Northern Ontario woman who left abuser starts program to help survivors restart their lives

Joanne Ferland of North Bay, Ont., had to restart her life from zero after leaving an abusive partner.

“When it was time to leave, my bank account was drained, my keys were hidden and my cellphone was disconnected,” she said.

Without support from her parents, Ferland said, she wouldn’t have been able to leave her abuser.

With that help from her family, she rebuilt her career and is now a financial adviser with the Caisse Alliance credit union in the northern Ontario city.

Last year, Ferland drew from her own experience as an intimate partner violence (IPV) survivor and started the Leap Into Financial Empowerment (LIFE) program.

To her knowledge, the program, designed to help IPV survivors get their financial lives in order, is unique in Canada.

Ferland works closely with aid organizations in northeastern Ontario and the court system to refer survivors to the program.

Key to the program is the creation of a free and private chequing account.

“So we make sure that it is safe for them to use,” Ferland said.

“We don’t allow anything to be sent to their home address or anybody to call them on their phone. And that way, if there’s any type of communication, it’s when they come in and then we give them their mail or we tell them whatever needs to be said about the account.”

Ferland and her colleagues also provide financial advice to domestic violence survivors and help them draw up a budget to rebuild their lives.

To date, 12 IPV survivors have participated in the program. Ferland said only one of them eventually returned to her abuser.

“So I would call that a success,” she said.

The program received a $50,000 grant from Equitable Bank to help Ferland expand it to other northeastern Ontario communities, including Timmins, Hearst, Mattawa, Sturgeon Falls and Kapuskasing.

‘Staggering’ IPV stats

Mathieu Shank, Caisse Alliance’s regional manager for the Nipissing East region, said he didn’t hesitate to support Ferland when she pitched the idea for the program.

Shank said he was surprised when Ferland shared the statistics related to IPV in Canada.

According to Statistics Canada, 44 per cent of women and girls over age 15 who have been in a relationship have reported some kind of abuse from an intimate partner. Every six days, a woman in Canada is murdered by an intimate partner, according to the data.

“There’s 55 employees in my region and we have 45 or 47 women,” Shank said, “which means there are likely 10 to 15 of my employees that are going through this. It’s actually quite staggering.”