Status of Women Committee on June 15th, 2023

[Veronica Brown]

Go for it, Nicole.

[Nicole White]

I know Veronica has done a lot more in regard to pain care and sending hot water bottles and that type of thing, so there's access to those basic pieces that we sometimes take for granted. We absolutely hear from folks that it is a limiting factor.

I want to answer some of the other questions that have gone on in the room, but I want to throw it to Veronica at this point.

[Veronica Brown]

In our research study, we asked about access to pain relief, because that is something we would like to know about. Not only are menstruators missing school, work and exercise because of a lack of access; this could also be because of lack of access to pain relief.

After a couple of years of doing this work, we got a request for some pain relief, so we send up hot water bottles and heating pads. Microwaveable beanbags are often a bit too heavy.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you so much.

We are coming down to the last few minutes before the vote. As I'm looking at this and reading the room, to give you an idea, what I'm going to do is four minutes, four minutes, two minutes and two minutes. We will be closing off at 5:15 so that those who need to vote can go and vote, and then we'll be done for the day, if that's okay.

We will end at 5:15 rather than come back. We'll adjourn at the time the vote starts.

I'll start off with Michelle Ferreri for the first four minutes.

Go ahead, Michelle.

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

Thanks, Ms. Chair.

Thank you all for being here today. I really appreciate your time, insight and the work that you do for a lot of the most vulnerable.

Education would probably be my biggest interest, because I think it's a big piece for kids who maybe don't have access to somebody who can help them or give them that guidance.

I have two questions. I'm curious, from each of you, where education falls in terms of how you reach the people who need it most if you don't even know where they are. Also, how are you each funded? I'm very curious about that.

I will open the floor and let everybody have a chance to answer that.

[Meghan White]

I can start out, if that's okay, because the education piece is so important to me as well.

The most success we've found of the different models that we've tried over the last five years is peer-to-peer, without a doubt. That is gathering young people who are leaders in their community or have an interest in communication in drama or in the arts and who want to use those skills through mentorship from the adults in the organization and then take that back to their own institutions and share the information that way. They are provided with a tremendous amount of literature and training. Then they can go off into their own communities and speak on a peer-to-peer level, young person to young person, to supplement what I will have to say is inadequate puberty education in these systems.

I find that extremely complementary to an alternative of having a bigger conversation about correcting through education.

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

I'm sorry; I'm going to jump in. I'm just going to ask a quick question, because it comes to my mind as you speak.

Are there any apps or social media platforms you're using to reach these young girls? I would think that may be a really useful tool.

[Meghan White]

Yes, definitely. We were using YouTube. They were creating a YouTube channel.

Again, it's excellent because of co-creating skills and leading them. Most of them were between the ages of 12 and 17 creating YouTube so that they can share those channels with other folks. It's just them, informed by research that's been done, talking about periods to other people their age.

YouTube has been a very helpful model for us.

[Hayley Newman-Petryshen]

I'll go ahead quickly about how we're funded.

First of all, we're not really funded. We get zero dollars. We function almost exclusively on in-kind donations from companies and from the community.

A high school recently did a fundraiser for us, and that's the most money we've taken in this year as opposed to government funding, funding from private foundations or anything like that.

We operate purely on in-kind donations.

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

This pilot program of $25 million that's coming from the federal government, will you be able to apply for that? Are you eligible?

[Hayley Newman-Petryshen]

We haven't quite been informed about the eligibility criteria. We are on the eligible list. We don't have registered charity status, but we are a registered non-profit. That's a barrier for a lot of grassroots organizations, because the process to get that status is very expensive.

I can speak a little to education, if that would be helpful.

Education is something that we're expanding our portfolio on right now. I also work with an organization, Free Periods Canada, out in B.C. We're working on a publicly available menstrual health course. We're doing a scoping examination of everything that's happening in each province.

As I've looked through each province's curriculum for sex ed, it kind of stops and starts in grades 4 and 5—understand the process of menstruation, done, end of sentence. They don't understand what level of pain is normal, don't understand what products are available and what they're allowed to use and don't understand that you can talk about your period and your needs.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you so much.

We're going to Jenna Sudds.

Jenna, you have four minutes.

[Jenna Sudds, Liberal, Kanata—Carleton, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair.

Thank you to all of our witnesses for joining us today and the incredible work that you're all doing.

I'd like to start with Moon Time Sisters.

One of the questions I've been asking through the consultations that I've been doing on the menstrual equity fund is: Who are you not able to reach in the services that you're providing? Ultimately it is those people who are hardest to reach who we want to ensure get the support they need.

Veronica or Nicole, whoever would like to answer, who are you not able to reach?

[Nicole White]

Gosh, there are a lot of people we're not currently reaching. I think a lot of our work is by word of mouth, through presentations and through partnerships with labour. We absolutely need to do deeper work to get the word out there that we're here to support people. There are tons of communities we have not sent product to. Obviously, we are hoping that funding will come our way to sort of build our capacity to strengthen our reach.

Veronica.

[Veronica Brown]

One limitation that we really have is communities that do not have access to Internet. We found this when we were doing our survey, because it was an online survey. That is a limitation of our data, but it is also a limitation of our request forms. When a community is requesting items, they have to do it online. For those communities that don't have access to Internet, this is a very huge barrier. Sometimes people have community members who work in remote communities who do request forms for those communities that they work in.

Going into smaller remote communities that do not have access to stores, food banks, dollar stores, the Red Cross, and things like that.... We are definitely really trying to moving into those communities. Working with the Nunavut government, we've partnered with them in their sexual health program as well as their education ministry to help pinpoint some of those smaller communities that have zero access and Internet.

We all talk about Internet. It's a wonderful thing, but it is definitely a privilege in this country. It's something that we're working on.

[Nicole White]

To add on to it, one of the great things we've been able to do is to reach out to a number of band offices and a number of education departments so they can actually disseminate the product to whatever schools need it.

[Jenna Sudds, Liberal, Kanata—Carleton, ON]

That's incredible. Thank you very much.

I'll pose the same question to Monthly Dignity.

[Clara Bolster-Foucault]

The reality is that, with programs like ours and with many other programs that rely on distribution, we don't actually know who we're not reaching. We infer who those people are based on who we have to turn away because we don't have the capacity to say yes, and based on who we think aren't able to reach out to us in the first place. In our case, the reality is these are probably the most vulnerable or the most underserved communities. Since the size of our organization is quite small at the moment, we are limited to the Montreal region, so we're unable to reach any rural or remote communities, or even to reach people in the Montreal suburbs who are a bit farther out. That's one big element.

The other population is those who aren't accessing services because they aren't able to. We rely on these community partnerships to serve clients who access their services, and if people aren't able to access those services because of whatever reason, then there's no way we're going to be able to reach those folks.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

You have about 15 seconds left.

[Jenna Sudds, Liberal, Kanata—Carleton, ON]

It's much appreciated. I think that's one of the challenges many organizations have repeated in the consultations for the menstrual equity fund. I appreciate it's a hard nut to crack, but it's an important one.

I'll leave it at that. Thank you very much for all the work you're doing.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

We vote in four minutes and five seconds.

We will go for two minutes to Andréanne Larouche.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Once again, I want to thank the witnesses who have travelled here today and the other witnesses who are also online.

With regard to next steps, I also want to think about parallel issues that could feed into our current study.

For example, Ms. Emond, we know that people want to abolish plastic. That could come with some financial support for businesses that, like yours, work on menstrual products that are reusable or plastic-free.

In your case, Ms. Bolster-Foucault and Ms. Newman-Petryshen, I know you work extensively with volunteers. You say your organization currently doesn't consist solely of volunteers. Could various types of assistance and aid increase recognition of the unseen work done by volunteers? That might be helpful. The United Way, it's community organizations and the food banks that offer its products could provide their assistance.

We could also simply look into the "pink tax" issue, as a result of which every product for women costs more because it's pink. That has its consequences. We're straying beyond the scope of our study on menstrual products, but that's another reality that has an impact on women's insecurity.

Would each of you please give a brief response? We have less than a minute remaining.

[Lara Emond]

I have an additional comment, if I may.

Plastic in products should absolutely be abolished. We see businesses that say they have bioplastic applicators. However, in certain cases, when you look carefully and read the fine print on the product, you discover that a percentage of the product consists of bioplastic. Bioplastic is a mixture of plastics. Plastic essentially isn't really biodegradable, a fact that then represents a real issue with our blue gold in Canada.

[Clara Bolster-Foucault]

I'd like to make a brief comment.

You've raised a really important point. Menstruation is related to many other things, including women's rights and the environment. That creates opportunities to address the the environmental aspect, for example. There are opportunities and perhaps subsidies—

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you so much.

We're now going to Bonita, who's online.

Bonita, you have the final two minutes.