Advocates count 48 feminicides in rural Ontario over the past five years. Here’s why women in these regions are at risk

Advocates say domestic violence is increasing in rural Ontario, but a lack of adequate transportation and a housing crisis are putting more women’s lives at risk.

Several rural shelters contacted by CBC News are operating at capacity by 2025 and are turning away women and children.

“Many women in rural areas actually have no access to help. The isolation, the distance from cities and the police make it very difficult for people to access it,” said Diane Harris, executive director of Domestic Abuse Services Oxford (DASO). , east of London.

“We get a number of calls every day and we can’t accommodate them here. So we try to direct them to the community, but the housing crisis also limits us. That’s what scares me for life women.”

DASO is Oxford County’s only emergency shelter, with a long-term transitional housing program and a part-time sexual violence counselor. It serves a population of 128,000 spread across eight municipalities and several small towns, ranging from Tillsonburg to Stratford to Paris.

“We’re a very large geographic area and we don’t have buses to different municipalities,” Harris said. “People have to rely on their own means to get here. In case of emergency, we try to send a taxi, but that doesn’t always work, so people without a car can’t come here.”

As demand for crisis services continues to rise, a lack of resources is putting a lot of pressure on rural shelters and can be a matter of life and death for those trying to get to safety, Harris said.

Home to a “systemic bottleneck”

The Ontario Association of Interval and Transition Homes (OAITH) tracks monthly and annual feminicides in the province as reported by the media. He gave CBC News a breakdown of feminicides between 2018 and 2023, which showed that small rural communities, with fewer than 30,000 residents, accounted for almost 20 per cent of feminicides over the past five years, or 48 deaths.

The OAITH divides Ontario into the Eastern, Toronto, Central, Northern and Western regions, which include Owen Sound, Windsor, Niagara, Hamilton and Cambridge. There have been 18 femicides in the western region since last year, said Marlene Ham, director of OAITH, adding that these figures are likely underestimated.

“We need to understand the levels of service that exist in rural communities and the complexities of where services are located and how to access them. Living in one community when services are elsewhere and leaving to go to another may not be possible. Ham said.

Ham said shelters were designed for emergencies but now must fill gaps in other services, calling it a “systemic bottleneck” made worse by a shortage of affordable housing.

The National Women’s Housing and Homelessness Network says approximately 699 women and 236 accompanying children are turned away from domestic violence shelters across Canada every day.

“If we have damage to our house and it’s on a rural road outside of town, no one will hear us scream,” said Liz Brown of the Valora Place shelter in Elgin County, south of London.

“You can drive around Elgin County and there are tons of areas where there is no cell phone reception. The closest person to you might be a ten minute walk or an hour away, it’s a very specific type of geographic isolation.”

Valora Place coverage includes St. Thomas, Dutton, Rodney, New Glasgow, Port Burwell and Aylmer. Since COVID, the number of people using its services has doubled from 1,500 to about 3,000, but the funding and amount of resources have remained the same, Brown said.

Declare domestic violence an epidemic

Two women have been murdered in Elgin County this year, Brown said. One of them was Tanya Wiebe, 38, the mother of a teenage son, whose partner killed her and then committed suicide — on a rural road in Sparta, about 13 minutes from the shelter, Brown said .

The other, Victoria Dill, 40, was found with a life-threatening gunshot wound at a property where there was an active house fire in July and later died in hospital. Two men are awaiting trial on charges of second-degree murder and arson.

Brown said the Renfrew inquiry’s 86 recommendations set out a good roadmap for how women fleeing violence in rural communities can be supported. This follows the murders of three women in Renfrew County in 2015, all of whom were murdered on the same day by the same man.

“Even if the first ten (recommendations) can be implemented, things will be very different. Governments need to count this data and call it what it is. It is within our reach to do so,” she said. declared.

Advocates also want domestic violence (IPV) to be recognized as a province-wide epidemic so that community safety plans can be mandated to improve education and prevention efforts. Ninety-five Ontario municipalities and six provinces have all declared this an outbreak.

A spokesperson for the Ontario Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services said in an emailed statement that the government supports the NDP’s Bill 173 to declare IPV an epidemic and that He referred it to a standing committee on justice policy for further review.

“The committee carefully evaluates available programs and the root causes of domestic violence to better understand the needs and improvements of the current system,” the release said.

The province is also reinvesting $3.6 million in the Rural and Remote Services and Supports Initiative, which it says will help front-line rural organizations collaborate with each other and reduce geographic and transportation barriers for women in need of services and support.

As part of Ontario’s four-year action plan to end gender-based violence, Ontario is investing $1.4 billion, along with a federal investment of $162 million, to help organizations to hire more staff and expand their services.

Improving technology, breaking down silos

Karen Vecchio, Conservative MP for Elgin-Middlesex-London, is the former chair of the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women. She said improving technology like the red dress alert in Manitoba and expanding it to all communities across Canada can reduce barriers to service.

“Sometimes you may not receive an alert because of where you live. The fact that we are not as connected here in Canada as we should be is something that we as a government really need to focus on, because we know that in other parts of the country around the world, GPS is not a problem,” she said.

Vecchio said silos between the provincial and federal governments make it difficult for community organizations to access crucial funding because Ottawa can’t control how provinces spend money.

“Shelters don’t have operating funding, so they’re always looking for that money through fundraisers. The federal government can make observations, but cannot recommend to provincial governments what they should do. Core funding is needed so (shelters) can focus. to help people,” she said.

DASO’s Harris and other shelter leaders have asked the province for $1.2 million over three years to create a femicide leadership table that can teach community members how to recognize the signs of IPV and respond effectively , she said.

---

For anyone affected by family or domestic violence, support is available through local crisis lines and support services. ​​If you are in immediate danger or fear for your safety or that of others around you, please call 911.