Supply Motion - Misogyny

Mr. Speaker, I'd like to take a few moments debating into Supply on this budget to speak about something that has largely been left off the table in the budget discussions.

Here in the NDP caucus, we talk a lot about systemic issues and the systemic challenges that face our province. We talk about racism, ableism, misogyny, and we talk about them because these are the things that constrain us from truly living up to the reputation that we have and, in some ways, we deserve. We know that this Premier and this government have acknowledged the systemic nature of discrimination. We saw it in the recent leadership race, we have seen it in various debates and conversations, and yet despite that acknowledgement, it is persistent.

The question is, how do we deal with it? I would like to take a few moments this afternoon and talk about misogyny and the misogyny that women in this province experience every day. I want to suggest, as NDP spokesperson for the Status of Women, that we are not doing enough to fix this. I want to offer a few examples - some from my constituency, some from other places.

I got a call a couple of days ago from a woman in Dartmouth South who was livid because her friend had decided, after much consideration, to report a historic sexual assault that had happened to her. The Province established a free legal advice line that women in her position could access a couple of years ago in the Department of Justice, where they could call 211 and register and get a couple of hours of free legal advice from a lawyer.

The woman called 211 and was asked to describe the incident, which is not what she's supposed to be asked, and then was told by the operator at 211 that what happened to her didn't fit the definition of historic sexual assault. This is systemic misogyny. This is dismissing a complainant before they've even had the opportunity to avail themselves of advice.

In my constituency is Holly House, which is a transition house for criminalized women run by the Elizabeth Fry Society of Mainland Nova Scotia. The Elizabeth Fry Society and Coverdale Courtwork Society have been working closely together throughout the pandemic. Coverdale Courtwork Society runs a similar facility in Halifax in Caitlan's Place. Both these organizations, which operate on a very limited budget, have faced hurdle after hurdle after hurdle as they try to meet the needs of their constituents.

One of those hurdles has been that they've spent thousands of dollars - and they're not the only ones - we've discussed this in this Chamber - on hotel rooms for women who are homeless or are in jail because they don't have a place to live. We know that our jails - particularly at Burnside, which has a high remand population - are doing double duty as homeless shelters for people who are in there for very minor offences and have not gone to trial but don't have anywhere to go.

More recently we became aware of something very troubling. Unlike all the other shelters and transition houses in Nova Scotia, these two organizations don't fall under the banner of transition houses of Nova Scotia, and their frontline staff - unlike all the other frontline staff - aren't being vaccinated. We're talking about the two organizations in Nova Scotia that arguably deal with the most vulnerable women in our province, that do not have the opportunity to social distance. They run food banks, clothing banks, but are not being offered vaccinations. They have gone through every channel of Public Health, we have brought it up with the minister, and still these staff members are not being vaccinated.

The issue that's really brought this up this week for us is education. I'll give a couple of examples before I turn to what's happening right now. In December, a Grade 12 student at Sydney Academy, Chloe Feltham, organized a protest against the school dress code, which sexualizes the bodies of women and girls. Students at the protest said that although the dress code had some restrictions for male students, as is often the case with school dress codes, these aren't enforced, or they're enforced differently.

Despite the fact that we did have school boards, and I'll speak more about that in a minute. Part of the reason for removing those school boards was the argument that we would have more consistency. Years later, we have no formal policy on dress codes or their enforcements, which leads me to what happened last week.

At West Kings District High School, a young woman was suspended. She went and sat in her classroom, and the male student in front of her was wearing a T-shirt with very misogynistic epithets on it - those have been tabled in the House earlier. The phrase in question, in particular, was "'tis the season to be rapey." Rape culture, as we would call it, was on full display. She went and alerted someone at the school about the existence of this T-shirt. Nothing was done. She returned home and posted a picture of the shirt, not the student, on social media, and she was suspended.

Not only was she suspended, but she was threatened with not being able to graduate if she continued to make waves, and this is all in the article that was tabled previously. Her peers protested, as well they should have, and many of them in those protests wore spaghetti straps and short skirts and all the things that women and girls are constantly policed about, to show the double standard and the misogyny. We still have yet to hear any strong statement either from the government or from the Annapolis Valley Regional Centre for Education. We know that there's still not a consistent policy, that there is still not a consistent repercussion for this type of behaviour.

One more example, Mr. Speaker: sexual health services and funding, which ties directly to this rape culture to which I was speaking. Sexual Health Nova Scotia represents the provincial network of community-based sexual health centres. The Halifax Sexual Health Centre is one of only six sexual health centres across the province that has a clinic. They have different streams of funding, including funds from MSI, small project grants, and part of an annual provincial grant. The provincial grant is not guaranteed. They have to re-apply for this provincial piece of their funding every year.

There's around $30,000 allocated each year, and running the clinic costs about $700,000. The South Shore Sexual Health Centre has continued to operate with only $33,000 in annual core funding. There continues to be limited care in the region, inadequate access to counselling support for survivors of gendered violence, and so many of these folks on the front line have to spend the majority of their time advocating for funding and doing the administrative work required to bleed the funds out of this government that they need to run their services. The question is: How do we fix this?

I would submit that it's actually not that complicated, and I'll tell you how we don't fix it. We don't fix it by deciding that what we need is more training. While training is necessary - and there are lots of brilliant trainers, anti-racism trainers, feminist trainers whom we should continue to listen to and learn from - it is not even close to sufficient. What we need to do is support the systems and the people who are doing the work. There are different ways to do that. For the Elizabeth Fry Society and Coverdale Courtworks Society and the sexual health centres, that's sufficient core funding that they need to do their work, that they shouldn't have to fight the government for every single year.

It might be oversight, Mr. Speaker. So for 211 we need to ensure that when the Department of Justice sets up a program dealing with vulnerable women, survivors of trauma, that that program has in it the proper resources and pieces so that the proper training can happen for frontline staff.

It might be not eliminating entire democratic orders of government. I am, of course, speaking about school boards. In this article from The Atlantic magazine entitled "The Sexism of School Dress Codes" - and this is an American example, but I think it's quite pertinent to what we're discussing - it says:

"According to students, the best solutions for remedying these issues entail more inclusive policymaking and raising awareness about the subject. And students and administrators tend to agree that schools should involve students early on in the rule-creation process to prevent conflicts from popping up. By developing a system like this, they have a stake in the decision and are significantly more likely to both adhere and respect the final verdict."

That's what school boards did, Mr. Speaker. Did they need work? Absolutely, but the solution to an order of government that needed work was to disappear it in the name of consistency, in the name of efficiency, in the name of better government, and I would submit that none of that has come to pass, especially for our most vulnerable students.

In closing, and back to the budget, comparatively it is our position that this budget does not make significant impacts on women - not in the caring professions, not in child care, not in education, and not in supporting vulnerable and criminalized women. The upshot for that lack of investment is all the examples that I gave today.

I will leave my colleagues with this parting thought, particularly my colleagues on the government side, Mr. Speaker: show us, don't tell us. Don't tell us that you care about equity and then not invest in it. Don't tell us that you're bothered by misogyny but not do anything to make it better. This government has an opportunity, and we are waiting for them to live up to it. (Applause)