Ontario Launches New Strategy to End Gender-Based Violence

Ministry of the Status of Women

Comprehensive Investments Will Support Survivors and Address the Root Causes of Violence

Toronto, ON – Mar 1, 2018

Ontario is building on its commitment to create a province free from domestic and sexual violence by launching a new strategy that will help support survivors and end the cycle of violence.

Harinder Malhi, Minister of the Status of Women, was joined by Michael Coteau, Minister of Community and Social Services, and Yasir Naqvi, Attorney General in Toronto today to launch It’s Never Okay: Ontario’s Gender-Based Violence Strategy.

This comprehensive new strategy will help survivors and families get the support they need, when they need it, as well as help to prevent violence by intervening early. The strategy will focus on four key areas:

Improving services and supports for survivors, families and communities. Support services like counselling will be expanded, as well as access to emergency shelters, transitional housing and Indigenous shelters and healing lodges.
Intervening early and effectively to help youth who have seen or experienced violence by providing consistent and flexible supports for children who find themselves in shelters and greatly reducing the waitlist for the Child Witness program.
Changing attitudes and norms through public education, along with training for service providers, communities and bystanders so they can recognize and respond to gender-based violence.
Improving the justice system response by providing free legal advice to survivors of sexual assault. In addition, alternate justice options for survivors of gender-based violence that are trauma-informed and survivor-centered will be explored in partnership with the violence against women sector.

Ontario’s plan to create fairness and opportunity during this period of rapid economic change includes a higher minimum wage and better working conditions, free tuition for hundreds of thousands of students, easier access to affordable child care, and free prescription drugs for everyone under 25 through the biggest expansion of medicare in a generation.