Status of Women Committee on March 4th, 2022

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to meeting number eight of the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women.

We are getting started a few seconds late here, but I would like to thank everybody for joining us.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), and the motion adopted on Tuesday, February 4, 2022, the committee will resume its study on intimate partner and domestic violence in Canada.

Given the ongoing pandemic situation and in light of the recommendations from public health authorities, as well as the directive of the Board of Internal Economy on October 19, 2021, to remain healthy and safe the following is recommended for all those attending the meeting in person. Anyone with symptoms, participate on Zoom and please do not attend. Everyone must maintain at least two metres of physical distancing, hopefully as well when they're seated. Everyone must wear a non-medical mask when circulating in the room. It's recommended in the strongest possible terms that members wear their masks at all times, including when seated. Non-medical masks, which provide better clarity over cloth masks, are available in the room.

Everyone present must maintain proper hand hygiene by using the hand sanitizer in the room entrance. Committee rooms are cleaned before and after each meeting, but if you're switching around, if you could wipe your station as well that would be fantastic.

For those participating virtually, I would like to outline a few rules. You may speak in the official language of your choice. Interpretation services are available for this meeting. You have the choice at the bottom of your screen of floor, English or French. If interpretation is lost, please inform me immediately and we'll ensure it is properly restored before resuming the proceedings. Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name. If you're on the video conference, please click on the microphone icon to unmute yourself.

For those in the room, your mike will be controlled by the proceedings and verification officers.

As a reminder, all comments should be addressed through the chair. When speaking please speak slowly and clearly, and when you are not speaking your mike should be on mute.

Before we welcome our witnesses, I would like to provide this trigger warning. We will be discussing experiences related to violence and assault. This may be triggering to our viewers with similar experiences. If you feel distressed or if you need help, please advise the clerk.

I now want to welcome our first panellists. Thank you so much.

We have on our first panel today, from the Canadian Center for Women's Empowerment, Meseret Haileyesus, the executive director. From the Ending Violence Association of Canada, we have Erin Whitmore, the executive director. Finally from the Muslim Resource Centre for Social Support and Integration, we have Yasmin Hussain, the manager of public education and community programs.

For our first round we'll be offering everybody five minutes for their opening comments. When you see me start doing this, please wrap it up. I will try not to cut you off, because I know this is a really important topic, but please try to keep your time within that.

I'm going to pass it over right now to the Canadian Center for Women's Empowerment.

You have five minutes. Go ahead, Meseret.

Meseret, we have a bit of an issue. Your mute button was off, but I could not hear you. What I would like to do, then, as they look at it technically, is to pass it over to the Ending Violence Association of Canada. We'll start with their five minutes first, and then we'll come back to you, Meseret, if that's okay. We'll figure out that difficulty.

I'm going to pass it over to Erin.

Erin, you have five minutes.

[Dr. Erin Whitmore, Executive Director, Ending Violence Association of Canada]

Great. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to the committee for this opportunity to speak with you today. My name is Erin Whitmore. I am the executive director of the Ending Violence Association of Canada.

The Ending Violence Association of Canada is a national organization that brings together provincial and territorial gender-based violence networks and organizations from across the country to identify and implement the systemic changes necessary to end gender-based violence.

We echo the many excellent recommendations already put forward to the committee in previous sessions. We want to underline the emphasis that previous witnesses have put on the need for a whole-of-government, cross-sectoral and cross-jurisdictional approach to addressing gender-based violence. This approach could be accomplished through the national action plan on violence against women and gender-based violence.

As a national organization, the Ending Violence Association of Canada has the opportunity to hear from its member organizations about the similarities and disparities in services and supports across the country. We are particularly attuned to the ways in which these inconsistencies are most deeply felt by those most marginalized. As one of over 40 organizations and advocates that contributed to the development of the road map for the national action plan report, which I understand the committee has already received from Women's Shelters Canada, we want to urge the committee to promote timely action on the resourcing and implementation of the national action plan and the 100 recommendations already set out in this report.

The national action plan is more than a tool for addressing the patchwork of services that exist for survivors. It is a framework that has the potential to tackle the root causes of gender-based violence and lessen the systemic inequalities that allow gender-based violence to happen. In addition, we would like to put forward recommendations in two areas that our organization is particularly focused on.

First of all, we would like to recommend that the committee recognize sexual violence and the expertise of sexual assault support centres as an important area to include within its study on domestic and intimate partner violence. Acts of sexualized violence are one tactic of abuse occurring within the context of dating violence, domestic and intimate partner violence, and family violence.

While 30% of women report experiencing sexual assault in their lifetime, the majority of those will be victimized by someone they know. Sexual assault is the third-most reported type of violence within relationships after physical assault and threatening behaviour, and 20% of women whose intimate partners commit sexual violence against them report experiencing this violence monthly or more within the past 12 months. This is a finding that is particularly troubling given the severity of this violence.

The impacts associated with sexual violence require specialized supports and responses. However, the distinct needs of sexual violence survivors can be overlooked in broader discussions about intimate partner and domestic violence. In addition to the network of shelters and transition houses that provide vital services to survivors across the country, there is also an extensive network of community-based sexual assault centres that provide crisis and long-term counselling, prevention and education. Community-based sexual assault centres are a central part of a support system available to survivors of domestic and intimate partner violence. However, like shelters and transition houses, these organizations have long been facing funding constraints that make it increasingly difficult to meet the demand for services.

For these reasons, we would encourage the committee to include consideration of the distinct needs of sexual violence survivors, and the organizations that support them, as part of its current and future studies.

Secondly, we would like to recommend that the committee include in its study consideration of how to better support the needs of frontline community-based anti-violence workers and volunteers within the gender-based violence sector in Canada. To illustrate this point, we have submitted a report that we produced in collaboration with one of our partner organizations, Anova, that shares the findings of a national survey we conducted in the summer of 2020 involving 376 gender-based violence workers and volunteers.

This report documents the way in which providing frontline support to survivors of violence, particularly during the pandemic, is complex and emotionally difficult work that continues to be largely undervalued. Many of those within the gender-based violence workforce continue to lack access to competitive wages, extended health care benefits, pensions and training opportunities. To be clear, this is not an oversight of organizations employing those within the sector. Rather, the precarity of this work is an extension of the chronic underfunding of the sector and the systemic devaluing of this form of labour that continues to be overwhelmingly performed by women.

Every day that we delay taking action on gender-based violence is another day that we make it even more difficult for those experiencing violence to build the lives, families and communities they want to create. We urge the committee to emphasize this need for immediate action and to stress the importance of moving beyond gathering recommendations and taking concrete steps toward implementing these recommendations.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you very much. We're now going to turn it back over to Meseret.

Do we have everything working there, Meseret?

[Meseret Haileyesus, Executive Director, Canadian Center for Women's Empowerment (CCFWE)]

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Fantastic.

You have five minutes.

[Meseret Haileyesus]

Good afternoon everyone.

My name is Meseret Haileyesus, executive director of the Canadian Center for Women's Empowerment.

I join you from the unceded, unsurrendered territory of the Anishinabe Algonquin nation in Ottawa. I am very honoured and pleased to join the committee this afternoon. Thank you so much for the invitation.

The Canadian Center for Women's Empowerment is the only national non-profit organization dedicated to addressing economic abuse through advocacy, education, economic empowerment and policy change. Our work is informed by up-to-date evidence and lived experience. To create systemic change, we have convened a national task force for women's economic justice. The task force is nationally represented by policy-makers, social service staff, financial institutions and community organizations advocating for policies to aid economic abuse victims.

From this task force, we have heard financial institution staff tell us that they can be the first line of defence for victims. They've told us that their clients open up to them with personal stories. Thus, they can see the first red flags of domestic violence abuse before police, shelters or lawyers are notified. However, financial institutions are missing policies and tools to be able to escalate abuse victims' files and help the victims. Financial institutions have shown their dedication to using innovative tools in combatting elder financial abuse such as flagging and escalating cases. We encourage them to replicate that process for domestic economic abuse survivors as well.

Economic abuse impacts 95% to 99% of domestic violence survivors. Economic abuse is under-reported and a hidden form of abuse often accompanied by physical, sexual and other forms of violence. Women from marginalized groups, including newcomers, refugees and racialized and indigenous women are at a higher risk of economic abuse due to systemic factors. The economic instability caused by this abuse is the top reason women cannot leave abusive relationships and the reason they often go back to the abusive relationship after separation. Survivors struggle to rebuild their lives after abusers have damaged their financial standing because abusers will take out credit card loans in the victim's name and steal and spend their money.

Last year, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the CCFWE conducted a national study on economic abuse in the national capital region. Our study showed that 80% to 95% of participants said that abusers engaged in actions like stealing their money or credit cards, spending their rent money, building up debt in the victim's name and threatening them if they tried to go to work. Twenty-eight per cent of women wanted to leave their partners during COVID-19 but were unable to, and 10% had left and returned due to financial constraints. Out of the list of service providers, participants also ranked financial institutions as the least helpful to them during COVID-19.

We thank the federal government for the recent initiatives in fighting gender-based violence. However, there is considerable work to be done. Our financial and legal systems are not set up to support victims, and acknowledging economic abuse as a form of domestic violence is very critical.

I would like to recommend the federal government to take the following actions to create meaningful change: Amend the federal Divorce Act, the Civil Marriage Act and the Criminal Code to include all forms of economic abuse—which are economic control, economic exploitation and employment sabotage—in the definition of economic violence, and remove delays in granting separation. Develop a financial abuse code of conduct for financial institutions like the United Kingdom has. Amend the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act to support economic abuse survivors. Enhance trauma-informed policies, financial codes of practice and procedures for private stakeholders such as housing, telecommunications, public transport, insurance, electric utilities, credit associations, banks and other stakeholders. Provide funding to develop educational materials. Provide funding to increase the research capacity of organizations studying economic abuse. Revise the metrics to collect economic and financial data through Statistics Canada.

Once again, I would like to thank the committee members for their interest in this important topic and, most importantly, for their leadership in bringing this conversation into public hearings.

I would be very happy to answer your questions.

Thank you so much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you so much.

We're going to now move over to Yasmin.

Yasmin, you have five minutes.

[Yasmin Hussain, Manager, Public Education and Community Programs, Muslim Resource Centre for Social Support and Integration]

Thank you, Madam Chair and committee members, for the privilege and opportunity to be here with you today.

I'm joining you from London, Ontario, the traditional territories of the Anishinabe, Haudenosaunee, Lunaapéewak nations.

As was said, my name is Yasmin Hussain. I work in a small social service organization called the Muslim Resource Centre for Social Support and Integration. MRCSSI was established in 2009 to address intimate partner violence and family violence within the diversity of London's Muslim communities.

We work closely with mainstream organizations, and our work spans the continuum of violence prevention, early intervention and critical intervention in situations of risk. Our work is really focused on providing culturally informed services and programs, and on culturally adapting existing evidence-informed programs such as the caring dads program, the strengthening families program and the healthy relationships plus programs for male and female youth that were developed at the centre for school mental health at Western University.

I'm speaking to approaches to addressing gender-based violence. Our approach is one that is culturally integrative. By that I mean that our work in prevention and intervention considers fully the socio-cultural context and experiences and intersectional vulnerabilities of the individuals and communities we serve, in particular survivors.

While there are a lot of universalities to intimate partner violence and domestic violence, there are also really clear specificities. We need to really pay attention to the social contexts that are varied and diverse. The factors and barriers that create vulnerability and risk for survivors are varied and diverse, as are the protective factors that exist in their lives. Therefore, the work of prevention in responding to intimate partner violence and domestic violence really requires multiple strategies and approaches.

I think my ask to the committee is to really continue to recognize and value the work that organizations like ours, but also many other culturally informed and grassroots organizations, do across the country in so many important ways. I think the work is really coming from a place that is trauma informed but also from a place that's building understanding and working with strengths. In our work specifically we recognize the collectivist context of family structures and community structures, and we take into consideration things like premigration trauma, migration trauma, integration stressors and racism and discrimination. I think all these intersectional vulnerabilities are part of the consideration in this work.

I do believe that prevention is key, and the work of creating safety for survivors and accountability work for those who abuse really starts and exists at the level of community, with direct work with community members, working directly and actively within communities.

Most individuals who experience intimate partner violence or family violence turn first to family members and friends before accessing formalized services, so it's important that we all have the knowledge to understand intimate partner violence, to recognize it, to name it, to recognize warning signs and to know how we can provide peer support.

How do we respond when someone discloses to us that they're being abused, or how do we recognize those warning signs?

One piece of our work is really building on peer leadership. We have a program that works with newcomers, immigrant Muslim women who are Arabic-speaking. Through this 12-week curriculum we really focus on building their knowledge of intimate partner violence and domestic abuse, to be able to name and recognize things, and equip them with capacity to provide peer support, plus provide them with knowledge and skills to sort of navigate the system, to recognize resources and to support any of their friends or loved ones who are in situations of abuse to navigate these systems as well.

My call is just to recognize that the work of addressing intimate partner violence and domestic violence will take working at many levels. It will require the involvement of multiple organizations and many people, and it will require diverse strategies. It's thinking about how we can create safety in various ways and how we can create awareness in various ways. The continued support of agencies dealing with violence against women, sexual assault centres and shelters, as well as work within formal institutions and academic research, are important. Equally important is the work of building in communities, because I think that's where so much about safety starts.

Thank you so much for your time and for the opportunity to speak.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you so much.

We're going to have our first round of questions. Each party will get six minutes, so we'll be going around, and then we'll get to our second round.

To begin we're going to pass the floor over to Dominique Vien.

Dominique, you have six minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Good afternoon, everyone.

Ms. Whitmore, a lot has been said. One of the things you talked about was funding of the shelter network. I think I understood your point. You also talked about the state of mind of the workers in these organizations.

I would like you to come back to that, starting with the state of your network and its funding. As I understand it, shelters are funded based on the mission, but it takes you time to get funded and you're asking for more funding. Obviously, when you spend time looking for funding, it's time you don't spend with the people who need support.

Can you tell us more about this issue?

[Dr. Erin Whitmore]

Thank you very much for that question.

Yes, I was talking about the challenges and issues around funding for shelters and transition houses as well as for community-based sexual assault centres. I would add to that the many other grassroots organizations and networks that are providing support to survivors of gender-based violence across the country.

Funding is one of those challenges we really need to address because we know that supporting survivors is becoming increasingly complex. There are real challenges in accessing supports in some of the other places we may think people would go to for help. We're seeing that people who are accessing supports through shelters, through sexual assault centres and through organizations like the type that Yasmin was speaking about today often have compounding challenges. They often have mental health challenges. They're looking for housing support. They're trying to access income support. Often people working in these organizations are facing the challenge of doing all of that individual counselling support as well as helping them navigate these really complicated systems.

We know that in many ways the work that is performed in these organizations requires really specialized training. It is often very difficult. They're working with people who have had very difficult, traumatic experiences, and they are often their first point of contact. We see, though, that this work is often thought of as just helping work or supporting work. It isn't necessarily given the same sort of recognition in terms of the type of complexity that's involved.

As we found in the study that we submitted to the committee, there's also a large network of volunteers who do this really complicated work. A lot of crisis support lines that operate across the country to provide crisis support to survivors of gender-based violence are staffed by volunteers.

We need funding that is long term, flexible and allows organizations to use funding in a way that works best for them.

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

I'm sorry to interrupt you, but my speaking time is limited.

How can the federal government offer you more support, Ms. Whitmore?

[Dr. Erin Whitmore]

I think the implementation of the national action plan is a really important step in addressing the disparities in funding. A lot of the funding that goes toward these organizations does come from provincial and territorial governments. We recognize that, but there are vast inconsistencies across the country in terms of how provincial and territorial governments administer that funding.

A national action plan at the federal level would help do that.

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

Thank you very much.

Ms. Haileyesus, you talked about financial abuse. I think we don't talk enough about the young girls who are victimized. It often leads them into dark places.

Have you done any research on this? Do you have any data on the situation?

We often imagine a middle-aged woman struggling with this problem, but do you have any data on young girls, since our study today is also looking at intimate relationships between teenagers?

[Meseret Haileyesus]

In terms of the research, unfortunately there is limited data in Canada, not only for young girls but for all community members. Right now, my organization is conducting a national study to identify and see the prevalence. We also want to explore what the services and opportunities are for victims and survivors of economic abuse.

There is a study out, which I shared with you in my statement, that was conducted during COVID-19, but only in Ottawa. Hopefully, we will continue conducting more studies, but we need more resources and support. Of course, we also need some more funding.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you very much.

We're now going to turn to Anita Vandenbeld.

You have six minutes.

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

Thank you very much. I want to thank all of our witnesses, not just for your testimony today but also for the incredibly important work that you do.

I'm going to be directing most of my questions to the Canadian Center for Women's Empowerment. I'm incredibly happy to see you here, Ms. Haileyesus. The work that you've done is incredibly.... It's avant-garde. It is work that really hasn't been documented, although anecdotally a lot of women understand that economic abuse and financial abuse are very much a part of the control and the abusive situation. It's something that needs more research, as you said.

My question to you is a bit cliché. It's “he didn't hit you, did he?” or that you can't see the abuse. That's hard enough when it comes to psychological, emotional and sexual abuse, but when it comes to economic abuse, there are many circumstances where that might seem normalized. He controls the finances, or it might not seem so bad that he's grabbed the credit card to go out shopping. It can happen to very strong women, including women who are employed, who one would think would recognize it. There's an issue in terms of identifying that as a form of abuse.

Why is it so important that we get the data and that we have this national advocacy on economic abuse? It can be stand-alone as well, although as you mentioned, it almost always accompanies other forms of abuse.

Why is it so important that we do this advocacy to ensure that people, women, who are experiencing it and are in that situation will know that it is a form of abuse?

[Meseret Haileyesus]

In terms of data, it is very important to share public policy and for women to understand the issue.

Unfortunately, one of our challenges is that women don't know about financial and economic abuse, because of its nature and complexity. Service care providers don't have a lot of resources to identify and tackle this form of violence. Data is very essential. As I said, we are conducting national research right now. Hopefully, that research will help us.

Beyond that, data helps us develop different screening tools. Right now, my organization is developing and adopting an economic abuse screening tool for lawyers, frontline workers and service providers. I hope this is also very important in our advocacy.

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

You mentioned that there might be particular marginalized groups that might be more prone to this. I'd be interested in knowing which they are, not just in terms of, perhaps, newcomers or others but also in age. I can certainly tell you that, in many families of my parent's generation, it was very normal that the man controlled the finances.

Are there particular groups that you're seeing, at least anecdotally, in the research you've done so far that are particularly vulnerable to this? Does this impact self-reporting? We know, for instance.... Statistics Canada said that racialized women are less likely to face abuse than white women. We know that is almost certainly a case of a lack of self-reporting.

How would that impact communities in which it may be normalized that women don't handle the money?

[Meseret Haileyesus]

In terms of vulnerability, from our experience and from our day-to-day work, Black and indigenous women are highly impacted, especially indigenous women who are aged above 15. That's what we have seen.

Unfortunately, our pension law and our pension system don't help them. As you know, your income support is sometimes not considered as income, especially if you have spousal support. That also affects women in many ways.

In terms of the other aspect you mentioned, it's definitely very intersectional. It affects everyone, regardless of their socio-economic status, education status, race or gender. We definitely need to work and continue moving forward. Hopefully, we will come up with some best practices and also will adopt them from many other countries.

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

You mentioned, of course, that economic abuse makes it very hard for the person to leave the relationship, but you said something briefly about it continuing long after. For instance, physical violence can often end when the person starts their new life, but economic abuse, the credit ratings, high debt loads and those sorts of things, can carry on much longer for women. Can you elaborate a little bit on that?

[Meseret Haileyesus]

Exactly. The nature of this form of abuse is that it continues after separation. It doesn't rely on physical proximity. When they leave women in those abusive situations, perpetrators deliberately hold and control economic resources. Those economic resources could be credit, debt, assets or any kind of property under the spouse's name.

Unfortunately, there is a lack of systems that support survivors in between, so that traps them and then survivors start to struggle to rebuild their lives. As you know, even to simply get an apartment, every landlord wants to check your credit history. Most survivors are not eligible to get an apartment. If they want to access legal services, unfortunately some of them are not eligible because of the joint assets. Even to freeze their assets, they need to hire a lawyer. That's the system out there.

In order to go back to school, definitely you need to have a good credit history, including for OSAP. That's what we have seen. Unfortunately, survivors are not able to go back to school, so they are not able to access housing, the justice system and basic needs. You also can imagine the [Inaudible—Editor] how it's layered.

When you see the continuum, this kind of violence is faced by a woman for more than 25 years. That's the statistics and that's also the research we found.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you so much.

We're now going to move it over for the next six minutes to Andréanne Larouche.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Again, I thank all three witnesses for their testimony. I thank them for taking the time to come and enlighten us today.

I would like to direct my first question to Ms. Haileyesus, from the Canadian Centre for Women's Empowerment.

Ms. Haileyesus, one of the mandates of your organization is to advocate for government recognition of financial abuse; you spoke eloquently about it in your earlier testimony. You also mentioned coercive control, and raising awareness about financial abuse in the context of domestic violence.

Can you tell us more about what you are proposing to the federal government regarding coercive control, which is one of the topics of our study?

[Meseret Haileyesus]

Thank you so much for this important question. We expect the federal government to amend the Divorce Act. That's our advocacy. We presented that, of course, in our petition the last time for the House. Unfortunately, because of the federal election, we were not successful.

The Divorce Act has to be amended to include the three forms of abuse, which are economic control, economic exploitation and employment sabotage. It has to be clearly articulated. From the justice system as well we need to have policies and practices that really help non-profit organizations and support services so that they can address this easily and support women. This is our advocacy.

So far, close to 27 cities across Canada have proclaimed November 26 as Economic Abuse Awareness Day. This year we also had an international campaign to raise awareness, not only for survivors but also for policy-makers, researchers and also any advocates in this field. We'll continue advocating in collaboration with our national task force and also many stakeholders.

This is our advocacy work. Right now we are advocating for financial institutions to develop a financial code of practice to protect survivors. We have a voluntary code of practice for elder financial abuse, so we want to replicate that advocacy and that code of conduct to protect against financial and economic abuse. It's an ongoing process, so we definitely need support from the federal government moving forward.