Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to mention the presence in the gallery of my wife Louise and two of my daughters, Marie-Hélène and Marie-Christine. I should also add that my other daughter, Isabelle, a student at McGill University, and my son Jean-François join me in stressing the importance of this day for all Canadian women.
On this day, March 8, I would like to talk about an issue of extreme importance to women and which we have to address if we are to give a true meaning to the word equality. I am referring to violence against women.
The very existence of this violence shows clearly that there is a power relationship underlying a serious imbalance and the absence of effective equality. Violence against women is an integral part of our social structure.
The tragic massacre at the École Polytechnique on December 6, 1989 brought back to the fore a brutal and far reaching reality and we are still torn apart by the whole thing.
This situation required action. In August 1991, the federal government set up a Canadian committee on violence against women. This committee was co-chaired by Mrs. Marthe Vaillancourt, a respected person in the field and also the director of the Centre d'aide aux victimes d'actes criminels in Chicoutimi, and by Mrs. Pat Freeman Marshall.
The committee did a lot. Hearings were held all over Canada. A final report was submitted in July 1993. From these hearings in 139 communities across Canada, as well as submissions and research documents, we gained a better picture of the situation of women. The committee proposed 494 recommendations in a 500-page document.
A framework had to be established and the committee defined violence against women as all forms of violence committed by men, as opposed to marital and family violence.
Violence takes different forms. It can be psychological, sexual, physical, financial and spiritual. Some aspects are unfortunately more familiar than others. There is no hierarchy in that list of various forms of violence; all forms of violence against women are to be banned, whether they are threats, rape, incest, unrequested sexual fondling, blows, withholding of money, contemptuous attitude towards one's personal beliefs, etc. Our tolerance of violence against women generates costs, human, financial and social costs.
Let me quote the final report of the committee: "A Quebec study compared the health of a sample group of women and children who had left a violent environment with women and children of a comparable group who had not experienced violence. It concluded that: The health of these women and their children was distinctly different from that of the general population, and they were affected first of all by problems of mental health".
We can see also that there are no case detection measures and that diagnostics are often false. Financial costs impact on health care and work-related costs and also on the judicial system. Let me quote the report again: "The costs of one sexual offence,
where the offender serves three years in prison, can be very conservatively estimated at more than $200,000". The Final Report of the Canadian Panel on Violence Against Women first describes the problem and its various aspects and, in a second part, presents a national action plan.
That national action plan comprises an action plan for equality and a zero tolerance policy. The action plan for equality makes recommendations on two main aspects of the issue: on the one hand, improve the economic status of women which is directly related to violence against women and, on the other, acknowledge and treat women as independent persons. Emphasis is to be put on eight specific areas: right to equality, equal access to the legal system, equal participation in politics and the civil service, improvements to processus aimed at promoting equality for women, economy, family, taxation and transfer payments.
Finally, the zero tolerance policy involves a responsibility structure for the implementation phases and an application model. This policy is based on the premise that no form of violence is acceptable and that sufficient resources must be allocated to eliminate violence against women.
In my riding, according to the 1992-93 statistics released by the Centre d'aide aux victimes d'actes criminels of Chicoutimi, spousal abuse and sexual assaults make up close to half of all complaints made pursuant to the Criminal Code. Note that 82.3 per cent of crimes are made against women.
At the national level, a comprehensive survey of 12,300 Canadian women conducted by Statistics Canada and made public in November 1993 provided eloquent information about violence against women. In Canada, more than one out of two women suffered physical or sexual abuse at least once during her adult life. In a great majority of cases, the assailant was known to the victim. The definition of an act of violence which was used refers to actions considered offences under the Criminal Code of Canada.
According to Statistics Canada, physical assaults vary from threats of imminent bodily injury to assaults causing serious bodily harm, while sexual assaults vary from sexual interference to violent sexual assaults causing serious injury to the victim.
This survey also shows that one in four Canadian women reported being abused by her current spouse or a previous one. The most recent national survey conducted in 1980, which was highly criticized for being speculative, indicated that one in ten women had been physically abused by her spouse.
Most of the 10 per cent of women who declared being victims of violence in the 12-month period preceding the survey were young women, between the age of 18 and 24.
The survey also shows that men tend to be more violent if they were witnesses to violence against their own mother.
Alcohol plays a major role since, as the study indicated, the assailant is intoxicated in more than 40 per cent of violence cases. One in five acts of violence mentioned in the study was severe enough to cause injuries, a quarter of which demanded medical attention. It is also noted that nine out of ten assaults not only caused physical injuries to the victim but left emotional scars as well.
Fear is on the mind of a good number of women whose spouse is violent. It is made worst by the prospect of finding themselves in a potentially violent situation. Thus, 83 per cent of women reported being afraid to enter alone an underground parking lot. Seventy-six per cent are afraid to use public transportation at night. Sixty per cent do not feel safe walking alone in their neighbourhood at night. Only 14 per cent of violent acts and no more than 6 per cent of sexual assaults were reported to police. In only a third of the reported cases, charges were laid against the assailant.
Further to this study, the Secretary of State responsible for the Status of Women stated that her government would launch a national campaign to heighten public awareness and take steps to force the violent spouse to leave the marital home. She promised in the same breath to better finance organizations for battered women and their children. As we say, desperate times call for desperate measures. One does not put a poultice on a gaping wound. These figures are very revealing and we deplore the fact that such a sad situation can exist in a country like Canada.
The budget allocated to the Canadian Panel on Violence Against Women was $10 million. A great deal of money and energy has been invested in this initiative, and the situation as it is depicted requires a follow-up on this report. Furthermore, the survey conducted by Statistics Canada, at a cost of $1.9 million, shows the extent of the problem.
Violence against women can now be measured. It is a serious problem that we must address despite its complexity. Community groups have shown us the way. At the moment, there are 360 shelters for battered women across Canada, and waiting lists to get in these shelters are often very long. The services provided are sensitive to budget cuts. Eighty per cent of these shelters were opened after 1980 and 95 per cent of them have less than 20 beds.
In the vast majority of cases, the services provided are short-term, as 70 per cent of the women remain in these shelters less than 20 days on average.
Beyond emergency services, we must offer more to women. We need to adopt a more reactive approach. The status of women in our society is directly related to their economic situation, among other things. Equality is also a matter of money. Let us take, as an example, pay equity and access to housing.
Women deserve the same treatment as men, and the violence that they have to suffer in our society clearly indicates that we have a lot of work to do. We must not think that it is a present-day problem. Let us remind ourselves of the suffragettes who fought for the formal recognition of women's political rights.
In 1931 and 1964, successive reforms to the Lower Canada civil code guaranteed full legal capacity to the married woman. In fact, in 1931, the introduction of reserved property allowed a woman to administer the proceeds from her work because it was said that many men would go off and drink their wife's savings. Unfortunately, there are numerous examples and, not too long ago, women had to fight for their rights.
The violence that they experience is a dramatic situation to which we cannot remain indifferent. It is very tempting to be legalistic, but we must go beyond that. To a systemic problem we must bring systemic solutions.
In the 1994-95 Estimates, Status of Women Canada plans to launch the following project: Co-ordination of the preparation of the federal program concerning the equality and security of women in co-operation with federal departments and other partners. This will incorporate the government response to the report of the Canadian Panel on Violence Against Women.
Status of Women Canada was given the mandate to produce the government response to the panel. That response will be submitted in the form of a federal program concerning gender equality and women security.
Finally, the co-ordination of a national public information campaign geared towards prevention will be pursued in order to eliminate the circumstances that promote violence against women. In view of the magnitude of the problem, the proposed action only allow the government to make an act of faith.
We are no longer trying to prove that there is violence against women; people are convinced that it exists. The consultation exercise has taken place, the problems have been identified and solutions have been suggested. What is the government waiting for to implement the national action plan that was tabled here in this House?