:
Thank you kindly, Mr. Chair.
Honourable members, thank you. I am delighted to be here. This is my first time appearing before a committee. Since I don't have a lot of time, I will speak directly to the issue.
I am from Montreal and I represent the Table de concertation des organismes au service des personnes réfugiées et immigrantes as well as the Réseau d'action pour l'égalité des femmes immigrées et racisées du Québec. Professionally, I teach the sociology of immigration at UQAM, so I'm a sociologist by trade.
I'd like to discuss two things today. The first has to do with the status of being an immigrant and the consequences of some precarious status-related issues on the living conditions of immigrant women. The second issue is also tied to status and concerns the economic uncertainty of immigrant and racialized women.
I will now discuss the first issue, the consequences of immigrant status, more specifically as they relate to sponsorship.
Before I begin, I should tell you that I also work on the front lines, and we are in contact with immigrant women. My remarks today are based on the experiences of women on the ground and on findings that have allowed us to give immigrant women a voice. This is the reality on the ground.
In October 2012, the federal government announced the introduction of a two-year conditional permanent residence period for certain sponsored spouses. Following that announcement, we realized that, as a result of the new immigration rule, the sponsored spouses in question could face deportation if they did not live with their spouse for the full two years of the conditional permanent residence period.
In the view of the Table de concertation des organismes au service des personnes réfugiées et immigrantes and Réseau d'action pour l'égalité des femmes immigrées et racisées du Québec, implementing a conditional permanent residence period is a step backward in Canada's immigration policy. It exacerbates inequalities in marriage relationships and makes women, in particular, more vulnerable to violence, despite the exception for spouses who are victims of abuse.
The new measure diminishes women's safety and, above all, significantly empowers the guarantor. The guarantor would have the ability to pressure the woman into doing whatever he wants, by threatening the sponsored spouse with the possibility of losing her permanent residence status at any time.
It is our view that this new rule also represents a step backward for all Canadian women and immigrant women, who are already overrepresented in the most vulnerable immigrant groups. The new sexist measures are a direct attack on them.
Although an exception was set out for spouses suffering abuse or neglect, we believe that women cannot benefit from it. Many of them are not familiar enough with Canada's laws or, specifically, the exception tied to the conditional two-year period. It is our opinion that sponsored spouses suffering from abuse, especially women, will not be able to benefit from the exception owing to a number of barriers such as the lack of access to information, the inability to speak the language and social isolation.
A number of cultural factors come into play as well. Speaking out against domestic abuse is frowned upon in certain cultures. Something of a code of silence exists and it forces women to keep quiet, out of fear that they will be shunned or rejected by their family, among other things.
For example, an arranged marriage is a situation where a woman cannot speak up about domestic abuse. If she does, she runs the risk of facing some rather negative consequences. Last year, for that matter, we observed situations involving honour crimes and the like. A forced marriage is another example of a vulnerable situation for women.
Women do not report abuse for many reasons. It is also important that immigrant women have the right understanding and definition of abuse. Some equate abuse with physical violence, even though we all know abuse comes in many forms, physical, psychological, economic and so forth.
That is why we believe there are other ways to deter people from committing marriage fraud, one of the objectives underlying the new measures. Steps could be taken to verify the legitimacy of a marriage or union in the home country. Different approaches could be used to verify that.
Furthermore, it is no longer good enough to judge the guarantor by the information they, themselves, supply. It is necessary to meet with them and look them in the eye. That is the person who will be sponsoring the woman. Making a determination on the sponsor should not be limited to reviewing the information in their file.
A great deal of immigrant women don't know the laws or even what it means to be sponsored. They should perhaps be advised in their home countries of the various issues related to being an immigrant and, especially, the sponsorship mechanism. In some countries, Canadian embassies frequently offer information sessions on Canada and Quebec to successful immigration applicants. It would be very beneficial to organize similar information sessions on Canada's immigration laws.
Violence against women happens in all cultures and religions, in all ethnic and racial communities, at every age, in every income group. Immigrant women under the spousal sponsorship program are more vulnerable to abuses or domestic violence due to the sheer nature of the power imbalance in the relationship between them and their sponsor partners. This is compounded by their economic dependence, conceivable language and cultural barriers, controlling attitudes, threats by their sponsor partners who keep them deliberately isolated from the outside world, withholding their passports and immigration documents, for example.
A woman's fear of her children's safety and welfare as well as her uncertainty of her PR status will keep her continuing in an abusive relationship. Furthermore, the lack of knowledge of her legal rights, community, and protective support services adds a further complication and challenge for her.
Refugees who arrive in Canada traumatized by war or oppressive governments are much less likely to report physical or sexual violence to the authorities for fear of further victimization, or even deportation. There are also cases where sponsored immigrant women are abused by extended family members of the sponsor partner.
Breaking the cycle of domestic abuse and violence is very difficult and challenging. Helping the sponsored immigrant woman to decide to walk away from the battered relationship with all the odds against her has proven to be very challenging and complicated as well.
It is important that we recognize there are some systems in place. Canada has well-intended laws to protect abused women and immigration policies to guard against sponsorship frauds; however, the application of these rules has sometimes created unintended barriers for immigrant women in abusive and domestic violence relationships. For example, as soon as the sponsor partner terminates the sponsorship when the immigrant woman leaves the marriage or tries to leave an abusive relationship, she loses her legal status to stay in Canada.
Settlement agencies and transitional house providers are seeing an increasing number of mothers without legal status across the country. There are cases where sponsorship applications are incomplete or the process has not even started and the woman's status has expired. Given that their children's primary residence is in Canada, they cannot leave the country to return to their own country of origin with their children without consent from their ex-partner. This means they must stay in Canada without status.
Our legal system, as a result, would not grant much favour to the mothers without legal status application for child custody or access decisions. Taking the child out of the country or away from an abusive partner would make the mother without legal status run the risk of being accused of child abduction. Even in situations where the children can stay with her under a protection order in a transition house, the father's access to the children in a neutral place, like a transition house, sometimes leads to violence. The women usually have no means to get a trustworthy third person to take the children to a place to enable the father's access to the children.
The YWCA has launched a national campaign requesting CIC to expedite the first stage approval of the legal status for mothers without legal status, or immigrant women leaving spousal abusive relationships who apply on humanitarian and compassionate grounds as they are living in danger. We, S.U.C.C.E.S.S., agree that this is one critical solution that opens doors to improve both the short-term and long-term livelihood of these immigrant women; however, the success rates for these applications are usually low and the whole process to receive legal status, ranging from two to three years, remains too long. Help is not happening soon enough for these immigrant women in crisis. We would like Parliament to strengthen and speed up the legal status issue for these sponsored immigrant women who find themselves in abusive relationships with their spouse.
From another angle, from the perpetrator's side, we agree that the abusive sponsor partner should carry their share of responsibility and punitive consequence of their doings.
The issue is the perpetrators have to see that they are the problem, not their spousal partner. The problem stops with the abuser. It is more practical to really make the perpetrators pay or owe the government for the costs of all the supportive government and social services to help the immigrant women leaving an abusive sponsorship relationship to rebuild their lives and the welfare of their children to economic independence. The government can even make this a condition in the spousal sponsorship application in the event of a spousal sponsorship breakdown in any abusive and also violent situation.
Beyond support services and legal protection for the abused women, it is important to look at the safety and custody of children, crisis intervention by transition houses, continued legal aid services and legal education, medical health services, mental health services, counselling support services, both long-term and short-term affordable housing, settlement services, access to education and language skill training, income assistance, child care services, bridging services for immigrant women—there are too many to mention in here.
I am pleased to learn that currently there are tools being developed by the BC Society of Transition Houses and the AMSSA, Affiliation of Multicultural Societies and Service Agencies of BC, which is an umbrella organization for all settlement services. These will be distributed by the B.C. government ministry to train and assist settlement practitioners in a sector to become more sensitized to the issue, and to know how to address it and refer people to the appropriate resources.
Let me conclude by citing for you two real cases encountered by our agency's front-line settlement workers:
In case one, an immigrant wife from China sponsored by her spouse had been verbally abused since the beginning of the marriage. He set strict rules in the house and if she didn't do things his way, he was verbally abusive to her. She thought that he was the breadwinner and worked hard outside and that she should be able to put up with him. Later she got sick and found out she had cancer. After that the situation became worse. Even after her chemotherapy, her treatment for cancer, when she was still very weak, she had to cook for him and clean the house.
Her parents came to visit from China to help her. They found out their daughter was abused and called the police many times when the abuse increased. But due to the language barrier, the parents of our client could not explain well to the police, and yet the husband, the abuser, who could speak English always told the police, “These are family arguments, no big deal.” So the police left without any actions.
Some of the wife's friends offered help, but the husband refused most of the time. He said taking care of her was his responsibility and if she got help from outside, that meant he hadn't done a good enough job. Friends could only come to her place when the husband was working.
With other people's help, her parents informed the Ministry of Children and Family Development that the spouse beat up their three-year-old son. The ministry sent a social worker for a home visit, but again no further action was taken. Social workers in the hospital were aware of her situation. With their help she was moved to a shelter for a couple of days, but was forced to leave because the shelter could not take care of a sick person like her.
Her parents tried to draw media attention for help, but the story was published by one Chinese newspaper—
Thank you for that story, Queenie. I think it underscores how front-line workers are dealing with these issues on a daily basis.
Thank you for this opportunity. I'm from the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants, OCASI. We welcome the opportunity to contribute to the study undertaken by this committee on strengthening protection of women in our immigration system.
OCASI is the umbrella organization for Ontario's immigrant and refugee serving sector, with more than 230 agencies across the province. A number of my member agencies provide a range of violence prevention, emergency housing for abused women, immigration support, health care, employment and skills training, among other services. You have heard from some of them and will hear in the coming weeks particularly from organizations such as the South Asian Women's Centre and the Afghan Women's Organization. We are very pleased that the work being done in Ontario will be coming to you along with our concerns.
OCASI has appeared as a witness on numerous occasions before the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration as well as before other parliamentary and Senate committees to share our expertise and experience on issues that impact upon immigrants and refugees.
We have also had the opportunity to contribute to this and other committees' studies of proposed and existing legislation through written submissions. I must apologize that you do not have my presentation for today in front of you.
In the few minutes that I have, I would like to offer some thoughts on two issues: on the proposal to impose an education and skills requirement as well as a language requirement for spousal sponsorship as a violence prevention measure; and on the two-year conditional permanent residency that both of my colleagues have also spoken about.
First, let me deal with the proposed requirements.
Distressingly, violence against women in Canada is a very real phenomenon, and it's a phenomenon that cuts across race, ethnicity, economic and social class, ability, and age. The one unifying truth, I think it's fair to say, is that violence against women is a function of patriarchy.
In its report, the Canadian Women's Foundation said that half of all women in Canada have experienced at least one incident of physical or sexual violence since the age of 16, and that 67% of Canadians say they personally know at least one woman who has been sexually or physically assaulted.
OCASI has heard from our front-line practitioners in the immigrant and refugee serving sector that in their experience spousal violence is significantly under-reported.
The 2009 StatsCan study “Family Violence in Canada: A Statistical Profile” noted, “Disclosing spousal violence can be difficult for many victims”, and “not all incidents are reported to the police”; that “fewer than 3 in 10...victims of spousal violence reported the abuse to the police”. The study noted, “Other forms of spousal abuse, such as emotional, psychological or financial abuse...are not offences chargeable under the Criminal Code and...are not included in this analysis”.
As I said earlier, violence against women can occur in all communities, regardless of culture, religion, language, age, or ethnicity. It is not limited to low-income women, to unemployed women, to women with limited education, or to immigrant and refugee women.
Some women are at greater risk because of other factors, such as a lack of knowledge of their rights or their ability to pursue them, lack of access to services or resources, or because of racial and other forms of discrimination when they try to access protection or services.
The Canadian Women's Foundation further found:
Immigrant women may be more vulnerable to domestic violence due to economic dependence, language barriers, and a lack of knowledge about community resources. Newcomers who arrive in Canada traumatized by war or oppressive governments are much less likely to report physical or sexual violence to the authorities, for fear of further victimization or even deportation.
Many racialized women face barriers to reporting incidents of physical or sexual assault or seeking help. “A study with young women of colour in Toronto found that one-in-five experienced racism in the health care system which included cultural insensitivity, racial slurs, and poor quality [of] care.”
That was particularly for young women of colour who had experienced sexual assault.
Let me state again that in spite of these findings, women are not more prone to violence or abuse because of a lack of education or a lack of labour market access.
A recent Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives report noted that 70% of Canadian women who report having experienced spousal violence are working women, and 71% have a university or college degree.
We are therefore very doubtful that imposing an education and skills requirement as well as a language requirement on a sponsor's spouse would do anything to address spousal violence and instead may become another factor that can contribute to the vulnerability of the sponsored spouse.
At present, the only requirement for marriage in most Canadian provinces and territories is an age limit, which is meant to ensure protection for minors. I want to add here that we support the proposal that is on the table to increase the age of spousal sponsorship from 16 to 18. The council absolutely welcomes that change.
We find it deeply troubling, however, that the Canadian government is now contemplating telling Canadians who they can and cannot marry by imposing language, education, and skills requirements. This is akin to the government acting as a marriage broker for Canadian spouses.
What will happen in the event that a Canadian has married overseas to a spouse who does not meet these requirements? Are they to live apart? Is the Canadian sponsor expected to divorce the spouse and find one more palatable to meet CIC requirements? While they might sound very far-fetched, these are the kinds of questions that arise when we look at imposing these kinds of requirements concerning who can be married and sponsored into our country.
Further, given that spousal violence and violence against women are issues that impact all Canadian women regardless of immigration status and place of birth, we are extremely puzzled at the proposal to address this very serious issue through an immigration lens. We believe that these proposals would not address the issue and would instead punish certain Canadians and certain immigrants.
We need to invest in a national campaign to build awareness and education on preventing violence against women, including forced marriage. This would include investing in education for service providers broadly defined, who include those working with immigrants and refugees in shelters and housing, within the health care field, in law enforcement, in immigration, and in community and other social work.
We need to invest in services for women, including specialized services for aboriginal women, refugee and immigrant women, women with disabilities, and older women, so that we can support them in breaking out of isolation and in their movement to economic independence.
We need a national housing strategy that would include providing affordable housing as well as emergency and transition housing for all women who need it.
Last, we need a national child care strategy that would free up women to enter the labour market.
I look forward to our conversation.
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Yes, absolutely. From our experience and our many meetings with women who have sought our help, we have learned that they are afraid to report their spouse or husband. They are afraid not just of their spouse, but also of their community, because of how it is viewed.
What's more, some women with bruises did not want to report the abuse. Others still don't understand that abuse is more than just physical, that it can be psychological as well. When they describe what is happening to them and professionals tell them they are experiencing psychological violence or abuse, they ask what that means.
During my presentation, I said it was important to keep these situations from happening, and not to wait until it's too late. These women should be advised of the rights they have here, in Canada, our values and the fact that men and women are equal here. They should be informed of all that even before they get to Canada.
Basically, as I was saying earlier, information sessions should be available to these women to explain what sponsorship is, how it works and what it requires of them and their husbands. Keep in mind that many husbands and spouses take advantage of the sponsorship dynamic.
:
Thank you. That's what I thought you said.
I'd also like to follow up on what you said about how hard it is to access protection measures and services. I believe all three of you mentioned that. Earlier, one of my colleagues said that a woman's initial reflex would probably be to call the police. That's not true. Given how things work in certain countries or the experiences these women have had, they won't react by calling the police.
I have here the information sheet that CIC provides to sponsored individuals who request it. The document says that, if the person is suffering from abuse and wants to request an exception to the conditional permanent residence measure, they should contact CIC's call centre at the number provided.
But one witness told us that the call centre wasn't suited to that kind of call. The witness said that the person could wait on hold for a long time and that, in some cases, a CIC representative had to call the woman back. Women in abusive situations can't always leave a phone number where they can be reached or wait on hold for long periods of time.
What are your thoughts on those comments? What kinds of services would make things easier for women who want to report abuse or seek help?
The question is for the three of you.
:
Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.
First, thank you for the invitation. Our director, Aoura Bizzarri, asked me to represent the Collectif des femmes immigrantes du Québec, or CFIQ, and give evidence for your study.
The CFIQ was established in 1983 by stakeholders from various backgrounds. Its mission is to support immigrant women and their families and women from visible minorities and cultural communities as they integrate into Quebec society and the labour market.
I'd like to give you a sense of the kind of work we do. Last year, the CFIQ offered 12 distinct services at its women's centre. A total of 2,685 women benefited from these services and activities, resulting in 12,375 visits to the centre. In addition, 2,400 people, including 900 women, registered for its 11 socio-occupational integration projects.
The CFIQ has expertise in two areas covered by your study, the integration of immigrants into the labour market and the social isolation of immigrant women. I will start with the integration of women immigrants into the labour market.
Immigrant women face many challenges common to immigrants: a lack of knowledge of the labour market, organizational cultures and the skills required in the workplace, the need to learn English or French, and the need to rebuild their work network. All newcomers, be they men or women, face these challenges.
But women must also reconcile a job or job search and family life. Most immigrant women come from traditional societies where gender roles are much more distinct than they are here in Canada. Women are usually responsible for domestic work and taking care of children. In their native country, however, they were able to rely on a large support network and often had domestic help even if they were not rich. In order to enter the labour market here, they must rebuild their personal support network, as well as their professional one.
For the first time in their lives, women often find themselves shouldering all the responsibility for doing the domestic chores, planning and preparing meals, and caring for children. That's a lot of responsibility all at once. Some men do not want to share these tasks, while others are willing to help but do not know how because they never learned how to do them. Regardless, this problem has an impact on the family dynamic and affects the spouses' relationship.
Now, I'd like to spend some time discussing the obstacles immigrant women face, obstacles that are not related to their integration or adaptation efforts. In fact, removing these obstacles falls more on the shoulders of Canadian society.
The first obstacle is the lack of room in subsidized daycare, which obviously prevents immigrant women from trying to enter the labour market. The longer immigrants take to enter the labour market, the more difficult it is to have their credentials recognized.
Another obstacle is the fact that services are not tailored. Offering tailored services is paramount. The immigration process and the individual's situation must be taken into account, as these affect access to services. Bewildered by the immigration process and finding themselves in a place where the rules of the game are different, new and often implied, where both work and personal networks are non-existent, immigrant women need different supports so that they can regain their independence. And goodness knows how much value we attach to independence in our society.
Program standards for public labour market integration services represent another obstacle. In Quebec's case, that involves Emploi-Québec. These services are often aimed at reducing the number of people receiving employment or social assistance. Sponsored women are not entitled to employment assistance; neither are economic-class immigrant women during their first three months in Canada. Often, then, those not receiving a cheque are not allowed to participate in a job placement or training program because helping them does not reduce the number of employment assistance beneficiaries. That denial of services further delays their entry into the labour market or even access to a retraining program.
And, very often, employers require prospective employees to have work experience in Canada. So we have some work to do in terms of making our society more inclusive and accommodating when it comes to immigrants.
Another obstacle is education and credential recognition, which is a very complex issue. Because of time constraints, I won't go into it in detail. I would like to say, however, that on a small scale, there are some pilot projects under way in that respect; they take into account the education completed and the credentials earned as part of a work experience in the host country or not. Non-standard projects of this nature are serving as trial exercises that will make it possible to better assess the situation and support labour market participation. But, even if these projects do perform well, the fact that they are non-standard often hinders their existence in the long term. So the problem as far as adequate funding is concerned, comes back to the non-tailoring of services, standards and programs.
As far as the employer perspective goes, Deloitte conducted a round table dialogue in 2011 involving a hundred or so employers. Round tables were held across the country and the focus of the discussion was diversity. The round tables revealed that employers were risk-averse and that they associated the hiring of immigrants and the difficulty of having foreign credentials recognized with risk. So rather than take the risk, they don't get involved.
The lack of understanding around cultural nuances was another problematic element. So there's a lot of groundwork to be done as far as small businesses are concerned.
:
Good afternoon. Thank you for inviting me to appear before the committee and share our experience working with immigrant girls and women in Canada.
[English]
I think it's clear that immigrant girls and women, including those in the spousal sponsorship program, face various challenges and experience considerable tensions in their efforts to bridge multiple cultures, live in a new context, and respond to the discrimination and barriers to opportunity they face. At the same time they also demonstrate high aspirations, skills in cultural negotiation, and great potential for leadership.
According to statistics from a few years back, girls and young women under 25 made up to 38% of female immigrants to Canada within that particular year.
We can see girls and young women are at the crux of race, class, age, and gender, which are converging factors that make them particularly vulnerable. They find themselves caught between two cultures where their own is often devalued, and they face tremendous struggle in trying to fit into a new culture. Their specific needs and experiences need to be acknowledged and addressed if we want to prevent violence against them and also to prevent an abuse of the immigration system.
Immigrant and refugee processes place many women, including those who come here as a sponsored spouse or those who sponsor spouses to come here to Canada.... In both situations the girls or young women are in particularly vulnerable positions and need our support.
Some immigrant girls and women face violence in their homes, but may have little or no protection due to a range of factors. I think the factors were covered by some of the participants who spoke just before me, so I won't go into detail. For example, there's the lack of information, distrust of the police and services, fear of deportation, language barriers, fear of isolation, just to name a few. There is a range of factors that make them more vulnerable. Perpetrators of violence also think they can escape punishment if the victims feel they cannot afford to report the violence. Usually the victims are girls and women.
I will tell you a little bit about the Girls Action Foundation and our approach. We are a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting girls and young women to reach their full potential as future leaders and change-makers. We operate on a national scale through a network of more than 340 member groups in all provinces and territories across Canada. We provide our members with tools, resources, and training to help them start up programs for girls, including programs for girls from specific backgrounds, such as immigrant and newcomer girls.
We have supported more than 100 initiatives across Canada to build a national movement of active and engaged young women and organizations.
We take an assets-based approach in working with girls and women, because we see immigrant girls and women as having many strengths and skills. They work hard. They carry heavier burdens than their Canadian counterparts, and they act as cultural ambassadors and bridges between two cultures. Often they are the ones who are supporting their family in understanding and accessing services, and in this process they develop skills, such as cultural awareness, communication skills, and resourcefulness, which can be valuable assets for the whole community.
Immigrant girls and young women are more likely to continue and complete their education than their Canadian counterparts, so we really need to see girls and young women who come to Canada, including those who come in as sponsored spouses, as assets, as agents of change, not as victims or beneficiaries just waiting for our intervention.
We have worked a lot with immigrant girls and young women, and we have seen some promising practices that have been proven to work. They include building skills and self-esteem, reducing isolation, and increasing connections to their communities, providing support, especially supports from their peers, and providing girls and women with girl-only spaces where they can express themselves more freely, and last, providing role models, including role models from their own families and communities, to show them they can also reach levels of leadership in Canada.
We have some recommendations that would reduce violence and abuse as well as support communities, girls and women in dealing with violence.
First of all, it's important to see that a holistic approach is needed, one that recognizes the diversity of needs, provides a range of social services, and builds linkages between the different services.
There should be services at all levels. At the individual level, services should help young women develop skills and knowledge to participate actively in society and to deal with issues such as violence when they face them.
There should be family-oriented support to address the stress that families face, especially families who are immigrating together or have other changes in their economic status due to their immigration, to help them support one another and respond together.
There should be services to help the host communities in the process of the adaptation of newcomers, especially women who come in as sponsored spouses and are particularly vulnerable. These services should include: cultural sensitivity and training for service providers, who should also belong to diverse backgrounds that can relate to the young women; increased collaboration between community centres, shelters, police, and justice officials; and ongoing provision of information to immigrant women, especially sponsored spouses, about their legal rights and services.
Health, well-being, and skill-building programs with a feminist and cross-cultural approach need to take place. We should start young because our society needs to equip girls and boys to develop into healthy active men and women who don't commit acts of violence or abuse, but know how to respond if they are ever faced with it.
Policies and programs at the government level must be proactive. Immigrant women should be engaged as a priority right from the start, not as an afterthought. They should be collaborative and flexible and adapt to different needs and realities of women. They need to recognize the role of immigrant women in their families, communities, and society at large. If women are provided with support and resources to develop their leadership skills, they can become a tremendous asset, not only for the young girls of the communities but for society at large, as they can act as role models for younger women and also provide them with support.
Last, I just want to highlight again that we should not overlook the specific realities and challenges that girls or younger women face. As I said, they are at the crux of race, class, age, gender, and they are particularly vulnerable, so they need specific attention to reduce their vulnerability.
Thank you very much.
:
My comments today will focus on just two aspects relating to the sponsorship program: the conditional permanent residence period of two years and its impact on women in domestic abuse situations, as well as the proposed requirement that sponsored female spouses be able to speak one of our official languages.
The government's objective of protecting women from barbaric crimes is commendable. But requiring women to speak one of the official languages does not address the source of the problem. Unfortunately, this new requirement will discriminate against women from certain countries and subject them to shameful consequences. It will also separate families, preventing women in their child-bearing years from starting a family and, in some cases, from having one at all.
Learning a language is not an easy, straightforward or fast process. I would submit that this new requirement violates the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women. What's more, it's an attack on the family and women's rights.
The fact is that the new rule will have no effect whatsoever on many women who come from countries in northwest Africa where honour crimes and forced marriages exist. The reason is that they already speak French.
In addition, there is no research showing that the ability to speak English or French shields women from domestic abuse situations. Resources to help women are what is needed.
In my legal practice over the years, I have seen a great deal of women suffering from domestic abuse. Many of them were from the United States, Canada and even France, just to name a few. They were often well-educated women with careers. However, they were socially isolated, and seeking out support and helping themselves was a challenge.
Violence is a complex problem that won't be solved by learning one of the official languages.
Furthermore, there is absolutely no doubt that Latin, Asian and European women who don't speak English or French and who come from countries where forced marriages and honour crimes don't exist, will be separated from their families and discriminated against unnecessarily, under the proposed requirement.
It's also quite conceivable that some women could face enormous pressure from their husbands to learn English or French quickly so they can be sponsored. And that could cause conflict in families and make women even more vulnerable.
If the objective is to prevent barbaric acts, why not take a targeted approach? I suggest that the government examine the problem directly at its source. Who are the women most at risk of falling victim to an honour crime? What support and information programs are available to those women upon arriving in Canada or before they are sponsored?
Would it be possible for the government to prevent domestic abuse by educating men and women on what constitutes violence against women under the Declaration of the Elimination of Violence against Women, adopted in 1993? According to that declaration, violence can be verbal and leave no physical trace.
Women who are already in extremely vulnerable situations should not be forced to file a police report and further endanger themselves because of the two-year conditional permanent residence period. The conditional two-year period makes women who are victims of domestic abuse more vulnerable, despite the exception put in place by the government. In fact, these women are often asked to provide evidence that they are experiencing domestic abuse. In some cases, what the government is trying to achieve will actually make the abuse these women endure worse, making them even more vulnerable.
The exception in the act should be interpreted very broadly so as to respect the definition of violence in the 1993 declaration, so as to include psychological and verbal violence. Article 1 of the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women states that:
[...] the term “violence against women“ means any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life.
A woman should not have to tolerate shouting, insults and psychological and verbal mistreatment, and should not have to prove this mistreatment in order to remain in Canada. The current law puts the sponsored woman between a rock and a hard place.
This problem existed before the advent of the two-year conditional residency. Indeed, women who were being sponsored were often victims of family violence. They could then ask to remain in Canada on humanitarian grounds or be entitled to an exception. I have had some of these women as clients. They had to prove that they had lodged a complaint with the police or that they had marks of physical violence. It was very complicated and traumatizing for them.
Realistically speaking, it has to be said that lodging a complaint with the police can sometimes make violence against certain women worse. In Quebec, I saw cases where following complaints to the police, violent husbands hunted these women down, and tracked them right to the shelters for abused women that are supposed to be anonymous and have secret locations.
That said, my conclusion is that the conditional residency provision prevents these spouses from giving each other a chance to reconcile and undergo therapy, but does not necessarily protect the institution of marriage as well as judges who give couples some time to change their minds. In real life, sometimes couples quarrel. Certain women will forgive acts of violence, that are then not repeated.
In conclusion, I submit that in sponsorship cases, families deserve as much protection from legislators as do other families. Once I saw a young couple with a newborn at my office. The mother had postpartum depression.
:
Thank you for your question, Mr. Menegakis.
I do in fact know the text you have in your hands very well, since I wrote it. However, I did say at the outset clearly that my testimony would not necessarily be about sponsored women, but more so about the expertise of the organization I represent, the Collectif des femmes immigrantes du Québec.
Regarding sponsored women, I can point out that we see them much less in organizations, since when they are sponsored, a network helps them out from the time they arrive. This causes a perverse effect. The advice that is given to them regarding integration into the workforce is often not well-founded. For instance, women are told to forget about their past careers and to begin again at the bottom of the ladder, or to take training as support workers in order to be able to find a job easily. If the same woman had gone to an organization that could assess her skills and take into account her schooling and professional experience, she could probably have been directed toward more satisfying and self-actualizing work. The fact that, generally, sponsored people do not have much to do with the integration services of the host society is a problem and often limits their future advancement possibilities.
In the statement you read, they in fact refer to a bidirectional integration process involving the host society and the new immigrants. This bidirectional process is more difficult in the case of sponsored women because often their harbour, their home port is the community, and sometimes remains the community. So often they do not benefit from the bridging role public or community services play.
Have I answered your question?
:
Yes, I spoke about that earlier. Among other things they must take into consideration the immigration process, the experience as a whole, the loss of reference points and the fact that many of these women are for the first time responsible for everything in the family—housework, educating the children, family balance—aside from having to find a job and deal with the family dynamics that have been perturbed.
Often, the services offered by women's networks have a feminist approach that encourages women to be independent and take their destinies into their own hands. I'm not saying that the feminist approach is bad, but in the case of immigrant women, we must absolutely take into account their central, essential role and what the family and the community represent for them. So we cannot do interventions that are based solely on the individual's independence.
It is important to take into consideration the environment, the community and the family. That is what the Collectif des femmes immigrantes du Québec does in its activities. We really want to work with the person where they are. Quietly, things evolve from there. Newcomers adapt much more quickly than people think. A lot of changes happen, but the host society only sees the distance still left to cover rather than the distance that has already been covered.
So we have to work with the person where they are when they arrive and help them evolve gradually, taking the environment into account as well as the frame of reference the person has. It may be that that frame of reference is different from those that are valued in Canada. So we have to gradually help these two realities to converge, to meet, and help with the necessary mediations so that the transition happens. The point is not to lose one's culture of origin, but rather to see what compromises can be achieved, what changes are acceptable, and which are less so, and to work step by step on integration at all of these levels.
:
I am an immigrant, and when I came in I got a lot of support in finding a job. Emploi-Québec helped me even before I came in. I was part of teleconferences looking at my background, my qualifications, how I could use them when I came.
Similarly, when a new immigrant is coming in as a spouse, before and after he or she comes here, there should be those kinds of services, that outreach. The immigrant has to take part in those services and sessions to learn about his or her rights, the legal situation in Canada, in a very simple way.
The government can make some simple worksheets, handbooks, which would help them to understand the laws as they would apply to them. What do they do if they are abused? What are their rights if they are abused? Would they be sent back to their home country if they report abuse? It's questions like that. They should be given to young women when they come into Canada.
There should be a continuation of the process, where social services providers stay in touch with them and build a relationship with them and also help them to get skills that allow them to express themselves, to learn the language, to find local supports. Usually women like to find support in their community, but they need to be really helped so they can find those supports and reach out to them and know where they can go if they need support.
:
Thank you for putting me on the right path.
Yes, the government could do something. For instance, when live-in caregivers arrive in the country, they are given a list of available resources concerning works standards and the associations that can support and help them. We could do something like that for sponsored women.
In Quebec, the Department of Immigration and Cultural Communities, which is responsible for the integration of immigrants, offers group sessions, one of which is entitled “First Settlement Steps” and the other “Integration Objective—Understanding the Quebec Labour Market”. Various themes are discussed at these seminars.
The problem is that the participants have to register to attend them. Currently, when newcomers go through the immigration wicket at the airport, they are told about the service, and they are invited to go to the website in order to register.
In the past, the immigration officer used to register the newcomers for these information sessions. So the immigrants—this would include sponsored persons today—were told to go to the information session on such and such a day at such and such an organization to attend “First Settlement Steps” and to go another day the following week to the next information session, “Integration Objective—Understanding the Quebec Labour Market”; these sessions lasted 24 hours.
If we did that, the newcomers would be put in contact with the community services and they could even develop a network amongst themselves to help each other out.
So we should not stop at providing information to the newcomers, we should also register them for these resources. When you have just arrived, and you reconnect with a member of your family, there are so many things to say, and people forget to register. They feel that is not important, and they depend on their spouse or other relatives to guide them after their arrival.