Status of Women Committee on June 2nd, 2026

[Erin Lee]

I think that's a really great idea. I think the function of that really comes down to how the courts navigate that and what the courts will find in terms of offering fines. The Supreme Court decision will also help us look at how we navigate that, especially with aging women who are in situations.

I think we do have to think about the realities of how we get upstream and how those programs, whether they're partner assault response programs or men's programs, can enforce the notion of their contributing to the cause.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dominique Vien]

You show great discipline. Thank you very much.

Ms. Nguyen, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Chi Nguyen, Liberal, Spadina—Harbourfront, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair.

Thank you very much to the witnesses for joining us today for this very important study.

Ms. Champagne, obviously the provinces and the municipalities and regions have a very important role in delivering shelter services. I understand that there has been a round of cutbacks in Alberta and that this is something you've noted as an association. Could you talk a little bit more about how that might impact rural communities and the service offerings there?

[Catherine Champagne]

Yes, 100%. The Alberta government did cut funding to some of our rural shelters. There was an increase for additional shelters. I want to be very clear that there were not straight cuts across the board. They did increase some of our other shelters in bigger centres, but I think we need to look at the supports we're providing. If we're pulling those out, what are the ancillary effects? Shelters aren't just women's shelters. They're the hubs of so many communities. They become homeless shelters. They become crisis locations. They become where people meet and where people go for any type of refuge.

I think when we look at cutting funding or look at how we can support, we need to look at the full role of a women's shelter. It is not to support just domestic violence. There are outreach workers. There are supports to their communities. Some women don't even come into shelters. I think as a community, provincially or even federally, when we're looking at funding as a whole, the ripple effect of cutting back is more than just closed beds.

[Chi Nguyen, Liberal, Spadina—Harbourfront, ON]

Ms. Lee, you started to talk a little bit about other forms of justice, such as transformative justice. Could you share a little bit about what that might look like, how we might consider that and how that might address some of the pain points we're seeing in our society?

[Erin Lee]

I appreciate the question. I think at this time and at this juncture, in terms of looking at violence prevention and healing pathways, we need to move outside the traditional criminal system. As I think my colleague said, the system is failing. It's failing victims. Victims are being retraumatized. The notion of restorative and transformative justice allows a victim an empowering position in that process. It allows them to talk about what it is they want. Most victims will tell you that what they want is for that never to happen to anybody else.

The criminal system does not engage in that. We need to be talking about how we work across systems and how we offer various pathways and various realities looking at all the safeguards, looking at coercive control and looking at all those realities, but also really surrounding the victim with the opportunity to face accountability. The criminal system doesn't really give that notion of accountability. How do we shift that? How do we intersect systems and create pathways so that women can actually find the healing they so deserve? How do we work upstream with perpetrators and look at how they can hold themselves accountable, make amends and perhaps make different choices so that we don't have to stay in the wrong systems all the time?

[Chi Nguyen, Liberal, Spadina—Harbourfront, ON]

I have a systems question for both of you now. Given that this issue has women intersecting with all kinds of departments, such as from a health perspective, etc., how do we better understand the pathways and align these systems so that they're more focused on the experience of survivors?

[Catherine Champagne]

I think my colleague has a suggestion, so I'll let her go ahead.

[Erin Lee]

I think it's important to invest in an IPV and GBV commission. I think it's important for the government to be informed by survivors and informed by experts who are doing the work in the grassroots communities. I think it's important to look at the recommendations that come from various places and let that inform how we move forward. We need to work alongside each other more.

[Catherine Champagne]

I would add that the survivor lens is the most important part there. It's not just at a bureaucrat level. It's at a survivor level too.

[Chi Nguyen, Liberal, Spadina—Harbourfront, ON]

Very quickly, are there any last best practices that we need to be thinking about adopting and putting into our reports and recommendations as they go forward?

[Erin Lee]

If you're looking at second-stage or beyond second-stage housing and at investing in that area, I think it is important to go into communities and find the models that involve communities, municipal government and provincial and federal governments to build sanctuaries that will work better for senior women and for women along the spectrum.

[Catherine Champagne]

I would agree. Really quickly, for example, in Red Deer, Alberta, we have a spot where a woman goes from shelter to transitional housing to long-term housing in the same building. She's fully supported throughout. It's a beautiful building and a beautiful model.

I think it's about looking at what's working and about fewer barriers, less retelling of stories and more support for those survivors.

[Erin Lee]

I also want to say that the model of working intergenerationally is a model that we really should be considering and investing in. If we have women from across the age spectrum and they can deliver each other support and give each other lessons, I think that would be a fantastic opportunity that we would love to explore.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dominique Vien]

My sincere thanks.

Ms. Larouche, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Ms. Lee and Ms. Champagne, thank you again for your testimony. You provide an equally interesting perspective from more rural communities. It's a reality faced by women in remote areas.

I will now return to the funding for the National Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence, which is set to expire. From what you've said, we really need to invest to create more shelters and beds.

If this funding is not renewed, what concrete impacts might that have?

[Catherine Champagne]

I think it's sustainability. Sustainability for those shelters, for those communities and for those survivors is the first thing that jumps out at me.

If there's not a reinvestment, they don't have that familiarity of where to go and what supports have been provided before. We talk a lot about how in this world it might not be today that a woman needs support, but she may down the road, and if she has those conversations and knows those supports exist, whether they're small shelters in small rural communities.... If it's not today, then it's going to be tomorrow. Removing that or removing any of that funding is where you're going to see the loss.

[Erin Lee]

I think that if there's a lack of investment in shelters, we're going to see an increase in femicides, and we're going to see an increase in deaths of children. I think that is a reality across our country. If we recognize the issue as an epidemic, we have to make sure that we support the functioning of all of our shelters, both remote and urban.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Very well.

Currently, we are witnessing the impact of the lack of funding and the uncertainty surrounding this program's renewal: women are spending longer at each stage. During the first stage in an emergency shelter, they are unable to move on to the second stage—and after that, there is often no third-stage housing suited to their needs, with support services for them and their families, who are in a vulnerable situation.

How does the delay at each stage hinder your ability to take in new victims?

[Catherine Champagne]

In Alberta, it's a backup. It's showing that the housing continuum doesn't.... You said it properly: If we don't have safe and affordable housing, women are staying in second-stage longer and they're staying in emergency shelters longer. What we're also seeing there is that it affects the number of people accounted for in those shelters, because they're staying in shelters longer. They're still being supported the whole time—

[The Chair, Conservative, Dominique Vien]

Thank you.

Mr. Davies, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Fred Davies, Conservative, Niagara South, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

This is my first visit to this committee, and I'm honoured to be here.

If I can give a bit of a preamble, one of the reasons I'm very happy to be here today is that last week, I hosted a group of survivors at a round table here in the House of Commons. These are survivors from the Niagara region, survivors of sexual abuse as children and as adults. At the time, as they told their stories...and I'm grateful to my colleague Ms. Roberts for participating in this round table. It was historic for them, because several of them had never been out of the Niagara region. One individual said it was the highlight of her life to be able to come here and tell her story of survival to parliamentarians.

We often lose sight of how people from our communities would appreciate having that voice and being able to come to a committee like this and express their concerns and tell their story. One of the things that was revealed that day was that, at that time, many of them didn't have shelters. It was a different time when shelters also implied a stigma of some sort, and people avoided shelters because of that.

This group was called Our Heart on Our Sleeve, and they really did wear their hearts on their sleeves that day.

I'm curious. Their biggest issue was follow-up. They didn't have access to services. Even those who had been to a shelter said that after they left, they were on their own. I'm wondering how both of you might be able to fill that narrative in for me a bit. What, if any, post-shelter services do you engage in, and is there sufficient funding for those services?

I can start with Ms. Champagne.

[Catherine Champagne]

First of all, thank you for being here and for being part of what you did previously. It's really important to have those survivors get that opportunity.

We do outreach. That's a big part of shelter work in Alberta. Outreach becomes something where women don't even have to attend shelter. It doesn't have to be a bricks-and-mortar situation. They can have that person meet them at a coffee shop downtown or somewhere that's available to them.

Outreach does wraparound services. For a woman who is in shelter, usually about halfway through her time in shelter, she'll start to work with an outreach worker to transition her out. That can be to help her with food security, housing, court, getting her kids into school—all of the life skills she might need. At the same time, we offer that to those who aren't in shelters. If they self-present that they need that support, we do that as well.

It is funded in a different model. We're even seeing in Alberta that there's a shift in that funding. That's part of public education as well. More funding in that area, I think, would be good, because what happens a lot of times is that it's just the work that shelters are doing off the side of their desks. They're trying to run an emergency shelter at the same time, and they're also trying to support those women through outreach. We should be looking at the full funding model as a whole and funding them as two separate things, because they are serving two very different purposes.

[Fred Davies, Conservative, Niagara South, ON]

That funding is provincial, however—is that correct?

[Catherine Champagne]

For us, it's provincial. It's all intertwined.