Parliamentary Research Branch

MR-122E

TABLE OF CONTENTS

BACKGROUND

MANDATE AND RESEARCH/CONSULTATION

THE PANEL'S ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK

THE NATIONAL ACTION PLAN

POST-REPORT DEVELOPMENTS

In June 1991, the House of Commons Sub-Committee on the Status of Women released its report The War against Women. This report was the culmination of a six-month study during which the Sub-Committee had heard evidence from a number of witnesses representing many sectors of Canadian society. In response to one of the 25 recommendations in the Sub-Committee's report, the federal government established the Canadian Panel on Violence Against Women in August 1991.

Two full-time co-Chairs appointed at the outset of the process were joined by seven part-time Panel members, four of whom had originally formed the Aboriginal Circle, an advisory body. A 23-member Advisory Committee was also established to strengthen the link between community women's groups and the Panel. The full Panel met five times during its mandate and a Panel Secretariat co-ordinated the research/consultation process before undertaking analysis and documenting the Panel's conclusions.

The Canadian Panel issued its final report, Changing the Landscape: Ending Violence – Achieving Equality, in June 1993.

The Panel's extensive mandate was to examine all forms of violence against women, document its incidence and explore its root causes. The Panel was also expected to increase public awareness of the issue, develop recommendations for prevention of violence, and establish a reasonable time frame for government action to bring about "zero tolerance" in Canadian society.

The work of the Panel was divided into two phases. In the first phase, which was primarily consultative, between January and May of 1992 small groups of Panel members travelled across the country including the Yukon and Northwest Territories. In total, they visited 139 communities and met with more than 4,000 people, 84% of whom were women. At meetings held in accessible arenas, such as community halls, schools, churches, band offices and private homes, they heard from women who had survived violence, service providers, community advocates, police, physicians and church representatives. The Panel also received close to 700 submissions, including personal testimony, reviews of existing community services and programs and suggestions for inclusion in the Panel's recommendations.

In addition to this series of consultations, the Panel sponsored specific events: meetings with national women's groups, one roundtable on health in the aboriginal community and another with Elders of the aboriginal community, a "think tank" for women with disabilities, a roundtable with churches and two "youth" roundtable events. On several occasions, Panel members met with specific groups who expressed concerns about the Panel or were interested in its activities.

The Panel also commissioned several pieces of research, calling upon experts in the field to bring together existing knowledge and highlight emerging themes, especially those dealing with lesser known aspects of violence against women such as ritual abuse and violence against domestic workers, women living in rural settings and women of colour.

The Panel adopted a feminist sociological framework, emphasizing that violence against women must be understood as a continuum, ranging from shouting and pushing to more forceful actions such as beating, rape and murder. It also emphasized that violence is multi-dimensional and has physical, sexual, psychological, financial and spiritual aspects. Most Canadians, according to the findings of the Panel, are aware of the physical dimension of violence but they are less cognizant of the other dimensions. Citing the experiences of women who testified, the final report vividly recounts the violent treatment of women of all ages and from all walks of life, cultural backgrounds, and income levels across Canada.

In keeping with the feminist framework, the Panel rested its analysis of violence on the premise that:

although individual men make individual choices to be, or not be violent toward women, explanations that focus solely on individual characteristics and traits cannot account for the scope, proportion and dimensions of violence against women today or throughout history.

Violence against women was analyzed as the outcome of unequally distributed social, economic and political power structured into social relations, and reinforced through certain ideological assumptions and actions that contribute to sexism, racism and class bias. Moreover, the final report emphasizes that a feminist analysis must look not only at the similarities between women but also at the realities that distinguish some women from others: age, ethnicity, sexual orientation and ability level. Thus, some sections of the final report focus on the experiences and problems of various populations: older women, women living in poverty, women with disabilities, rural women, lesbians, women of official language minorities, women of colour, young women, immigrant and refugee women, foreign domestic workers and Inuit and aboriginal women. The final report also explores the various dimensions of violence listed above and elaborates on its lesser known forms, including ritual abuse and financial abuse.

In keeping with the Panel's feminist and sociological approach, the final report links the cessation of violence against women with the achievement of women's equality:

inequality increases women's vulnerability to violence and limits their choices in all aspects of their lives ... The Panel is therefore committed to two goals: the achievement of women's equality and the elimination of violences against women.

The Panel proposes a two-pronged plan; an Equality Action Plan and a Zero Tolerance Policy. The former deals with aspects of inequality that make women particularly vulnerable to violence – lack of equality rights, unequal access to the legal system, lack of political and public service participation, the tax/transfer system and other economic issues – and aims for the maintenance and/or creation of specific mechanisms for women's equality.

Some of the selected strategies are:

• to eliminate the discrimination between different categories of aboriginal women and their children in the Indian Act;

• to ensure that human rights legislation has the power to address systemic discrimination, as well as individual, complaint-driven cases of discrimination;

• to include sexual orientation as one of the prohibited grounds of discrimination in the Canadian Human Rights Act and in provincial and territorial human rights legislation where it does not at present exist;

• to reinstate and expand the Court Challenges Program, extending its sphere to provincial and territorial laws, and to provide full and adequate funding for its application by the various levels of government;

• to work with provincial and territorial governments to implement mandatory gender and race sensitivity training for all law students, lawyers, judges and para-legal personnel;

• to require all departments responsible for the compilation and dissemination of statistics to provide data based on gender and other significant demographic characteristics;

• to implement a national child care plan based on the principles of equity and flexibility and to support that program through regulations and standards governing child care workers, programs and facilities.

The Zero Tolerance Policy is based on the position that "no level of violence is acceptable, and women's safety and equality are priorities." The report recommends that all organizations and institutions review their programs, practices and products in light of the Zero Tolerance Policy, which they should use as a tool for creating a violence-free environment and for monitoring that environment. The policy should also be applied in key sectors of society such as health and social services, legal institutions, workplaces, the military, educational settings, the federal government and religious institutions. While the implementation of a Zero Tolerance Policy in these sectors will address the overall nature of Canadian society, the report also includes a plan for action by for individual Canadians in their capacity as parents, partners, children, co-workers, friends and community members.

The release of the final report was not without controversy. A number of women's groups, community groups and individuals working in a range of direct-service settings were disappointed by it, claiming that it did not fulfil the Panel's mandate to develop a timetable and a strategy for implementation of their recommendations. Moreover, the report included more than 400 recommendations and contained a huge amount of material, yet it was released without the executive summary, which was issued only some weeks later. Many found that the size of the report severely undermined its impact.

Although the government is not obliged to respond to the final report of the Panel, Status of Women Canada is in the process of developing a women's equality and safety agenda, based on the contents.