A New Brunswick family violence researcher is calling for a change surrounding the “culture of violence” in the province and across Canada along with more resources for transition houses, shelters and outreach services.
Cathy Holtmann, director of the Muriel McQueen Fergusson Centre for Family Violence Research, said the funding for those services is “woefully inadequate.”
The call comes on the heels of the final report looking into the 2020 mass casualties in Nova Scotia released Thursday, which identified how an “epidemic” of domestic violence played a role in the rampage.
The events of April 18 and 19, 2020, killed 22 people in Nova Scotia.
The Mass Casualty Commission wrote in its report that while no one could have predicted the shooter’s specific actions to kill 22 people across Nova Scotia over those two days, his “pattern and escalation of violence could and should have been addressed.”
Holtmann said the commission’s finding that the shooting was connected to gender-based, intimate partner violence was a “very important move and something that we waited for for a long time.”
She said she is awestruck by the amount of work that domestic violence service providers do, but the demand for services far outweighs the resources the organizations have.
“In addition to providing the actual services and ensuring women and children’s safety, they are fundraising constantly just to stay afloat,” said Holtmann. “And this is absolutely a huge problem.”
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She said there have been some significant changes in New Brunswick in the last several years, including the Intimate Partner Violence Intervention Act, which was proclaimed in 2018, and changes to workplace legislation.
But there needs to be a public approach to safety from gender-based violence and all different forms of intimate partner violence and family violence, Holtmann said.
“We know that gendered and intimate partner violence has a huge impact on people in the workplace,” she said. “We know that it impacts children’s learning.
“It’s impacting a variety of sectors across our province and across our country, and we need to take a public social approach to solutions.”
With files from Shift
This story was originally published in CBC News on April 3, 2023.
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