Despite urgent need, new women's shelter spaces in Quebec held up by bureaucracy

Several new women's shelters for victims of intimate partner violence that had been approved for construction in Quebec are seeing their funding rescinded or threatened due to conflicting bureaucratic demands from the provincial and federal governments.

"It's unfair. We're talking about people's lives," Constance Laurin, political affairs co-ordinator for Alliance MH2, a network of women's shelters, told CBC in an interview Thursday.

Laurin said two shelters that had funding approved and are ready for construction have now seen that funding cut, and three other projects are waiting for an answer.

The planned shelters, representing 70 spaces in total, are in Montreal, Gatineau, the Laurentians, Abitibi-Témiscamingue and Chaudière-Appalaches — all regions with a shortage of spaces.

"We're talking about really basic needs that are growing. It should be easy, it should be simple, but we see that it is not," Laurin said.

Louise Riendeau, spokesperson for another network of women's shelters, the Regroupement des maisons pour femmes victimes de violence conjugale, said 10,000 women looking for help are turned away from shelters in the province each year.

"The government says it's a priority to have new shelters, but then they don't make it easy for these shelters to be built," Riendeau said.

The problems began last year, when Quebec Housing Minister France-Élaine Duranceau put construction of new shelters on hold because she said they were too expensive. She asked groups looking to build new shelters to go back to the drawing board.

Many did, revising their plans and reducing costs. They then had to reapply for provincial funding from the Quebec Housing Corporation.

But the shelters are funded by both the province and the federal government. So they also had to resubmit their new plans to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) for approval.

That's where many projects hit a snag.

Laurin said two projects that had previously been greenlit by the CMHC have had their federal funding cut.

"We don't have a lot of explanation right now," Laurin said. 

"They said we weren't able to provide all the documents that were needed. They wanted some kind of plans that we didn't have."