Human Resources Committee on Dec. 2nd, 2009

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

You need consistent core funding.

Second, I'm sure you're aware of the issue of a basic annual income for persons with disabilities that is being promoted by a number of folks--Campaign 2000, the Caledon Institute, Canada Without Poverty--based on what we've done for seniors in terms of combining the OAS and the GIS. You'd be in support of having a basic annual income, I'm sure, for persons with disabilities.

[Michelle Gillis]

I would, but one of the larger issues is Canada's definition of, and in particular the Government of Canada's position on, what a disability is. We deal with a number of clients who aren't just legally disabled. They have complex needs, special needs, and chronic illnesses.

Right now where we're having difficulties is with the Government of Canada's definition. Right now they're following the definition they use for CPP, and it's not inclusive. A lot of people become very sick, can't work, and then go directly to income support, because they have no income coming in.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you.

Did you have a quick point, Jean?

Then we're going to go to Mr. Lessard.

[Jean McKendry]

Mr. Savage, your statistics are alarming, and I'm very concerned about the homeless being included in your statistics. Without an address, a homeless person can't vote. They probably aren't filing their income tax. Because they're not a cohesive social group, they don't have a spokesperson for them. I'm wondering if there's a missing portion of the population that's not reported in those statistics.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

I think you're entirely correct. We've seen that in places like Calgary, for example, where people have shown up at the drop-in centre and have no identification whatsoever. That's a very important point.

[Jean McKendry]

Because of protection of privacy issues, we have no way of keeping track of homeless people.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you.

Mr. Lessard, the floor is yours for seven minutes.

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My name is Yves Lessard. I am from Quebec and I am a member of the Bloc Québécois.

I would like to begin by saying how admirable and extraordinary I find it that organizations like yours play a role that should normally be played by the government. I sometimes tell myself it is good that you are there, but in a way, that amounts to saying that the role is yours alone, but that is not the case.

When she described the situation, Ms. Wilson said she had the impression she was watching the genocide of part of the population. It is even more disturbing to see that to a large extent, poverty hits aboriginal communities even harder.

I reiterate that the federal government is responsible for aboriginal communities. The approach that is currently being taken is relevant, and your input is important. As far as the status of women is concerned, I think that we should rise up against situations like the one you are describing for us this morning. We should be horrified that such situations still exist today.

Ms. Hache, you spoke to us about the women who would come to see you at your centres. You said that they displayed courage and strength and often looked at their situation with a touch of humour.

Am I to understand that you do not encounter women whose courage is gone because of their situation? My conclusion from what you said is that some of those women will always go unnoticed. They have no contacts and no means and have even lost the ability to go where help is available. Is there any word about these women?

Ms. Gillis, we see that the gap between men's and women's income is quite striking. Men earn an average of $45,000, while the average for women is $34,000. I cannot imagine what the difference is for persons with disabilities who find a job, if they ever do.

[Arlene Hache]

Thanks for asking that question. The sad truth is we hear about those women often in their death. We had the death of a woman not long ago; her husband killed her. There was a 10-month warrant out for his arrest in a small community where there's no RCMP detachment and nobody bothered. The RCMP basically, in my view, didn't bother to pick him up. In my view, it wasn't that important to them.

In Nunavut and the Northwest Territories, the level of violence is extremely high against women. The level of targeted violence is at epidemic rates. Not long ago, we had a story about a woman whose husband had tortured her for three days. He put their children in a closet. He tortured her--literally for days--and then left the home and went to work, because that's fairly common.

Some of the women I know were asking why he wasn't charged with attempted murder. Why wasn't he charged with torture? The sad truth is he didn't intend to murder her; he just intended to send a message. That's how we often hear from women who are living in communities that don't have RCMP detachments. They are living in communities where there really is condoned violence. There really is sort of an underground message that you have a right to rape any woman you want, or do anything to any woman, because you have to teach her a lesson.

I'll just go through a quick court case that we had recently. Not to bore you, but the question is just so critical and not many people ask it. We had a court case where a woman went to work at a mine. You should expect to be safe in your workplace. But she went to work at a mine and a man from her community tried to sexually assault her three times at the mine site. She felt unprotected at the mine. She took it to the RCMP and the guy was charged. There really wasn't one person in her community who supported her. The MLA wrote a support letter for the guy. The chief wrote a letter of support for the guy. There was a medicine person in court for the guy. The pastor was there for the guy.

It is still kind of shocking, because there was me and the woman on one side of the court and the whole community on the other side. It's so important to understand that. I was trying to figure out what was going on, so I said to the people in the community that I know, “What's happening? How come this woman isn't getting the support?” They said, “Well, she's not getting support because she's a slut. That's what it boils down to.” And this is from women too. They said she was in a relationship with that guy. It's all about that. I went back to the woman and said, “Gee, that's what people are saying. Why is that?” She said she was never in a relationship with the man. He raped her when she was 13. Her oldest child is a result of that rape, and that's what they're calling a relationship. He would drive around in the community and tell her to get in his truck, and she did.

Not many people really look closely at that level of extreme violence that I believe is present in lots of communities--not just northern communities, not just aboriginal communities. But underground and underneath it all, I hear about those stories, pretty blatantly, and probably because I've lived here that long.

So when you're looking at economics and basic money and basic income... That's why I go back to the high level of trauma. It's never been studied, but I believe women in the north live in a war zone, and if you really looked at the level of post-traumatic stress disorder--which I believe is a disability--you would realize that women are ultimately immobilized here around post-traumatic stress disorder. They're cast as drunks who can't quite control themselves. They're really cast as something totally different from what they are. They need protection.

If you go back to the United Nations, the United Nations is making Canada accountable, in theory, for its failure to protect Inuit, first nations, and Métis women. Those women are not protected, and they're certainly not protected in communities in the north where there's no RCMP detachment. Even if there's an RCMP detachment, they're often not protected. So you can imagine how bad that is with no protection.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you.

Thank you, Monsieur Lessard.

We're going to move to Mr. Martin for seven minutes.

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

What we're hearing about this morning, in a very compelling and clear way, is the whole question of inequality and the role poverty plays in that. If you don't have the housing, if you don't have the money to get out or look after yourself, you're left in a position where you have no choices. That inequality is not something that just kind of evolves or happens. It happens because of sometimes bad public policy. Mike spoke to that.

This morning I read in the National Post--not a particularly left-wing newspaper--an article by Murray Dobbin, who suggested there has been a battle happening in Canada over the last 20 years over property rights and equality, and the property rights are winning. It seems to me this is also an issue in aboriginal communities.

He goes on to quote Statistics Canada, saying that in terms of that battle for equality, the poverty created has twice the impact cost-wise than all of the cancers that we experience in the country. He also said that the average life expectancy of women is 75, but 51% of the poorest women don't make it to that age. It is the same thing with men. The poorest men, at 25, lose seven and a half years of life versus the wealthiest.

That's what we're hearing. Yesterday in Whitehorse we heard some really compelling testimony about violence against women. It was just unbelievable, and we're hearing again today that women tend to be the most obvious and clear victims of all of this.

How do we get to equality? And how do we erase the poverty that leads to this inequality?

There were a couple of comments made, and suggestions. We focus very clearly...and we heard again here and yesterday about the very desperate circumstances that many aboriginal people are now forced to live in because of the way things have evolved. We come forward with suggestions of ways we might change life to make it better, and then we move aggressively ahead, with our ideology often sticking out, to do things that then become problematic to the environment.

On the whole question of matrimonial rights, yes, perhaps we should, but what we found in dealing with that bill when it came before Parliament was that the consultation that needed to be done with the parties involved wasn't done in a way that led us to believe that at the end of the day, what they were proposing--and it's always limited--would get us to where you would want us to get to, Jean.

We need to remember that in working with and doing things on behalf of aboriginal people, they need to be involved and engaged and consulted in the whole thing, or else it's not going to work. I think that's what Shirley said this morning, that if you don't sit down and talk with, engage, and work with... That's what some of the leadership of the aboriginal communities who spoke to us both in Vancouver and yesterday in Whitehorse said to us as well, that we have to include them. We have to talk to them and we have to engage... And I think it's the same thing with the disabled.

[Michelle Gillis]

May I comment?

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Yes.

[Michelle Gillis]

As an aboriginal person, I have to say, though, that aboriginal people are really tired of being consulted and seeing no change happen after that.

We just settled, in 1999, a Nunavut land claim. As a beneficiary, I have seen nothing. All the resources... Our community has been mined out. People have entered into employment, and then all of a sudden there are no jobs, vehicles are being taken back, and there are children with no money and no food on the table.

We've said what we want to see happen in the north. It's the same with finding shelter so that women have a safe place to go. We've said what we want to see happen, and we've said it over and over again. We want to design low-cost housing ourselves. We want to educate ourselves. We want to tell our young people to go to school. Graduation rates are increasing slowly over time.

We keep saying it, and nothing is happening. People are getting disappointed. It's like the residential schools all over again, with the government saying that this is how it's going to be and this is what's going to happen. Members are appointed to housing authorities, and they tell our communities how it's going to be. Why can't we design the legislation ourselves and tell our people to work for a living, care for themselves, and make lives for themselves?

I just wanted to add that.

[Arlene Hache]

I want to quickly point out that right now in Canada there are 9% more aboriginal, Inuit, and Métis children in care than there were during the residential school period. I wanted to raise, in terms of a real solution, something that I found very helpful. Consultation usually means leaders, not necessarily on-the-ground real experiences. Something I found very helpful was giving people the tools and the resources to document experiences on the ground, as a way of conveying back to decision-makers, whether aboriginal or non-aboriginal, what's happening in the communities, so as to get out of the heads of all the people who are not living there. I've found that having tools to document what's happening is really critical, and they're not available.

I think this is a real key.

[Jean McKendry]

I'd like to add that I'd like to see evidence-based fiscal accountability on every native reserve in Canada. I have dealt with students at Kwantlen Polytechnic University who are aboriginal and who come to me and say, “I'd really like to become a nurse and go back to my community and help the people there, and I cannot get funding from my band.” I question why, and they say they don't know why, but there doesn't seem to be a public fiscal accountability of the money that's spent on reserves.

I'd like to see it evidence-based. I want results.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thanks, Jean. You may be opening another can of worms that we're not here to talk about today.

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

It would be interesting to know why.

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Do you have any comment on that, Shirley, or just to wrap up?

[Shirley Tsetta]

Just to wrap up?

My recommendation would be that they need to go more into home ownership in the communities than into social housing. Social housing is needed. I sit on the housing committee for my first nation, and there is definitely a need for social housing. But my recommendation would be that they go back to the program they had a few years ago called the home assistance program, the HAP program. The HAP program was one whereby the potential homeowners needed to put in just, I think, 20% sweat equity to help build the home and maintain it for five or ten years, and then it was theirs free and clear.

That program has been taken away, and now to become a homeowner is very restrictive and criteria-based. Many people can't meet the criteria. I would really like to see that home assistance program come back. As it is now, for the last three years we've never had a home built in my home community; we've had more social housing built in my community, and a lot of homeowners are getting very frustrated.

So I think the HAP programs needs to come back.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Jean, I'm going to ask you to hold your thought for a second; we're going to turn it over to Dona. I have a question for you regarding homes, so I'll give you a chance maybe to respond when I ask a question.

Dona, the floor is yours for seven minutes.

[Dona Cadman, Conservative, Surrey North, BC]

Well, ladies, you've given us a lot to think about, and it's a very scary thought, what these women are going through.

Arlene, you mentioned the percentage of people who were going to your society and that you had 50% Inuit. Can you give me the others? I missed them.

[Arlene Hache]

It was 30% first nations, 5% Métis, and 10% are immigrants and new Canadians.

[Dona Cadman, Conservative, Surrey North, BC]

Okay, thank you.

It's rather disturbing, isn't it?

Jean, I'd like a clarification from you. You said there were three types of homelessness. One was the hidden and one was the absolute. What was your third?

[Jean McKendry]

The middle portion is the sheltered homeless. People traditionally stay in shelters for from six months up to two years.