Status of Women committee  First of all, if language blocks are present, then the door of entry to any information, to any choice of action, to any option is automatically barred. That is automatic. She can't get into the CLSC. She can't go to the police station to make a report. She can't call a helpline.

Status of Women committee  There's a lot of fear for women surrounding the issue of conjugal violence, a lot of fear and a lot of shame. Only 30% of the cases of violence are reported. This is a Stats Canada fact. We're just wondering where the other 70% are. Why didn't they come forward? Why didn't they t

Status of Women committee  In terms of housing, I can take the example of the organization Shield of Athena. We began with external services, and the house was developed in 2004. Obviously, the house was developed for a reason, which is that it's the only confidential and secure area a woman can flee to wh

Status of Women committee  Anything that reinforces the rights of the victim.... I see this as potentially reinforcing the rights of the victim and the responsibility of the abuser, because it goes two ways. On the one hand, you're protecting the victim, but on the other hand, you're giving a sense of resp

Status of Women committee  Of course. In Quebec, we recently produced a report, and I was in the group of 21 experts. The whole purpose of the report—it was called “Rebuild the Confidence”—was rebuilding the confidence of victims of sexual assault and victims of conjugal violence. We were looking over

Status of Women committee  After all that drama, I represent an organization that has been in existence for over 30 years. We presently have three points of service in Quebec, which are an emergency shelter and two external centres. We also have a community outreach department where we go out actively and

Finance committee  I want to add that for all of this issue, it's not only a question of extra housing, not only a question of better laws, not only a question of more awareness. If this situation of conjugal violence is left unchecked, it provokes what we call ripple effects. We can all remember t

Finance committee  Totally.

Finance committee  I have a figure right offhand. A large group of shelters in Quebec did a study, and they figure that every year it's 10,000 women who are being turned away. If we look at our shelter, every week the minimum number of women we refuse is about five. Over a year, that's 260 women in

Finance committee  It will help. At this point in time, the movements—the women's rights movement and the shelter movement—are on their hands and knees everywhere in Canada. It's not only in Quebec. Everything helps. As I mentioned before, they're even thinking of making an emergency fund where w

Finance committee  The second-step resource is for women who want to transition to a more autonomous level of existence without violence after their stay at an emergency shelter. In Quebec these resources were sorely lacking. It took us a long time to mount the funding for our resource. I do resp

Finance committee  Good afternoon. Hello to all the members of the committee and guests. It is an honour for us to present to the committee today on the specific issues we deal with in violence against women. I'd also like to say hi to Lise, with whom we've been working on several occasions. I'm

Finance committee  Violence against women affects everybody, not only women. Violence against women is a matter of societal concern, and I think we have to collaborate with one another to make sure this is not repeated and that we can ameliorate situations and we can reduce the potential of violenc

Finance committee  Whatever I've said is based on the experience we have had when women have come to us at the shelter or at the centres. A lot of women do have jobs, but if a woman doesn't have a job and has been accustomed to being financially dependent, the first thing we do is to get her onto w

Finance committee  As I've said, the underlying issues that were there prior to COVID are still there. One of these pressing issues is social housing. In Quebec now they have established what we call alternative housing, which includes some rooms in hotels. However, a key problem with having the r