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Results: 1 - 15 of 95
View Michael Barrett Profile
CPC (ON)
I should have about a minute and a half left, Mr. Chair. There were substantial interruptions and clarifications there.
Now, iwanttohelp.org is the name of a website to apply for the CSSG. Did the government create this website or was it created by WE? The reason I ask, ma'am, is that in the April 22 announcement, it mentions the “I Want to Help” platform twice, which is the origin of iwanttohelp.org. What I'm looking for is the origin of the “I Want to Help” branding, because that April 22 announcement includes branding from the company WE.
View Francesco Sorbara Profile
Lib. (ON)
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
As a follow-up, I've gone quickly to the FCAC website, and I want to say thank you to your team for having the website updated. There are some great resources for Canadians from coast to coast to coast to look at, especially during this extraordinary period of time.
Our government has put in place a number of measures, including the Canada emergency response benefit and the wage subsidy, and my seniors, over 20,000 of them, this week will be receiving a $300 old age security tax-free one-time payment. If they're collecting the supplement or the allowance, there's an additional $200. That's on top of the GST/HST credit they received, which was another several hundred dollars. We are assisting Canadians to weather this time. We don't want to have people having to choose between paying bills and putting food on their table. We don't want to have people facing that financial hardship due to this extraordinary and unique period of time.
Largely, our government has been applauded for the number of measures that we've taken. I look forward to continuing as we move out of the recovery to work with all agencies and to see what all agencies have put up on their websites. One question is, do you folks at FCAC measure the number of times that Canadians have visited the website and looked at the information to help themselves and to ensure that they know what they need to do to weather this storm as well?
Judith Robertson
View Judith Robertson Profile
Judith Robertson
2020-07-07 16:28
If I understand the question correctly, it's do we monitor our traffic to our web pages...?
Judith Robertson
View Judith Robertson Profile
Judith Robertson
2020-07-07 16:28
Yes, we do. We are also active on social media, and we monitor the response on that as well—the pickup and so on. Honestly, it's an area of quite strong interest to us to try to evaluate the effectiveness of what we're doing and ensure that we're devoting our resources in the right places.
Kaitlin Geiger-Bardswich
View Kaitlin Geiger-Bardswich Profile
Kaitlin Geiger-Bardswich
2020-07-07 15:32
Good afternoon and thank you for this invitation. My name is Kaitlin Geiger-Bardswich, and I am the communications and development manager at Women's Shelters Canada, or WSC.
WSC is a national organization representing over 550 shelters and transition houses serving women and children affected by violence against women and intimate partner violence. We were created by the provincial and territorial shelter associations that wanted a voice on the national stage. Today, these 14 associations are our full members and make up our advisory council.
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, we held weekly Zoom meetings with our advisory council, both to support them in learning from each other's contexts and to provide us with a sense of what was happening across the country. These remarks are informed by their experiences.
I would like to begin by prefacing that while WSC's overall goal is to see an end to all violence against women, my remarks will focus on domestic violence, which includes family violence and intimate partner violence. I'm sure you will hear from other witnesses who will speak to other effects the COVID-19 pandemic has had on women, such as limits to reproductive choices and freedom, disproportionate job loss, increased child care responsibilities, and police violence against indigenous and racialized people.
Before the COVID pandemic arrived in Canada, things were already bleak for women fleeing violence. In fact, many have called violence against women, or VAW, the pandemic within the pandemic. The stats are indicative: Every six days a women is killed by her current or former intimate partner. Indigenous women are 2.7 times more likely to be victims of violence than non-indigenous women. However, femicide rates for indigenous women are six times higher than for non-indigenous women. We also know that certain groups, such as women aged 15 to 24, racialized women, women living with disabilities and LGBTQ+ people experience violence at disproportionate rates.
During COVID-19, this violence did not stop. In fact, it increased. Across the country, there have been reports of 20% to 30% increases in rates of domestic violence. Police in some areas have also noted an increase in domestic violence calls. In Ontario, the Assaulted Women's Helpline, a 24-7 crisis counselling service, has seen a total increase of only 5% in the number of calls it received but now has four times as many of those calls relating to women seeking shelter. Several shelters told us that it was not just the number of calls that increased but the severity of the abuse they were seeing.
Women's Shelters Canada's website—sheltersafe.ca—is an online clickable map for women, or friends and family, to find their closest shelter and its 24-7 crisis number. In April 2020, visits to sheltersafe.ca were double what they were in March 2020 and as compared to April 2019. Our May 2020 visits were triple what they were in May 2019. We have also heard from shelters across the country that they are receiving more calls from family and friends trying to help their loved ones.
On the other hand, calls have been greatly reduced in regions such as the Northwest Territories and P.E.I., in indigenous communities in Manitoba, and in other rural and northern areas. We heard from some shelters that their phones were silent, their buildings nearly empty. This was perhaps even more terrifying than an increase in reported domestic violence, because it meant that women, hunkering down at home as was recommended, were potentially trapped with their abusers and unable to call for help.
Anecdotally, we heard from our members that abusers were using the COVID-19 pandemic as another tool in their tool box. Some shelters spoke of women calling them from inside a locked bathroom, saying they only had a few minutes to speak. Others noted that abusers told their partners that they would get COVID if they left the house, or threatened to tell their family and friends that they had COVID.
Various factors associated with COVID-19 likely influenced the heightened rates of violence against women. Various studies have shown that stress, job loss, alcohol intake and mental health issues can all exacerbate violence. However, we want to stress that COVID-19 does not turn people into abusers. While the pandemic can aggravate stress and violence, we cannot blame the violence we've seen during COVID on the pandemic itself.
At times, the measures imposed by different levels of government had unintended consequences. Social isolation is an abuser's dream. Now that this isolation was government-sanctioned, the situation for women living in violence worsened. Border closures also caused problems for some women. We heard of one woman who was fleeing her abuser in Alberta and tried to cross the Alberta-NWT border to stay with her mother in Yellowknife. She was refused entry into the territory and told to “go find a shelter in Alberta”.
Too often, domestic violence can lead to domestic homicide, or femicide. In the first month of pandemic-related lockdowns in Canada, at least nine women and girls were killed in suspected domestic homicides. This does not include the Nova Scotia shootings that occurred in mid-April, where nine men and 13 women were killed in a rampage that started with the perpetrator attacking his female partner in a case of domestic violence.
For women's shelters across the country, COVID-19 highlighted something that we at Women's Shelters Canada have been saying for the last few years: that the services a woman can access when she's fleeing violence should not depend on her postal code. During the pandemic, we asked our member shelter associations what was happening in their province and territory in relation to five questions. This was updated at the end of June.
First, are the VAW shelters or transition houses in your province or territory receiving provincial or territorial funds specifically for COVID-19? Seven answered no, two answered yes and three said that it was complicated—for example, some but not all shelters were receiving funds.
Second, is your provincial or territorial government ensuring shelters have PPE and EPA-standard cleaner? Four said no, two said yes and six said it was complicated.
Third, are VAW shelters considered an essential service in your province or territory? Two said no, six said yes and four said it was complicated.
Fourth, in your province or territory, are VAW shelters receiving priority access for COVID testing? Five said no, including P.E.I., which said it wasn't needed. Two said yes and five said it was complicated.
Fifth, has your premier or provincial or territorial government made a public statement about not staying home if home is not safe? Three said no, five said yes and four said it was complicated.
While the federal government normally only funds on-reserve shelters, the rest are funded provincially or territorially. It did allocate $26 million for VAW shelters and transition houses across the country due to COVID-19. The Department of Women and Gender Equality asked Women's Shelters Canada to distribute $20.5 million of these funds, which we agreed to do, knowing how important it was for shelters to receive these funds quickly.
COVID-19 emergency funds were distributed to over 400 shelters across the country. However, those in Quebec waited weeks longer, if not months, to receive their funds distributed by their provincial government. We have also heard from several shelters expressing concern over eventual clawbacks from their operational funds from their provincial government because they received these federal emergency COVID funds.
It wasn't all bad, of course. WSC personally saw an uptick in donations from individuals and organizations. We received our largest-ever gift from the Rogers family last month. People were reaching out to us constantly by email and on social media to find out how they could help shelters across the country. We saw an increased number of stories in the press focused on domestic violence in the pandemic, and we were also pleased to see the federal government's commitment to build 10 new shelters on reserve and two in the territories. We have hope that this issue is now firmly on the agenda for both government and individuals across the country.
I'll move on to recommendations for a potential second wave of COVID. We have five.
Number one, shelters need more core funding. Before the pandemic, shelters were already grossly underfunded. Our “More Than A Bed” study, published last year, showed that 56% of shelters indicated that they could not meet their operating expenses without fundraising, while 11% said they could not meet their operational expenses even with fundraising. While the $26 million given by the federal government was badly needed and gratefully accepted, it is a drop in the bucket. We also echo Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada's call on the federal government to provide $20 million in its next budget for transitional housing and shelters in Inuit Nunangat and Ottawa for Inuit women and children fleeing violence.
Number two, all levels of government must stress the message to stay home only if home is safe. Our sector worked diligently during the pandemic using social media, traditional advertising and countless media interviews to get the message out there that shelters were open and available and that women did not need to stay home if home was not safe. In a second wave, all levels of government need to relay this message.
Number three, Canada needs to look to promising practices from around the world when it comes to domestic violence and COVID-19. For example, in Tunisia, there's a quarantine centre for women escaping domestic violence. In India, police checked up on women who had previously filed reports of domestic violence before the lockdown. In France, 20,000 hotel rooms were made available for survivors of domestic violence. New Zealand included domestic violence preparations in its lockdown planning from the start.
Number four, the process of designing and implementing a multi-year national action plan on violence against women and gender-based violence must begin. We have been advocating for this for over five years with a coalition of organizations across the country. As you've heard, the situations of women fleeing violence and of VAW shelters across the country during the pandemic differed according to where they were located. We are pleased with the current government's commitment to a national action plan and strongly urge that its development begin without delay. This plan needs to be robust and well resourced.
Number five, we also stand with the national action plan and the recommendations of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and implementing a national action plan in response to that.
Thank you.
View Kody Blois Profile
Lib. (NS)
View Kody Blois Profile
2020-06-17 15:35
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to our witnesses for their testimony. It was great to be able to have three different dimensions in terms of the inspection side generally, the farm advocacy group through Ms. Robinson and, of course, a local farmer.
The majority of my questions are going to be for Ms. Hatcher, who is from the Annapolis Valley.
Ms. Hatcher—Kim—you mentioned the fact that there's been a huge uptake in local food and that the farmers market in Wolfville is simply doing very well because there seem to be more people buying local. How important is it for the online component, in terms of being able to have consumers use the CSA and be able to go on...? Has that created efficiencies for you as a business as well?
Kim Hatcher
View Kim Hatcher Profile
Kim Hatcher
2020-06-17 15:36
Thank you.
The online portion is critical at this juncture because, of course, for the physical markets thus far, with the exception of a few markets that are doing pickup with pre-ordering and drop-off only, the online avenue is the only way to go at this point. For vendors like me, for us to be able to do that individually, there is no other option to bring our products to the consumers in any sort of efficient or financially viable way.
The fact that we've had online sales since 2017 with the Wolfville Farmers' Market meant that we were already ahead of the game, in that the platform was already figured out. It was already running, and it has since exploded.
View Kirsty Duncan Profile
Lib. (ON)
Thank you.
You've talked about the positives for video voting. I'd like to hear what the positives are for web or application. You talked about four methods.
Nicole Goodman
View Nicole Goodman Profile
Nicole Goodman
2020-06-11 12:11
Yes. The big positive for application and web is I think intent. Also, they can be very user-friendly. It depends on how they're designed. They work very well. In Estonia, for example, and Switzerland, they have worked well, but there are additional cybersecurity challenges.
View Patrick Weiler Profile
Lib. (BC)
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you again, Minister, for coming to join our committee for the third time in a couple of months.
Minister, my province of beautiful British Columbia is now in phase two of our restart plan, under which many businesses have already been open for several weeks. We're hopefully going to be moving into phase three, under which a large number of other businesses are going to be opening up. Right now there is a significant need for PPE to support those businesses to safely reopen. There's going to continue to be that going forward.
You mentioned earlier that there was an announcement today about the establishment of a supply hub. How can interested small businesses use this tool to get access to critical PPE?
View Anita Anand Profile
Lib. (ON)
I just want to indicate, in response to the last question, that the vast majority of the supplies we are ordering are coming in—gowns, surgical masks and face shields. It's important to keep that in context, because the Government of Canada's procurement effort has been largely very successful. Deliveries are going out to the provinces and territories every day, including 2.7 million N95 masks, which have been delivered to the provinces and territories.
Now, to your question about the supply hub, I will say that we have a range of resources on our web page for purchasers of PPE. Suppliers are also able to place information through us on that website. We've introduced, for example, links to the rapid response platform and the platforms of the Government of Manitoba and the Government of Ontario, which have information about individual items of PPE that businesses might need.
We are continuing to update that website, and I encourage you to take a look at it because it is an innovation. It connects businesses across the country with a one-stop shop of resources for the acquisition of PPE.
View Matthew Green Profile
NDP (ON)
Will your government take responsibility for some, perhaps, of the misleading directions that members of your caucus have provided to Canadians online?
View Ahmed Hussen Profile
Lib. (ON)
I'm proud of our response. We've been there for Canadians and we'll continue to be there.
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