Status of Women committee  It depends on how it's rolled out. In our rural community, the biggest challenge will be that people are on seasonal employment, so it will depend on whether that applies to everybody or just certain sectors. We hope that low-income people in certain sectors aren't at a disadvant

Status of Women committee  I think they gloss over it a little bit. I don't want to say they don't care. I think they are scared of it. The stories we tell can sometimes be disturbing, and they just say, “You just keep doing your job. Good job, keep it up every day.” Yes, but you're not listening. These ar

Status of Women committee  I think one of the biggest challenges is that, because the funding is not there, the vast majority of people working in transitional housing can't hire people who are specialized to deal with complex trauma. We know that over 80% of victims of domestic and intimate partner violen

Status of Women committee  As a crisis centre, we see more than 2,000 people a year, and a big bulk of those are people with financial issues—for example, their electricity has been cut off and they come to us when they have an outstanding bill and they're in the cold. The honest answer is that they need t

Status of Women committee  It is possible that many of those responsible for shelters will not like what I'm going to say today, but under our new model, we don't want to hide our location. We visited a lot of rural communities, and it is impossible to hide. In two seconds people find out where we are. Th

Status of Women committee  Thank you.

Status of Women committee  We see that there are three categories of older women who are victims of violence. The first category is made up of women who experienced a violent relationship during all of their coupled life, and once their children reach adulthood and leave the home, they decide to get out o

Status of Women committee  I agree that one of the biggest problems in homes or shelters in indigenous communities is the lack of confidentiality. The women are not necessarily comfortable because they are located close to their aggressor, and there is a relationship between the aggressor and the extended

Status of Women committee  For our funding campaign, since this is a rural community, we decided that it was really important to provide various services in the same building. Previously, women victims of violence were forced to go to various places. They had to go to an RCMP office, although that was a lo

Status of Women committee  You need to invest in the initial services. If you decide to simply increase the number of affordable housing units, you bring the victim back to poverty. You don't help her get out of poverty. When we provide our services, our purpose is not to place a victim in affordable hous

Status of Women committee  We need translators and people who can help us connect with people from different cultures. I'm in a rural community in which the vast majority of people who are working in the fish-processing plants are from different cultures. It's hard enough as it is to connect with a survivo

Status of Women committee  Thank you.

Status of Women committee  I think that core funding is always going to be something that women's organizations are going to fight for across the country. I'm sure I'm not the first to say it, nor the last in this committee study, because at the end of the day, we can't do our jobs effectively if we don't

Status of Women committee  In our rural community, we didn't have any transitional housing. We had two second-stage units. What I spoke about was our $4-million campaign that we've been doing for quite some time. It is all transitional housing; it's just at different stages. Across the country, there are

Status of Women committee  We'll screen for it, but programs...? No. It's lack of funding; it's not because we shouldn't be doing it.