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Results: 1 - 15 of 55
View Peter Fragiskatos Profile
Lib. (ON)
Thank you very much.
My last question is directed to both Mr. Neve and Ms. Richardson.
Mr. Neve, you talked about your deep concern about Chinese government actions and abuses on Canadian territory. Could you give specific examples of what worries you the most?
I suppose the same question goes to Ms. Richardson, phrased exactly like that.
Alex Neve
View Alex Neve Profile
Alex Neve
2020-08-11 13:13
What worries me the most is that Amnesty has been following this through the coalition for many years now. It's getting worse, not better. That's my first worry.
Second, as I speak with amazing colleagues with other grassroots human rights organizations here in Canada, it's very clear to me that there is a predominance of threats and intimidation against very courageous women human rights defenders, accompanied by increasing threats of sexual violence, etc. That needs to be a very grave concern.
Third is the fact that, even though this issue has been in front of the government for quite a number of years now, we really have not taken some of the simplest steps to try to do something about this, even to just improve coordination amongst departments and agencies. Frankly, I think that's unconscionable.
View Andréanne Larouche Profile
BQ (QC)
Okay. I want to come back to Ms. Monsef.
Ms. Monsef, do you have a time frame for the national action plan on gender-based violence?
I also want to speak to you about projects that were set up in my region during the pandemic to work on the issue of sexual exploitation, and about the sexual assault centres, or CALACS. Yesterday, I met with the director of one centre. Your department has made investments. However, in Quebec, only three CALACS out of seven have received financial support. The other centres weren't eligible.
Wouldn't assisting these centres be a way to help more women find a way out of this sexual exploitation situation?
View Maryam Monsef Profile
Lib. (ON)
We do not, but I will say that we are working very closely with the provinces and territories. Those conversations have begun, and it is in my mandate—
Megan Walker
View Megan Walker Profile
Megan Walker
2020-07-07 12:47
Thank you so much, Madam Chair. Good afternoon to you and the members of the committee.
The London Abused Women's Centre is a non-crisis, non-residential feminist agency that provides women and girls over the age of 12 who are victims of male violence with immediate access to long-term, woman-centred, trauma-informed service. This includes women and girls who are abused in their intimate partnerships; are trafficked or sexually exploited into the commercial sex trade, including pornography; are sexually assaulted by strangers or acquaintances or via date; and/or are subjected to sexual harassment and torture.
LAWC also provides support and counselling to family members of women and girls who have been trafficked or sexually exploited, who are missing or who have disappeared. Many parents have travelled from cities across this country to London, Ontario, to meet with us at LAWC to help us find their daughters. Without LAWC's support, more than 200 family members would continue every single day to check online ads to see if their daughters were still being advertised to provide violent sexual services to men. They do this because they need to know whether their daughters are alive or dead. During the 2019-20 fiscal year, LAWC provided service to 8,100 women and girls, a 107% increase over previous years.
COVID has significantly impacted the lives of women, girls and all children. Women have been forced to isolate in their homes with their abusers. Imagine, just for one moment, how your lives would be impacted if you were forced to remain in your home while knowing that you would be repeatedly assaulted, raped, tortured, debased and maybe even killed. Now imagine your young children being forced to witness or be exposed daily to the violence their mother is facing. Some of these children may be harmed as they attempt to help their mothers. Others may be murdered along with their mothers. Older children will sometimes gather the younger siblings and take them to their bedroom, where they will pull dresser drawers or chests in front of their bedroom doors to keep their dad away.
During COVID, many agencies, including LAWC, had to close their physical space and work from home, providing online groups and phone counselling. Women trapped in their homes who needed help couldn't call for phone counselling. They couldn't call for the police. They couldn't run to a friend's home. Leaving their abuser under ideal circumstances is very, very difficult. During COVID, it was almost impossible. If they themselves were able to find a way to leave, they wouldn't do so if it meant leaving their children behind. Most women in these situations live under constant threat of being killed or having their children killed. If the police do arrive, thanks to the wonderful alertness and intervention of a neighbour who decides to take action, where will she take those children? The shelters are full. There is no place for women and children to go.
Megan Walker
View Megan Walker Profile
Megan Walker
2020-07-07 12:51
During COVID, we did connect with the London Police Service because we identified that having no place to go was a huge gap. Police need to have a place where they can take women and children immediately, so the London Abused Women’s Centre, in collaboration with the London Police Service, responded by developing a protocol whereby LAWC secured safe hotel rooms so that police could take women and their children immediately to a hotel. LAWC negotiated with the hotel so that police could just drop in there with women day or night, at any time, and LAWC would respond any time by stepping in to provide food cards, clothing, diapers and any other identified needs. We provided counselling and safety planning immediately, and we helped women get to shelters as spaces became open. We helped them find long-term housing.
This was a huge upfront cost to the London Abused Women’s Centre, but we were later supported by the United Way and recently by WAGE through the Canadian Women's Foundation to cover those costs. It certainly was not a perfect solution, but it provided hope when sometimes it was hope that was missing.
Aside from the last two weeks of April and the first two weeks of May, following the femicide in Nova Scotia when LAWC service demands increased by almost 50%, our overall service demands during COVID decreased by 18%, as did the London Police Service's. This was all attributed to the nine weeks when we worked from home. Our physical office was closed to walk-in and drop-in clients and we were not able to provide services to women and girls in youth or adult detention services. Phone and Zoom groups were simply not accessible to women at home with their abusers. COVID kept women hostage in their homes with their abusers. How could women possibly reach out for service when they couldn't even go to the bathroom without asking for permission to do so?
However, LAWC's anti-trafficking program saw a 37% increase in service requests during COVID, notwithstanding the federal government's decision to discontinue to fund our trafficking program in the very middle of COVID. The London community sustained us by providing funding to keep our program open until July 31. Had our community not provided funding to sustain that program temporarily, 650 trafficked and sexually exploited women and girls to whom we have provided long-term service would have had no place to go except back to their traffickers, where they may have ended up in the morgue.
That of course does not bode well for a government that prides itself as being feminist. The fact that the Trudeau government thought it was okay to eliminate funding to all anti-trafficking programs across Canada in the midst of a deadly pandemic is deeply concerning about this government's commitment to women and girls. We find it devastating and appalling.
Trafficking and sexual exploitation did not suddenly disappear or slow down during COVID. It increased. Men who believe they have a right to pay to rape women and girls increased their demand for underage and young women and girls. Sex purchasers fuelled the demand for young girls and women, and it is traffickers who are always at the ready to make sure they have the supply needed to meet this increased demand. COVID was no exception. Traffickers continue to traffic vulnerable young women and underage women from city to city and from hotel to hotel along the 400-series highways.
There is of course no social distancing and no PPE in the sex trade. While those precautions are mandated for health care practitioners exposed to bodily fluids, that would be contrary to the very purpose of the sex industry, which is to allow men unfettered access to rape women and girls.
Men pay more for unprotected sex, and they pay more for the money shot where they can ejaculate on a woman's face. Not only have I not heard any public health official or politician address this, we've heard that too many of them believe that the role of women is to satisfy men, their sexual fetishes and fantasies.
With schools closed, with children at home and parents working from home, we saw an increase in online luring of children. Girls were pressured to strip and masturbate for traffickers. They were young and naive and thought the boy or man online was interested in them. They never expected to be videotaped in various stages of nudity and masturbation.
The videos were uploaded to foreign sites like Pornhub that is operated by MindGeek in Montreal. Horrified and devastated parents called LAWC for help in removing these videos. We have been attempting to do so, working very hard, but the reality is that, once these videos are up, they are easily downloaded and, even when removed from porn sites, they remain forever embedded in somebody's download file.
It's important for you to know that the funding the Trudeau government eliminated for LAWC's anti-trafficking program on behalf.... We served on behalf of the government, and it was eliminated. It cost only $164,000 per year.
Ann Decter
View Ann Decter Profile
Ann Decter
2020-07-07 14:01
Good afternoon. I'm Ann Decter from the Canadian Women's Foundation, Canada's only national public foundation for women and girls and one of the 10 largest foundations in the world. Through three decades, our granting work has focused on moving women out of poverty and violence and into safety and confidence.
Thank you for the invitation to appear today on this urgent question—urgent because women in Canada have been impacted by the pandemic to an extent that threatens to roll back equality gains. Women's safety, livelihoods and well-being have all been put at risk, most severely for women from communities that are marginalized by systemic discrimination. The pandemic has shone a penetrating light on gender-based violence, women's economic security, care work and the central economic role of child care.
Economic losses have fallen heavily on women, and most dramatically on women living on low incomes who experience intersecting inequalities based on race, disability, education, colonization and migration and immigration status. A historic downturn in women's employment, compounded by uncertainty over the capacity of our fragile child care sector to fully reopen, is a potential perfect storm for women's economic security. Women in diverse and marginalized communities can be expected to have the greatest difficulty in emerging from this crisis.
The scale of women's job losses is enormous. At the end of May, 1.5 million women had lost their jobs and another 1.2 million had lost the majority of their work hours, impacting more than one quarter of all women workers. The lowest wage earners have been hit the hardest. Fifty-eight per cent of women earning $14 per hour or less were laid off or lost most of their work by April. Overall, women earning the lowest 10% of wages experienced job loss at 50 times the rate of the highest wage earners. This is the type of granular data revealed by the intersectional gender-based analysis that is needed to support decisions on next steps.
Mothers are experiencing disproportionate job loss. They account for 57% of parents who had lost their jobs or most of their hours by the end of May and for only 41% of employment gains. More than one quarter of mothers with children under 12 who were working in February were unemployed or working less than half-time by April's end. Mothers parenting on their own were more likely to lose work than those in two-parent families.
Women are leaving the labour market and increasing their care responsibilities at home. The number of women in core working years outside the labour market increased 34% from February to the end of April. That includes women who stopped looking for work due to soaring unemployment or to take up care responsibilities at home. This leaves women's economic security under threat.
Access to child care underpins mothers' access to the workforce, and without government intervention child care will be scarcer and more expensive. One out of three child care centres have not confirmed that they will reopen. Physical distancing requirements are reducing spaces. Personal protective equipment and sanitization will raise costs, increasing parent fees and putting child care financially out of reach for more families. Parents of all genders need child care to work, but for women, who still shoulder a disproportionate share of family care work, it is essential. Emergency closure of child care centres and schools placed a triple burden on mothers doing full-time jobs from home and managing both children and household tasks.
Care work has been central to pandemic response. Our primary and long-term care systems are staffed largely by women. More than one in three women workers are in high-risk jobs with greater exposure to COVID-19. Women make up more than two thirds of those who clean and disinfect buildings and almost 90% of personal support workers. After two decades of austerity in health care and community services, the most poorly paid workers—a highly racialized, women-majority workforce—form the first line of defence against catastrophic illness and economic depression. Canada's care economy is fractured, and women, largely racialized, black, migrant and undocumented women, are bearing the brunt.
Government withdrawal opened the door to the proliferation of for-profit chains in care work, which reduced quality of care, staff levels, job benefits and protections, with negative consequences for care recipients, the gendered racialized workforce and Canada's pandemic response.
Care work in Canada also has an entrenched reliance on highly skilled but low-paid migrant care workers who now fill positions in private homes and in health care facilities, yet face increasingly restricted chances of securing permanent residency and rights protections. Pandemic impacts on migrant care workers include dismissal by employers now working from home or laid off, 24-7 lockdown in employers' private homes and loss of immigration status due to government processing delays.
Stay-at-home orders increase the risk of domestic violence and decrease women's abilities to leave abusive homes for the safety of shelters—highlighting the importance of the violence prevention sector—while placing additional strain on already taxed anti-violence services. Closure of physical spaces and the shift to remote services created unique access barriers to sexual assault centres.
In the best of times, gender-based violence services are underfunded and oversubscribed. Demand for access to women's shelters consistently exceeds capacity. Significant gaps persist in shelter services for women with disabilities, deaf women, women in rural and remote areas and women in need of culture-specific services. Four out of five women's shelters across the country are accessed by first nation, Métis or Inuit women, yet only one in five can frequently provide culturally appropriate programs, and 70% of Inuit communities do not have access to a shelter.
With the rise of “Me Too”, sexual assault centres experienced significant increases in calls without matching increases in funding. As the pandemic arrived, sexual assault survivors, some at high risk of suicide, were stuck on a waiting list for counselling across Canada. One sexual assault centre executive described transitioning to remote work: “We had to invest in a phone system, as ours was a donation from 1980. We didn't have funds for PPE for staff and volunteers accompanying women to hospitals, police and doctors. ... As much as I'm grateful for the 25k, I must be honest with you: It's not enough. … We are running out of PPE, volunteers have begun to show signs of burnout, and we are averaging 60 to 80 crisis calls a day.”
As you're likely aware, the women's sector refers to non-profits and charities that provide women-specific services in order to advance women's equality through policy, advocacy and public engagement. That includes shelters for women, sexual assault centres and women's centres that provide a safety net to women and their families. These are essential to a healthy welfare state system and to achieving gender equality.
The pandemic lockdown exposed and exacerbated existing flaws in the women's sector funding model. The sector is funded partially and irregularly through an unpredictable combination of individual donations, corporate gifts and foundation and government grants. This is time-consuming and inefficient, requiring constant renewal and contact. Organizations constantly seek out, apply for and renew funding that is largely project-based and temporary. Reports from the women's sector indicate an impending future crisis.
Like the best of the pandemic emergency response from public health leaders, many of whom are women, recovery planning with women and gender equality in mind requires thorough analysis, clear evidence-supported outcome targets, methodical approaches to implementation and responsible leadership with vision and heart.
Should broad emergency measures need to be reimposed for another indefinite period, the Canadian Women's Foundation recommends the following actions, with a reminder that an inclusive gender-based analysis with an intersectional lens is essential to the design of all government recovery investments, short or long term: With regard to women's economic security, reinstate the Canada emergency response benefit throughout any economic shutdown; reinstate the Canada emergency wage supplement with a simpler administrative mechanism throughout any economic shutdown: broaden access to employment insurance so all women who pay in can access benefits; work with the provinces and territories to implement 10 paid sick days, as announced; ensure funding is in place to safely reopen the child care sector at pre-pandemic service levels and to continue to expand it until universal access is achieved.
As for women and care work, work with the provinces and territories to ensure—
Paulette Senior
View Paulette Senior Profile
Paulette Senior
2020-06-15 14:06
Sure, I'd be happy to do that. Thank you for the question. It's great to see you again.
We have been one of the organizations working closely with Women and Gender Equality to provide funding to the sector. Back in April, we were able to secure $3 million that we provided specifically to sexual assault centres.
As you've probably heard, the increase in gender-based violence and violence against women, not just in Canada but certainly globally, has been documented far and wide. Women in Canada are similarly impacted. We've been able to distribute $3 million to 93 sexual assault centres across the country.
View Karen Vecchio Profile
CPC (ON)
Thanks very much.
Specifically on the 93 sexual assault centres—because I know that the money absolutely needs to go there—how were they eligible? How were they chosen to get this funding? I recognize that there wasn't a normal application or anything of that sort. I have heard from many sexual assault centres that were not eligible. Trust me, I know what a tremendous job you do there, but what does that mean? Were they not part of a network?
How did it work that those centres may have been chosen in places, but some organizations, such as the London Abused Women's Centre, would not have been able to receive funding like that? Can you share a little information on eligibility?
Paulette Senior
View Paulette Senior Profile
Paulette Senior
2020-06-15 14:07
We distributed funding to sexual assault centres throughout the country, those that were identified by us, but also through WAGE, so if there are those that we have missed that are not connected to hospitals, for example—
Paulette Senior
View Paulette Senior Profile
Paulette Senior
2020-06-15 14:07
Yes. If they're connected with hospitals, they were not on the list.
Mrs. Karen Vecchio: Okay.
Ms. Paulette Senior: I think it's important to note that.
Paulette Senior
View Paulette Senior Profile
Paulette Senior
2020-06-15 14:08
Women's College Hospital would be a good example of that, right? They did not make the list.
These were stand-alone sexual assault centres. However, we do have a bit of contingency, so if there are those that we have missed for some reason, we can actually turn around and make sure they get that funding.
View Karen Vecchio Profile
CPC (ON)
Absolutely. I just want to go on to that. Like I said, I've done a few different calls. The money had to get out, and I know that. Your organization as well as Women's Shelters Canada do fantastic jobs here in Canada, but not everybody's part of that network. I have spoken to many, many organizations that were not able to get this funding.
You're saying there's a $10-million contingency fund. How do people apply? How did they get their names into it? Places like the London Abused Women's Centre and others around the country, how do they now become eligible for it if they were not picked in the first place?
Paulette Senior
View Paulette Senior Profile
Paulette Senior
2020-06-15 14:10
First of all, let me say that shelters across the country, gender-based shelters or those dealing with violence against women, would have gotten funding through the national women's shelter, Women's Shelters Canada. That's not within our purview at this time.
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