According to my BlackBerry, it is exactly 8:45 a.m., daylight savings time or Eastern standard time. I would like to welcome you to the 41st meeting of the Standing Committee on the Status of Women. This is the committee's last meeting of 2014, which makes it a very special one. We are continuing our study on promising practices to prevent violence against women.
Today, we have the pleasure of welcoming Marion Little, an assistant professor at the University of Victoria's School of Public Administration.
We also have with us Tracy O'Hearn, who is the executive director of the Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada.
Joining us by video conference is Bonnie Johnston and Jenny Ofrim, from the Sheldon Kennedy Child Advocacy Centre, and Fay Faraday, who is a lawyer and visiting professor at Osgoode Hall Law School.
Each group of witnesses will have 10 minutes to make a presentation, which will be followed by a question period.
I would like to start with Ms. Little. You have 10 minutes.
:
Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee. Thank you so much for your invitation.
Please permit me to open and close with poems that invoke some of the voices of the many women and girls I’ve been privileged to serve over the years.
The first is from Jamie Jardine.
Wounds
I stand naked
Looking in the mirror
What do I see?
Not the flawless woman I so yearn to be
But a damaged girl permanently scared,
Scarred from unwanted abuse that will not fade,
No matter what I do.
Every time I look, I’m reminded of where,
And from whom they came.
I’ve stopped trying to change,
To cover or erase these scars.
I’ve stopped explaining these dark wounds.
These are my tattoos.
There are so many issues I would love to speak about with you today. Drawing on my experience, I will focus exclusively on the marginalized women who are many times more likely to be targeted by violence than anyone else. My primary point is that marginalized women require sustainably funded, tailored, responsive, unconditional peer-to-peer programs informed directly by their needs and the context in which they live.
I'm so nervous; I can hear my voice shaking. Pardon me.
This core best practice is recognized as the most accessible, effective, and cost-efficient way to increase wellness while decreasing marginalization and experiences of violence. Marginalized women are more likely to participate in peer-to-peer programs than in mainstream programs. Disclosure is more likely in trusted peer settings, making them critical for response, liaison with police, trauma recovery, and violence prevention.
My secondary point is that the best practice in policy development and drafting new law related to marginalized women requires that these peer groups be comprehensively consulted, alongside the national academic research consensus on the issues.
In the B.C. missing women inquiry report “Forsaken,” the Honourable Wally Oppal defines marginalization as “the social process by which individuals and groups are relegated to the fringe of society” and “systematically blocked from rights, opportunities and resources that are normally available in a society”.
It is related to the “endangerment and vulnerability to predation” of marginalized people, “creating the climate in which the missing and murdered women were forsaken”.
He says the following:
Three overarching social and economic trends contribute to the women’s marginalization: retrenchment of social assistance programs, the ongoing effects of colonialism, and the criminal regulation of prostitution and related law enforcement strategies.
According to the Ending Violence Association of BC, most women and children killed or seriously injured by domestic or sexual violence in recent years were members of marginalized groups. Please see endingviolence.org. They identified gaps regarding specialized, domestic, and sexual violence services for marginalized women, in particular aboriginal women; immigrant women, including refugees and migrant workers; women with disabilities; women with mental health or addictions issues; women in rural areas; impoverished women; lesbians and transsexual women; and sex workers. And I would add the service gap for youth who are homeless or at risk of homelessness.
According to Statistics Canada, women aged 15 to 24 are most commonly targeted by all forms of violence. This, combined with marginalization, makes it difficult to grasp the enormity of the issue, particularly since marginalized women are often reluctant to call police and more likely to access informal supports.
As you know, aboriginal women—first nations, Métis, and Inuit women—experience higher levels of violence and are disproportionately represented in the number of missing and murdered women across Canada. They have a heightened vulnerability to violence simply because they live in what the Honourable Wally Oppal calls “a society that poses a risk to their safety”. The report also said, “In British Columbia and around the world, vulnerable and marginalized women are exposed to a higher risk of violence including sexual assault, murder and serial predation.”
The B.C. Missing Women Commission of Inquiry says that it’s imperative we realize the broader forces of marginalization and societal dismissal and abandonment that contributed to the vulnerability of the women. That dismissal and abandonment also shaped police response. While aboriginal and sex worker groups have identified valid concerns about the B.C. inquiry, it also contains very thoughtful recommendations. I commend it for your consideration.
Please review the executive summary of the Honourable Wally Oppal's report, “Forsaken”, via the website of the Attorney General of B.C. I also invite you to review the October 1, 2014, letter to Parliament from the Secretary General of Amnesty International, which is available on their website.
The Supreme Court has recognized street-based sex workers as some of the most marginalized members of society. The first nationwide research on sex work is emerging just now from the University of Victoria Centre for Addictions Research. It offers new—and what some may find surprising—findings. Understanding the reality of sex work here is central to developing laws, policies, practices, and supports that will actually prevent violence and increase safety for all of us. Please see their website at understandingsexwork.com.
Peer-to-peer supports are a core best practice for marginalized groups. For example, PEERS Victoria and sister agencies across Canada provide rare, unconditional, and trusted peer-to-peer supports for current and past sex workers when they are distressed, experience violence, or seek help. Sadly, all are grossly underfunded.
The respectful relationship between PEERS Victoria, the sex workers they serve, and the Victoria police special victims unit routinely leads to the arrest and jailing of violent offenders, increasing public safety. Support for marginalized groups positively impacts the whole community.
Unfortunately, it takes only a few unethical officers to destroy that trust and the related benefits. Sex workers and research tell us that police are among their clients, and that there are unethical officers who are violent or abuse their power to coerce sex. It is a common enough experience for sex workers in Canada, such that they tend to distrust police as a group. The reality of unethical officers harming or exploiting sex workers poses a certain dilemma under Bill , where those same officers now hold increased power over sex workers and an increased reason to silence them.
Education across the justice system about marginalized women is necessary to increase reporting, ensure effective responses, protect the vulnerable, and prevent violence. Ongoing abuse prevention training and strong policies to address abuse of power within government institutions, such as health, justice, and social services, are also necessary, because marginalized women tend to distrust them due to routine experiences that range from discourtesy and dismissal to exploitation and violence.
Sexual exploitation of minors is not sex work. It's child abuse. It and trafficking are separate issues and direct acts of violence with specific laws. However, laws are not enough to prevent these atrocities. As a primary prevention, we must provide stable housing, food security, and nurturing supports for the over 65,000 youth in Canada who are currently homeless or at risk of homelessness—see raisingtheroof.org.
Violence against marginalized women and girls is directly linked to our child poverty rates and our housing crisis—our home crisis, actually. If we're serious about violence prevention, we will mitigate the factors that increase marginalization at individual, relational, community, and societal levels. This requires accessible stable housing, legal aid, food security, and clean water. It requires enough affordable child care spaces, addiction treatment beds, and transitional shelters, as well as programs—particularly peer-to-peer programs—that support trauma recovery, skill development, and community building. We must invest in increased resilience and empowerment.
If we tolerate violence against marginalized women, sex workers and aboriginal women being the starkest examples, then we allow that to stand as a threat to all women, a graphic threat that violence is tolerated against any of us, depending only on circumstance and social whim, and that neither our laws nor our rights and freedoms as Canadians will protect us from it. Socially condoned or ignored violence against marginalized women is an open attack on every woman, an open attack on the justice system, and an open attack on the rights and freedoms of Canadian citizens.
I will close with one final, very brief poem from a poet at PEERS, who uses the metaphor of a maze full of dead ends contrasted against a labyrinth that is one circling contemplative path:
Puzzle
My life is a maze.
I’m always running into a dead end
No matter which way I turn,
Even when I take the next right step.
I strive for my life to be a labyrinth;
To go in, and no matter which way I go,
It’s the right path to that place
Where I am always centred.
Thank you.
[Translation]
Good morning.
Ullakut.
Thank you for your invitation. I don't speak much French.
[English]
I would like to bring greetings and best wishes from Rebecca Kudloo, who's our president. She lives in Baker Lake, Nunavut, and is not able to be here today. She very much appreciates this opportunity.
For those of you who may not be familiar with Pauktuutit, it just celebrated its 30th anniversary as the national representative organization of all Inuit women in Canada. It has a broad mandate, but our work is focused in three main areas: health is certainly one; violence and abuse prevention has been one of the biggest priorities for 30 years now; and socio-economic development broadly.
I'm happy to answer any further questions you may have about that.
We've been asked today to talk about best or promising practices in education, the social programs that can help prevent violence against women.
For Inuit women, violence prevention policies and programs must be based in Inuit culture, values, practices, geography, and language broadly. This is standard practice in our work. We produce a broad range of resources for people to use in the communities, whether individuals, service providers, or other organizations. Our work is always produced in plain language English and at least one dialect of Inuktitut. Inuktitut is one of the three indigenous languages in Canada expected to survive, and it is still used on a daily basis.
We try to learn as we go and improve our ways of communicating. The Internet is rapidly spreading across the north—we now have a Facebook page—but things like radio are still very effective. Everyone goes home at lunchtime and listens to the radio, so it's a challenge. Probably one of our biggest challenges is communicating across one-third of Canada's land mass, but we try to learn and improve.
Unfortunately, Pauktuutit has been working on this issue for 30 years, and not only has the situation not improved, it's become significantly worse. I won't reiterate all the statistics and rates of crime. They're very well known. I would like to note that a recent report by Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated, which is the Inuit land claims body in Nunavut, recently released its most recent report on the state of Inuit society and culture, with a focus, in part, on violence against women. It says that Nunavut is the most dangerous jurisdiction in Canada in which to be a woman or child, and that's absolutely true.
With regard to violence against women, it also has to be addressed as a significant mental and physical health issue. There's the whole range of responses: emergency, interventions, medevac, surgeries, rehabilitation, time away from their families, and employment. I'm sure we're all quite familiar with a lot of those impacts.
I would like to just draw your attention to the fact that there were four regional health surveys done. There are four primary Inuit regions in Canada.
In Nunavik, in the study conducted in 2004, they found that half of the women who participated in the Inuit house survey reported they had been victims of sexual assault or attempted sexual assault when they were minors. One-quarter had encountered the same problem as adults. For men, 16% of men, who participated in that regional survey, indicated the same problem as children, and 13% as adults. In Nunavut, one in two Inuit women have experienced severe sexual abuse during childhood and these injuries go far beyond broken bones. They can damage a soul and ruin a life, potentially, without support and specialized services. Those are by and large not present in Inuit communities.
We know in our hearts, but cannot yet prove through evidence, that many victims of child sexual abuse are choosing to end their pain by ending their lives. We know.
I'd like to talk briefly about a project that we're just concluding with Status of Women Canada. This has given us the first opportunity to conduct a survey of knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours among Inuit women and men, different age groups, about the knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours that support these crisis levels of violence. We're actually gathering results as we speak. The project will end at the end of March. We hope we'll learn a great deal from the results of that survey.
Part of what we're doing is developing a tool kit of resources. Our project is to engage men and boys in reducing violence. Again, it's the first opportunity we've had to take this approach. We're also developing a tool kit for individuals, men's groups, and others to use in the communities to encourage men to come and talk about their challenges, their difficulties, and try to heal.
With regard to recommendations about best practices, we participate in every opportunity we're given to bring forward the voices of Inuit women. At the end of October we attended the 4th National Aboriginal Women's Summit in Membertou, Nova Scotia. As members of the national planning committee, we're now trying to prepare a report from NAWS. When we were in Membertou, our task was to look at the recommendations from the first three NAW summits with a view to what has been done, what needs to be done now, and what needs to be done next. The major theme in the recommendations that came forward from 2007 was the need for coordinated, multi-year sustained funding. This work has to be tailored to meet the unique needs, priorities, and circumstances of first nations, Inuit, and Métis women, and it must be done in equal partnership with representative organizations. Unfortunately, that has not yet been done.
I'm going to speak just briefly about the national action plan to address violence against aboriginal women that was announced in September. I know some organizations responded quite quickly. We didn't, because we needed to understand what was in there, what might be new, what might already exist. We actually just issued a press release last week to the extent that we could, based on the information that we have received, primarily from Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada. Of the $7 million annually that's available for family violence prevention and protection through Aboriginal Affairs every year, Inuit women across Canada are at this time in receipt of $75,000, which is 1% of the $7 million. Inuit communities continue to be specifically excluded from federal funding that's available for shelters on reserve. We've tried to bring that up at the policy level with the department for about 20 years—as long as I've worked with the organization.
Taking a look at the $20 million that was available this year to aboriginal representative organizations, which included a theme around family violence prevention, of that $20 million, we received $80,000 this year to work on economic development. When you look at this $20 million plus the $7 million, of $27 million this year that is specifically for aboriginal peoples, women—and I would interpret that as Inuit women—through Pauktuutit, are receiving one half of 1% of the annual funding made available through Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development. I felt I had to bring that to your attention.
I would also say that with regard to best practices or promising practices, there haven't been enough Inuit-specific violence prevention initiatives that have been evaluated over time to really even offer promising practices. We are supported in our work. Our work is directed closely by women in the community, service providers, Inuit experts, and other experts. We're confident that we're on the right path, but it has to be broader, sustained, and evaluated over time.
Again, I'm very grateful for your time this morning. Thank you very much.
:
It's a little different here in videoland trying to connect with your audience. We do appreciate that. Thank you so much. It's seven o'clock here in Calgary and I don't think we've had our coffee yet, Jen, have we? We will slow down.
Canada is very fortunate to have federal and provincial governments that recognize the importance of healthy child development. We also have key assets, including a number of Child Advocacy Centres in Canada that are leaders in supporting victims of child abuse.
Today we have three key messages for you.
Number one, children who experience abuse are more likely to commit violent acts against their partners and their own children in the future, and to be revictimized as adolescents and adults.
Number two, witnessing domestic violence is a form of child abuse that often happens with other forms of abuse in the home. These are not isolated issues, and solutions must focus on all forms of violence.
Number three, girls and women are disproportionately affected by abuse especially sexual abuse. To prevent or decrease violence against women and girls in the future we must focus on preventing abuse and intervening early with children and youth who have been abused, and with families who are at risk of abuse. This will result in better quality of life for our children and families, as well as result in valuable returns on these investments that will be seen in generations to come.
The Sheldon Kennedy Child Advocacy Centre is a not-for-profit organization working in partnership with six government organizations—Calgary Police Service, Calgary and Area Child and Family Services, Alberta Health Services, Alberta Justice, RCMP, and Alberta Education—to better serve children and families impacted by child abuse. We are extremely proud of this model that has come together. The centre became fully operational with all partners, including close to 100 staff on site, in April of 2013.
The primary objective of our centre is to minimize trauma through multidisciplinary teams that specialize in treating, investigating, and supporting children and families who have been impacted by abuse. This includes all child sexual abuse cases being dealt with by the police and the most serious, severe, and complex cases of physical abuse and neglect reported within our partner organizations. It is truly a system of integration and collaboration that wraps around children and families.
In our first 16 months of operations the centre assessed almost 2,000 infants, children, and youth.
:
Over the course of our first 16 months of operations two-thirds of the 2,000 children and youth assessed at the centre were girls. Of these 2,000 cases seven out of ten were for reports of sexual abuse, and two out of ten were for severe physical abuse or neglect. Ninety-three per cent of the children and youth seen at the centre were offended against by a trusted person such as a caregiver or parents.
The centre has also had the opportunity to collect information on the impact of this abuse. Although we have only been gathering this information since April 2014, data is already demonstrating that, at the time of initial assessments at the centre, one out of three infants, children, and youth struggle with suicidal thoughts, substance abuse, self-harm, mental health, aggressive behaviour, or sexualized behaviours. When we isolate youth aged 12 to 17, one in two struggle with these issues. After hearing from several experts on violence against women it is no surprise that the prevalence of this crime and the issues related to it are staggering.
The impact of child abuse on rates of re-victimization and future violent offending behaviour needs to be taken into consideration to find solutions to prevent violence against women.
One of the largest studies to date, conducted as part of the adverse childhood experiences research in the States, has demonstrated that being physically abused or sexually abused or growing up in a home in which there is domestic violence doubles the risk of perpetration or victimization of domestic violence as an adult. For children who experience all three types of abuse, the risk is increased by three and a half times for women and even more for men.
Children who have been abused grow up to have children of their own. When this trauma is left unaddressed, these children can be impacted in many ways by their parents' historical abuse. If we do not address these issues early, research indicates that these girls are four times more likely to report self-harm and suicidal ideation, 30% less likely to graduate from high school, 1.5 times more likely to use illicit drugs as an adult, and three times more likely to have an early unplanned pregnancy.
The term “cycle of abuse” is used often, and it is a reality for many of the children we see at the centre. We need to recognize that child abuse is a national public health issue. We need to put concerted effort into preventing abuse from happening to children. If it does happen, we need to ensure that the best services are wrapped around them as early as possible so they can move forward with healthy and productive lives, free of violence.
:
Based on our experience and the insights of others who have been working vigorously in the fields of child abuse and violence against women, we appreciate the opportunity to make the following recommendations.
Recommendation number one is that the federal government demonstrate global leadership by committing to predictable and stable funding to address child abuse issues. This should include increased funding to support the further development and operations of child advocacy centres across Canada. The child advocacy centre model is an innovative way of addressing child abuse. In recognition that child abuse is an issue that reaches across sectors, this model brings together law enforcement, child protection, the crown, education, and therapeutic and medical services. Together, these sectors create a business model that works more effectively and efficiently. Bringing these sectors together provides an opportunity to wrap services around a family as opposed to a family having to navigate separate systems on their own during a traumatic time.
Recommendation number two is that the federal government engage its research organizations such as the Canadian Institutes of Health Research to focus on child abuse issues, including the social and economic impact of collaborative models of service delivery. To date, research in the area of child abuse has been limited by disclosure and reporting rates. As multiple sectors continue to work together, a more sophisticated understanding of the issues and impact of child abuse and domestic violence is emerging.
Recommendation number three is that the federal government commit to mitigating the impact of child abuse through early intervention that includes access for children and families to intensive, evidence-based therapies. This includes swift access to youth who demonstrate sexualized behaviours that are intrusive or offending in nature.
Recommendation number four is the encouragement of provincial cross-ministry policy and practices that support the sharing of relevant and critical information. From a practice perspective, the information shared among the centre’s multidisciplinary teams has proven to be instrumental in providing timely and tailored responses to families in need. Quite simply, we are doing in hours and days what was taking weeks and months to do before we could adequately respond to these families. This allows each member of the team to make conscious decisions about progressing with each case that is in the best interest of the child and their family.
Recommendation number five is that specialized and timely interventions be provided to pregnant women and parents of infants who are living in high-risk environments. Low-cost and safe child care needs to be provided to women who have limited options. The focus on maternal and infant health needs to continue to be a priority for the Public Health Agency of Canada. Our centre also offers a prenatal outreach support team that provides outreach to highly vulnerable pregnant women and connects them to prenatal services that meet their needs. We started with 30 referrals in year one. We are over 240 referrals in this region right now for these women in high-risk situations. This program has had excellent outcomes reducing risk and decreasing the number of babies coming into care of child protection.
Recommendation number six is that standardized and specialized training be provided to professionals in education, health, the justice system, and social services to assess for abuse, sexual re-victimization, and domestic violence as part of their interventions with children and youth, ensuring professionals such as teachers have the skills, training, and tools to recognize child abuse, understand their responsibilities, and respond in supportive and compassionate ways, and ensuring that professionals who work in the field of child abuse have access to specialized training and support.
We are beginning to understand the issues of child abuse and their links to violence against women in far more sophisticated ways. We are building innovative, collaborative models. When we come together as government, communities, and organizations, we will be successful in making a difference for our children and ultimately building resilience for generations to come.
As a community, we have a moral and ethical call to action to protect our children in making child abuse and violence against women national priorities.
We thank you for your time and support for these very critical issues.
:
Thank you for the invitation to speak to the committee.
As you were told in the introduction, I am a labour and human rights lawyer here in Toronto and a visiting professor at Osgoode Hall Law School. For the last 25 years I have been working with low-wage migrant workers across all the different streams of temporary labour migration: the seasonal agricultural worker program, the live-in caregiver program, and the temporary foreign worker program.
What I want to speak about today is the structural problems that make women migrants particularly vulnerable as targets of sexual violence. The two themes I want to address are the need to remove those structural terms and conditions built into the temporary labour migration programs that make women vulnerable targets for sexual violence and to think about ways to build practices that build security.
The things that make migrant workers vulnerable to abuse, and particularly women to sexual violence, are conditions of dependence, isolation, precarious immigration status in Canada, and the lack of effective routes to raise complaints about their treatment. Those are the four things I want to look at.
What I'd like to do is also connect this with an example coming out of the Presteve Foods fish processing plant in Wheatley, Ontario. It's an example in which 42 Mexican and Thai women migrant workers came forward with complaints of not just employment violations, but sexual violence in the workplace. The employer was charged with 23 counts of sexual assault and 5 counts of common assault. In the end he pleaded guilty to common assault, but the allegations with respect to the sexual violence went forward in a human rights complaint before the Human Rights Tribunal in Ontario. What's remarkable about the Presteve case is not so much the vulnerability and the abuse that the women faced, but the fact that they were able to come forward and file legal complaints. What's remarkable about their situation is that they were unionized. They were able to bring those complaints forward with the backing of their union and community organizations in southern Ontario, but most women don't have that support. As you'll see, even with those supports, it was not sufficient for them.
The primary condition that makes women such vulnerable targets to sexual violence when they are migrants is the dependence that is created through the tied work permits. Under the temporary labour migration programs for low-wage workers, workers come here on permits that tie them exclusively to the single employer named on the permit, to the specific job named on the permit, in the location that's identified in the permit, and for the time period on that temporary permit. That single condition creates an enormous imbalance of power that makes it virtually impossible for workers to resist the abuse that they are subject to.
For many workers, the temporary migration programs also either require as an element of a program that their housing is tied to the employer, or in practice it has been and is in fact provided by the employer. That again creates another link that makes them even more vulnerable.
The third factor I want to draw your attention to is the fact that most migrant workers who are coming into these low-wage jobs are paying predatory, extortionate recruitment fees to come here. I did a study published in April that showed that two-thirds of live-in caregivers who are coming into Canada are paying recruitment fees of between $3,500 to $5,000. The fees go up from there: $7,000 to $9,000 or $12,000 for an individual worker coming in.
For the workers in the other sectors, in food processing, in restaurants, in other low-wage jobs, there are similar rates of paying these illegal recruitment fees. That ties them even more closely to the employer because they're unable to resist unfair treatment and sexual abuse on the job because they have to repay those recruitment loans.
What happened in Presteve is that these workers from Mexico and Thailand had come to Canada. They were tied to that employer. They had paid up to $10,000 in recruitment fees. When they arrived they were living in a bunkhouse on the employer's property, so were completely isolated from the local community, and were subject to extensive practices of sexual violence and harassment on the job.
The inability to complain about that is very real because they can't quit and get another job; they are tied to that employer. They can't quit because they have to pay back the recruitment fees. They are isolated by language. They are isolated physically. They are unable to access settlement services, which is another real concern. The federal organizations that provide settlement services to workers are only available to people with permanent status, not to those with temporary status. There's a real lack of protection for workers when they do come forward with claims of sexual violence.
In this case, the events of violence happened in 2007 and 2008, and the legal proceedings are still ongoing. There were 13 separate procedural motions before the Human Rights Tribunal. The final decision on the merits has still not come out. But in the course of that, these workers are on permits that are for only two years. The legal processes grind slowly. Many of the workers who were subject to the abuse have had to leave the country. There is no process in place to ensure protection for women when they do come forward. There's no access to open work permits or other forms of security that would allow them to remain in Canada, to earn a living while they're pursuing their legal claims, or to establish security so that they can pay off the fees that they had to pay to get to Canada.
What is important to recognize is that there are ways to change this. These recommendations have been made in the past. One of the key changes that needs to be made is to eliminate these tied work permits. There have been recommendations made repeatedly in the past for province-wide permits or sectoral permits that would allow workers to be able to move, or to change employers, when they are facing abuse. What's needed is very strong legislative protection and enforcement to eradicate the practice of predatory recruitment fees. Workers need access to settlement services to overcome the isolation. They need access to unionization and community networks. They need access to information about what their rights are when they arrive in Canada, and about who can help them, so that when these situations of abuse arise, they have someone to go to. They need effective remedies to ensure that their rights are rectified, so that they're not subject to a legal process that will drag on far longer than they can stay in the country. But ultimately, the bottom line is that they need access to routes to permanent status, because it is a matter of being trapped in a situation of temporariness, where all their entitlements to be in Canada and to have any rights in the country are dependent on ties to their employer.
The changes that have been made, both to the temporary foreign worker program, in June, and to the live-in caregiver program, have not in any way addressed the structural vulnerabilities that are created by those tied permits and temporariness.
I'd be happy to answer any other questions you have about this.
:
The temporary status that these workers face is the driver of their insecurity, in addition to the tied permits. That's a very important piece that goes with it.
The changes that were just introduced with the caps have really undone the nature of the bargain that had been at the core of the live-in caregiver program, which was that if workers completed two years of work as live-in caregivers, they would earn their right to permanent residency. That is no longer there. There is a possibility to apply for permanent residence, but there's no guarantee of that. That makes the women even more vulnerable. They don't know at the end of the day whether they are on a route to permanence or on this merry-go-round of continuing temporariness.
With regard to other changes that have been implemented, the division between the child care stream and the high medical needs stream also creates additional vulnerability. Women used to be able to accumulate work in both of those areas toward the 24 months that they needed. Now they are locked into one stream or the other. They can't move between those streams; they're not accumulative.
That's a real impediment, and the real uncertainty of whether there is a route to permanence at the end of the day. What the workers really need is a right to permanence from the beginning, the right to status on arrival. What's disturbing about some of the changes is that under the high medical needs stream, a series of female-dominated jobs where workers used to be able to apply directly for permanent status under the federal high-skilled program are being shifted into temporariness. Registered nurses, licensed psychiatric nurses, licensed practical nurses, who used to be able to apply directly, are now being looped into this temporariness, with a requirement to do work, and a possibility but not a guarantee of permanence at the end of it.
The more vulnerabilities and uncertainty that are created, the more a worker is compelled to put up with whatever treatment they receive on the job in the hope of potentially having some security at the end of the day. The further that promise gets from them, the more dangerous it is for them on the ground.
:
We did a bit of a literature review looking at better or promising practices in indigenous populations and communities, broadly with the objective of working with men to reduce violence. We narrowed it down to about 10 practices we thought were promising. One was the I Am A Kind Man program that's run by the Ontario friendship centre association.
We always work with an advisory committee that's regionally representative. We're working specifically with two Inuit men's groups: one in Nunavik, northern Quebec; and one in Nunavut. There aren't a lot of organized Inuit men's groups. We discussed with our advisory committee some of the elements of each of the programs that they thought would work, what needed to be changed to be Inuit-specific, and then we started drafting materials for dealing with past abuse. There's a great need for healing for men. As I mentioned earlier, men have also been victims of violence and abuse as children. We won't go into residential schools and all of that, but we know. Literally, we're writing drafts. For example, if a men's group in a community wanted to have a program over six weeks, what might the modules of that program be? How could it be broken up?
A lot of people find activities on the the land very effective: being out of town, going hunting, and returning to more traditional practices that are being lost somewhat with the wage economy and very rapid cultural shifts. Those are the things we have tried to develop, based on our other work.
We keep taking it back to our advisory committee, the men's groups, and as I say, my colleague is in Rankin Inlet today, going through what we hope will become a final draft, so there'll be tools, resources, exercises, and techniques for men to work with men, primarily on their own healing but with the broader objective of reducing violence.
:
I'm not aware of any psychiatry resident in the north. These services in Nunavik, I think, are available through telehealth—virtually. That would be one.
I would say that the second overarching recommendation would be the need for investments to address the immediate crisis. There are 53 Inuit communities across Inuit Nunangat, as it's called. Some 70% of those do not have a safe shelter for women and children trying to flee violence. I know personally and first-hand that that situation has directly resulted in the death of women and children. More than 70% do not have a safe shelter. It's not even a band-aid, but there has to be much better access for women to leave their homes, their communities. Their communities are fly-in.
I heard one story not long ago, when Helena Guergis was the minister responsible for the Status of Women. She attended our annual meeting. There was a woman who had virtually begged a social worker in western Nunavut to get her on a plane out of her community to escape violence. That request was denied, and she was murdered.
So I know first-hand. I don't know how you rank such urgent priorities, but that would be the second—better access to safety for women and children.
The third, I would say, would be sustained efforts, not one annual project based on predetermined criteria and that maybe does or doesn't fit Inuit needs and priorities. It has to be sustained. And to me, part of that is a whole-of-government response. Let's all work together with their regional Inuit women's organizations. We need to be able to work together. They have virtually no capacity. I think all Inuit stakeholders, the federal government, provinces, and territories—we have a round table coming in February with the provinces and territories—need to get together, identify Inuit priorities and what role each entity has to play and how we can move those forward in a meaningful and sustained way.
Thank you.
:
Certainly research in Canada and around the world and sex worker advocacy agencies across Canada are expressing considerable concerns about how the bill is likely to drive sex work underground.
I spoke about how just one very small factor, which is the few unethical police officers in every region, can undermine the capacity to even implement such a bill because they themselves are undermining the relationship between sex workers and police.
The confusion around what the restrictions are on sex workers is huge, so for people who are engaged in that kind of work to support themselves, I think we've created a very complex situation for them to try to navigate.
Certainly when we look at a country like New Zealand we see that when there is consultation with the marginalized women affected by a certain law, the law that is created then tends to decrease violence against that group. In over 10 years in New Zealand we've seen how that kind of consultation with peer-to-peer groups, as well as with business and government, has exponentially decreased violence there and increased reporting of things like exploitation, human trafficking, exploitation of youth, and that kind of thing.
Here, with the law in place, people are going to be more reluctant to go to police, which means that when sex workers witness human trafficking or exploitation of youth, where they were already reluctant to go to police under the previous law, they're going to be even more reluctant because they will be uncertain about what the implications are for themselves. So I think that's certainly a concern.
I know it was well intentioned.
:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Ladies, I would like to thank you for your testimony this morning.
I will begin with a comment on your answers.
As mentioned, nothing has been done and nothing is being done to prevent violence against women. I knew that you hadn't been consulted about the national plan to counter violence against women.
Unlike my colleagues opposite, I think that, regardless of the number of women, in Nunavut for example, the amount allocated should be the same. Instead, it should be a matter of quality.
You said that women and children in Nunavut—in Canada—are in danger, and that scares me. We need to invest more in order to intervene in urgent cases, to protect the safety of these women and children, rather than invest only based on population.
There is another problem. The court has recognized that sex workers are the most vulnerable women, yet nothing has been done so far to protect them appropriately.
How do you explain that nothing has been done to protect sex workers and women and children in Nunavut from violence?
I really appreciate the testimony we've heard so far today. I feel as though we are getting to best practices, which is really what this study is intended to do. I think we heard at the outset—and it sounds very ominous—that we've been doing a lot of these things for 30 years, and yet in some areas like the area of violence against women, we haven't seen much change.
I want to turn, therefore, to the Sheldon Kennedy Child Advocacy Centre, because I really feel that it represents a new wave of change in how we deal with these issues, and it has some great innovation that we can learn from today.
I'm hoping, ladies, that you can help us expound on that and really learn from what you've learned.
I want to talk about how we know. One of the great challenges with pouring money into a field that we all feel deeply needs our attention is to actually know what is working and how to measure that as you go along.
Can you talk about that, please, Bonnie?
:
In terms of what has not been done in the changes, none of the changes that were implemented in June addressed any of the structural conditions that I've talked about that actually drive vulnerability to exploitation and violence, so the removal of the tied work permits is absolutely critical.
Some of the dangers that have been created with the changes are that the term of the work permits is shorter now. Instead of having two-year permits, they are now one-year permits, which puts even greater stress on workers to comply with employers' demands because they are even more vulnerable. It's easier to cycle them out more quickly. There is less security with regard to their ability to stay for a period of time that will allow them to pay off their recruitment fees, to figure out what their rights are in Canada, and how to enforce that.
What we have seen is this acceleration of the revolving door, of spinning workers in and out more quickly without an ability to enforce their rights. The focus of the changes has not been to address any of the elements of that system that drive worker vulnerability.
That was also accompanied with a framing that contributes to a discourse in which migrant workers are seen as a threat. They are the others who are seen as problematic. It was framed in the discourse of putting Canadians first and setting up a divisiveness between people who are Canadians and migrants who have been living and working here for a long time.
That needs to be very directly addressed to recognize that these are workers who are doing core jobs in the economy that our families depend on, our economies depend on. They are members of our communities, so it is important to provide recognition of that and enable them to actually regularize their status as permanent members of our communities. They should be able to bring their families with them. The isolation of being here on their own without their families makes them even more vulnerable. It drives even greater marginalization and greater opportunity for employer control over every aspect of their lives.
Those are some really key issues that need to be addressed and the issue around recruitment has not been addressed at all.
I want to thank everybody for coming out today. It's great to hear your passion and some of your great ideas. I think this is an important opportunity for all of us to get together, consolidate some of these great ideas, and get your feedback on what is working but also what is not working and how we can address some of those solutions.
I also want to quickly mention that temporary foreign workers is a very significant issue for us in Alberta, but there are lots of options out there—the express entry on January 1, the open work permit, and we've quadrupled the staff who will be investigating reports of abuse. I'd be interested in having Mrs. Faraday keep in touch with us to let us know how those programs are working.
To Bonnie and Jenny in Calgary, it's good to see you both again. I had an opportunity to tour the centre a couple of times over the years.
Bonnie, you touched a little bit on the fact that you're able to do there in days and hours what would have taken weeks and months previously. I'd like to get you to perhaps expand on that a little bit. I think what we want to make sure is clear is that you have all of these services housed together. For lack of a better term, it's a one-stop shop. That seems to be making a world of difference.
First, can you tell us what difference that has made by having all of these groups together? Second, you mentioned the prenatal support team. I hadn't heard of that program before. Can you expand on that a little bit and let us know how that works and what's involved with that?
:
I appreciate that question, and it's something we have given a lot of thought to. There's quite a problem in lack of capacity and lack of civil society, if you will, in Inuit communities. Iqaluit is probably the biggest one. It's the only city. Again, it's only really two generations since Inuit have lived in communities and settlements, so it's a speed of light cultural change. In some areas, we still have 70% of Inuit kids not finishing high school. There are a number of challenges: unemployment, poverty, overcrowded housing.
I don't want to overstate it, but when you're just trying to navigate each day and survive, maybe feed your children or not, it can be very difficult to have the ability, the time, the knowledge, the skills to develop that civil society capacity. There are no incorporated women's groups or other groups as we take for granted in the south.
We work with two regional Inuit women's organizations, to the extent we each have the respective capacity. We would like to have a formal engagement with those women on the priorities in their regions.
There are a number of entities. Qulliit Nunavut Status of Women Council would have a role to play. We have a board. Frankly, in preparing with the provinces and territories for the round table in February, we will be there, I hope, having to have a bake sale. Again, I don't want to overstate it.
We have zero resources to solicit views on priorities, so we've created a new email address, and I'm hoping that women will email us with their priorities. There have to be resources for equitable participation, as was brought up earlier—not per capita but equitable—with a view to equitable outcomes. Using a substantive equality approach, what is required to achieve an equitable outcome, whatever it may be?