Bonnie Brayton]

I'm going to go to the recommendations that we wrote.

Address the systemic barriers that make women and girls with disabilities and other groups more vulnerable to trafficking: isolation, social exclusion, discrimination, low income, poverty, housing precarity and inadequate access to support services.

Dismantle laws that perpetuate discriminatory law enforcement practices with Black, indigenous and other racial groups.

Establish funding and partnership mechanisms that strengthen community capacity and connect and sustain allies in their collective work to recognize, prevent and address gender-based violence and trafficking.

Integrate an intersectional approach to provincial, territorial and federal inquiries. Of course, a national action plan is a perfect opportunity for us to really work on this with our provincial and territorial partners.

Explicitly name women, girls and gender-diverse people with disabilities, especially those living with intellectual, invisible or mental health conditions as well as those who are racialized or indigenous, as facing a higher risk of trafficking in human trafficking policies.

Collect disaggregated data.

Centre disability and trafficking responsiveness in public education, as many survivors become disabled because of trafficking, and their disability makes them targets to be trafficked.

Commit to an anti-racist, anti-colonial and anti-ableist framework and to meaningful participation of the disability community of civil society working with diverse women and girls with disabilities and our partners.

Connect funding to appropriate, accessible, inclusive, affirming and culturally sensitive trauma-informed supports for survivors of GBV.

Of course, based on what I talked about at the very beginning in terms of the case I discussed, we're not always talking about trafficking for the reasons many other women are trafficked. In the case of women and girls with disabilities who are vulnerable, this is simply somebody taking advantage of an individual, perpetuating that and repeating it. The idea is that, as I said, it starts at childhood and is repeated and repeated.

Again, we have two Supreme Court cases. That is not because there are only two cases but because those are the only two cases that made it to the courts.

Thank you so much, Anita. I really appreciate your giving me some time on the floor.

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

Thank you so much. Those are very good recommendations.

I know there's only a little bit of time left, but I want to ask Ms. Tallon Franklin something.

You mentioned two things that struck me. One was repeating the word “bias” a couple of times. Could you tell us what you mean?

Also—and maybe this might have to be in writing to the committee, because we're very short on time—what funding criteria should there be? I was very moved by what you said about the funding not going to organizations like yours. How would we have to change the criteria in order for that to be solved?

I'll leave which parts to send in writing—

[Kelly Tallon Franklin]

I don't know which one. Those are big conversations.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

You have about 15 seconds to respond here, so....

[Kelly Tallon Franklin]

I think we have to look at all the biases all the way around. They start with misogyny, patriarchy and colonized thinking and how our system is set up to address this. Then we need to look at biases at all levels, from ageism to sexism and racism and all those things in between, and we have to acknowledge them when we're going to come to the table.

I will write about this. There's a lot of information that's already out there that will help support the committee's research.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you so much.

For the final questions, two minutes go to Andréanne Larouche.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Ms. Brayton and Ms. Tallon Franklin, thank you both for your insight.

Ms. Peters, I look forward to reading your book. You said that you recently presented at the Canadian Sexual Exploitation Summit. Did you take anything away from the summit that could be germane to the committee's study, anything that could help us make the right recommendations?

[Cathy Peters]

The French translation stopped, so I didn't hear the question.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Can you ask the question again?

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Ms. Peters, I said that I was going to read your book.

Madam Chair, the interpretation still doesn't seem to be working.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

It must be on your end, because I do have translation.

If you want to check, at the top, does it show “01 English”?

[Cathy Peters]

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Andréanne, could you speak a little bit?

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Can you hear me, Ms. Peters?

[Cathy Peters]

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

That's fantastic. We're good.

Let's go back to your question.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Ms. Peters, I was saying that I was really looking forward to reading your book.

In your submission to the committee, you mention that you presented at the Canadian Sexual Exploitation Summit. Did you take anything away from the summit that should inform the recommendations the committee makes at the end of its study?