Status of Women Committee on Sept. 23rd, 2026

[Mary Hannaburg]

Thank you very much. I get very impassioned.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

As you should....

Ms. Torres, my third question is for you.

You talked about housing options for low-income women fleeing violence, as well as for their children. I'd like you to tell me more about that.

Can you tell me what kinds of options we could help put in place?

[Sandy Torres]

Actually, I rely mainly on briefs from civil society organizations, scientific literature reviews and other qualitative and quantitative studies I've read that make recommendations.

I know that you pay particular attention to housing resources, and we need those. We need a whole continuum of housing that meets different needs—

[The Chair, Conservative, Dominique Vien]

Thank you, Ms. Torres. I don't want to seem like I'm picking on you, but it's time to move on.

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

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Harris, as well, for your contribution to this committee's study. I forgot to mention you earlier.

Ms. Torres, I'm going to ask you a question as briefly as possible so that you have time to answer.

I want us to talk about numbers now. There is another piece of news that caught my attention this summer: It has been shown that when it comes to homelessness, prevention costs less, as it does in many areas, by the way. When a woman stays longer in a shelter because she can't find housing, she takes up space that can't be offered to another woman.

Can you give us an idea of the cost of a shelter bed, per day or per month, compared to the cost of supporting that same person in social or community housing?

[Sandy Torres]

I would love to be able to give you those numbers, but I don't have them. That gives me an idea for future projects. However, we know that prevention is needed. Why is it not being done? It's hard to say. These are investments that we must agree to make for the future. We all benefit from building social housing, for example. None has been built for decades, and we are now suffering the consequences.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

I'd like to quickly follow up on that.

Recently, the Fédération des maisons d'hébergement pour femmes estimated the funding needed for 89 additional emergency shelter spaces at $5,679,582. That works out to about $63,816 per bed per year, $5,318 per bed per month or $175 per bed per day. We may not be able to quantify the savings that could be achieved through prevention, but we have an idea of the federation's budget requests.

Lastly, wouldn't it cost the government less to work upstream?

[Sandy Torres]

It would cost the government less, but term lengths are what they are, and it takes a while to reap the benefits of these social investments, which certainly pay off.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Thank you, Ms. Torres, Mr. Harris and Ms. Hannaburg, for your contributions to this study.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dominique Vien]

Thank you, madam.

Mrs. Borrelli, the floor is yours for five minutes.

[Kathy Borrelli, Conservative, Windsor—Tecumseh—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you so much, Chair.

As a registered nurse, I provided health care and helped fix the physical wounds of children and their mothers who had been subject to violence, but the work our witnesses do is just amazing. I don't know if I could do it. You are very brave, and we very much appreciate the work you do.

Mary Hannaburg, you mentioned earlier in your testimony that there are unmentionables that you wouldn't bring up here. I can't help but think that we really need to hear all of the horror in order for the government to take notice and take action to solve these problems. Are you willing to share any further?

[Mary Hannaburg]

I can tell you that we are not proud of coming from a community where they find dead bodies thrown into septic tanks. We've had people dumped there. This is very traumatizing to the community.

We were proud, after 1990, to have our nation be who we are, as Mohawk people. This is starting to disintegrate. Our pride is going down the toilet right now because a young man was found killed. He had been murdered. This is something that we live with. We're not proud.

That poor person who was killed, and his family.... He was a very young man. He'd just turned 25 years old. It's being dealt with by the police, but it has happened. We need security. We need police. We need policing, and we need it yesterday and last year. We need it. This is enough of living like this.

I'm telling you that you get awakened by people shooting automatic weapons in the pitch black, and I'm not the only one who talks about this. On our social media, they talk about it, but nothing is getting done. Why is it being left? “Just let everybody get killed. It's one less Indian. A dead Indian is a good Indian.” Is that the way it goes? We value our lives. We value our children's lives. My grandchildren sleep in the house where those gunshots are coming in the middle of the night.

We're not living in a war zone, but we're left on our own. It's like our lives do not have value. We want to live in a safe community—

[Kathy Borrelli, Conservative, Windsor—Tecumseh—Lakeshore, ON]

Thanks.

[Mary Hannaburg]

We want our children to be able to go to school on the bus and not have the bus get run off the road. It's time for the government to do something or implement some type of security that works to keep our community safe.

We have outside people who are running businesses there. They've infiltrated our community. It's no longer the loving Kanesatake with the beautiful pine trees. Devastation is going on there.

Do not close your eyes. We need support, and we need help there.

I have to be careful how I speak. That's all. I have to go home and sleep in my bed tonight.

[Kathy Borrelli, Conservative, Windsor—Tecumseh—Lakeshore, ON]

Mary, do you have transitional housing for women who have suffered from violence?

[Mary Hannaburg]

In the community, in the present day, no, we do not.

[Kathy Borrelli, Conservative, Windsor—Tecumseh—Lakeshore, ON]

Are there people in your community who would help make that happen, should you have the funding you need?

[Mary Hannaburg]

Right now, we're at a standstill. There is no leadership there. We're at a standstill.

Eventually, we will have an elected band council, because we're in court right now. That's how dysfunctional we are. Let's leave it at that. With all due respect, we're at a political standstill, and there is no leadership. We have just administrators right now.

[Kathy Borrelli, Conservative, Windsor—Tecumseh—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you, Mary.

I have a question for Mr. Harris. When women leave transitional housing—I guess they have to at a certain point—what keeps them from being successful in the outside world?

Could you answer quickly? I have another question.

[Brian Harris]

I'll do my best.

Our transitional housing program offers a 12- to 24-month stay for women who are exiting the shelter system. I think the main barrier they face when leaving the transitional program is affordable options to move into permanent housing, because there is such a lack. Also, our program is a recovery program, and right now there are not a lot of treatment options available in Ontario.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dominique Vien]

Thank you, Mr. Harris.

Thank you, Mrs. Borrelli.

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

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses, Ms. Torres, Mr. Harris and Ms. Hannaburg, for being here today.

Mary, thank you for sharing. I know those are really tough conditions to be living under. We recognize that there is work to be done, so thank you for sharing with us.

Mr. Harris, I want to speak a bit more about the great and excellent work at the St. Felix Centre, which is located in downtown Toronto. The site that you talked about, Hope House, is actually just north of my riding, in beautiful downtown Toronto.

I want to ask you a bit about the conditions and what worked well in that particular program—

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Madam Chair, there is no interpretation.

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

—in terms of the wraparound supports.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dominique Vien]

Ms. Nguyen, I'm going to ask you to pause for a moment, please, because there's no interpretation.