N.S. government prepares engagement table on gender-based violence

A new engagement group on gender-based violence is intended to bring together subject matter experts, people with lived experience and front-line workers as the Nova Scotia government seeks progress on an issue the legislature declared an epidemic last year.

Justice Minister Becky Druhan, who is leading the work, said the approach is based on a similar engagement group used to focus on child care when she was education minister.

"It has proven to be a very effective way to ensure that sector and community has real, significant and meaningful input into government work," she said in an interview.

Druhan said applications will open soon for up to 25 spots. The group's terms of reference and priorities will be finalized soon and then made public. The minister expects the first meeting to happen in the fall and for subsequent meetings at least once every three months.

Bringing together insights and knowledge

Although the government appreciates the work the sector is doing, Druhan said officials have also heard feedback that there needs to be a way to "knit together the insights and understanding and knowledge of first voices, of families and survivors and those who work on the front line" with the work the government is doing or planning.

Kristina Fifield, a registered social worker and trauma therapist who specializes in intimate partner violence, said groups have been calling for meaningful engagement on the issue for some time.

The engagement table is "a huge opportunity" to create a cultural shift across government and society and for people to come together to work on the issue, she said.

"I think there's an opportunity here to co-create something different," she told CBC's Mainstreet Halifax.

Fifield said she thinks that creation should begin with the group's terms of reference. It's important for people from the community to have a hand in the drafting of the terms of priorities, she said.

She also wants to see timelines affixed to whatever comes from the engagement table to ensure recommendations are followed through and progress takes place.

"That is, I believe, a cultural change that is needed within government and how they're showing up in spaces and in community."

During the last meeting of the legislature's standing committee on health, the Liberals put forward a motion to create such a roundtable. A vote had been scheduled for Wednesday's committee meeting.

In a news release, the party welcomed Druhan's announcement.

"When we listen to the people doing this difficult work every day, and to those directly impacted, we can create better policies that save lives," Liberal MLA Iain Rankin said in the release.

"I want to thank the presenters who supported the motion last month. Their insights helped build momentum for this important step. I'm hopeful that this initiative leads to real, coordinated action that helps those who need it most."

Despite the Liberal motion, Druhan said the idea of an engagement table was something government officials had previously discussed with people connected to the sector.

Must lead to change

NDP Leader Claudia Chender said in a statement that the new group would only be successful if it leads to change.

"We know what the problems are — and we know what must be done. The recommendations from the Mass Casualty Commission, the Lionel Desmond inquiry, and the Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls — all provide us with a path forward. Now we need to do the work."

For Chender, stable core funding for organizations that work to address and prevent gender-based violence would be a good first step.

After tabling its budget earlier this year, the Progressive Conservatives announced additional funding for transition houses amid concerns there was not enough money being directed at the issue. That new money came after seven women were killed in Nova Scotia in less than five months whose deaths were connected to their male partners.

Last September, all MLAs in the legislature supported a motion by the NDP declaring intimate partner violence an epidemic in Nova Scotia.