QUEEN’s PARK—NDP’s Krystyn Wong-Tam is calling on Ford’s government to provide funding from their budget in order to address the increasing rate of sexual violence in Ontario.
Quoting Statistics Canada’s current data confirming that gender-based violence and sexual assault is rising in Canada, Wong-Tam expressed concerns echoed by key community partners from organizations such as, the Toronto Rape Crisis Centre.
Joined by Naomi Martey, sexual violence counsellor and advocate at the Toronto Rape Crisis Centre and Multicultural Women Against Rape, Tamar Witelson, director of legal services at the Barbra Schlifer Commemorative Clinic, and Pam Hrick the executive director of Women’s Legal Education and Action fund, Wong-Tam called on the provincial government to take action.
“This week, Statistics Canada released new data that confirmed what survivors and many working in the sector to end gender-based violence already knew: sexual assault in Canada is increasing with no end in sight,” Wong-Tam said. “Where is the provincial government? How are they taking action? The provincial budget must be updated to include significant funds to address sexual assault. We can’t just leave the people most vulnerable to gender-based violence to continue to fight this epidemic alone.”
Since 1996, police reported sexual assault is at its highest level, and with only six per cent of sexual assault cases reported to police the statistics are probably higher. During the COVID-19 pandemic Sexual assault incidents increased by 81 per cent.
In her statement Thursday, Wong-Tam questioned if the Ford government even followed through on their promise in 2021 to invest $2.1 million over the next three years to address this issue.
Martey, sexual violence counsellor at the Toronto Rape Crisis Centre, describes how even with the increase in reported sexual assaults, that the centre has only seen an increase of $5,800 per year from the province in the last 10 years.
According to Patrick Hrick, executive director of Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund, “We need to expand the options available to survivors to seek justice that works for them. That means investing in the growth of alternative justice systems, like restorative justice. When this government came into office in 2018, it canceled the exploration of restorative justice for sexual assault.”
Jill Andrew (Toronto-St. Paul’s), NDP critic for Women’s Social and Economic Opportunity believes that there is no excuse for sexual assault and gender-based violence to continue and that the government continues to fail all victims who face gender-based violence and sexual assault.
“There is no excuse for sexual assault and gender-based violence to continue, let alone trend upwards over the past 25 years. The picture painted by Statistics Canada demonstrated the continued failure to protect women, girls, non-binary, trans, and gender-divers folks, and all victim-survivors through education, access to justice, mental health resources, and the everyday and systemic dismantling of toxic masculinity in our society. This increase in sexual assault and gender-based violence is even more troubling when you consider that the report only captures a fraction of the violence, since the majority of incidents are unreported.”
The consensus by each of the partners who joined Wong-Tam in making her statement is that by not providing the funding needed to stop the gender-based violence and the increase in sexual assaults, will not meet the growing need that exists across the province today.