Sexual assault response services will continue to be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week to survivors throughout the entire Sea to Sky corridor and Stl’atl’imx/Lillooet region, thanks to a recent influx of provincial funding.
The Howe Sound Women’s Centre Society (HSWC) is among 56 service providers across British Columbia that are set to receive stable, annual funding beginning this year, the province announced July 24.
The B.C. government is spending just over $6.6 million to establish 68 sexual assault response programs facilitated by those providers. The funding kicked in last month.
A regional panel decided to award the HSWC with three contracts—one each for programs in Squamish, Whistler/Pemberton, and the Stl’atl’imx/Lillooet region.
The Sea to Sky non-profit initially set up a five-person mobile team in 2021 offering 24/7 sexual assault response services in Squamish and Whistler. The program was made possible by a nearly $300,000 grant funded by the province and managed by the Ending Violence Association of B.C.
That funding expired in March of this year, “so we were really excited to know that this opportunity from the province would allow us to continue the program,” said HSWC executive director Ashley Oakes.
Better yet, the new funding means HSWC can extend its programming’s reach by 200 kilometres, into Stl’atl’imx and Lillooet communities.
In addition to core staff based in Squamish, Whistler and Pemberton, a full-time HSWC employee currently living in N’Quatqua will be based in Stl’atl’imx First Nations communities to provide crisis support to those who need it, Oakes said. A similar program was previously offered through the Southern Stl’atl’imx Health Society. “We were advised that they were unlikely to apply again for the funding through the province, so we decided that we would apply for that funding so there was still service delivery and continuity of service delivery for the Indigenous communities up north,” Oakes explained.
HSWC’s sexual assault services include trained staff who are reachable around the clock by phone or text at 604-389-9168 and by chat through the Izzy platform at hswc.ca. Workers are also available to accompany survivors to RCMP detachments, hospitals, and court, and can help connect survivors with third-party reporting options they can use to share details of an assault anonymously.
Those services are available to individuals of any gender who are visiting, living in, or passing through the corridor. “They’re also available to support people with … a history of sexualized violence in their past in their lives,” Oakes added. “It’s not just things that are new.”
Beyond an immediate response in the wake of an assault, sustained funding empowers HSWC to provide longer-term support to survivors, Oakes said. “It is not just a one-time contact,” she explained. “The level of crisis support required to ensure somebody is supported throughout the journey of seeking justice or healing is long.”
The province has committed to funding HSWC’s programs for a three-year term with two renewal years. “Then we will have to wait and see what the government wants to do in terms of continuity of the funding,” said Oakes. “We are optimistic that this will become a permanent service contract within the provincial government. Especially showcasing the need in the community, we’re hoping that it would be sustained funding moving forward.”
On average, sexualized violence occurs at a higher rate in the Sea to Sky corridor than it does at provincial and federal levels.
In a report to Whistler’s mayor and council this March, Sea to Sky RCMP said the number of sexual assaults reported in the resort increased 18 per cent last year, rising from 28 offences in 2021 to 33 reported in 2022.
Statistics Canada data shows 34,242 sexual assaults were reported to police nationwide in 2021, representing 90 incidents per 100,000 people. It’s not an entirely fair comparison considering Whistler’s tourist economy, but the 28 offences reported in the resort in 2021 translate to 200 incidents per 100,000 people—more than double the national rate.
Self-reported data from 2019 shows only about six per cent of sexual assaults in Canada were reported to police that year.
“We’ve started to see the numbers of people contacting us for help increase steadily over the last two years and we anticipate that that will continue with this new funding,” Oakes said.
Slowly but surely, the stigma around sexualized violence also appears to be diminishing, she added. “We’re improving how we talk about it,” she explained. “We’re empowering people to talk about it more, and that is resulting in more disclosures coming forward as well.”
