Lori Dupont arrived to her job at Windsor's Hotel Dieu Grace Hospital on a cold fall day in November 2005. Before it was time for her morning coffee break, her former lover, physician Marc Daniel, had ambushed her in a hospital corridor and brutally ended her life, stabbing her repeatedly with a military style dagger and leaving her in a pool of blood. An inquest into Dupont's death was told that her employer had failed to respond to 44 warning signs and opportunities to intervene as Daniel repeatedly harassed her at work.

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The 36-year-old nurse's case, tragically, is too common. In Canada, on average, a woman is killed by her domestic partner once every six days and many more are battered, raped, stalked, harassed and emotionally abused. Experts on violence against women know that these crimes sometimes occur at the woman's workplace, and that they often have negative impacts on the victim's ability to maintain her employment, and hence the economic independence that could help her escape her abuser.

But no one really has hard data on the extent of the workplace implications of domestic violence in our country, and now the Canadian Labour Congress and Western University are partnering in a research project, launching this month, to close this knowledge gap. They are going to conduct a study that will, they hope, help inform both contract negotiations and new public policy initiatives. The study will conduct an online survey to collect data from workers across the country about their own experiences with domestic violence when it washes over into the workplace and incidents of violence they have observed in the lives of co-workers.

The invitation is for anyone (including readers of this story) over 15 to participate, men and women alike and whether or not they have experienced domestic violence directly.

In B.C., according to a paper published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives this year, 6.5 per cent of the population over 15 had experienced partner violence in the past five years. The equivalent rates of partner violence experienced in other provinces and territories range from 5.5 per cent in New Brunswick to 14 per cent in Nunavut.

The World Health Organization estimates that one in four women in Canada will experience intimate partner violence or sexual violence in her lifetime.

While some men are victims of domestic violence too, according to Stats Canada, women are reported to police as victims over four times as often as men are, and typically, women are far more seriously injured than men in such incidents.

A monetary cost, as well

Supporters of the new research note that domestic violence has a measurable economic cost as well as horrific impacts on the lives of women and children. The annual cost to Canadian employers of domestic violence, according to a 2009 federal government study was $77.9 million. When all costs associated with this phenomenon are totalled, according to the study, domestic violence annually costs Canada $7.4 billion, or $220 each for everyone in the country.

So, even if we were willing to ignore the arguments from simple human decency and fairness for studying domestic violence with a view towards eliminating it, a sound business case for such efforts exist as well, as the Globe and Mail pointed out this summer.

"We need to make the case that preventing violence against women is not only the right thing to do, it is good for business as well," Todd Minerson, executive director of the White Ribbon Campaign in Toronto, a global movement of men working to end violence against women and girls, told the Globe this July.

The CLC/Western research project was launched on Dec. 5 this year, to mark the anniversary today of the Montreal Massacre in 1989, when a rifle-wielding terrorist singled out female engineering students and women he considered to be feminists. He killed 14 women and wounded 10 more, as well as wounding four male students.

Barbara MacQuarrie, community director of the Centre for Research & Education on Violence against Women & Children at Western, and community director for the survey project, told The Tyee that the date for the project launch was chosen to honour the memory of the women killed in Montreal that day, but timed a day early so as to avoid pulling attention away from the memorial events planned each year for Dec. 6.

"We are excited to be working with Barb MacQuarrie and Western on this project," Barbara Byers, executive vice president of the CLC said, explaining that launch events would be held both in Ottawa and on the Western campus.

"This study is going to go a long way toward clarifying policy and legislative issues, and the results will help shape our union work in the future."

Byers said she was also pleased that the Canadian Network of Women's Shelters and Transition Houses, Canada's new national umbrella group representing over 350 shelters, would be collaborating on the survey project. The network's executive director, Lise Martin, a featured speaker at the Dec. 5 launch, said that getting employers and the workplace to recognize the importance of the domestic violence issue would be big step forward for Canadian women.

"We have to get recognition that domestic violence is not a private matter, and help eliminate the stigma attached to victims of domestic violence," Martin said.

"Hopefully, when the survey has been completed and the results announced next December, we'll have a lot more hard data, and the basis for policy changes," she added.

A first in Canada

Mary Lou Cherwaty, president of the Northern Territories Federation of Labour, representing over 9,000 workers in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories, sees the survey as a "wonderful project," noting this is the first time such comprehensive research is being done in Canada. She is seeking support from the two territorial governments in order to translate the survey and associated materials into nine First Nations languages.

"I want us to reach a wide audience. I am concerned that we reach Aboriginal women, who we know are very vulnerable on this issue. I hope that the survey process will get people talking, and make the issue of domestic violence more visible."

Cherwaty said that women of her generation had been trained to keep secrets about domestic and partner violence. The CLC sponsored survey will help break that silence, she said, and help union negotiators win new contract language that will provide paid leave from work and other forms of flexibility for women who need time off to flee an abusive partner.

Like all the survey supporters who spoke with The Tyee, Cherwaty took great hope from the successes won by a groundbreaking research project conducted recently in Australia. As a direct result of the work done by researcher Ludo McFerran and her colleagues in New South Wales, more than a million Australian workers are covered by contracts that mandate paid leave if they need it in escaping an abusive home.

McFerran's 2011 research, which relied upon survey responses from over 3,600 union members, (81 per cent women) revealed that two-thirds of the respondents were in full-time employment and nearly two thirds (64 per cent) were aged 45 and older.

Nearly one-third (30 per cent) had personally experienced domestic violence, and nearly half those who had experienced domestic violence reported that the violence affected their capacity to get to work; the major reason was physical injury or restraint (67 per cent), followed by hiding keys and failure to care for children.

The Australian researchers also found that nearly one in five (19 per cent) who experienced domestic violence in the previous 12 months reported that the violence continued at the workplace. The major form the domestic violence took in the workplace was abusive phone calls and emails (12 per cent) and the partner physically coming to work (11 per cent).

The main reported impact was on work performance, with 16 per cent reporting being distracted, tired or unwell, 10 per cent needing to take time off, and seven per cent being late for work.

'A significant workplace issue'

The Tyee contacted Dr. McFerran by email and asked her what, in her view, were the most important lessons that emerged from her study.

"The research," she replied, "showed that this is a significant workplace issue that affects attendance, performance and safety at work- not only for the individual directly affected, but also for their work colleagues. The research provided evidence for the business case that this is costing employers money, and needs to be addressed in a standard fashion."

The unions involved, McFerran added, have been remarkable for their capacity to both drive the campaign, and to educate their members. She wrote that including domestic violence clauses in collective bargaining for agreements and awards is now Australian union policy, "so we will see increasingly this become standard practice in Australia."

Sponsors of the domestic violence survey being launched this December hope that Canadian scholars and trade unionists can replicate the Australian success story in Canada. If they succeed, it would be a fitting memorial for the women killed in the Montreal Massacre and for all the other Canadian women who have suffered domestic violence.