Special Committee on Violence Against Indigenous Women Committee on Nov. 28th, 2013

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

No problem.

We'll go over to you, Ms. Brown.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Gentlemen, thank you so much for being here. I have a number of questions that I hope I ask in a functional way.

Mr. Domm, may I ask you this first? Can you tell us what the incidents of violence are that you are dealing with in your area? What percentage of the calls that you respond to are because of violence?

[Chief John Domm]

I can say when I was chief of Nishnawbe Aski Nation that looked after most of the fly-in—

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

This is the one near Rama, is that correct?

[Chief John Domm]

Well right now, I'm in Rama. It's a fairly healthy community, and it may be noteworthy that it's fairly prosperous with the casino, quite frankly. It's not that the casino is the answer by any stretch of the imagination, but what it did was generate an economy. It generated a demand for other services whether they be public works services, waste water, or policing, fire, ambulance, etc. With that, it also then compelled an administration: greater finance departments, legal departments, HR departments, and so on.

This economy manifested and it provided everyone with healthy employment. The community invested in training and development for its own people to be able to fulfill these new positions, this new economy, if you will. It's become quite successful. As a result of that, it's very mainstream, if you will: everybody works, they're raising their kids, their families. It's a very healthy community. There are issues from time to time, but there are issues anywhere in any community in Ontario. It's a completely different set of contrasts or communities, if you will, from the community I used to work in.

That's why I started to talk about Nishnawbe Aski Nation area. I worked there for four years. In response to your question, if I can speed it up a little bit, in the north it was dramatically different. Most of our responses were to violent incidents. There was an extraordinarily high rate; sometimes tenfold the national rate of violence for some offences. It was a dramatic change. It is a dramatic reality, but it's still very real.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

So the percentage of calls that you get in the Rama area for violent incidents are comparable to any other police force across Canada, would you suggest?

[Chief John Domm]

I would suggest that it's very low.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

My riding is Newmarket—Aurora. So I'm an hour south of Rama, and I know there are hundreds of thousands of dollars—in fact, dare I say millions of dollars—that go through that casino. There is steady traffic from Toronto north. The children there are getting education. There is a great hospital in the Orillia area and of course access in Barrie for further services if they need it. So education and health care are taken care of. What you're saying is that people have jobs and that is making a difference in the choices they make in other areas of life. Is that fair?

[Chief John Domm]

I think it makes a dramatic difference, and I think it's a fairly fair assertion.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you very much. Orillia is a lovely city. There are so many small towns in that area that are beautiful places to live. All around Lake Couchiching is lots of lovely property, and people are privileged to live in that area, if I may say so.

Mr. Syrette, I need a little bit of clarification from your opening remarks, if you could help me out. I'm quoting from your remarks that you provided. In your bullet points, you say:

The majority of violent incidents against aboriginal women were perpetrated by males acting alone.

The next bullet says:

Most violent incidents did not include the use of weapons or result in injury, except in the cases of spousal violence, where about half of the female victims reported being injured.

I wonder, first of all, if you could define what you're saying there about most violent incidents not including the use of weapons or resulting in injury. Do you mean specifically weapons-related injuries, or am I reading that incorrectly?

I just wonder if you could define the violence there that you're talking about, because somehow there's a disconnect for me.

[Chief John W. Syrette]

It was actually the other John who did that part of the presentation.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

I'm so sorry.

Mr. Domm, you read that. Perhaps it was cooperative effort here, putting this together. I apologize.

[Chief John Domm]

Indeed it was, thank you.

It came directly from the Statistics Canada table. Those are the stats that we presented in this particular report. I think that you're talking about splitting violent acts with weapons and non-weapons.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

It just says here that, "most violent incidents did not include the use of weapons or result in injury". So if they didn't result in injury, how do you define them as violent incidents?

[Chief John Domm]

Sometimes it can be threats of violence, verbal threats.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Okay, so it could be verbal abuse, then?

[Chief John Domm]

That would account for a significant amount.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

So you would include verbal abuse in that?

[Chief John Domm]

I would include verbal threats of criminal violence, yes.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

All right. I thank you for that clarification.

I want to go back to a witness statement that we heard last week. We heard from the Hollow Water First Nation in Manitoba. A woman who was our witness said:

There was a time when it was okay for women to be treated in that way, to be physically abused, to be sexually abused and all that comes with that. My community had developed this attitude that women were to blame.

And she went on to talk about how the women in the community had made the decision to stand up and say that this was no longer acceptable. Can you tell me, in your experience, when that was acceptable? Across Canada, when was it acceptable? Is there a turning of the tide with this being discussed?

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

Give us a quick answer to that question, please.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

How can the government deconstruct this?

[Chief John W. Syrette]

I think there's been improvement. I can't say there was a day that was the turning point. I would suggest that individual communities move forward at their own pace. Some of them may still be living in an environment where that is acceptable. I'm hoping that through ongoing intervention and education we'll all move to the point where we recognize that this is no longer acceptable behaviour.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

Thank you.

Over to you, Mr. Saganash.

[Romeo Saganash, NDP, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Yes, she's going to—