Table 5.

Stakeholder quotes: Impact on remote and rural communities

“Some of the key impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has really clearly demonstrated the lack of infrastructure within Indigenous communities on responding to domestic violence . . . some of the challenges that we have seen is having individuals removed from the communities, because of the travel restrictions and permitted travel in and out of communities . . . unless [you're] taken out of there by medevac, you're not going to be able to access those services.”

“Many of our [communities] are being hit with COVID. And we have families with 10, 20, 30 people in a home. It's impossible to isolate. And whereas women who might be experiencing forms of violence could maybe go to a neighbors, a home of a friend or a relative, that is not happening because of the need to stay in place and isolate. And so it is a huge - I mean the geographic - both physical, but also in terms of what kind of services people are getting in Canada is enormous, there's so many huge disparities.”

“When we're talking about remote settings - internet, access to internet. We take it for granted that in cities and towns, that everyone has internet. But it's access, it's in affordability, and so we are excluding a major portion of the population by moving everything virtual, which I understand we've had to do because of the pandemic. But my fear is that a lot of organizations, because it's more affordable than sending care workers out long distances, that we're going to sort of stay with this, and there'll be a huge portion of the population that suffers as a result.”