Councillor Angela Caputo, who moved the unanimously adopted Sault Ste. Marie motion, has a message for this House after their recent and heartbreaking mass murder-suicide: “I ask Premier Ford to reconsider the stance”—of his government. “Angie Sweeney deserved better. Those three innocent children deserved better. Women in this province deserve better.”

Speaker, on Monday, we were absolutely shocked to hear the Solicitor General dismiss the top recommendation from the Renfrew inquest as an empty gesture of symbolism.

My question to the Premier is, will he join the 63 municipalities that have already adopted similar motions by substantially declaring intimate partner violence an epidemic and committing the necessary resources to keep women and children safe in Ontario?

Interjections.

I’d like to recognize a friend and colleague, Toronto city councillor, James Pasternak. Nice to see you, Chainsaw Jimmy.

I’m very proud to be rising today to speak about this bill and to speak on behalf of the good people of Toronto Centre. It is an absolute honour.

I want to begin my remarks by, number one, thanking everyone who came out to the deputations at committee. I thought it was important that they had an opportunity to speak to this bill. The bill, of course, was introduced and pretty soon it went straight to committee, so I recognize that there wasn’t probably a lot of time for everyone to respond, but for those who had a chance to come out, their input was incredibly valuable.

I want to pay particular attention to fact that my good colleagues from Ottawa West–Nepean and Nickel Belt did incredible yeoman’s work, trying to respond to a bill that didn’t have a lot of time on the floor and certainly wasn’t necessarily before us for a length of time, but I thought that just listening to the member from Ottawa West–Nepean provide her remarks was exceptional. She gave a master class in providing input throughout the “consultation” that was provided at the committee, but also just listening to her provide a surgical incision of why the bill’s areas could be strengthened was just exceptional. It’s hard to imagine that she just arrived here in June—so much respect to that.

I want to begin my remarks, I guess, largely about the things that are good. I really was encouraged to hear members of the government say that sexual violence, sexual assault and harassment should not be a partisan issue, and I wholeheartedly agree with that. Speaker. I couldn’t agree with that more. I want to be able to recognize that if this House was truly gripped to address the pandemic of sexual violence and gender-based violence in Ontario, then we should be able to work collaboratively across the aisle, work collaboratively at every single committee to advance amendments based on good practice and good policy-making.

Unfortunately, what I heard from the member from Ottawa West–Nepean was that didn’t always take place. So I’m trying to recognize what was said here about the opportunity to collaborate and build better legislation and work together to make sure it’s non-partisan, and then how challenging it was to then also recognize that good amendments that were put forward—oftentimes brought forward by the committee deputants—were then shot down by the government members. So clearly we still have a lot of work to do in reconciling what is said and what actually happens.

I want to try to bring the importance to this debate about what happens when we don’t do the good work together. We can get a little bit bogged down by language. “Sexual abuse” then morphed into “sexual misconduct,” and now there’s a call from the community that is most directly impacted—which is the students—to make sure that we use the right words and to use the language that students recognize as currently on the campus. What’s on campus are not sexual misconduct centres or sexual misconduct policies; what’s on campus are sexual violence policies, sexual assault centres. That’s the language that the students, as well as the post-secondary institutions, are using, and that’s certainly the language that we should be using to make sure that it’s consistent but also respectful to what their needs are.

Post-secondary institutions do not have minimum standards right now when it comes to design and implementation of sexual violence policies. They do have them, but they’re not entirely standardized, and if we’re going to make sure that the work that they are able to do and empowered to do is going to be procedurally fair and consistent, survivor-informed as well as trauma-informed, then we are needing some minimum standards. That’s exactly what the member from Ottawa West–Nepean was speaking about.

Now, currently, we have standards everywhere, minimum standards all over the place. We have minimum standards for judges in courts. We have minimum standards for police officers. We have minimum standards in training for nurses and doctors. But when it comes to investigations on campus, that still is not set out in any way that is going to be clear and consistent. The challenge of that is that, while you have a policy that is guiding all of the post-secondary institutions across Ontario, whether the ones that are publicly assisted or the ones that you request of privately funded institutions, if you don’t give them more guidance and specific minimum standards, you’re going to have policies that are all over the place and entirely inconsistent. Universities and colleges oftentimes look over each other’s shoulders, and they do borrow from each other, but it’s not enough, because they would have expected that guidance coming from this House that’s producing this legislation, that’s asking them to do this work.

When it comes to taking a look at how sexual violence intersects with the population on campus, I think what has been incredibly clear and that has been so oftentimes repeated—and it befogs me why the government House members cannot accept that—is that the relationship on campus goes in multiple ways. So it’s not always going to be faculty or teachers or professors assaulting students; most of the violence actually takes place, and the harassment takes place, among students, and there’s nothing here that actually addresses that.

Campuses are incredibly porous places. TMU—Toronto Metropolitan University—is a good example, or George Brown College, or University of Toronto—all within my catchment area and riding. Those campuses are incredibly open and porous. People come and go all the time, whether they be alumni, whether they be visitors, third-party contractors, as well as contract staff. It is not a stagnant place where you have binaries of, “You’re faculty, and you’re a student,” and nothing else—not to mention the sizable amount of administrators as well as guests who come in. This legislation before us, as proposed, doesn’t recognize the reality of the dynamism that exists in universities and colleges. So there’s another missed opportunity that I think could have easily been closed if there was more willingness on the behalf of the government side to actually listen to the experts and opinion makers and the thought leaders who came before the deputations.

And there is a portion around risk management that I’ve spoken about before: What happens when we don’t actually provide the post-secondaries with the necessary tools to do a good job of developing clear, consistent policies around sexual violence, making sure that the investigations are procedurally correct and consistent every single time? What happens is that, if those policies and procedures are not adequately and clearly communicated, there is a spottiness of expectation, execution and operationalization. What can happen? Students can protest. Actually, it’s been the students that have led the charge on campuses across Ontario and right across the country. They are the ones who have stood up and said, “We demand better,” and that they deserve better, to make sure that sexual violence and harassment are addressed on campus.

They’re the ones who have been defending their own integrity and autonomy of self, asking for the universities and colleges to do better. University and college administrators—their boards of governors—are actually turning to this government looking for guidance: “Show us how to be better at our job so we can be consistent.” Then the students will know everyone is looking after their best interests, and those who have been harmed, especially survivors, will know that there’s some consistent process for them to follow.

Sexual assault centres at post-secondary institutions all need support. We have seen repeatedly that there are now a number of quite alarming surveys and reports that have come out about the level of violence on campus, oftentimes facilitated through power dynamics or perhaps the person is not entirely informed around consent.

What we know is that 81% of sexual assault centres saw an increase in demand for their services during COVID, and 71% of post-secondary students—71%—have now witnessed or have been subjected to violence. Of that, only 41% are actually reported to the police. Therefore, what we know is that sexual violence and harassment on campuses are on the rise, especially during COVID. We also know that the request and demand for services are outpacing the actual service provision itself.

Not everything is going to be resolved through policing. We certainly know that. When you have people who know each other—and oftentimes the perpetuators are known to those who receive the harm—they don’t always want to go through that system. Which is why it’s so critically important that education, public awareness and consent awareness take place, because that’s the preventive piece.

Every single administrator, every president of universities and colleges is going to be asking for and clearly begging this House to show them the way when it comes to public education and consent. Don’t fail them. Because, Speaker, when we fail them, we leave them alone. When we don’t give them the guidance, they’re going to be making it up to the very best that they can, and it’s not going to be good enough and it’s certainly not going to be consistent.

We know that the rape crisis centres in Ontario are already underfunded. They have also seen an alarming rise in violence in the general community. What happens is that you have people who can’t get access to services on the campus and the wait-list is long. If you want therapy, the wait-list is long. If you want someone to accompany you to the police or to the hospital to administer the rape kits, that wait-list is long. We’ve heard questions in the House about that. But when the campus itself can’t provide the support for the person who is harmed, who is a survivor, then they go off to the sexual assault centres, which are also overburdened and also drawn out when it comes to their resources.

The Toronto Rape Crisis Centre has said that they have now seen a high in the past 33 years around sexual assault and that their funding hasn’t changed in 15 years. If this government was truly, truly serious about addressing sexual violence in Ontario, you would fund the sexual assault and rape centres. Just fund them so that they can actually do the work that you’ve asked them to do.

The demand for their services has continued to rise, with the funding being stagnated, and at the same time, the rate of inflation and the cost of service delivery have gone through the roof. Every year they’re facing funding cuts. They’re not being supported, which is of course something the Ontario NDP has been consistently, emphatically speaking about, the need to support our partners on the ground in the community who are doing this extraordinary and good work.

I want to be able to highlight the need for consent awareness, Speaker. I brought forward a bill—and it was actually my first private members’ bill. I was really proud to have done so. I gave it a lot of thought. I came to this House with a lot of—back in city hall, I should say, I probably passed more motions than any other city councillor in the past four years, and there are records of how that’s done. But it’s basically because I love to be able to push forward good policies and bylaws that will serve our community locally. So I came into this building with probably a dozen private members’ bills that were somewhat ready to go.

I really wanted to advance Consent Awareness Week because I thought that it was going to be, number one, important for us to have the conversation around consent and public awareness, but especially in light of what we’ve seen through Hockey Canada—the national scandal and shame that has buried that sport, our beloved national sport, around sexual violence, and then the deliberate cover-up using NDAs. And I thought, why not put forward what I thought was going to be a fairly straightforward bill that designates the third week of September, at the beginning of every single orientation period in post-secondary schools, as Consent Awareness Week? All that does, Speaker, is actually start the conversation so therefore we can engage as a citizenry in Ontario and talk about public awareness and sexual violence.

Much to my surprise, it was politicized: “Oh, it’s not our idea,” from the government side, “so therefore we’re just going to vote it down. We’re not going to accept it.” But at the same time, I’m hearing from the government side that sexual violence and sexual harassment should not be partisan. But why was Consent Awareness Week so critically important? Because, Speaker, in post-secondary institutions, the first six to eight weeks, statistically, is the highest time for sexual assault and violence on campuses. If we want to prevent sexual violence, if we want to stop it in its tracks, if we want to not be punitive but be proactive, then that was just a great example of how that bill could help.

That bill could still be put into this legislation. You can’t be talking about strengthening post-secondary institutions and strengthening the safety of students and faculty and all members of the campus environment and not have consent education. It is a clear and obvious omission that everyone can see who is outside of this building, who has been working on these issues on the ground for decades. But in the absence of government leadership, Speaker, universities and colleges, many of them across the country, are already putting forward consent awareness education. They’re doing it in an inconsistent fashion. In some, we have work happening in November; some are doing it in September, but can you imagine how powerful it would be if the entire province—not just the campus environment, but the entire province—spent some time talking about and promoting good education around consent awareness? It would revolutionize how we address sexual violence and harassment in our province. It would make these conversations available to everyone in a healthy and proactive fashion, and it would also be entirely accessible to all: boys and girls, men and women, those in power and those without. We would be able to build healthier, stronger human relationships because of it.

I want to be able to spend just a few minutes to talk about the Toronto Metropolitan University. I am so incredibly proud to be, first, their city councillor for almost 11 and a half years, 12 years, but I’m incredibly proud to represent them as their MPP. They did an extraordinary amount of work in a very difficult time when they undertook the process of reconciliation. I know many of the community members that actually were asking and calling for the name change, and I know that they did not do that lightly. I also know that it was on the heels of the discovery of children—buried children, skeletons, residuals left over in the school campus environment—of the Indian residential schools.

And in 2021, our nation was rocked to the core. I remember very clearly: How could this happen in this country? We had all heard stories, I suspect, especially in light of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. We had heard the stories, but there was also an element of disbelief: “Oh, that happened a while ago. It probably wasn’t as bad as some of the speakers who came forward”—who spoke to the commission and shared their trauma and shared their stories and basically bared their souls to say, “We have been harmed as a community, as Indigenous people, First Nations and Métis and Inuit people across the country.”

I remember my grief, but the collective grief of Canada when we said we were going to do something about it. So we now have the national day. But then we have an institution like Ryerson University, which has stepped up in extraordinary ways—and to have a very public conversation in Canada’s biggest city, recorded by Canada’s largest newspapers, on how they were going to tackle reconciliation and to right the path of justice.

It was a privilege, Speaker, to actually see the campus community develop their task force to engage the conversation that involved 10,000 Ontarians to provide insight and value to what could be a better name. And I think that they have done an exceptional job. They’ve also set up, I believe, a really respectful protocol and template for the rest of us, including cities and towns that are now faced with their own conversation of how to take action on reconciliation. I’m sure that even here at Queen’s Park, there are probably places and spaces and monuments and designations that need to be reconsidered in light of the reconciliation conversation, and I’ll look forward to that. But I really want to thank Toronto Metropolitan University for leading the way.

In closing, Speaker, I just want to acknowledge that this bill actually does some very important things. Do I wish it would go further? Absolutely. But I’m going to take the government at its word that when the issues of sexual violence and new policy come up, that they will support it, and I’ll look forward to having their support on Consent Awareness Week.