Question Period Note: Survey of Safety in Public and Private Spaces

Stakeholders have received invitations to provide advice on a national gender-based violence survey. What is this survey and what are the government’s plans for it?

• Everyone has the right to live free from violence. Preventing and addressing gender-based violence and supporting survivors requires coordinated actions informed by evidence and lived experience.
• That’s why, through the federal gender-based violence strategy, over $17 million was invested in new national surveys on gender-based violence.
• The Survey of Safety in Public and Private Spaces was implemented in 2018 with Statistics Canada, as the first national survey on gender-based violence in Canada. It provided invaluable information to inform our federal actions, including the first ever gendered data on the prevalence and nature of intimate partner violence. Having this evidence helps all of us identify specific gaps and challenges that particular groups of people experience, so we can work together on specific solutions.
• In August 2022, the Government of Canada began engagement with survivors, academics, researchers, private sector, and community-based organizations serving people who have experienced violence to inform the next cycle of data collection through the Survey of Safety in Public and Private Spaces. We expect the survey to be in the field in 2024-25 with data available in 2026.

Investment
• With an investment of about $9.6M from the federal Gender-based Violence Strategy, Women and Gender Equality Canada (WAGE) partnered with Statistics Canada (STC) to develop and implement the Survey of Safety in Public and Private Spaces (SSPPS), the first national survey dedicated to measuring self-reported experiences of gender-based violence (GBV) in Canada.
• Budget 2021 allocated $11M over five years to WAGE for GBV research and knowledge mobilization, including $500K to enhance the sample size of national GBV surveys to improve the collection of Indigenous identity and race-based data.
• With annual funding from the federal GBV Strategy, WAGE is investing $500K in the 2022-23 fiscal year to support engagement of stakeholders and revisions to the SSPPS questionnaire.
• (Redacted)

Results
• Data for the first cycle of the SSPPS were collected in 2018.
• These were the first-ever national data on many forms of GBV in Canada, providing valuable information on self-reported experiences of GBV, including information on who is more likely to experience GBV, on the prevalence and gendered nature of intimate partner violence, barriers to reporting violence, and the social, economic and health impacts of GBV.
• To date, 31 reports and analyses have been published using SSPPS data.
• Since 2019, SSPPS-related published papers and reports have been referenced over 300 times in reports, government documents, and academic literature. These data are instrumental in informing policies and programs to prevent and address GBV and to support survivors and their families. Data from future cycles of the SSPPS will provide an even better and more intersectional picture of GBV prevalence and of trends over time.

Project examples

• Of the 31 total reports and analyses published using SSPPS data, there have been 14 main reports on GBV. In summary, they cover the following topics:
o Initial and general findings about GBV and unwanted sexual behaviour in Canada
o Perceptions about GBV, gender equality and gender expression
o GBV in the territories
o Violent victimization among LGBTQ2 populations, Indigenous women and women living in rural and remote areas
o An overview of intimate partner violence (IPV) in Canada
o IPV among women with disabilities, young women, visible minority women, Indigenous women, sexual minority women and sexual minority men

BACKGROUND:

• Under the federal gender-based violence strategy, WAGE received $30.1M over five years, starting in 2017-18, to undertake research and data collection, including $17.1M over five years, for three new surveys on gender-based violence – the Survey of Safety in Public and Private Spaces (SSPPS); the Survey on Individual Safety in the Postsecondary Student Population (SISPSP); and the Survey on Sexual Misconduct at Work (SSMW). This included new data collection every five years on each of these surveys.

• The three surveys each went through one cycle of data collection: the SSPPS in 2018; the SISPSP in 2019; and the SSMW in 2020, and data and a series of key publications have been released for all three surveys. The three surveys collected similar information regarding GBV in Canada, among different populations, and as such there was some overlap in both survey content and target populations. The number of respondents to the SSPPS general survey who were students and working people was higher than in the SISPSP and SSMW. These redundancies may have contributed to declining response rates over the course of the three surveys. Based on the lessons learned, it was determined that all ongoing funding for the surveys provided to WAGE under the federal GBV Strategy would be directed at the SSPPS, and that the SISPSP and SSMW would be discontinued, with key themes from those surveys added to the SSPPS. This approach aims to balance the need to collect information with the need to reduce the response burden on Canadians, while protecting their privacy, and to improve data quality.

• On August 25, 2022, WAGE and Statistics Canada launched engagement of stakeholders to inform the second cycle of the SSPPS. Over 600 stakeholders from academia, not-for-profit, private and government sectors have been invited to participate through written submissions and small group discussions.

• The second cycle of the survey will include detailed questions and analysis of experiences in the workplace and in post-secondary institutions, as well as the general population. In addition, WAGE will use Budget 2021 funds to increase the sample size of the SSPPS, which will increase the number of respondents and allow for targeted oversampling of specific groups to obtain better disaggregated data from this survey. Data collection is expected to take place between fall 2024 and summer 2025, with data anticipated for release in 2026.

None