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

There are data gaps on the nature and prevalence of gender-based violence in Canada

• Everyone has the right to live free from violence. To support this fundamental human right, Canada is committed to using evidence-based approaches to prevent gender-based violence and to support survivors.
• The Survey of Safety in Public and Private Spaces, funded through the federal Gender-Based Violence Strategy, is the first national survey dedicated to measuring experiences of gender-based violence in Canada. The first cycle of this survey was conducted in 2018, and results have been released by Statistics Canada.
• These results have significantly improved our knowledge of experiences of gender-based violence in Canada and will be instrumental in helping to improve initiatives to prevent this violence in all its forms and to support survivors and their families.

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) in 2017 to develop and implement the Survey of Safety in Public and Private Spaces; the first national survey dedicated to measuring self-reported experiences of gender-based violence (GBV) in Canada. Data was collected from April to December 2018 and the initial results were released in December 2019, with further results released in 2020 and 2021. Below are highlights from the data that were released by Statistics Canada in April 2021:
o 30% of women reported having been sexually assaulted at least once since the age of 15 – more than three times more than men (8%).
o 45% of First Nations women, 44% of Métis women, and 26% of Inuit women reported having been sexually assaulted at least once since age 15, compared with 30% of non-Indigenous women.
o 39% of women living with disabilities reported having been sexually assaulted at least once in their lifetime, compared with 24% of women without disabilities.
o 19% of racialized women reported having been sexually assaulted at least once since age 15, compared with 33% of non-racialized women.
o 12% of women and 4% of men reported having been sexually abused at least once before the age of 15.
o 59% of LGBTQ2 people reported having been physically or sexually assaulted at least once since age 15, compared to 37% of heterosexual and cisgender individuals.
o In the 12 months preceding the survey, women were more likely than men to have experienced unwanted sexual behaviours that made them feel uncomfortable or unsafe in public spaces or in the workplace, as well as to have experienced online harassment.
o Results show that 44% of women in Canada, or about 6.2 million women have experienced at least one form of intimate partner violence (IPV) since the age of 15; significantly more than amongst men (36%).
o Women are more likely than men to have experienced some of the most severe forms of IPV in their lifetime, such as ever having been forced to have sex (10% vs. 2%), confined in a room (3% vs. 0.5%), choked (7% vs. 1%), or beaten (6% vs. 2%).
o Results also show that certain populations were more likely to have experienced at least one form of IPV in their lifetime, including women (55%) and men (44%) living with disabilities, LGBTQ2 women (67%) and men (54%), Indigenous women (61%) and men (54%), and women (57%) and men (53%) with a household income of less than $20,000.

These are the first-ever national data on many forms of GBV in Canada, providing valuable information on self-reported experiences of GBV among specific populations, such as women with disabilities, Indigenous women, and LGBTQ2 individuals. These data will be instrumental in informing policies and programs to prevent and address GBV and to support survivors and their families.

Further analysis of the SSPPS data will be conducted in 2021, notably on experiences of intimate partner violence among Indigenous, racialized and young women.

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