A rose honouring Sonia Pelletier, a victim from the Montreal massacre, is pictured Tuesday during the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women rally on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.Chris Watte/Reuters
On Tuesday's anniversary of the Montreal massacre, Councillor Mike Layton said cuts to social programs in the city's 2012 budget are unacceptable in the fight to end violence against women.
More than 60 people heard him speak at Mount Sinai Hospital to mark the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women. The day is held in memory of the 14 women who were murdered at École Polytechnique in 1989.
"The city must take into account women and girls' reality in creating policy," said Mr. Layton, the councillor for Trinity-Spadina. "We need to consider the very real and violent situation many women face, both economically and physically."
In an interview after his speech, he said the city's proposal to close Bellwoods House, a women's shelter in his own ward, would be "a disaster."
"We've asked women to get out of those dangerous relationships for their own health and we're not doing anything to support them in that, or we're taking away the support that was there.
"Why are we cutting services to the most vulnerable in the name of efficiencies when we're not even spending the money we took in last year?"
Mr. Layton also spent part of his speech addressing how health-care providers can help end violence against women.
"We've got to combat this at every angle…So we need to address it through our health-care system, we need to address it through our shelter system and our housing system," he said.
Marylin Kanee, the hospital's director of diversity and human rights, said training nurses, doctors and paramedics to recognize signs of domestic abuse is crucial.
"A health-care encounter might be the only opportunity for a woman to get help," Ms. Kanee said. "If we start to recognize that a woman coming into emergency with a broken jaw might not have actually fallen and tripped…we may be her only lifeline to getting out of that situation."
Ms. Kanee said the hospital's workshops and training programs have even encouraged its own staff to seek help if they are in violent and abusive relationships.
She estimates that in the last year, between 10 and 20 staff workers have come forward as victims of domestic abuse.
"We were able to work with them and address with them the situation they were in, keep them safe at work and refer them to resources in the community," she said.
"So I think that's just giving us a sense of how much more prevalent an issue this is than many of us know."
Many people at the hospital also wore white ribbons to show their support for the White Ribbon Campaign, a movement started by Mr. Layton's father, the late Jack Layton. It encourages men to talk about their role in ending domestic violence.
Mr. Layton said he was sure his father would have been proud that he was speaking out on the issue.
"I think Jack left us very specific instructions that we were to continue this work and redouble our efforts," Mr. Layton said. "There's still so much work that needs to be done."