Senator Hartling: Yes, I would.

Hon. Nancy J. Hartling: Honourable senators, I rise today to speak to Inquiry No. 10 by calling the attention of the Senate to intimate partner violence, or IPV, especially in rural areas across Canada. This inquiry is in response to the coroner’s inquest conducted in Renfrew County, Ontario. My sincere gratitude to my friend and colleague Senator Boniface for highlighting this critical issue.

I speak in solidarity with others, especially women, because gender-based violence is, in my view, an epidemic that permeates the lives of our sisters, mothers, daughters, aunts, friends and co‑workers from all walks of life across our country.

Today, I want to highlight the dangers women face in rural areas. For most of my adult life, I have worked in the not-for-profit sector helping women and their children leaving violent relationships, while working to change social programs and pushing for funding of programs and services. For decades, I’ve witnessed their suffering, and I’ve mourned lives lost by IPV.

This inquiry is partly a response to the Ontario coroner’s inquest into the deaths of three Ontario women: Carol Cullerton, 66, Anastasia Kuzyk, 36, and Nathalie Warmerdam, 48, on one horrifying day at the hands of a known, violent abuser. A good friend of mine who has worked with women in shelters and who lived in the county told me the whole community was devastated. Carol, Anastasia and Nathalie died because the man who had been deemed a high risk to reoffend was able to gain access to them unhindered.

Throughout the coroner’s inquest, the jury heard about the many opportunities missed to protect all three women. This included the lack of enforcement of release conditions, the lack of supervision of the perpetrator and the lack of communication between the victims and probation officers in the months leading up to the murders. Dr. Peter Jaffe, former director of the Centre for Research & Education on Violence Against Women & Children, testified there were 100 opportunities to intervene in the case. One hundred interventions that might have saved their lives. The jury’s final verdict included 86 recommendations for systemic changes to the way the province deals with intimate partner violence. Each recommendation is a response to the accumulation of failures that provided the opportunity to commit these terrible crimes.

These recommendations echo many of the same recommendations made by the Ontario Domestic Violence Death Review Committee set up by the coroner’s office over 20 years ago to systematically track such cases and provide meaningful recommendations on how to prevent them. For a variety of reasons, including the fact they’re not legally binding, the committee’s recommendations have been left largely unimplemented. It’s little wonder the deaths have not stopped.

We’re not lacking in knowledge. We’re lacking in political will.

Although some of the recommendations are specific to Ontario, there are so many parallels between the provinces and territories that are equally applicable in every jurisdiction, including in my home province of New Brunswick.

With regard to research and policy development on the subject, I would like to highlight the work of the Muriel McQueen Fergusson Centre for Family Violence Research, named for our former New Brunswick senator and speaker of the Senate who was an activist dedicated to ending violence against women. The Centre’s work, which is focused on gender-based violence, has assisted our province in making a difference.

Nevertheless, violence against women and girls continues in Canada. Between 2014 and 2020, there were 576 victims of intimate partner homicide in Canada, and 80% of the victims were women. Sadly, one woman is murdered by her intimate partner every six days in Canada. That number is staggering, and isn’t going down. IPV comes in many forms: psychological, physical, sexual and financial abuse.

One of the most insidious and difficult to detect types of violence that women experience is called coercive control, where an intimate partner engages in a pattern of behaviour intended to isolate, humiliate, exploit or dominate the victim, thereby stripping away their freedom and their sense of self. This type of behaviour, although not captured in police-reported final statistics — as it’s not currently illegal in Canada — is a significant predictor of violence and murder. It is worth noting that two thirds of women killed by their partners suffered years of being abused, which underscores the importance of intervention. There is a cycle of violence where women in abusive relationships go through a honeymoon phase where the partner tries to make amends and asks for forgiveness. These women may be less likely to realize they are at risk, and are less likely to report incidents.

If we compare urban versus rural communities, the rate of police-reported intimate partner violence against women in Canada was 461 per 100,000 people in urban areas, and 985 per 100,000 people in rural areas. In New Brunswick, the rate is 722 per 100,000 people in urban environments, and 823 per 100,000 in rural areas — the highest rate in Atlantic Canada. It’s critical to note that women in rural areas experienced violence at almost twice the rate of women in urban areas. In New Brunswick, 70% of IPV deaths took place in rural areas in small towns, and many died by firearms.

Of course, the lack of services, interventions, internet and transportation in rural areas is a factor. Living in rural areas, as many of us know, is different, because there are often tight-knit bonds between people, which many of us enjoy. However, the downside is if you’re living in a violent situation, it may be hard to call on your neighbours. Survivors report difficulty in being believed, especially when the person committing the abuse is well respected. Often, seeking help means disclosing information to someone who may have a close connection to the person committing the abuse. This makes seeking help more difficult and increases the risk of retribution because the chances are high that the abuser will discover that the victim is looking for a way out. To make matters worse, women looking to leave an abusive situation fear that they may have to leave their community altogether, for example, leaving a family farm or another small business into which the victim has poured a tremendous amount of resources. The most dangerous time for a woman to be killed is when she’s about to leave, if it’s known.

Women in rural communities may be older, too. This is especially true in New Brunswick where the average age is 45, second only to Newfoundland. Sometimes religious values and beliefs may mean they’re more likely to self-blame and keep any abuse secret because they believe in being married for life or “until death do us part.” Gender stereotypes make leaving the relationship difficult.

Another characteristic that puts rural women at greater risk is the prevalence and normalization of firearms ownership. The presence of firearms in the home increases the chances that they will be used to commit murder or provide the means for the abuser to use them as a threat and a form of coercive control.

Despite the close-knit bonds, rural living can also mean isolation. This was especially true during COVID-19, where the ability to travel anywhere was severely diminished by lockdowns, and increased unemployment left many women vulnerable to social isolation. Everyone being at home created tension. This is compounded by a lack of access to alternative transportation, to high-speed internet or to cellphone coverage. In a study conducted by our office, law student Alexandra George described how deeply New Brunswick women were impacted by this reality. In New Brunswick, the shelters were caught off guard by a double pandemic. They were left scrambling, trying to piece together emergency plans that would allow them to operate safely during COVID-19 while facing a jump in demand for services.

I would like to highlight the impacts pertaining to rural, remote and northern communities, for many of the women who live in these communities are Indigenous. They may also be dealing with intergenerational trauma, lower income, poor funding of services and infrastructure, higher rates of substance abuse and a deep distrust in police and government due to colonial violence, which may act as a deterrent to reporting and using victim services. All these factors put Indigenous women at a substantially higher risk of experiencing intimate partner violence. About 61% of Indigenous women have experienced it in some form in the course of their lives. Reclaiming Power and Place: The Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls has a great deal to say about this and about how our collective indifference can result in the murder and disappearance of hundreds of women.

Friends, I think you’re getting the picture that this is a very serious situation. We’ve looked at the stats on intimate partner violence, we’ve touched on some kinds of violence that they experience and we’ve explored a bit about why women in rural and remote areas are at higher risk. I’m asking you, seriously: What is going to keep our women and girls safe in Canada? Over 40 years have gone by, and this has not been solved. It’s getting worse. Why? Don’t we care? We have the resources. We have a justice system. We have the means. I just don’t get it.

Recently, I obtained a book from British author Joan Smith called Home Grown: How Domestic Violence Turns Men into Terrorists. The author’s research draws parallels between some world situations where domestic violence was a key factor and then a terrorist situation later took place. She says dealing with domestic violence in a comprehensive way may cost us up front, but over the long term the damages to women and children, prison sentences and horrific acts of public violence cost a lot more. Sadly, we don’t have to look beyond Portapique, Nova Scotia, where the perpetrator — who came from an abusive home — murdered 22 innocent victims. His spouse was a victim of IPV, and he victimized other women too. There are links between abusive behaviour at home and his decision to carry out one of the worst mass murders in living memory. It was heartbreaking, and continues to be devastating, for these families and communities. I grew up only 15 minutes from there, so I think about this a lot.

All the recommendations at the coroner’s inquest are important and not necessarily new, but I will highlight three areas of most concern to me. First, the criminal justice system needs major adjustments. This was made very clear by what happened in Renfrew County; more effective supervision is necessary during probation. Despite multiple warnings from the victims that they were concerned about their safety, supervision of the perpetrator was such that he was allowed to move closer to the victims, continuously breaching his conditions and even openly expressing his contempt and denial of the responsibility for his previous actions. Had the victims’ concerns been taken seriously by the criminal justice system, had he been reprimanded for not adhering to the conditions of his probation and had the accumulated evidence that he was a risk to women been taken seriously, he may not have been able to commit these crimes. Of course, this requires a serious rethink of how we as a society and the criminal justice system perceive the severity of IPV. Perhaps it’s time to enshrine concepts such as femicide into the Criminal Code so it stands as a separate offence and a reminder how IPV works.

I believe we should give consideration to creating a specific offence for coercive control in the Criminal Code. This would reflect just how dangerous coercive control is and would provide a pathway for victims to exit dangerous relationships through the cover of law. As we discussed previously, coercive control is a prime indicator for future violence and murder, so this could be an effective preventative measure.

Second, funding for infrastructure such as transportation and high-speed internet in rural areas, along with better and more stable funding for women’s shelters, second-stage housing and other aid groups, is needed. I often wonder: Why do women and children have to hide out in shelters and leave everything behind? Nonetheless, shelters are desperately needed until things change so that women and children can escape violence. This critical infrastructure saves lives and is needed. Yet, too often these organizations need to expand resources, chasing down grants which put their staff in precarious positions of not knowing where funding will come from, or having to spend time writing grants rather than developing safety plans with their clients. Women and children in New Brunswick can only stay in a shelter for 30 days. Then what? With a housing crisis, high rent and inflation, it’s no wonder women feel trapped in a violent relationship. There are few shelters in rural areas, so many have to move to urban areas, and then what? This is highly disruptive to children. And what about their favourite pets? Must they be left at home?

Finally, training awareness and action are so important. Awareness is one of the key issues that come up repeatedly. It’s not just for victims, but for all of us, to be aware of IPV in our communities, our workplaces and our professions. I taught a UNB course to nursing students for seven years called Introduction to Family Violence Issues so that as they entered their nursing careers they would be aware of what to look for, whether it was IPV, elder abuse or other types of abuse. Part of my teaching was to engage these students so they could look at their own relationships and at those around them, and think about what that meant. Awareness campaigns can have a tremendous impact on opening up the possibilities of escaping violence. In New Brunswick, we have the Silent Witness Project, a travelling exhibit of life-sized red silhouettes made in the shape of women who died. Often, their families will bring a scarf or jewelry to put on the silhouette. Awareness emboldens bystanders to say something, opens up the possibility of leaving for victims and erodes the ability of abusers to control information. Campaigns such as the Silent Witness Project are excellent. New Brunswick has had many advertising campaigns over the past 40 years, and they have helped to a degree. But we need zero tolerance. We have a lot of training for first responders, nurses, police, doctors, churches and workplaces. Combined with this, I believe the implementation of stronger legislation to close the gaps is imperative.

In conclusion, colleagues, I’m grateful to be able to speak about this important topic, but I’m very frustrated that we have to keep talking about this year after year. I hope you don’t sleep tonight. I hope you don’t sleep well. I hope you’ll think about this, because this is an issue we need to take seriously. We need to take action so that your grandchildren don’t have to keep talking about living with IPV.

It has been said that until more men speak out against domestic violence and change toxic notions of masculinity that link men with violence, and until the men support us women, things won’t change. I’ve appreciated Senator Manning, Senator Boisvenu and others in our chamber who have an interest in this topic. This isn’t something we have to live with. I think it’s imperative that we take action as IPV erodes equality and the fabric of our society as women and girls continue to suffer an overwhelming burden. We can’t ignore this epidemic. Thank you.

Hon. Nancy J. Hartling: Honourable senators, it is with a heavy heart that I rise to pay tribute to Isabel Hicks from my home community in Riverview, New Brunswick. Her sudden death a few weeks ago shocked our community and left us feeling unprepared to say goodbye. I will share some of my reflections about Isabel with you so you will understand why she will be missed so much.

Isabel was born in Alma, New Brunswick. She was a true and genuine person with a big personality: Her smile and laugh could engulf a room. She loved her family and friends deeply. Her husband, Dale, of 65 years was an ideal husband for her because he supported her career, travels and life plans without hesitation. Many of us would like a “Dale” in our lives.

They had three children — Cathy, Pat, and Marty. Sadly, Marty died in an accident several years ago. She had several grandchildren and many relatives and friends she adored.

Heather McKinley, her niece, delivered a meaningful tribute to Isabel at her celebration of life. It was funny, personal and thoughtful. I will summarize a bit of what she said about “Aunt Is”:

Indeed, Aunt Is was an early proponent of “Girl Power.” She was a savvy businesswoman and her accomplishments in real estate were outstanding.

Heather’s dad, Sydney, and Isabel were really good friends.

When Isabel would blow into Granny Myrte’s like a sandstorm in the desert, not even taking off her shoes, Heather often wondered if her Uncle Dale ever got a word in edgewise, but he was her rock and allowed her to soar.

One of Isabel’s greatest passions was politics. Two of her closest political friends were the late senator Brenda Robertson and Ann Seamans, former mayor of Riverview. She got behind these women, and they were elected more than once. We all need someone like Isabel to support us.

I would often see Isabel and Brenda at our church in Riverview, and I wondered what kind of conversations they shared over coffee or a glass of wine. Isabel, of course, loved the colour blue and wore it to make a statement about her political affiliation. At her celebration of life, even our minister wore blue.

She volunteered for many causes, including food banks and St. Paul’s United Church. She was a doer.

A few days before she died, she called me at home and said she had a proposal for me. I wasn’t sure what she was going to ask me but she said:

I have a huge, framed photo of our Senate Chamber that was a birthday gift from the late senator Brenda Robertson in 1998, and I thought you would like to take it to Ottawa and put it in your office.

Of course, I said yes. I was deeply touched. After our phone call, Isabel fell and broke her hip and needed surgery. Unfortunately, she didn’t recover. I picked the picture up from her daughter while Isabel was in surgery and later learned she died. I was shocked and saddened. However, her special gift to me will be hanging in my office — it’s here now ready for hanging — as a constant reminder of her unwavering spirit.

Thanks, Isabel, for your generosity to many, and for your love of your family, friends and community. You will be missed and always remembered. My sincere condolences to your dear family and friends.

[Translation]

Senator Hartling: It’s a good question, and I appreciate it. I’m not sure that I can answer it at the moment. I think we need to look at all sorts of laws, and I think we need to discuss domestic violence here and bring laws forward to protect women and children.

(On motion of Senator Housakos, debate adjourned.)

(At 5:54 p.m., the Senate was continued until tomorrow at 2 p.m.)