Status of Women Committee on May 26th, 2026

[The Chair, Conservative, Dominique Vien]

I call this meeting to order.

A cordial welcome to meeting number 39 of the House of Commons' Standing Committee on the Status of Women.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the committee on Thursday, April 23, 2026, the committee will begin its study of women's shelters and transitional housing. For the second hour, we will move in camera for consideration of draft reports.

As always, today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the Standing Orders. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application.

I would like to make a few comments for the benefit of members and witnesses. We aren't very strict, but some rules do need to be respected.

Please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. For those participating by video conference, click on the microphone icon to activate your mike, and please mute yourself when you are not speaking.

For those on Zoom, at the bottom of your screen you can select the appropriate channel for interpretation: either floor, English or French. For those in the room, you can use the earpiece and select the desired channel.

If you wish to speak, please raise your hand. For those on Zoom, please use the “raise hand” function.

I would like to remind witnesses that committee members may ask questions in either French or English. If you will need interpretation, please take a moment now to prepare your earpiece and select the listening channel you need in advance in order to take full advantage of the time allotted for questions and answers.

A reminder that all comments should be addressed through the chair.

I'd now like to welcome the witnesses.

From Sagesse Domestic Violence Prevention Society, we have Andrea Silverstone, chief executive officer. From Shelter Movers, we have Marc Hull-Jacquin, founder and chief executive officer.

Hello, sir. You're here, with us.

From Women's Shelters Canada, we have Anuradha Dugal, executive director. Welcome.

We will begin with opening statements, and Ms. Silverstone.

[Juanita Nathan, Liberal, Pickering—Brooklin, ON]

Madam Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Dominique Vien]

Yes.

[Juanita Nathan, Liberal, Pickering—Brooklin, ON]

Before the witnesses proceed, can I please move a motion to appoint a vice-chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Dominique Vien]

Of course.

[Juanita Nathan, Liberal, Pickering—Brooklin, ON]

I would like to nominate Marilyn Gladu as the vice-chair of the committee.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dominique Vien]

I'll give the floor to the clerk.

[The Clerk of the Committee, Tina Miller]

Thank you.

Pursuant to Standing Order 106(2), the first vice-chair must be a member of the government party.

I'm now prepared to receive motions for the first vice-chair.

[Juanita Nathan, Liberal, Pickering—Brooklin, ON]

I would like to nominate Marilyn Gladu for the position of vice-chair.

[The Clerk]

Are there any further motions?

Is it the pleasure of the committee to adopt the motion?

(Motion agreed to)

Thank you. I duly announce Ms. Gladu as first vice-chair of the committee.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dominique Vien]

Congratulations, Ms. Gladu.

I'll pick up where I left off.

Welcome. We will begin with opening statements.

Ms. Silverstone, the floor is yours for five minutes.

[Andrea Silverstone, Chief Executive Officer, Sagesse Domestic Violence Prevention Society]

Thank you so much.

Good morning. My name is Andrea Silverstone. I am the CEO of the Sagesse Domestic Violence Prevention Society, which is an agency that works to disrupt the structures of abuse with individuals, organizations and communities across Saskatchewan and Alberta.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to appear before this committee today to discuss housing and shelters in the context of gender-based violence.

There are many important elements of this issue. However, today, I would like to focus specifically on how the current system is structured to respond to women who are leaving abusive relationships and where I think that structure is failing them. My perspective comes from over 20 years as a social worker, working directly with survivors, as well as from research and practice-based evidence.

At its core, our system currently conflates two distinct experiences for women. These are the need for immediate safety from violence and the need for housing stability after leaving abuse. When those needs are treated as the same, the system becomes misaligned and women don't receive the right support at the right time.

Gender-based violence is not a single, uniform experience. We know some women experience ongoing coercive control and are at high risk of serious harm, while others experience violence that does not involve the same level of coercive control but still results in the need to leave their homes. This distinction is critical for policy because it directly shapes what women actually need in order to be safe and rebuild their lives.

Canadian data highlights a clear gap in how we respond. Only a small proportion of women who experience violence access shelters. At the same time, shelters consistently report that a lack of affordable housing is the primary barrier to women leaving shelters, and approximately one-third of women return to an abusive partner because they have no viable housing alternatives.

For women, this is not just a housing issue. It's a safety issue shaped by economic and structural constraints.

At Sagesse, most of the women we work with don't require emergency shelter, but they do experience profound housing disruption as a direct result of the abuse they experience. This includes many women who appear financially secure but still experience financial control or legal abuse. Leaving an abusive relationship often results in a loss of housing, financial instability and disconnection from their community. For these women, the barrier is not access to safety infrastructure. It's access to housing, stability and supports that allow them to move forward into safety.

There are two clearly different groups of women with very different needs. The first group has acute safety needs. It's a smaller group—probably about 6% to 20%—of women who are fleeing violence and require shelter, confidentiality and intensive supports. The second group experiences what we call displacement-based housing needs. This is made up of the majority of women—about 80% to 90%—and they require rapid access to affordable housing, financial and legal supports and the ability to remain in their communities.

Right now, what we're doing is asking one system, shelters, to serve both of these groups. This has real consequences for women. Women who don't need shelters are being displaced into them because there are no alternatives. Shelters experience overcapacity and longer stays, and women at highest risk may face barriers to accessing safe spaces because they're not available.

This is not just about capacity. It's about a gendered system design issue that limits women's ability to safely leave domestic abuse. Sagesse’s work demonstrates that women benefit most from community-based wraparound supports that allow them to remain connected to their communities when it's safe; that address housing, financial, legal and emotional needs together; and that strengthen informal supports, such as friends, family and community networks. For many women, informal supports are central to their long-term stability and safety.

I'd like to propose four key directions for this committee's consideration.

First, preserve and strengthen shelters as critical, specialized safety infrastructure for women who are at highest risk. Second, develop parallel housing pathways for women leaving abuse who do not require emergency shelter, including rapid rehousing and portable housing benefits. Third, invest in community-based wraparound supports, recognizing the importance of informal and peer-based support systems. Fourth, reduce unnecessary disruption, ensuring that women can remain in their homes and communities whenever it is safe to do so.

Gender-based violence creates a spectrum of different needs for women. Evidence clearly shows that only a minority of women require high-security shelter, while the majority of women require housing and stabilization supports to safely leave the abuse. Treating these needs as interchangeable is overwhelming shelters and limiting women's options. A more differentiated, housing-informed approach will improve stability, safety and outcomes for women across Canada.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dominique Vien]

Thank you very much, Ms. Silverstone. You stayed within your time limit.

Mr. Hull‑Jacquin, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Marc Hull-Jacquin, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Shelter Movers]

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

My name is Marc Hull-Jacquin, and I'm the CEO and founder of Shelter Movers - Transit Secours.

As Canada's only free moving and storage service for survivors fleeing abuse, Shelter Movers is pleased to provide its unique perspective and national scope to inform the committee's work, focusing on the three questions in front of you for your study.

For survivors fleeing gender-based violence, Canada's ongoing housing crisis remains a significant and pervasive barrier to achieving autonomy, security and stability on their journey to a better future. Having completed over 10,000 moves for women and children in crisis, Shelter Movers has observed first-hand how a lack of safe, affordable and supportive housing contributes to the myriad of compounding risks and barriers faced by survivors before, during and after violence occurs.

Notwithstanding survivors' varied and unique experiences, safe and stable housing is consistently highlighted as a primary concern when contemplating whether or not to leave an abuser.

To understand the relationship between safe, stable housing and survivors' varied experiences, we must understand the nuanced, complex and often high-stakes calculation many survivors are forced to make in their decision to leave their abuser. Key factors such as social isolation, financial precarity and repeated psychological or physical trauma create an environment where leaving an abuser often feels entirely overwhelming and utterly unimaginable. For a survivor who manages to overcome these and other serious barriers, not knowing where she and her children will live next leads many survivors to conclude that enduring further abuse in the home is preferable to leaving.

Key to many abusive and coercive narratives are two combined messages: that the world is a dangerous place where no one can be trusted, and that the survivor is incapable of succeeding on her own. Safe, stable housing and help to collect and retain one's belongings present survivors with a positive empowering counter-narrative that can often make the difference between leaving and staying in an abusive relationship.

As we know, the data reveals that on average, survivors return to the abusive relationship seven times. By the time many survivors decide to flee, the abuser has taken control of the family finances, social relationships and often the survivor's sense of autonomy and self-worth.

Many of Shelter Movers' clients will have left their abuser at least once. Each time the survivor returns, the notion of leaving feels less and less logistically, financially and emotionally achievable. As the survivor's dependency and isolation deepen, the frequency and severity of violence also tends to increase. As housing costs and living expenses increase, each departure becomes increasingly expensive and out of reach.

Emergency women's shelters and transition homes historically have played a very central role in Canada's social safety net. Shelters and transition homes staff face an enormous pressure to continually innovate to meet the increasingly diverse needs of survivors, and they strive to be as multi-faceted in their operational offerings and capacity as the vastly diverse communities they serve.

In working closely with hundreds of shelters and transition homes across the country over the past 10 years, Shelter Movers has observed the many ways shelters strive to adapt and serve the needs of local communities in crisis with varying degrees of success despite incredible efforts.

Shelter Movers views the ever-increasing financial and administrative demands on shelters and transition homes as unsustainable and untenable given the broad ecosystem of services currently supporting individuals and families experiencing abuse. For too long, shelters and transition homes have borne the burden of attempting to be all things to all survivors. Shelter Movers has observed that, rather than focusing on areas of expertise to maximize effectiveness and impact, shelters and transition homes tend to favour offering a wide range of services despite reduced capacity.

A survivor-centred approach would contrast the needs and priorities of survivor subgroups in a community against the available services in that area. This method focuses on a complete, holistic and community-specific system of care. A survivor service ecosystem that typically comprises over 30 individual organizations is a way of spreading out the responsibility and burden on shelters and transition homes to allow organizations like Shelter Movers to do what they do best in a nuanced, comprehensive and compassionate way.

With better resourcing and coordination of organizations operating within this survivor service ecosystem, including shelters and transition homes, we stand a better chance of generating significantly better outcomes for survivors fleeing abuse, while allowing shelters and transition homes to focus on their primary areas of expertise, depending on their particular community's needs.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dominique Vien]

Thank you very much, Mr. Hull‑Jacquin.

Ms. Dugal, the floor is yours for five minutes.

[Anuradha Dugal, Executive Director, Women's Shelters Canada]

I'll read my remarks in English, but I can answer questions in French.

Good morning, Madam Chair and honourable committee members. Thank you for the invitation.

My name is Anuradha Dugal. I'm executive director of Women's Shelters Canada, Hébergement femmes Canada, bringing together 16 provincial and territorial shelter organizations and supporting over 600 shelters across the country for women, children and gender-diverse people fleeing violence.

We will submit a written brief, including our latest national report published in March, authored by Dr. Robyn Hoogendam and Chika Maduakolam, “Sheltering Under Pressure: Frontline Realities of Canada's Violence Against Women Shelters and Transition Houses”, which forms the basis of my remarks.

The main takeaway and the focus of my message is that VAW shelters across Canada are doing more than ever with less and less. Without sustained funding, infrastructure investment and housing solutions, shelters' capacity to support survivors is being stretched.

Rising violence and the housing crisis keep survivors trapped without safe options. In a 2024 report, WSC found that 97% of shelter survey respondents indicated that over the preceding 12 months, it had become harder and harder to support survivors in finding housing. This housing crisis has led to increasingly high turnaway rates. The lack of affordable housing means that shelters help fewer women because of the bottleneck effect of women staying longer in shelter because there's nowhere to go. The high turnaway rates increase the risk of femicide and other long-term harms of returning to an abuser because there is nowhere else to go.

When the system is working with sufficient supports and capacity, shelters and transition houses function as they were meant to, as pathways to safe and affordable housing. In the absence of these options, both emergency and second-stage shelters are extending their length-of-stay policies.

WSC is also running a program that supports new shelter builds as unmet demand leads shelters to consider building new spaces for survivors to live and heal in safety.

There are clear links between housing insecurity, poverty and gender-based violence. Those in shelter are only a small portion of survivors in need. Those who can go elsewhere, such as to family or friends, generally do. Shelters are for those who cannot go anywhere else or who are at increased risk of post-separation violence. Women don't need to move into a shelter to access supports: They can use outreach services for all kinds of services like safety planning, counselling, service navigation and other community organizations.

Poverty and income insecurity are major factors for survivors in shelters. Violence is both a driver of poverty and housing insecurity and a result of being unhoused. Employment can be a protective factor for survivors, as it often offers independence, confidence and social support. Too often, violence follows survivors to work, and employers make the mistake of thinking the effects of violence are other kinds of performance and work issues. You can learn more about this on our website, referher.ca.

Finally, capacity and accessibility of women's shelters across Canada to support vulnerable women and those fleeing violence is at risk. Over half of the surveyed organizations in our newest publication report chronic shortfalls in core operational funding, reflecting stagnant or insufficient government and core funding streams that have not kept pace, especially with rising costs.

Shelters have limited capacity to offer dedicated supports, especially to meet intersectional needs of survivors. In particular, these are limited for Black survivors, as well as two-spirit, trans, gender-diverse, gender-fluid and intersex survivors and survivors with disabilities. Fifty-eight per cent of shelters offer targeted, culturally relevant programming, but these are often under-resourced and cannot fully meet the demand.

The shelter workforce is large, specialized and under intense strain. Turnover, burnout, low pay and the emotional toll of the work remain pervasive.

Our report highlights six recommendations, of which I will underline three today.

Shelters need sustained capital investment in infrastructure.

Survivors need access to affordable—

[The Chair, Conservative, Dominique Vien]

Thank you very much, Ms. Dugal.

[Anuradha Dugal]

May I just finish presenting the two recommendations?

[The Chair, Conservative, Dominique Vien]

Respectfully, to make sure the meeting goes smoothly, I have to refuse. Otherwise, we'll be short on time. I know my colleagues are generous. They'll likely give you an opportunity to finish your thought.

[Anuradha Dugal]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dominique Vien]

We'll now begin with questions.

Ms. Cody, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Connie Cody, Conservative, Cambridge, ON]

Thank you.

Through you, Chair, thank you to all the witnesses who came today to speak on the important issue of shelter systems.

I want to address my question to Andrea Silverstone.

Senior women are particularly vulnerable to coercion, control and exploitation, but barriers prevent them from accessing shelters. This abuse can come from family members and caregivers, not intimate partners.

In the government's Bill C-16, the protecting victims act, the definition of coercive control is limited to intimate partners. Should the definition of coercive control be expanded to persons of trust to cover all types of coercion to better support seniors and improve their care and shelter?

[Andrea Silverstone]

My answer is yes, absolutely.

One of the recommendations that Sagesse made, which I shared when I was able to testify in front of the justice committee, was how that piece of legislation should extend to people who have relationships of dependency and trust. It needs to include seniors as well as many other groups that are experiencing coercive control but not necessarily in intimate partner relationships.

[Connie Cody, Conservative, Cambridge, ON]

Thank you.

We know that seniors and elderly people are more likely to struggle with mobility issues. Amid the affordability crisis, more seniors are being pushed into the shelter system.

In your opinion, would you say that the shelter system is equipped to accommodate the unique mobility needs of seniors?

[Andrea Silverstone]

I would suggest that most are not.

I think that one question I would ask is whether most seniors require sheltering support because of extreme violence or they require sheltering support because of housing. If it's because of a housing issue, then we should be looking at a different solution that accommodates their specific needs as seniors and considers the long-term effects when seniors move out of independent housing and into some sort of assisted housing, which often becomes a permanent situation. What happens next?

I think that we have to offer specialized services that respond to the specific needs of that group of individuals.