Note: Transcripts may contain errors. If you wish to re-use all, or part of, a transcript, please contact CBC for permission. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. Copyright © CBC 2016

The Current Transcript for May 9, 2017

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

BOBBY LEE Worm: There were times when I lost all hope. Solitary confinement does one thing: it breaks a person's will to live.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Bobby Lee Worm spent more than twelve hundred days in solitary confinement in Canadian prison, a form of incarceration that the UN and others who track its effects now define as a form of torture. When he was first elected, Prime Minister Trudeau directed his new justice minister to implement a series of recommendations that would include banning long term solitary confinement for some and prohibit it completely for other prisoners. Now Ontario is bringing in parallel measures, but Ottawa still hasn't done it. In a moment we're asking about the resistance and the delays.

ATM: And back in the early 80s when NDP MP Margaret Mitchell rose in the House of Commons to ask about domestic abuse they laughed at her.

SOUNDCLIP

MARGARET MITCHELL: One in ten husbands beat their wives regularly. And these women…

[Sound: Laughing]

MARGARET MITCHELL: I don't think have very much of a laughing matter, Madam Speaker.

AMT: Shelters for abused women and their children were rare at that time. The very first shelter in the country was started by a 25-year-old woman with a radical idea. And an hour our project The Disruptors brings you the story of Lynn Zimmer and the creation of Toronto's Interval House.

AMT: And… Hilary Harris says she can no longer see the Halifax night thanks to the LED streetlight outside her window.

SOUNDCLIP

HILARY HARRIS: It's not the light streaming in that's bugging us. It's the feeling that it's morning. It feels like it's early morning all night long. Across North America, LED streetlights were embraced as environmental money savers. But an angry citizen backlash points to the glaring unintended consequences for people, pets, even plants. In half an hour how the bright future of one shining invention is now being dimmed. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti.

This is The Current.

Federal prisons must find alternatives to solitary confinement, says correctional investigator

Guests: Ivan Zinger, Lisa Kerr

SOUNDCLIP

BOBBY LEE WORM: It was very cold, very empty and just a very sad dark place. It wasn't enough for me to walk around and I would feel like I was getting tinier in the cell. It would sometimes feel like I was constantly being caved in from it - how small it was. It is torture. It really is. It is designed to break you. It's designed to destroy you.

AMT: For three-and-a-half years, Bobby Lee Worm spent her days alone inside a six-by-nine foot prison cell. The Saskatchewan woman was jailed for robbery and assaulted the age of 19. She was in solitary confinement more than half of her 6-year prison term. She spoke about that isolating experience in a video, part of what you heard there, produced by the B.C. Civil Liberties Association. It has mounted a charter challenge against the practice of solitary confinement. This is how Bobby Lee Worm said the segregation affected her.

SOUNDCLIP

BOBBY LEE WORM: I was starting to have more violent thoughts. I would just cause chaos just to feel that I wasn't a ghost. It just went on like that for years.

AMT: Last week, correctional investigator Howard Sapers is the Independent Adviser on Corrections Reform to the Ontario provincial government released a plan for reforming Ontario's prison system. It included 63 recommendations on the practice of solitary confinement and it called for limiting its use. It is something the current federal government has said it will address as well. In 2013, a coroner's inquest into the death of teenager Ashley Smith while in solitary confinement recommended limits on the use of segregation in federal prisons. Last fall, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau committed to bringing in new legislation limiting solitary confinement. With mounting calls for the federal government to follow Ontario's lead many are asking why it has not done that yet? My next guest is one of those who wants the federal government to bring in new laws limiting the use of solitary confinement in federal institutions. Ivan Zinger is the federal Correctional Investigator - the ombudsman for those in federal prisons and he joins us from Ottawa. Hello

IVAN ZINGER: Good morning.

AMT: How many federal inmates are put in solitary confinement?

IVAN ZINGER: Well, about 400 on any given day are in solitary confinement on the federal level.

AMT: And what's the average length of stay?

IVAN ZINGER: So the average in like a state right now is about 22 days for the general inmate population. For women it's about 10 days.

AMT: And does it go higher at times? How high does it go?

IVAN ZINGER: Well, I have to say that those numbers are actually quite good. In the last couple of years, the correctional services of Canada has moved in with a strategy and been able to reduce the number of placement in administrative segregation and the length of stay by about half. So about two years ago, we had about 800 offenders. We're down to about 400. And the length of stay was about 35 days. Now it's about 22 days. So these are our great news and great improvement over the last two years.

CO: What prompted that?

IVAN ZINGER: Well, I think there's been a lot of pressure on correctional services of Canada. There's been obviously, as you mentioned, there's been some lawsuits. There's been increasing pressure around the world whether it's been the United Nations. Whether it's been in offices like mine, The Canadian Rights Commission and various provincial ombudsman offices. So I think there's been certainly increasing awareness of the damaging effects of placing individuals in solitary confinement over the last couple of years.

AMT: There are two categories: disciplinary segregation and administrative segregation. What's the difference?

IVAN ZINGER: That's correct. Very, very few people are placed in disciplinary segregation. With disciplinary segregation, the regime is much higher due process. So if there is a violation of serious disciplinary offense then somebody from outside, an adjudicator, comes into the institution and you know hears what the correctional staff has to say. Hears the inmate and the inmate can actually be represented by a lawyer and can only impose up to 30 days of disciplinary segregation. The administrative segregation part is only administered by the correctional service of Canada. There is no outside person coming in to validate their decisions. There is no upper limit. It can be indefinite.

AMT: So in other words you don't even know what's going on in there? They don't have to go outside?

IVAN ZINGER: And that's part of the challenges for those who are placed in administrative segregation is that they don't know when they're going to come out and they don't even know what they need to do in order to come out.

AMT: So what do you want to see change? Are you looking for an outright ban?

IVAN ZINGER: Well, I think you know I'm glad there's been a reduction, but I think we do need to match -at least match - the level of due process and safeguards that is currently in place with disciplinary segregation. So we do need either the court or an independent adjudicator or a combination of both to ensure that that segregation is used as a last resort when every single alternative has been exhausted. And that means for me that this should be a presumption of no placement for inmates that for example suffer from mental illness, self-injure, are suicidal and then those who are younger offenders as well as women. I think the presumption should be one of no placement for those and there certainly should be and external review of decisions made by the service after probably 15 days. But this office has advocated and many others for about 30 days.

AMT: that is in line with what the UN calls for under its so-called “Mandela Rules”, is it not?

IVAN ZINGER: That's correct, so in order for the federal government to be consistent with those international obligations. The federal government should bring in some legislation to increase due process and rigor in the whole system.

AMT: So no one with mental health or suicidal tendencies. No one with mental health issues and no youth. No women. I think do they make a distinction of pregnant women or no women completely?

IVAN ZINGER: Well, I think given that most women in the federal system suffer from mental health issues and most of them have been victims of you know whether it be physical abuse, psychological abuse, or sexual abuse. I think that we should have at least consider exempting women. I think there are some times in the federal correctional system where there were no segregation cells and women could be managed without segregation. So I think it should at least be considered.

AMT: OK, so essentially men above the age of 18. But what restrictions would be on them beyond mental illness? Would you see a legitimate use for solitary confinement still?

IVAN ZINGER: You know I think at this point you know there are some legitimate, if you want, need for segregation. If there is you know an incident. If there's a fight. If there's somebody who was acting out. I think that initially the correctional services of Canada should have the authority to place individuals in segregation for a very short period of time. And once place in segregation, there should be some external review of those decisions. I think it is appropriate maybe down the road complete prohibition and caps would work. But right now we need to invest in alternative to segregation and change the culture of the correctional service of Canada so we can further decrease significantly its use. There's still in federal corrections over 6,500 placements in segregation every year. That's enormous. And I believe that can be dropped significantly with some legislative reforms.

AMT: To be clear all sorts of psychologists and psychiatrists who track this the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture all say that this is a form of torture.

IVAN ZINGER: Yes. I think there's now certainly consensus among various stakeholders that beyond 15 days certainly for those who suffer from mental illness that segregation is certainly not helpful to anybody's well-being or mental health.

AMT: Now we asked the corrections service of Canada for an interview. No one was made available to us. We did get a statement and I'm reading here quote, “We've invested a significant amount of time and energy into the management of administrative segregation. The consistent decline of our population in segregation over the past few years is a reflection of all the work we have done. We continue to discuss and examine our policy framework and operations to look for possible improvements.” End quote. How do we know what they're really doing? They are very secretive at corrections Canada.

IVAN ZINGER: Well, I can tell you that it's true that they have invested in the last two years in inordinate amount of effort and shown some good leadership in reducing and reducing by half is no small feat. And I think they should be congratulated for that. The problem I have is that they did this without any changes in the laws and regulations. This has only been an initiative based on corporate focus so it's primarily been the commissioner of corrections directing there his wardens to pay more attention and to be more involved in the segregation review process to try to drop the numbers. And then also to create some of those alternatives so that people could be moved out of segregation. So this is basically corporate focus and actually applying the rule of law as it was you know intended back in 1992. So this is why I think we need to bring in some legislation that will ensure that corrections actually apply the law as it was intended. And there's a validation out there in terms of external oversight.

AMT: OK, Ivan ZINGER, thank you for your time today.

IVAN ZINGER: Thank you.

AMT: Ivan Zinger federal Correctional Investigator - he's the ombudsman for those in federal prisons. He joined us from Ottawa. We did ask the Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodell and the Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould for an interview. Neither was available to speak to us today. My next guest believes it is a matter of time before Canada's laws relating to solitary confinement are reformed. Lisa Kerr is an assistant professor of law at Queens University. She studies prison law. She's involved in a charter challenge against solitary confinement in the case of Bobby Lee Worm, who you heard earlier. And Lisa Kerr joins us today from New York. Hello.

LISA KERR: Good morning.

AMT: What do you want to see change with the practice of solitary confinement?

LISA KERR: Right, so the case filed in British Columbia it's filed two rights organizations: the B.C. Civil Liberties Association and the John Howard Society of Canada. And it's filed by those organizations rather than an individual inmate because it's really just too risky and difficult for an individual inmate to bring a case like this. And at the heart of the case in B.C. is a theory that solitary confinement is like torture. It's like capital punishment. We don't allow these practices no matter how useful the state says they might be. And we say solitary practice like that and that it should be subject to strict limits set out in the legislation.

AMT: Now corrections workers argues that sometimes it is a necessary tool. I have a clip I'd like you to hear.

This is Jason Godin, President of the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers.

SOUNDCLIP

JASON GODIN: The abolishment of segregation is a completely ludicrous notion in our in our prison system. Simply because if we were to abolish segregation we would just take those problems and put them back into general population, which creates more problems inside the institution. We call it administrative segregation. There's all kinds of reasons why we would place an inmate into administrative segregation. Sometimes we even have health care professionals recommend segregation time for inmates and the complete abolishment of these units would completely put our institutions in chaos.

AMT: Lisa Kerr, how do you respond to what he says?

LISA KERR: Well, I think it's important to distinguish between two concepts the idea of separation and the idea of isolation. And there may be times where you do you know for legitimate reasons separate inmates from one another separate inmates from the general population. What the law currently allows is to isolate inmates in cells for up to 23 hours a day. You know that's not required. There's no reason you couldn't have you know two hours in fresh air. Two hours in a program room. Two hours consulting a religious adviser. Even if there were those periods of time don't involve circulating with the general population. So I mean you know there's no reason that we need to isolate any human being in a cell for 23 hours a day. It's really just a matter of changing the culture around that practice and having clear legislative restrictions on doing that.

AMT: Now I mentioned that the Minister of Public Safety Mr. Goodale is not available for an interview. We got a statement from his office I'll read it to you. I'm quoting here, “We remain committed to our mandate to implement the recommendations of the Ashley Smith inquiry. the Justice Minister and the Public Safety Minister are working on proposals to reduce the use of administrative segregation in the federal correctional system. Most particularly for women, indigenous offenders and those with mental illness. We expect to bring those proposals forward in the near future.” End quote. They actually have a deadline do they not yet related to the charter challenge?

LISA KERR: They do. So the charter challenge was adjourned in January because lawyers for the federal government asked for more time in order to put together a legislative package and not adjournment and you know the period of time ends in July and there hasn't been any sign of this legislation just yet. I do remain hopeful because I do think that the Liberal government is seriously committed to these issues and you know that's quite different than the governments we've had for the last three decades. It hasn't come yet. It should come soon in my view. I do know that there is resistance within the correctional service of Canada. And I know there's a complicated set of stakeholders and so on. But I think the government is serious. And to me, you know this litigation fired and filed in British Columbia. We've never seen a case like this in Canada. It's a comprehensive charter-based challenge to the entire system of federal law that allows administrative segregation. It's a very good legal team. This is a very winnable case and I think the government knows that and I would rather put together their own package of reforms rather than have it enforced by the judiciary.

AMT: So if they don't bring in reforms they will be forced you think because of this.

LISA KERR: I mean I think this is a very winnable case. Trials are always difficult and outcomes are always unpredictable but if you have a basic understanding of our protections against cruel and unusual punishment in the charter. The protection against the deprivation of residual liberty and the security of the person that inmates retain the claim is really legally quite straightforward.

AMT: Now this was part of the mandate letter that Minister Wilson-Reybould received, was it not? When she first was appointed to cabinet by Mr. Trudeau?

LISA KERR: Yes, as soon as the prime minister was elected. That was one of the first things he did and the mandate letter was direct the implementation of the Ashley Smith inquest record patience.

AMT: So in other words the government has said it will do it, but we're still waiting.

LISA KERR: Right. And those inquests recommendations you know they're robust. They contain concrete time limits on the number of days that you can segregate. They require a prohibition on the placement of mentally ill inmates in segregation. These are things that the correctional service of Canada has long resisted. And the way they resist it is they say that their legislation is already very rigorous but just to sort of you know they say their legislation already says that you have to release an inmate at the earliest appropriate time from segregation. That you can only use segregation if there's no reasonable alternative. Well those are important concepts, but they're subject to discretion and interpretation on the ground. One warden might think you know 15 days is excessive. Another warden might think three months is on they might have different standards that they apply as to when an inmate gets to be released. You know you have to behave perfectly or does risk just have to be reduced?

AMT: We're out of time, but we hear what you're saying. So thank you for sharing your thoughts with us today?

LISA KERR: Thank you.

AMT: That's Lisa Kerr, assistant professor of law at Queens University. She's involved in the charter challenge against the use of solitary confinement. She studies prison law. She joined us from New York City today. The news is next. Stay with us. When we come back we're talking about LED lights that are replacing traditional bulbs around the world on in streetlights. There is a big controversy over this. People say it's too bright and they're losing the night. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current on CBC Radio One.

“It’s early morning all night long”: Halifax resident revolt over LED streetlights

Guest: Jim Benya

AMT: Hello. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

AMT: Still to come: Canada’s first women's shelter opened its doors quietly over 40 years ago. We will meet the disruptive pioneers behind Interval House, which became a blueprint for hundreds of shelters across the country today. But first the frustration of what feels like never-ending daylight.

SOUNDCLIP

HILLARY HARRIS: I have to say I've been you know awake at 4:00 in the morning. Actually I have to admit like in floods of tears because I'm so frustrated. After day in day out of waking up all through the night.

AMT: Well, sleep is hard to come by when it's bedtime at Hillary Harris's house. What has her in tears many nights these days is the new LED streetlight right across from her front porch. LED is short for light-emitting diode. LED bulbs are far more energy efficient than both incandescent and fluorescent bulbs and they glow much brighter. CBC producer Mary-Catherine McIntosh visited Hilary Harris as she was getting ready for bed.

SOUNDCLIP

HILLARY HARRIS: So this is the bedroom right here. So you can see outside right now it's incredibly bright. And actually, in fact, my husband took a photo of me at about 10:00 at night a few weeks ago. It actually looks like daylight. It's pretty incredible how bright it is out there. At night now we've got these really, really great blackout curtains that we had made a while back that usually keep the light up. But since the new LED lights have gone in, we're now having to climb up on the bed every night and stuff the soft little kind of quilts in the top. Mainly because the light comes streaming out the top of them, which unfortunately makes it real in the middle of the night like it is morning. So although we don't have light sort of coming straight into our eyes all night it's the feeling that the light is streaming out from the tops of the curtains. So you kind of get the impression when you're half asleep that oh it must be 6:00 in the morning.

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: Right, so you're stuffing a duvet essentially in the crown or the cracks of the curtains.

HILLARY HARRIS: Yes.

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: This seems really extreme.

HILLARY HARRIS: It is. But we're finding both my husband and I are waking up. My son, who's on the same side of the house, is also waking up. And if you get up to go to the washroom or put a kid back to bed it's also the sense that the light is coming in from downstairs. It's coming up through windows we just never noticed even ever before. You know we've been sad for 11 years and we've never kind of noticed bright light. And actually when they were first installed we thought there was a snowstorm outside and I kept going downstairs and going oh my God, is there snow? Because it's so white outside.

AMT: Well Halifax is just one of many cities in the midst of converting every streetlight to LED. That is expected to cost the city nearly $50 million. One thing that's proving very unpopular is the color of the LED bulbs. The colors measured by a unit of temperature known as kelvin. The higher the kelvin the whiter the light and cities across North America and around the world are struggling to decide just how bright city lights should or should not be. Jim Benya is a lighting designer who is hired by cities to help convert street lights to LED. He's also a fellow with the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America and he's in Davis, California. Hello.

JIM BENYA: Good morning. How are you?

AMT: Well, I'm curious to know what's going on here. Why are so many cities moving to install LED streetlights?

JIM BENYA: The primary motivation is they're more efficient. They save energy. They use about half the energy of conventional streetlights. And one of the big side benefits of them is that they virtually eliminate maintenance. You're talking about never having to change a light bulb for 10-15 years. And the combination literally can make money for a city compared to what they're used to spending on the incumbent technologies.

AMT: But it's not always a popular change. We just heard from Hillary Harris in Halifax who cannot sleep because of the new lights on her street. How common is that kind of complaint.

JIM BENYA: Unfortunately common worldwide. I was just reading an article the other day about how someone was saying they've ruined Rome. Several years ago they ruined Paris. And it was all because of a poor choice in two things. There’s two things really problematic or potentially problematic with LED streetlights. Primary problem number one is the kelvins you talked about or kelvin. We use both phrases sort of interchangeably, but it measures the apparent whiteness of the light source. And there is a warm white that is low kelvins, which seems a little backwards because we call it colour temperature. But it's a warm white that's comfortable like the older lights - the high pressure sodiums. It is like a table lamp in your home.

AMT: Like a yellowy glow?

JIM BENYA: Yeah.

AMT: How many kelvins would that be?

JIM BENYA: That is in the range of between about 2000 and 3000.

AMT: OK. Keep going.

JIM BENYA: All right. And then there's sort of an in-between where it starts to get a little bit whiter. A little bit harsher. That's in the range of 3,500 to 4,000. And then above that 5,000 and above in street lighting applications and indoor lighting applications the high to high kelvin's over 5,000 are extremely harsh. And they've been described as “zombie lamps” in Seattle. They've been described as “prison lamps” in Oceanside, California and other places where you know we work or we work with people who work there. And it's a harsh light and it's the colour temperature that is the number one problem.

AMT: The American Medical Association came out last year saying the lights can actually affect people's health. How so?

JIM BENYA: Well, every living being is something called a circadian system. The circadian system is your body's daily cycle. It's a regulatory system. It's like a master computer in your body. I'm not going to pretend that I know all the medical science behind it. But what I do know is that this cycle has to go through its normal phases every day in order to keep you healthy. Awake during the day. Asleep at night. All of these are important parts of our lives. And that's true of all living beings not just humans. And what happens is that in nature the world gives us signals about where we are on the planet and what time of day it is. And the number one signal it's called zeitgeber in medicine the number. The number one zeitgeber is the amount of light, the timing of the light, when it occurs in your cycle and the colour of the light. And so those three principal things tell you for example, in the morning oh, it's time to wake up. And when they disappear at night it tells your body it's time to go to sleep. Unfortunately, the colour of that light is about the same as the higher color temperature LEDs that are so common.

AMT: And so the AMA is saying there should be a colour temperature no greater than 3000 kelvin's on the street lights.

JIM BENYA: And that's exactly what they said. But this is the result of years of their consideration of the problem. They actually have said this many times as has the International Dark Sky Association since 2009, when a group of us got together and said you know this is probably not a good idea to have all this high colour temperature light at night.

AMT: What about plants and animals? Are they affected as well?

JIM BENYA: Oh absolutely. We have very serious problems. We're working with right now environmentalists throughout California both with the Coastal Commission also here in central California with the rivers. And we're working to eliminate the white lights around water. We had a problem here in the Sacramento River where the salmon runs were being disrupted severely by white lights on a very brightly lighted bridge. And to the point where the bridge lights have now been turned off so that the salmon can do their thing, you know. And it was very serious. The salmon run went from 15 or 20 thousand a year to like less than 800.

AMT: Over the course of like when the lights were put in?

JIM BENYA: It was immediately. Really almost immediately. What happens is the fish get disoriented by the lights. You know birds get disoriented by lights too. But in this case the fish got disoriented by the lights and they found themselves swimming around in circles, which made them tired. It made them open to predation. And it killed them off. It disrupted the run.

AMT: This goes beyond health complaints. People also don't like how they're affecting the audience of cities what's the complaint there?

JIM BENYA: Well the city of Los Angeles is probably the most famous this They had the traditional high pressure sodium streetlights, which you know most cities had throughout the last half century or so and they replaced them with the LEDs. And the colour temperature of the sodium was very low 2,000-2,100 kelvins. And it was a very warmish sort of romantic golden light and they replaced it with these very harsh LEDs 4000-5000 kelvins and it completely changed the you know the ambience. And not only that, but it changed the ambience in a way that made them say you know they can't really film in Los Angeles nighttime scenes because it was so harsh. So yes, it really changes the way a community looks and feels.

AMT: There is some support. I want you to listen to Dean Lively, he lives in Beaverbank, Nova Scotia.

SOUNDCLIP

DEAN LIVELY: As soon as the new LED lights went up on my street I was applauding them. I thought what an incredible move this is. I know a lot of people walk in the evenings when it gets dark and I'm sure they appreciated it as well. Also I know our subdivision has some problems in the past with mischievous kids running around and you know being mischievous around people's cars parked in the driveways over the years. And I'm sure these lights help deter that. Also, I just want to add I changed one of my side lights on my house, which is a side entrance door and has access to the driveway where the vehicles are parked. And as soon as the LED bulbs came out, I changed my sidelight on the house to an LED bulb. And that never gets turned off. It's on 24/7 all day all night and I sleep better at night knowing that the streets are illuminated better than they were before.

AMT: And Jim Benya, can you tell us anything about brighter lights might affect safety on our streets. What do we know about that?

JIM BENYA: Pros and cons. On the pro-side, there is a certain point where adding light to any outdoor situation really helps. I don't think anybody denies that. The big question is harsher light, whiter light and more light necessarily better? There is a lot of dispute over that. You know throughout England for example, they started running into economic problems. Many of the smaller cities in England were having financial difficulties. They said what if we just turned off the streetlights after 11 or 12, you know because a week we can save all that energy and save that much more money. They did it and most of the communities reported a drop in crime. This has been a hotly contested issue. You know there is there's research studies from universities around the world and every other study says it's good. Every other study says it doesn't do any good. So it's a very it's a very controversial issue. We've found here in Davis when we went through the process the city started putting up the 4,000 kelvin lights. The community rebelled and said we really don't want them and the city came back and said OK, we'll do a study and find out what you do want. The city did a study found out we really like the 2,700 kelvin, which was the best choice at the time. And there are places that are well-lighted, but most of the city isn't that well-lighted and people like it better. You know there is no simple answer to this one.

AMT: How tough did the fight get in Davis?

JIM BENYA: Oh, we were invited because of our expertise down to a city council meeting. There was a line of about 200 people out the door, which in this community the room only seats about 50. There was a long line of people complaining about the new streetlights. They’d only partly installed the street lights when the furor erupted and people came out of the woodwork. Environmentalist's hated them, astronomers hate them and many community members just hated the loss of the ambiance of the city. So we went from basically about one in five acceptance of the new streetlights to four in five acceptance when we dropped the colour temperature to 2,700. And I want to point out that that colour temperature drop doesn't reduce your visibility. You can still see pretty much just as well under the 2,700 as you can the higher colour temperatures. But you don't get the sense of glare and what they call the “zombie light” effect of the “prison light” effect. It just looks normal.

AMT: Was that a problem near your own house?

JIM BENYA: Yeah, right out in front of our house. It was amazing they put in the new light and I you know stepped outside looked at and said Oh, this has got to go. But that was only partly the motivating factor. We knew better. We knew that the 3,000 kelvins or k had been promoted by the American Medical Association going back to 2009. It's just that recently it's become very important because they took a firmer stand in 2016 to say you've got to stop at 3,000 k or preferably less.

AMT: You mentioned glare. What does that do for driving conditions?

JIM BENYA: First of all, in LEDs it's an unusually exaggerated blue. You can't say it's blue because you're looking at a white light. But it's the blue that is making it harsh. Those short wavelengths what they cause is a human stress response. My partner is an expert in this. And so we stay on top of these things. But the stress response actually causes adrenaline to be released in the human body. So your sensation is more than a sensation it's actually a physiological stress response. And it's part of a fight or flight sort of activity in your body. So you know the problem there is that if you see the light and you get stressed and you see that light you get stressed. It helps in certain ways under certain conditions to see a little bit better. But other times it doesn't make any difference. And there have been a number of tests and studies done to try to demonstrate that the higher colour temperature white simply allows people to see better outdoors. And the test results just aren't that good. They aren't that compelling to make us say we have to do it for safety. They just aren't that good.

AMT: And as we point out, the streetlights are being switched to LED in cities around the globe. I've got a clip here I want you to hear. This is Bruce Zvaniga, he's in Halifax. He's in charge of Transportation and Public Works for the Halifax Regional Municipality.

SOUNDCLIP

BRUCE ZVANIGA: For the most part we're getting very positive reaction to the improved lighting levels. The challenge we have at this point in time is that the contract was awarded back in 2015 and had a certain specification. And so to do it now really becomes a financial issue for HRM to decide whether it wants to replace relatively new LEDs that are out there with a lower colour temperature and the financial impacts of making that decision. And the actual value of making the change in terms of what does that do from a road safety point of view as well?

AMT: So it seems from what he's saying there that the city of Halifax - the municipality - thinks it's basically stuck with the plan that may be outdated with the colour temperature. How widespread is that problem?

JIM BENYA: Worldwide. It's a worldwide problem and it's not an easy one to resolve. He's absolutely right about the fact that once you've bought the system you're stuck with it. And that's at the core of why this is such a significant debate right now. There is still a significantly large portion of the world that hasn't changed to the LED lights. We're working as consultants to the city of Chicago's conversion. They’re going totally 3,000 k. They waited long enough for the 3,000 k technology to become just as efficient as the higher colour temperatures. And in waiting long enough they had the benefit of their conversion, which is going to be one of the largest ever done is going to be complied with that 3,000 k limit. But communities that were early adopters they're the ones that are sort of facing the fact that they got enthusiastic about the LEDs. The most efficient ones were the higher kelvin light sources and you know the savings were very attractive financially to any community. And so they went ahead and did it. The problem is that the industry has been in a race to make things so efficient they didn't slow down enough to look at the other options and to look at the environmental and physiological impacts.

AMT: And I'm talking to you in California, where people are very environmentally progressive So you have lots of California stories. What happened to Monterrey?

JIM BENYA: Oh Monterey, well there was a real doozy of a problem. They were one of the earliest adopters. I think they put in their system around 2009 or 2010. And at that point, LED streetlights were just becoming financially practical. They were just becoming efficient enough and low enough costs, although they were still pretty expensive. But Monterey wanted to save the money and enjoy the benefits of LEDs and they went ahead and did a project. And they put in even higher kelvin I think they put in 5,700, which are really bluish and harsh. And the community hated them from the get go. And the community got together, put together a legal fund and sued the city and won just recently it was announced that they claim the city failed to do an environmental impact study, which is required under California's environmental quality act. And they won. And now the city has got to go back and undo everything and start over and do it right this time.

AMT: Do we know for sure these lights will last as long as expected like 20 years?

JIM BENYA: You just asked the billion dollar question. Let me let me back up a little bit. I want to give credit to the U.S. Department of Energy and a number of other organizations in at least the United States and European equivalents and Asian equivalents have put you know hundreds of millions of dollars into testing technology evaluation technology and everything that it takes to be able to predict the life of an LED. The fact of the matter is that you know we're using products that we're told are going to last 20 years that weren't invented six months ago.

AMT: What's your advice to a town or a city that is considering a change in how it lights the streets?

JIM BENYA: Number one, do your do your research on what's happening throughout the world read what the American Medical Association and the International Dark Sky Association have had to say. Pay attention to many of the cities experiences, mostly problematic with the colour temperature of the light. Learn from everybody else's experience before you race out and do something. And most of all, I encourage communities to go look at other communities where the lower colour temperature lights have been used and experienced the difference between the high colour temperature lights and the low colour temperature lights. There's one other thing about LEDs that we haven't mentioned, which is LEDs are optically so much different than the incumbent technologies. One of the reasons why Hillary has a problem with the street lights affecting their life so severely is because the incumbent or old high pressure sodium technology didn't throw light as widely and as efficiently as LEDs do. And so they may have had a street light before and it was shining more on the street and not as much in the bedroom windows. Now we have a lot of complaints about bedroom windows because LEDs are so much more optically efficient.

AMT: So in other words you may not need as many street lights. We know that 80 per cent of North Americans can't see the Milky Way because there's so much light in cities. Do we need as much light as we have?

JIM BENYA: No we don't. No we don't. One of the things we find over and over again is that cities have extremely high levels of light. Not only from the street lights, but also from private property parking lots and car dealerships and all those other things. And it's kind of a runaway problem the International Dark Sky Association has been screaming about this problem since the organization started in the 1980s. And saying you know there's maps showing how light pollution has grown that are that have come out of a research group out of Italy that are phenomenal. You can go online and look at all this stuff and it's showing we just don't seem to be able to stop putting in more and more and brighter and brighter lights. There's no reason why we can't reel them back generally speaking.

AMT: Jim Benya, thanks for your time today.

JIM BENYA: You're very welcome. Thanks Anna Maria for having me.

AMT: Jim Benya is an engineer and lighting consultant. He's in Davis, California. We want to hear your stories. Is your community switching over to LED bulbs? Do you wish they were? What is your experience with the bright or dim lights now illuminating your town? Send us a note on Twitter we are @thecurrentcbc. You can also find us on Facebook. Send us an email through our website: www.cbc.ca/thecurrent. Now stay with us. Coming up in our next half hour domestic abuse was neither discussed nor understood when Interval House opened its doors in 1973. Its co-creator was a 25-year-old at the time. Her idea launched a revolution whose legacy continues. We're going to hear how lessons learned from Canada's first women's shelters are still being used today. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current on CBC Radio 1, Sirius XM Online at: www.cbc.ca/thecurrent and on your radio app.

Meet one of the pioneers behind Canada’s first shelter for abused women

Guests: Lynn Zimmer, Barb MacQuarrie

AMT: Hello I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

[Music: The Disruptors theme]

SOUNDCLIP

MARGARET MITCHELL: One in ten husbands beat their wives regularly. And these women…

[Sound: Laughing]

MARGARET MITCHELL: I don't think have very much of a laughing matter, Madam Speaker.

[Sound: Shouting]

MARGARET MITCHELL: Madam Speaker, I really don’t think this is a laughing matter.

AMT: I don't know if you could get all of that in there, but when she said wives are regularly beaten someone an MP said, “I don't beat my wife. Do you beat your wife George?” That was Margaret Mitchell, an NDP MP in the House of Commons in 1982. Margaret Mitchell just died in this past March. But she stood up in the House of Commons in 1982 to talk about domestic violence and she was mocked by her mostly male colleagues. They refused to take her or the issue of domestic violence seriously. So you can imagine why in the 70s, a full decade before that, any talk of violence in the home was rarely louder than a whisper. It was at that time in the early 1970s that a group of Toronto women came together to open the first shelter for abused women and children. It was a quiet disruptor at first. It was known only to those in need and it was called Interval House. The idea for Interval House was inspired by Lynne Zimmer, one of its co-creators. Today, she is the executive director of the YWCA in Peterborough, Ontario. And as part of our project “The Disruptors” we wanted to hear more from Lynn Zimmer about this project. She is in Peterborough. Hello.

LYNN ZIMMER: Good morning.

AMT: What do you think when you hear that clip there from Margaret Mitchell?

LYNN ZIMMER: I remember how upset and angry we were that our country and that our elected representatives were so out of touch with the reality that women faced.

AMT: And a decade before that exchange you had the idea to start a shelter. Where did that idea come from?

LYNN ZIMMER: I had been working at the Women's Place, which was an organizing center and women were calling and thinking it was somewhere they could come and stay. They would describe that they were trapped in terrible relationships and they needed to get out. But they had no money, they couldn't get welfare because they had no separate address from their partner and they didn't have a way of getting money until they had a separate address. So we called around to try and find out where they could go and discovered that indeed there really wasn't anywhere that was suitable for a woman, especially with children. And I put up a sign on the bulletin board at the Women's Place and said anyone interested in starting a crisis shelter for women please come to a meeting. And about 10 women showed up and we did it.

AMT: So until that point you were helping women, but you didn't know that that help was needed until you start getting those phone calls.

LYNN ZIMMER: Exactly, yeah.

AMT: And so your group begins this. What did it want to achieve?

LYNN ZIMMER: We wanted women to have a place to stay that was temporary. That was an interval between what they were trying to leave and their old life that wasn't working at all and a time to get some support from others, to have some time for quiet and reflection and planning and then be able to move on to a better kind of life for themselves and their children.

AMT: So what did you do to get that shelter up and running? What did you have to do?

LYNN ZIMMER: Well, first of all we tried to persuade some existing organizations to take it on and for one reason or another they were all already too overloaded. So we decided we would do it ourselves. We applied for a local initiatives program grant, which was the Youth Employment Program of the day. And we went to the United Way and we asked them to provide first and last month's rent on a house, which they did. They gave us twelve hundred dollars. And after we got the grant we were you know we had to move in, we had to paint it, we had to find furniture, which we found by driving around nice neighborhoods on garbage day and finding things that people would put on the curbs. And we chipped in some of our own money to stock the kitchen.

AMT: Did you know anything about running a shelter?

LYNN ZIMMER: We did not. However we were women. Many of us lived in co-ops and so we were quite accustomed to group living. We figured that what could be so difficult? You cook, you clean, talk with people and keep the doors locked.

AMT: So once it opened what kind of response was there?

LYNN ZIMMER: Women started to come immediately and from the very beginning they were coming to us with stories of horrific emotional, physical and sexual abuse. Levels that we were horrified to hear about it and that we actually had not truly anticipated and we hadn't anticipated how consistent it was.

AMT: What kinds of things were they telling you?

LYNN ZIMMER: That basically their husbands they might drink or they might not, but that they would beat them. They would punch them. They would throw them around. They would call them names. Humiliate them. Tell them they were worthless and stupid and nobody would help them. So one of the most amazing revolutionary aspects of it is that there was now somebody who would help.

AMT: So you knew there was a need. But when they started coming through the door you realized how deep that need was. You hadn't really understood the reality of what they were facing in the same way?

LYNN ZIMMER: Exactly, and we had no idea how many women would need it. So it in a few years there were several shelters in Toronto because there were women who had been experiencing this abuse for decades.

AMT: Well I've got some tape I want to play. This is from one of the first woman to arrive at Interval House. Her name is Jan. We're not using her last name in order to protect her identity. This is some of what she was going through before she arrived at Interval House.

SOUNDCLIP

JAN: It was a lot of mind control and just twisting everything I said. Like even leaving me questioning my own sanity. You know people that need to control somebody they end up cutting you off from family and friends. So I had nothing. Several times he had like smacked my face. That would be after he’d been getting me upset. And there was that one time that he hit me in the back of my head. And that startled me and I fell. And I came up off the floor and I said that's it, no more. It's over. Done. And I called the police. This was in ‘72. When they came, they questioned me and then they questioned him and they turned to me and they told me to behave myself and things like that you know. It was just getting out of control.

AMT: So we heard the tape off the top of the MPs in the early 80s making fun of the very idea of domestic abuse. She talks about the police telling her to behave herself. Lynn Zimmer, you had been in University just before you opened this. You were studying law. What kinds of things were you hearing from your professors about this issue?

LYNN ZIMMER: I remember having a class in evidence where the professor seemed to deliberately stage what he considered to be interesting and potentially funny sexual assault cases to amuse the primarily male audience and to help them remember the cases.

AMT: And how did you react at the time?

LYNN ZIMMER: I would be outraged. There we're only a handful of women in the class, so I would stand up and make you know various perfectly sensible arguments about why a woman might want to say no to the 27th guy that they wanted to have sex with her. And it just was not something that could be entertained that there really ever was a point where a woman could say no.

AMT: Well, I have another piece of tape from Jan. She's talking about the importance of Interval House to her.

SOUNDCLIP

JAN: It was you might say a God-send. It gave me my life back. When I left I felt that there was nothing left. I was just a shell of a person. So I was able to rediscover who I am. It was almost like reinventing myself or rediscovering myself and getting some footing on what I'm going to do next. Realizing I was the pilot. I was the captain of my ship. Interval House was quite important for me.

AMT: What kind of transformation did you see in the women who came through those doors?

LYNN ZIMMER: Exactly what Jan is describing. They would arrive frightened, quiet and almost reluctant to tell some of the story. And even within a week they would relax. They were there sharing meals with other women who had experienced similar things to theirs. And gradually you would start to hear laughter in the kitchen. And you would hear the noise of children running around instead of just being kind of frozen and silent. They were really the sounds of a normal household. And then women would you know start to identify how long it had been since they listened to music that they really liked or ate the foods that they liked or talked about things they wanted to talk about because they had been in this environment where it was entirely controlled by their abusive partner.

AMT: And what was that like for you?

LYNN ZIMMER: It was actually a great joy. So it was often traumatic to hear the stories, but it was such a happy experience to see women just unfolding and rediscovering themselves and discovering their strength. And being able to take pride that yes they had survived and that was because they were strong. And starting to have hope and an idea of a future that could be so different.

AMT: There were of course, many children who came through those doors with their mothers. Nader Hasan is now a lawyer in Toronto, but he remembers being a toddler in Interval House with his mother listen to him.

SOUNDCLIP

NADER HASAN: So I was an infant near after I was born until I was four. It was very it was a very comfortable sitting in a very loving setting. They took care of everybody to the best of their abilities. They had a very loving environment. I would say that was conducive to our growth. And to be honest with you, while you were there you know you don't really feel at least when you're a toddler you don't really feel like you're undergoing any sort of stress or anything. So it did really provide you what you need. They really try to go out of their way to figure out different ways of helping the kids and what they do is irreplaceable.

AMT: What do you remember of the children who came there and lived in the home?

LYNN ZIMMER: I remember children who came in angry. I remember kids who would be so mad at us because they would see us talking to their moms and mom would be crying and so to them it was just more of the same. You know some other adult now is making my mom cry. And gradually you know when mom was crying less often they let themselves relax and interact with us and be with the other children.

AMT: Just underlines how much children are affected by abuse in the home that they witness and hear.

LYNN ZIMMER: That's right. They feel helpless and they feel angry and they start to feel like they're doing something wrong because they can't stop it.

AMT: You made the point that you all chipped in to stock the fridge. The kitchen was an important place in the shelter. Tell me a little bit more about how that worked?

LYNN ZIMMER: Well, we were totally misguided when we started out. We had the idea that we should have healthy food. So we filled the place up with soy beans and grits and brown rice. None of which we particularly liked ourselves, but we thought we had a duty to cook this healthy food. And then we realized that women were sneaking out and buying hamburgers with their hard earned money. And really that they were trying to escape the food that we were giving them, so we turfed it all out and came up with a more reasonable menu by just involving all the women staying there telling us well what do you like? And what are your kids like? And you know how can we have meals that everyone will enjoy and want to stay home and eat? And that principle of food being at the center of a shelter I think certainly remains to this day in every shelter that exists.

AMT: We can't forget that these were people, women and children they were escaping abusive homes. How did you protect them from husbands? How were the husbands reacting?

LYNN ZIMMER: The husbands were pretty amazed that anybody would help their wives. So I think they imbued us with an authority that you know we didn't actually understand that we had. They thought we were like the government. They probably assumed that we were connected to the police, but the police really hardly knew who we were and they weren't sure with what with what they thought about us sometimes. All we had was a little chain lock on the door and if the husband came to the door. We'd open it up and you know ask him to account for himself and he'd say he wanted his wife using usually horrible language. And we would say well I'm sorry, she doesn't want to speak to you and you'll have to leave. And we'd shut the door and having told him that we would call the police if he didn't leave immediately. And we were amazed but it worked. And every once in a while, somebody didn't take no for an answer and we did call the police. There was certainly one guy who dove through a window and got all the way up to the third floor. By then thank goodness he was exhausted and a staff member came along and grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and marched him down the stairs and out the door again. So I think we were really lucky that the husbands themselves seemed to accord an aspect of authority on us that you know we didn't really have yet.

AMT: What is your location secret?

LYNN ZIMMER: Not really because at that point, we were trying to tell people where we were. Because really people didn't know we existed at all and we had to call all the different agencies in town. Call the social workers and let them know that there was a place for women to go.

AMT: Was there any moment when you were particularly frightened by one of the husbands showing up at the door?

LYNN ZIMMER: A few years later there was one time where a man actually entered the shelter. Some kids had left the door and that's how bad our security was. And he actually rushed into the hallway waving a baseball bat and demanding that I produce his wife. So I actually put my hands on his chest and tried to shove him out the door. And then I realized oh my goodness he's not moving, he's like a rock. That was a big mistake. So I apologized to him and I thought now is the time to look scared because he's going to expect that and be reassured by it. So I looked scared and I certainly felt scared. But I told him that it was my job to get him back outside that door and that he would have to go and stand on the porch. And then I’d get his wife. So I knew the police were being called. He did actually go out on the porch to my astonishment. And then when the police came, I sort of snuck around the corner and slammed the door on him and locked it. Then they had to come up on the part of the porch steps and apprehend him with his baseball bat.

AMT: What did you learn from the women who came to Interval House?

LYNN ZIMMER: I think one of the things that amazed me always was that these women who had been crushed and abused and sometimes since they were children from their own parents as well. That they had so much love within them that they shared with their children. And that that love for their kids and concern for their kids was mostly what drove them to our door. They hadn't left for themselves. They were leaving for the kids. And once they were there and in a safe place, I was just always astonished at the incredible mothering that I saw happening.

AMT: How old were you when you when you first opened Interval House?

LYNN ZIMMER: in 1973, I was 25.

AMT: Did you have any idea how ground-breaking your efforts were?

LYNN ZIMMER: Well, we knew that we were going against the grain and that we were challenging a whole big system. We opened on April 1st on purpose because we understood that there was an element of the unbelievable about what we were doing. But we had no idea how big it would become. That part we weren't expecting.

AMT: Did you see it as a disruptor at the time?

LYNN ZIMMER: We absolutely did. We used to actually tell people that we were creating a shelter for women and children who are in a housing crisis. We knew that we couldn't tell them that we were actually going to be in the business of helping women leave their husbands and that we were doing that deliberately.

AMT: That's how again radical the very idea was.

LYNN ZIMMER: Absolutely. Yeah, you did not break up families. That was a horrifying concept to people.

AMT: Even though families were being broken?

LYNN ZIMMER: Yes. And even though the women themselves you know had stayed for so long because they thought it would be so terrible to take their children away from their father.

AMT: So when you look back all these years later how encouraged are you by what has changed since the opening of that first shelter?

LYNN ZIMMER: Well, today there's way more hope available. There's more public education. We all know that assaulting your partner or your wife or woman is wrong. But somehow the behavior still hasn't changed. So I know that many young men are being brought up in a much more positive way and with ideas about respecting women, but not all. And guess what? Canada's women's shelters are still full. So something is there to be done that we haven't even begun to address. At the heart of it every child has to be loved and respected. So we still have huge levels of child abuse. And when a child starts with that experience from their youngest days that's a recipe for disaster for them and for everyone around them. That they'll either expect to be badly treated or they will learn that to survive they will become the abuser.

AMT: All these years later even though we can now talk about this there's still some a great deal of societal denial?

LYNN ZIMMER: There is. And I think we're we still aren't preparing young people well enough to give them the skills to be able to engage in healthy, respectful relationships and understand when they're not and to protect themselves.

AMT: Lynn Zimmer, thanks for your work all those years ago in the work you still do.

LYNN ZIMMER: Thank you. It's been a great pleasure to be part of this.

AMT: Lynn Zimmer, co-creator of Interval House. Canada’s first shelter for abused women. She is now the executive director of the YWCA in Peterborough, Ontario. Within a year of that first home opening in Ontario, four more shelters sprung up across the country independently. Today there are close to 500 women's shelters and transition houses across Canada. Those early shelters were crucial to helping more people, including police and social workers, understand the complexity of domestic violence. Barb MacQuarrie is the Community Director of the Center for Research and Education on Violence Against Women and Children in the Faculty of Education at Western University. She joins me from our studio in London, Ontario. Hello.

BARB MACQUARRIE: Hello.

AMT: What were you thinking as you listen to Lynn Zimmer speak about those early days at Interval House?

BARB MACQUARRIE: I'm thinking about how brave she was in the people that she was working with. And how brave the women were that that came forward. They are real pioneers and they really had very little to work with. So when you start a shelter with a grant you have no idea really how you're going to keep that going, but when you get involved in those lives you know you have to.

AMT: How important was it to provide those kinds of shelters at the time?

BARB MACQUARRIE: it was critically important. It brought the problem to the surface. It brought it out into the open, or at least begin to bring it out into the open. It helped us to name the problem of spousal abuse, domestic violence, woman abuse and we call it different things but it's all the same behavior.

AMT: So it changed the way domestic violence was viewed?

BARB MACQUARRIE: Absolutely. It was the major factor in understanding that this is not a private problem. It's actually a problem of our society and something that we all have to deal with.

AMT: And of course, we heard that clip of the MPs laughing at the top of my last interview. So it's a it was a process I guess?

BARB MACQUARRIE: It was a process. It still is a process. I believe that we are making progress, but we haven't reached the point where everybody acknowledges and understands that this is a problem for us all and something that we all have a stake in.

AMT: What we're women doing before they had shelters?

BARB MACQUARRIE: If they weren't just enduring. I think there are some women who are actually just taking women into their home as sort of an underground network of support that existed. Of course, you can imagine how risky the idea is if the abusive husband pursues his wife or his partner and absolutely no security. And even Lynn talked about you know the police response was variable.

AMT: How has it changed policing over the years?

BARB MACQUARRIE: It's changed policing a lot. It was as a result of shelters and bringing the problem into the open that changes were made to the Criminal Code of Canada in 1980. That actually make it so when a police officer is aware of domestic violence they have to lay a charge. So it's not the woman anymore charging her partner. We took that responsibility off of her shoulders and put it onto the shoulders of a police officers. So mandatory charging was a huge, huge shift in the way we do policing in Canada. And then we realized well if we're going to be having all of these charges of domestic violence we need to train officers to understand the problem really and to be able to provide a more safe and effective response.

AMT: There was always an assumption at the beginning too that abusers and the abused were from a lower economic, lower education background.

BARB MACQUARRIE: Well, I think that's an easy way of looking at it because it pushes the problem away. And so we can say well that just happens to those people and it makes us feel safe. It makes us feel like you know for many of us that's not going to be an issue. But we had a lot of research since that shows that domestic violence does not discriminate based on class. Not based on religion, faith, not based on geography. It's an equalizer across our society.

AMT: How have shelters evolved from those early versions?

BARB MACQUARRIE: Well, shelters they still provide the roof over their head and the beds like they always did. But they've really expanded a lot in and what they provide, so they're like community hubs that connect women and their children to other supports and services. So one of the most important functions of shelters is what we might call system navigation. So when a woman is leaving an abusive relationship, she needs to interface with a whole lot of different systems and not every woman with every system. But she might need housing. She might need income support or support getting new employment. She may have to be in family court. There might be criminal charges. Certainly she's in shelters. The child protection system is going to be involved. If she's a refugee woman she might need to apply for residency or make a refugee claim. She might need culturally specific services. And so shelters have really become experts at helping women to sort out all the systems that they need to be involved in to help them advocate for what they need in those systems to make sure that people in those other systems are actually listening to them and aware of their.

AMT: The first shelter opened in the 70s. Today we still have thousands of women who need sheltering in this country what still needs to happen?

BARB MACQUARRIE: I think we're also learning how to provide services to women in their communities. And so I think that putting more focus and more thought into how we can keep women in their homes and their jobs and in their communities and provide that support to them. It would be really important so the outreach and transition services that shelters provide today are reaching many more women than what are actually coming in and staying under the roof. So I think focusing on that is really important. There is a really interesting initiative happening in London and this one this will be I think as radical almost as the first shelter. And that is that some discussions are happening between the Partner Assault Response Program, who serves primarily men who have been abusive in their relationship and the women's shelter thinking is there a way for the men's program to take over the shelter? So we bring the men into the shelter and they need services as well. They need support as well if they're to change their behavior and take responsibility for being in healthy relationships. So those discussions are starting. There's a research piece that goes along with that and we'll see where it goes.

AMT: Well Barb MacQuarrie, thank you for speaking to me. Thanks for your perspective.

BARB MACQUARRIE: Thank you.

AMT: Barb MacQuarrie, Community DSirector of the Center for Research and Education on Violence Against Women and Children. She's in the Faculty of Education at Western University and she joined us from our studio in London, Ontario. I should mention if you are listening to this and you need help there is an Internet site to go to it’s: www.sheltersafe.ca. It's a clickable map that helps women anywhere in Canada find their closest shelter. And we will also link to it from our website: www.cbc.ca/thecurrent. www.sheltersafe.ca. That's our program for today stay with Radio 1 for “q”. A new comic book is being hailed by reviewers as the most politically relevant comic on the stands. It's based on a very old school cartoon The Flintstones and writer Mark Russell is meeting up with Tom power today to talk about what is his decidedly 21st century spin on the modern stone age family. So wait for that on “q”. Coming up next and this is as close as a commercial as we get to The Current. Just reminding you to take The Current with you to go on our CBC Radio app. You can browse through past episodes of our shows start listening in just a few seconds. Search for stories you missed or want to hear again. Listen live to your local CBC station right from your smartphone or your tablet. You can hear the day's top stories even make your own playlist of your favorite stuff to listen to later. It is free from the App Store or Google Play. That's my commercial. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti, thank you for listening to The Current.

[Music: Ending theme]

Provide Transcript Feedback

CBC would like to acknowledge the support of the Broadcasting Accessibility Fund.

May 9, 2017 episode transcript

Social Sharing

More from this episode