Meeting 43 · June 9, 2026 · 11:24–13:01 (1h 37m)
45-14 witnesses · 69 interventions · 9,170 words
This House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women (FEWO) meeting, held on June 9, 2026, studied gender-based violence and the role of shelters and transitional housing. Witnesses included Debbie Zweep, Executive Director of Faye Peterson House; Claudine Thibaudeau, Lead for Issues Involving Intimate Partner Violence at SOS violence conjugale; and Nneka MacGregor and Sonya Boyce from the Women's Centre for Social Justice.
Debbie Zweep described the construction of eight second-stage housing units in Thunder Bay, funded by federal, municipal and community sources, which came in under budget through a modular build. She noted that while capital funding was secured, there is no sustainable operational funding for second-stage housing, and that women in this phase have moved out of crisis but not out of danger, requiring specific programming. She also highlighted the high costs and lengthy delays in custody and access battles, which often leave women living in poverty for two to three years.
Claudine Thibaudeau presented alarming data from SOS violence conjugale, showing that the placement rate for victims seeking shelter in Quebec has fallen to 45%, and when considering only local placements, it drops to 22.4%. She emphasized that more than half of placements are outside the victim's community, forcing them to leave their support networks, and that allophone women face even lower placement rates. She called for greater investment in shelter capacity and noted that the rise in masculinist rhetoric requires broad prevention campaigns, including a tool on her organization's website that has been used 400,000 times.
Nneka MacGregor and Sonya Boyce presented findings from a pan-Canadian study on Black survivors, revealing that many avoid shelters due to fear of police, child welfare and immigration systems, and that when they do access shelters, they encounter culturally inappropriate services. They recommended expanding the scope from intimate partner violence to gender-based violence, establishing a dedicated funding stream for Black survivors, funding Black-led and survivor-led organizations, mandating race-disaggregated data collection, and requiring federal policies to address gendered anti-Black violence. They disagreed with the notion that shelters are the only solution, emphasizing that many survivors rely on kinship networks and community care.
The committee also discussed procedural matters, including the adoption of a study on menopause, with submissions accepted until September 30, 2026, limited to two pages or approximately 1,000 words.
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Debbie Zweep
Executive Director, Faye Peterson House
Opening remarks
Good morning, everyone. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. I'm going to try to keep my speed relatively slow. My name is Debbie Zweep. I've been the executive director here at Faye Peterson House in Thunder Bay, Ontario—
Claudine Thibaudeau
Lead, Issues Involving Intimate Partner Violence, SOS violence conjugale
Opening remarks
Good morning. Madam Chair, members of the committee, I want to begin by thanking you for the opportunity to speak today. Like Ms. Zweep, I have been working in the field of domestic violence for 28 years. I represent SOS violence conjugale, which serves as the central resource for referring victims of domestic violence to shelters throughout Quebec. For nearly 40 years, our mission has been to provide information and referral services to victims, their loved ones and professionals on a 24/7 basis. Every year, we receive from 50,000 to 60,000 calls, text messages and requests by chat. We also offer this service 24 hours a day, and seven days a week. Behind every one of those requests is a person trying to regain their power, improve their safety and, sometimes, save their own life. Among the services we provide, one of the most critical ones is to quickly find a space in a first-stage shelter for a victim who wants to leave a violent situation. Each year, we receive from 15,000 to 20,000 requests for shelter. Data from our most recent activity report reveals an extremely concerning reality. Year after year, our ability to find an available space continues to decline. Six years…
Nneka MacGregor
Executive Director, Women's Centre for Social Justice
Opening remarks
Good morning, Madam Chair and honourable members. Thank you for this opportunity. I am Nneka MacGregor, co-founder and executive director of the Women's Centre for Social Justice, better known as Women at the Centre. I'm appearing today with my colleague Sonya Boyce. We're a survivor-led organization of diverse women, gender-diverse and trans survivors. Our community shapes our priorities, our research and our policy recommendations. Over the past five years, Women at the Centre led a groundbreaking initiative entitled “Truth & Transformation: Advancing Gender Equity For Black Women, Girls And Gender Diverse, and Trans Peoples In Canada”. It was funded by Women and Gender Equality Canada, and we engaged over 700 participants from across every province and territory. It is, to our knowledge, the first pan-Canadian study to centre Black survivors' and advocates' experiences of gender-based violence in their own words. The peer-reviewed literature on this specific population and their experiences of the shelter system is very thin, and this study, in significant part, begins to fill that gap. Black survivors are the proverbial canary in the coal mine. Their experiences reveal the…
Sonya Boyce
Director, Stakeholder Outreach and Engagement, Women's Centre for Social Justice
Opening remarks
Survivors also told us that when GBV systems fail, they turn to their kinship networks. This includes grandmothers, aunties, sisters, faith groups and Black-led organizations like ours. This is where many survivors found housing, child care, transportation, emotional support and advocacy. In the words of one survivor, “The shelter turned me away. My auntie took me in. The church helped me with groceries and my kids' school. A Black women's organization helped me find a lawyer. None of that would show up in any government data. But that's what kept me alive.” These are not informal coping strategies. They are culturally grounded approaches to safety and healing that are rooted in Afrocentric values of kinship, collective responsibility and community care. I'm going to share five recommendations with you now. First, expand the scope and language from intimate partner violence to gender-based violence to capture the diverse range of survivors in need of emergency shelter. Second, establish a dedicated funding stream within bilateral agreements for housing that is specifically designed by and for Black survivors. Funding must include capital investment and operational…