Projects and Initiatives

The P.A.T.H Project objectives are:

1. Identifying existing informal/unrecognized/grassroots advocacy approaches to access to justice for incarcerated women and gender diverse people in Canada.
2. Developing strategies to support enhancing the resources and capacity of existing informal/grassroots approaches and expertise.
3. Identify existing regional networks, services and institutionalized efforts that support access to justice for all incarcerated people – across women’s and men’s sectors, provincial and federal incarceration.
4. Identifying comparative analyses of differences between access to justice for incarcerated people across sex and gender in Canada (Pacific, Prairies, Northern, & Rural and Remote pilot).
5. Contributing to a paradigm shift toward an advocacy/non-profit culture of practice sharing, support, and solidarity across individuals and organizations engaged in legal/penal advocacy dedicated to increasing access to justice.
6. Scaling up CAEFS Regional Advocacy program by translating existing volunteer roles into paid coordinating roles, creating more space for impacted communities to meaningfully contribute to Regional Advocacy, and creating capacity for increased efficacy in advocates efforts in: Legal literacy awareness raising, partnership/solidarity building with incarcerated populations and criminalized communities, effective redress of violations to law, policy, and human/constitutional rights.
7. Developing an effective partnership between CAEFS and PATH to systemically resolve the persistent and prevalent injustices impacting criminalized populations in Canada

Outreach

CAEFS’ Northern Regional Coordinator has met and collaborated with numerous governments and organizations located in the Yukon and Northwest Territories, such as the Council of Yukon First Nations, Yukon First Nation governments, Northwest Territories Indigenous governments, Yukon Corrections, federal parole officers in both Yukon and Northwest Territories, the Minister and Deputy Minister of Justice for Northwest Territories, transition home operators in both territories, non-profits, and criminal defense lawyers representing justice-involved people in the territorial and federal prisons. Breaking The Cycle surveys were provided to potential external service providers to learn about the current supports being offered to criminalized folks in the Yukon and Northwest Territories. The data collected from these surveys helped inform CAEFS’ conversations with local service providers as well as determine the community need and interest in establishing local Elizabeth Fry membership societies. All programming administered by future membership societies in the territories will be co-created and co-developed by Indigenous governments and organizations to ensure cultural safety

Collaboration

CAEFS is currently working on several projects with local organizations from the Yukon Territory. COVID-19 has made in-person trust building challenging, however CAEFS hopes that 2022 will allow for safe community visits.

CAEFS has partnered with the Yukon Status of Women’s Council (YSWC) on a case study to explore the community parole options for federally sentenced Indigenous women and gender-diverse people in the Yukon. This project is being funded by the Canadian Court Challenges Program. The case study examines whether the disparity in services available to men exiting prison compared to those available to women is genderbased discrimination under section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. CAEFS and YSWC will be releasing their case study in conjunction with a legal memo prepared by Yukon lawyer, Vincent Larochelle.

CAEFS is also working to unpack the community safety issues surrounding Yukon’s Safer Communities and Neighbourhoods Act (SCAN). This Act allows for community members to report alleged suspicious activities, such as sex work, drug trafficking, and bootlegging to SCAN authorities. SCAN officers can investigate and handle complaints about the alleged activity outside of the criminal justice system. Section 3(2) of the Act allows for complaints to be resolved via landlords terminating a lease or tenancy with only five days’ notice, regardless of tenancy agreements. While SCAN disproportionately impacts marginalized people, it is liked by some communities in the territory. Through this project CAEFS will meet with these communities to learn how SCAN impacts them and how our organization can support alternative community safety practices.

CAEFS currently submitted a number of funding applications in with Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada, EFry Northern Alberta, and Liard Aboriginal Women’s Society to support ongoing work in the northern territories.

Using a trauma-informed, intersectional, and gender-based lens, the team conducted research into the bi-directional relationship between housing insecurity and criminalization. This work recognizes how housing needs disproportionately and uniquely impact women, Indigenous peoples, 2SLGBTQIA+, and/or racialized groups. The team also conducted an extensive literature review to better understand the complex nature of the interconnections between barriers to accessing and retaining safe and adequate housing and involvement with the criminal justice system.

The team also worked directly with CAEFS’ membership to collaboratively create resources, and advocacy tools. As a first step to robust strategy building, the team developed the “CAEFS Housing and Residential Portrait.” The report found that CAEFS members are growing rapidly as housing and housing related service providers, with important geographic variation. Some members have successfully adopted and adapted emerging development practices and models such as modular building, hotel conversions, and community land trusts. The Portrait highlights several policy areas for further investigation including Indigenous housing needs, avoiding displacement of “hard to house” individuals, trans and gender-diverse inclusion, and orienting housing and residential options towards the mission of abolition.

The housing team assisted member societies seeking housing-related advice and information. The team wrote a briefing document about the underfunding of Community Residential Facilities and request for alternative funding models as part of a network-wide presentation to Correctional Services of Canada. The team is also assisting a member society to challenge a land-use zoning restriction on a potential new residential facility. They developed knowledge sharing platforms, knowledge exchange workshops, and databases that will facilitate the sharing of best practices, development strategies, and funding applications across the network.

The team also developed network engagements and engagements with people with lived experience of incarceration with the goal of building further capacity through knowledge sharing and collaboration opportunities. This culminated in a network-wide in-person “Housing Summit” in Montreal, Quebec in September 2022.

A final report is forthcoming in 2023.

To mark Sexual and Reproductive Health Awareness Day 2021, we hosted a conversation between Emilie Coyle, Martha Paynter, and Toni Sinclair that dives deeper into the “Reproductive (In)Justice” report.

They discuss the experience of developing and delivering the workshops that informed the report, what we learned, and what we are going to do next. Trigger Warning This discussion includes mention of sexual assault, coerced sterilization, familial separation, and other forms of reproduction oppression and injustice.

Emilie, Martha, and Toni also discuss important case law (like R v Ewanchuk – aka the ‘no means no’ case) and legal protections (like the Bangkok rules).