Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Marie McGregor Pitawanakwat. I serve as chair of the National Indigenous Women's Housing Network and co-chair of the Women's National Housing and Homelessness Network.
I am grateful to be able to provide comments today. I have a presentation. I will try to be as brief as possible with it. It is to the Standing Committee on the Status of Women. It's a brief discussion of the role and capacity of women's shelters and transitional housing. I have five issues to briefly state, a “what will happen” statement if the issues are not addressed and five recommendations to match the issues.
The first issue is the matter of staffing at violence against women shelters. The staffing numbers tell part of the story. For example, there are 3,546 full-time workers, 1,076 part-time workers and 1,682 casual or part-time relief staff at women's shelters and transition homes. The question is this: Are these numbers adequate for the number of clients being served? In addition, some of the staffing and human resources issues facing shelters and transition homes include staff fatigue, high turnover and recruitment challenges.
The second issue has to do with aging infrastructure. A national survey in 2025 asked 618 violence against women shelter staff to participate, and 317 responded. When asked about the condition of buildings and infrastructure, 45% of the respondents indicated that major repairs were needed, with costs of more than $40,000. When asked about minor repairs, survey respondents indicated that 31% of shelter buildings needed minor repairs at a cost of less than $40,000. It was also stated that many buildings were created before accessibility standards were imposed, which required retrofitting to comply with regulations.
The third issue is the housing crisis and deep affordability issues. These are reflected in shelters and transition homes having to turn away survivors after reaching capacity. Survivors are also staying longer in emergency shelters, transition homes and second-stage shelters. This means beds and units are not as available to new survivors as they were formerly, since survivors are staying there longer.
The next issue is fundraising. This one is vital: “The need to raise funds for core operational costs...is nearly universal.” Fundraising is conducted to cover the following: renovations, 71%; technology, 51%; transportation, 50%; office administration, 44%; salaries, 47%; safety and security, 36%; utilities, 31%; and rent or mortgage, 19%. This is from the Hoogendam and Maduakolam study of 2026.
The next issue is what I'd call multi-faceted needs. For instance, emergency shelters and transition homes are working with clients who present multi-faceted needs. Some clients have histories of sexual exploitation, trafficking, forced marriage and family violence. Clients include indigenous women; clients living in rural, remote, northern and isolated communities; immigrant women; 2SLGBTQIA+ individuals; women involved in sex work; and survivors of human trafficking. In addition, technology-facilitated gender-based violence shows up as tracking, hacking and harassment of clients. This work requires increasingly specialized, trauma-informed and culturally safe approaches.
I turn now to what will happen if not enough is done.
The view of clients and shelter workers has to change—