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PC MPP Jess Dixon co-leading Ontario Government Intimate Partner Violence subcommittee · Kvetch & Release

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  A PC MPP has been named to co lead a subcommittee of a Queen's Park
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  Justice Committee tasked with moving the issue of intimate partner the violence epidemic forward.
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  The MPP for Kitchener South Hespeler joins me right now, Jess Dixon, how
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  are you doing today? And great, John, how are you doing very
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  well? Thanks for joining me, very important issue of course, intimate partner
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  violence. Wondering just right off the bat, what you're hoping to achieve having
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  been named to lead this subcommittee. Well, I've been referred to as the
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  proverbial mouse and then you give a mesa cookie kid story, So quite a
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  lot, you know. I was named several months ago and it basically happened
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  as soon as I knew that there was going to be a subcommittee on this,
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  I texted Paul Calandra saying basically pretty pretty please, anything I can do
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  to help or support you know, I'm here, And he responded touching to
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  me back and said, oh, you're you're going to lead it. So
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  I screen count everything I knew, delighted about it. So we are really
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  looking at making progress on what I will call, you know, an in
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  depth investigation prevention and what i'll call actionable recommendations. Okay, So work is
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  beginning now in earnest for you kicking off, I'd imagine yesterday things got started
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  for you. I've been doing this in April, Okay, I thought that
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  work was to begin in July. Yeah. Yeah. The the I start
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  hearing we have our first witnesses should hopefully be on July seventeenth. I have
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  been putting in i would say, most of my time just in general on
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  this since April. Wow. It's a lot of work to get to this
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  point right now. So when you say, you know, coming to look
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  for actionable items that can be achieved, like, what does that look like
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  for you at the start of this process. Yeah. So one of the
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  biggest you know, challenges slash criticisms that has been sort of levied against the
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  very existence of this committee is the idea that this is it is not like
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  we had never had a committee on this. It's not like we've never had
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  a round table and inquiry an in quest you know, at federal, provincial,
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  municipal levels. This is not an issue that is lacking in in study.
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  And I was very live to that, to that criticism frankly, because
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  it's salads. So I went and started digging through even more of the reports.
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  Like once you put together I would say, the main reports on this
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  issue in Canada, you're at about six thousand pages. And as a sort
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  of different recommendations, what I concluded, Like, take for example, the
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  Renfrew inquiry recommendations. When I look at those two years ago, before I
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  live at MPP, I would have had the same thought of that seems like
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  a reasonable thing to ask for, you know, for a number of the
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  of the recommendations. Having now worked in government for two years, a lot
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  of those recommendations are actually very complex and require some unpacking. That does not
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  mean that they are not good or valid, but it requires drilling down because
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  so much of this is interministerial. There's the differences between the official side of
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  ministries, the political side of ministries, the way be fun things, the
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  way be grant things, plus just all of the the rest of the expertise
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  that is out there. So for me, what I really, you know,
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  attached myself to was one of the recommendations from Renfrew is they call it
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  an all of government approach and I really really agree with that, and so
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  to me, that is one of the main things that I am working on
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  is what does an all of government approach look like? For real? How
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  do you get all of the different components of governments who come together and make
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  sure that what is being you know, talked about and agreed upon and legislated,
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  is actually able to achieve what the goals are. I know that one
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  of the criticisms that is often levied by members in the NDP is that it
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  hasn't been declared an epidemic specifically, and I just I wonder what your thoughts
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  are about the debate and just declaring IPv and epidemic. I mean, I'm
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  a very result oriented person, like I mean, inherently a practical person,
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  and so when you have a when you have a problem, you know,
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  my question is, well, what is the what is the solution? Has
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  anyone else solved it? This idea I believe that when you when you consider
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  the braving of an epidemic, I in some ways I think it's a bit
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  of a conflation with the idea of a state of emergency, the idea that
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  a declaration of something as an epidemic, you know, has some sort of
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  regulatory measure that that triggers the unlocking of the funding or something like that in
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  the declariat and epidemic, and it is that I'm not committing myself one with
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  the other. You know this this committee will go for beyond that. But
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  I'm completely on board when it comes to reflecting the experiences of victims, survivors,
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  their families that this is increasing, that this is a social ill that
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  we want to eradicate, and that it should be taken seriously. But if
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  we were to declare it an epidemic tomorrow, well then what and so the
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  then what I think is where you know, my committee comes in so easy
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  to go and declare it, but what does that actually mean? How does
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  that actually affect things? It's not like, as you said, the money
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  just starts to flow. So for people who don't you know, spend their
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  afternoons in their days studying the Queen's Park subcommittee schedule, what does this look
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  like in terms of how this is all going to roll out for you?
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  I presume there's going to be witnesses that come in and testimony and whatnot.
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  Yeah, so there there are you know, standard ways that the government committee
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  and subcommittees can occur. And I would say the most typical is you know,
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  you get a witch call the foundational report from Legislative Research. You put
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  out an ad through sort of the Legislative Clerk's office saying we're having a committee.
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  Anybody that wants to submit like ways apply this slide in a first come
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  first or fashion, in no particular order. They come, They give verbal
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  submissions, sometimes they might provide some written materials, and then Legislative Research prepare
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  a report I would say, like in something like this, summarizing recommendations issues,
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  which the committee would then read, amend and table. And that wasn't
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  enough for me, frankly. So when I say that I've been working on
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  this since April, it was because I very much have this sort of drum
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  beat in my head that says, look, all of the other things we've
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  done, you know, haven't haven't really worked. So like the other recommendations,
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  they haven't stuck, and so I need to come up with a way
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  of doing something different. So this is going to be a very long committee.
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  I mean it's going to run at least until December, I would imagine,
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  And I'm currently breaking it up into sort of three determined phases and probably
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  four, and these are this is not a structure that is a government structure.
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  This is just you know, out of my own head and in conference
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  with my co lead. So our first phase is what we're calling sort of
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  our experts for either people or organizations that we have actually reached out to directly
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  to say, we believe you have expertise that would be useful to our committee
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  and we would like to hear from you. And then I've drafted guidelines about
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  the submissions that I'm looking for in the formats, we don't tend to give
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  people a lot of support about how to testify the committee. Than our phase
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  two is what I'm calling a ministry component. So you're never going to be
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  able to do anything with this issue until you also look at inadequacies in government.
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  And when I say inadequacies, I'm not talking about you know, a
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  bad face or maliciousness or laziness or you know, like lands, the things
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  that sort of the MVP have been leveling. I'm just talking about the fact
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  that government is an enormous machine. It's slow and lumbering, and you know
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  there's bits of it that gathered dust and you know, programs that are from
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  like nineteen ninety eight and they're running on one computer somewhere and no one else
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  has ever been able to access it, you know. And again it's not
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  it's not through any lack of desire to make it better. It's just a
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  very very big, old old machine. And so there's probably i would say,
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  at least thirteen ministries that have anything like even a tiny part to a
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  large hard to do with this problem. So I'm going to be having officials
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  and political staff from all of those ministries also attending because after phase one,
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  we're going to have a lot of like, you know, problems solutions,
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  and so the idea with having the ministries and is then to be like,
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  okay, so what are you funding, Why are you funding it? You
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  know, what's your grant structure? These are problems and solutions that have been
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  identified. What is your response to it? You know, when can we
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  expect a response from that? And again it is not. This isn't because
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  the ministries are not doing their job. They're doing their job. They're just
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  doing their job in the way that government works, which, as I said,
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  can be a little bit clunky. And then our last, our last
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  while our third phase is what we're calling to the travel phase. So that
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  will be an open call for submissions, So it will be ads going out
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  saying again, we're looking for this, and I'm I'm determined, Like we'll
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  go to run Through, We'll go to a couple of other places. We're
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  definitely going to go up north. I as a crown out as a crown
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  before, which is where a lot of my passion comes from. As a
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  Crown attorney. I only ever did two fly in courts, but I really
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  would like to committee to kind of experience what it's like to be, you
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  know, four hundred kilometers away from help, because of course Indigenous women are
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  you know, statistically far more impacted by both intimate partner bounds and sexual violence.
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  So we'll be we'll be traveling and you know, hearing stories, reevancees,
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  that type of thing. Then the idea is, okay, we get
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  interim reports from all three of those stages, and then the fourth one is
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  the one that I mean, some people think I'm delusional for trying, but
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  as I said, give the most of cookie. It's this idea of okay,
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  then you know it isn't epidemic? Is it endemic? How do we
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  need to deal with this? And what are the recommendations going to be about
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  how to how to deal with soltment. I'll also note because of the second
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  ndpkiving members sale that God referred to the committee which is Lydia's Law from Catherine's
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  life. It has now expanded, in my opinion, the scope and mandate
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  of my committee to also include sexual balance, which for me is wonderful because
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  I was going to do it anyway, but now I can, I can
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  say that I've been clearly given the direction to do so. So we'll be
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  drilling down on Okay, what is that? What does that look like?
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  From prevention, from education, from awareness, you know, from funding.
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  And the goal is to come up with recommendations that are designed for a government
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  to implement, you know, in the structure that it currently works in.
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  Like if I if I end up with recommendations, it is just a list
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  of recommendations to have working groups, I will consider my efforts to within a
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  failure. Well, it's something that we are going to keep our eyes on.
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  I'm sure that we will be speaking about this as again as the summer
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  moves forward. I want to thank you so much for your time today to
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  discuss Thank you and I appreciate you giving me the upree. Absolutely have yourself
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  a great afternoon. Just Dixon is MPP for Kitchener South Hespler with the Progressive
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  Conservative Party on Ontario. Also Parliamentary Assistant to the Associate Minister of Women's,
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  Social and Economic Opportunity AM eight hundred CKLW will be back right after this