Special Committee on Violence Against Indigenous Women Committee on Jan. 30th, 2014

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Jean Crowder]

Good evening. Welcome to meeting number five of the Special Committee on Violence Against Indigenous Women.

I want to let committee members know that Michèle Audette, who was to be our first witness, was called away on a family emergency and sends her apologies. I'm sure I speak on behalf of the committee when I say that we are thinking of Michèle and her family. I'm sure that at some later date Michèle will request an appearance before the committee.

I want to thank the witnesses for coming. We have Mr. Hassel joining us by video conference.

I'm going to ask you to take approximately 10 minutes to give your presentations. I'll give you a signal to wrap it up. Then we will have questions from the members. Their questioning time includes your response time. In the first round of questions, it's seven minutes for questions and answers. Just keep that in mind when you're responding, that you're taking up time around the questions. The members will encourage you to elaborate, if they wish.

I'm going to start with Ms. Rhoad from Human Rights Watch.

[Meghan Rhoad, Researcher, Women's Rights Division, Human Rights Watch Canada]

Good evening. My name is Meghan Rhoad. I'm a women's rights researcher with Human Rights Watch. I'm here with Liesl Gerntholtz, who is the executive director of the women's rights division at Human Rights Watch. Our colleague, Samer Muscati, is also present today.

We would like to express our gratitude to the committee for extending this invitation to speak on this very important subject. We would also like to recognize the traditional Algonquin territory in which we are present.

Human Rights Watch is an international organization that documents human rights abuses around the world and advocates for policy changes to ensure respect for human rights. Our involvement in the issue of violence against indigenous women and girls in Canada began when Justice for Girls, a Vancouver-based organization that advocates for the rights of girls in British Columbia, submitted a briefing paper to Human Rights Watch in November 2011. The paper described human rights violations against indigenous teens in northern B.C. and requested that Human Rights Watch investigate.

In the summer of 2012, Samer Muscati and I proceeded to conduct such an investigation, with facilitation by Justice for Girls, and indigenous women advocates and experts, Mavis Erickson and Sharon McIvor. We conducted five weeks of field research in northern B.C. examining how the Royal Canadian Mounted Police treated indigenous women and girls both as victims of crime and as suspects. We travelled Highway 16, often referred to as the Highway of Tears, where at least 18 and possibly more than 40 women and girls have gone missing or have been murdered over the last several decades. From Prince George to Prince Rupert and as far south as Williams Lake we visited communities devastated by loss, where the absence of answers in many cases has exacerbated decades of tension with the police.

In total, we conducted 87 interviews. We talked with indigenous women leaders, tribal chiefs, domestic violence counsellors, homeless shelter staff, youth outreach workers, court workers, and on an informal basis, current and former police officers. Most importantly, we spoke with 50 indigenous women and girls themselves about their experience with the police.

On the basis of that research and our analysis of policy information provided by the RCMP, Human Rights Watch published a report entitled, “Those Who Take Us Away: Abusive Policing and Failures in Protection of Indigenous Women and Girls in Northern British Columbia, Canada”, which I believe has been distributed to you tonight. The report, published almost a year ago, documents a deeply fractured relationship between the RCMP and indigenous women and girls in northern B.C. It documents not only how indigenous women and girls are under-protected by the police, but also how some have experienced outright police abuse.

According to our interviews in B.C., women who call the police for help following domestic violence or sexual assault may find themselves blamed for the abuse, are at times shamed for alcohol or substance use, and risk arrest for actions taken in self-defence. Likewise, despite policies requiring active investigation of all missing persons reports, some family members and service providers who had made calls to police with such reports said the police failed to investigate promptly.

Further, Human Rights Watch documented abusive policing of indigenous women and girls: young girls pepper-sprayed and tasered; a 12-year-old girl attacked by a police dog; a 17-year-old punched repeatedly by an officer who had been called to help her; women strip-searched by male officers; and physical and sexual assault of women in custody.

For many of the indigenous women and girls we interviewed, the abuses and other indignities visited on them by the police had come to define their relationship with law enforcement. At times the physical abuse was accompanied by verbal, racist, or sexist abuse. Concerns about police harassment led some women, including respected community leaders, to limit their time in public where they might come into contact with officers.

The situations documented in our research, such as a girl restrained with handcuffs tight enough to break her skin, detainees who had food thrown at them in their cells, and a detainee whose need for medical treatment was ignored, raise serious concerns about tactics used in policing of indigenous communities in B.C., and about the police officers' regard for the well-being and dignity of indigenous women and girls.

We do not contend that the information we gathered proves a pattern of routine systematic abuse; in fact, we recognize the honourable service of many police officers who work hard to protect communities in the north. However, when incidents of abuse take place in the context of an already tense relationship with the police, they have a particularly harmful, negative impact. They leave women and girls feeling that they have nowhere safe to turn.

Not surprisingly, indigenous women and girls report having little faith that police officers, who are responsible for mistreatment and abuse, can then offer them protection when they face violence in the wider community.

I will now turn this over to my colleague, Liesl Gerntholtz.

[Liesl Gerntholtz, Executive Director, Women's Rights Division, Human Rights Watch Canada]

I would like to move now to the recommendations we have made in the report, which we would urge this committee to consider.

First, police accountability is a necessity for the safety of indigenous women and girls. Meaningful police accountability requires independent civilian investigations of all allegations of serious police misconduct, including allegations of sexual abuse.

Our research showed that when police abuse happened or when the police failed to provide adequate protection, women, girls, and their families had limited recourse. Fear of retaliation for filing complaints runs high in the north, particularly for women and girls who live in small communities, who are homeless, or who have had multiple contacts with the criminal justice system. They could lodge a complaint with the Commission for Public Complaints against the RCMP, but the process is time consuming and the investigation of the complaint could, and often would, fall to the RCMP itself or to an external police force. The CPC's primary role was to monitor the processing of complaints by the RCMP, and the RCMP ultimately determined what remedial action would be taken.

While the passage in June 2013 of the Enhancing Royal Canadian Mounted Police Accountability Act resulted in some reforms, including the replacement of the CPC with the new Civilian Review and Complaints Commission, CRCC, which has expanded investigative powers, we do not feel this goes far enough. The law still does not obligate the RCMP commissioner to heed the recommendations of the CRCC, nor does it remove the CRCC from reporting to the Minister of Public Safety, a move that would have enhanced the body's independence. Moreover, although serious incidents are to be referred to provincial investigative bodies where these exist, the law does not foreclose the possibility of the RCMP investigating itself.

Even in a province like British Columbia where an independent civilian investigative body has been established, this system will not ensure proper investigation of all serious allegations of misconduct. British Columbia's Independent Investigations Office, IIO, which began operations in September 2012, is mandated to conduct criminal investigations regarding police-related incidents involving death or serious harm. Serious harm is, however, defined in such a way as to exclude sexual assault. Consequently, it is highly likely that even with the new federal law, sexual assault allegations against RCMP officers in B.C. will be investigated by police officers either external to or with the RCMP.

Second, the gravity of the crisis of violence against indigenous women demands a national inquiry. We were heartened by the establishment of this committee and we look forward to the results of your work. At the same time, our conviction that an independent national inquiry is necessary for addressing this violence has grown stronger over time. There is still so much that we do not know about the scope and the dynamics of the violence, as well as the police response to it. Recently published research indicates that the number of missing and murdered indigenous women across Canada may be over 800, but comprehensive data collection efforts are hampered by the fact that there is currently no precedent for the standardized collection of ethnicity data by police forces in Canada.

An independent inquiry could also examine in depth the range of complex economic, social, and historical factors that contribute to this violence. The need to address the problem at this level is painfully visible in northern B.C., where billboards warn women and girls of the dangers of hitchhiking but where many have few alternatives when they need to get to a doctor, go to court, visit family, or attend to any number of pressing needs. Apart from the clear infrastructure gaps, which have been known about for years, this speaks to the need for a larger discussion of the economic and social dynamics that put women at risk.

The desire to move forward and take immediate action is understandable, and indeed a national action plan is called for, but the action should be informed by a comprehensive independent inquiry with the full participation of all stakeholders, including individual indigenous women and girls, family members of victims, indigenous community representatives, women's rights advocates, law enforcement, and social service providers.

A national inquiry would represent a major undertaking, but the safety of Canada's indigenous women and girls is at risk, and has been for far too long.

Thank you again for the opportunity to testify.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Jean Crowder]

Thank you very much, and thank you for a succinct presentation that stuck to the time limits.

We'll now go to Mr. Hassel from the Zebra Child Protection Centre.

Mr. Hassel, the floor is yours for 10 minutes.

[Robert Hassel, Chief Executive Officer, Zebra Child Protection Centre]

Good afternoon, Madam Chair and honourable members of the committee.

My name is Bob Hassel, and I'm the chief executive officer of the Zebra Child Protection Centre in Edmonton, Alberta. I'm fairly new to this role, having just taken over about a month ago. I'd like to thank you very much for allowing me to speak to you about the centre and about the very important issue of violence against indigenous women.

I thought it would be important to start with a brief history of our child advocacy centre, what we do and what we represent. Before our centre opened in 2002—we were the first centre of this type in Canada—a child who disclosed any type of physical or sexual abuse was treated the same way as an adult. They went into a police facility, and quite often they had to tell their tragic story of what happened to them numerous times before the case would even get going. Things were disjointed. Information was disjointed. There was great difficulty in building a case for justice.

That has changed. Thankfully, that has changed. Zebra, our centre, is away from a police facility. We're a stand-alone centre. We're in a place where a child can feel safe and protected. You probably can't see what's around me here, but everywhere in our room we have blankets, stuffed toys, etc., to make our children comfortable. They need to feel strong comfort when they come into our centre.

We also are a multidisciplinary team. We work with a community of professionals within this centre. We have the Edmonton Police Service, Alberta children's services, crown prosecutors, and a child-at-risk response team, which has social workers and police constables working together for that first intervention. We have professionals who do medical and trauma screening and we have volunteer advocates.

Our program provides a continuum of support to children and their non-offending caregivers through the entirety of the investigative and judicial processes. We create individualized support plans for appropriate community referrals and connections that are in the best interest of both the child and the family.

We also recognize that no one agency or profession alone is fully equipped to prioritize the well-being of an abused child and balance community needs. The shared efforts of several organizations will yield the best results.

Discovering the truth behind suspicions and allegations of child abuse is a time-consuming and complex task. Balancing the needs of the child with the needs of the justice system requires a special set of skills and knowledge, as well as sensitivity. We're fortunate that our collaborative approach creates a network of support that lends strength to the child during the entire investigative process, and also lends strength to law enforcement and the legal agencies behind it.

We sincerely believe this is a best practice, a leading practice. I believe there are now 26 child advocacy centres across Canada. I know that Calgary Police Service recently partnered and opened one up within the last year as well.

On our team we have child advocate volunteers. We have approximately 40 volunteers who help the centre run. We have seven full-time Zebra staff, and that includes me. We have Alberta child and family services. They've supplied two investigators and six social workers. With law enforcement, we have twelve detectives and six constables, who, as I said before, work with our social workers, with supervisors attached to that—a staff sergeant and two sergeants.

Just this week I was told that the RCMP will be joining us in our centre, which is fantastic, for a trial period of one year. That will help us get to the rural environment and hopefully spread the type of programming we have so that we can get out into the smaller agencies and areas.

We have Alberta crown prosecutors, mental health and medical personnel, and two dogs that we use to help with the interviews.

What's important to note is that we all have our own mandates, but we work together with the common goal of making the centre an appropriate place for the kid, where the kid can tell their story as to what occurred. We start the day with a multidisciplinary meeting. We support the team, we support the families, and we support the non-offending caregivers as well by providing trauma counselling and whatever we can do to help them get through this. Then, of course, working with the court system, hopefully we'll ensure that we deal with the offenders in an appropriate way.

I think I'm getting close to my time here, but I have some statistics to share. In 2012 we had 669 clients come through our centre, and 21% of those clients self-identified as indigenous people. In 2013 we had 861, so a huge increase, and 14.5% of those clients self-identified as indigenous people.

I'd like to thank you for allowing me to give those opening remarks. I know that one thing you're looking at is front-line assistance and prevention. When I look at that, I have a few ideas and a few things I've written down, and I've also talked to people, about what we would like to see.

While I still have a little bit of time here, I'll say that one of the main things is that in policing, in crown prosecution and in child protection areas, we're always looking at extra resources and at whether we are using our resources effectively.

I'm so happy that the RCMP have joined this centre with us, because I really believe we're doing a bit of a disservice to our rural areas by not having the same collaborative, multidisciplinary team approach that we have in Calgary and Edmonton. It would be of real benefit if we could get this out to some of our community partners. I know this is starting. There are some smaller areas that are starting with centres such as ours, where they will be working with a multidisciplinary team approach. I think it would only benefit the children who we work with.

Thank you very much for allowing me the time to tell you about our centre and what we do.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Jean Crowder]

Great. Thanks, Mr. Hassel.

Now we'll go to a round of questions.

We'll start with Mr. Saganash, for seven minutes.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

First of all, I want to thank our witnesses for their statements. The committee always appreciates their cooperation as it examines this issue that is particularly troubling not only for aboriginal people, but for all Canadians.

Your presentation is greatly appreciated, on this side at the very least.

I must also commend the truly excellent work done by Human Rights Watch on these issues. I read the report you produced several times. I also want to thank you for the French version I just received.

I listened to your presentation very carefully, and I have several questions. I would like to begin with something less difficult, I hope. Mr. Hassel can certainly join the discussion.

In previous presentations, we heard about the federal Family Violence Prevention Program. Are you familiar with that program? Can you give us some examples of projects funded through that program that could be effective models for the communities? If you know of some effective models that were submitted through this program, what were their main features?

My question is for all three witnesses.

[Meghan Rhoad]

We did review the domestic violence response policies of the RCMP as part of our analysis. We did not do a study of the level of services for domestic violence prevention in northern B.C.

I can also say that as we were doing our research, certainly the scarcity of resources in rural areas came up quite frequently. I don't believe we can point to a particular model of program, as that really wasn't the focus of our research.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Jean Crowder]

Mr. Hassel, do you have some comments?

[Robert Hassel]

Yes.

Likewise, at the Zebra Child Protection Centre, we're mostly focused on child sexual and physical abuse and really aren't working with the domestic violence piece, although from my previous job, I do have a little bit of knowledge of some of the national programs that the RCMP are running.

I do know that the Edmonton Police Service have a model that they use called a domestic violence intervention team. Not to speak for them, but I'm well aware of their team, where they have a social worker and a police officer working together, as well as with victim support areas. They work on not only prevention, but also after the fact, when this does occur in domestic violence, to try to break that cycle of violence to ensure that it doesn't happen again.

I'm sorry I can't comment on it more, but I know they have been reasonably successful. I sure would be happy to point you in the right direction or to people you could speak to from that service.

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

My question is for the Human Rights Watch representatives.

You just mentioned a recommendation from your previous report, regarding the need for an independent national public inquiry. I fully support that recommendation. I think that the entire universe is favourable to that recommendation, except for a certain group in Parliament.

You said this in your statement today:

“An independent inquiry could also examine in depth the range of complex economic, social, and historical factors that contribute to this violence.”

Could you provide us with more details on that point?

I am from a northern region where development is quite recent; it began in the 70s, and with it came certain consequences: with development came violence, especially violence against women.

I'd like to hear more about that from you, if possible.

[Meghan Rhoad]

Certainly.

What we were hoping this would get to is a theme that was recurring in our interviews in the north. Service providers as well as indigenous women and girls themselves would raise the spectre of the residential school system in Canada and the intergenerational effects that has had. There is an association with homelessness, with suicide, with alcohol use, with depression and trauma. Some of those factors need to be considered in terms of ensuring that women and girls have the most options open to them in terms of pursuing a livelihood and generally for their safety.

In addition, in terms of the economic issues, as my colleague alluded to, in the north where so much of the controversy has surrounded the highway and hitchhiking, there has been quite an emphasis on making people aware of what the dangers are, but that has little effect if they can't do much to avoid them.

We think that a greater examination of, for example, why the dropout rate is higher for indigenous girls, is just part and parcel of discussing why there is this violence happening at such a disproportionate rate to indigenous women and girls.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Jean Crowder]

I'm sorry, but I have to interrupt. We're out of time for Mr. Saganash. Some of the other questioners may expand on that issue.

Mr. Dechert.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for being here this evening and for sharing your expertise with us.

I'd like to start by asking Ms. Rhoad from Human Rights Watch a few questions.

You said you interviewed 50 women and girls in your study in B.C. I assume they were families of victims.

[Meghan Rhoad]

Some of them were. Some of the women and girls were victims themselves of police abuse.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

You interviewed the families of victims and the actual victims.

[Meghan Rhoad]

That's right.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

That's very interesting.

In terms of the various causes of the disappearance of women that you were researching, what role did domestic violence play in causing the women to go missing, in your view?

[Meghan Rhoad]

That's a good question.

Where domestic violence came up in our interviews, a lot of it was with respect to women who had tried and failed to get a response through the RCMP to domestic violence, with that being responsible for a general alienation, I think, from the police force.

In terms of the disappearances that we heard of, I can't think of a single one that was directly linked to domestic violence.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

As you may know, this committee heard the testimony of many families of victims at our last session in December. Your report, which was published I think last week, “World Report 2014”, unfortunately doesn't mention that. I guess you weren't aware of it at the time you wrote the report.

What we were told by many of those victims' families was that the women who were missing had been abused by either a family member or a spouse, a partner. In a number of cases, it was the understanding of the victims' families that the murderer was actually that domestic partner, or that in other cases the women ran away from their communities to get away from the domestic abuse.

I am wondering if you found anything similar in your research. It's kind of curious that the families of the 12 victims, the families from across Canada who we heard from, didn't have a different story than the ones you spoke to in British Columbia.

[Meghan Rhoad]

We certainly did hear about domestic abuse, absolutely. That was something that came up multiple times in our interviews, but again, we did not hear of it as the impulse for someone to go missing.

In part, I think that could be because some of this may involve women who left the north, went to Vancouver, and maybe disappeared from there. Certainly, that's a huge issue unto itself, the Pickton disappearances, etc., and maybe that would emerge more strongly in this. But again, I don't remember that particular set of facts presenting itself.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Okay. I'd like to switch to another part of your testimony.

You spoke about the police response to reports of missing persons. We've heard that the aboriginal police forces and the provincial, territorial, and RCMP forces have improved their operations and their procedures with respect to missing persons. The RCMP now have a national missing persons bureau and a national missing persons database that is accessible by all police officers; so they seem to have been taking steps, in recent years at least, to address some of these issues.

What struck me with regard to the victims' families we spoke with or listened to in the last session was that many of them expressed that they had not received much information from the police and from the justice system, including during the investigation right up to the time of a charge being laid, in cases where there were charges laid, and through the prosecution process. There was a frustration that they were somehow kept out of and not allowed to participate both in the investigation process and in the prosecution process.

Did you hear any of those kinds of comments from the people you spoke to in British Columbia?

[Meghan Rhoad]

Absolutely. That was something we heard a number of times. I think part of the tragedy there is that if the police are diligently doing their work, they should get credit for it. Improved communication with the families is absolutely essential to disabuse them of their beliefs about inaction.

In some cases, though, families were talking about having made phone calls to police to try to get updates and not seeing a response. I do think it's a mix of actual inaction and then not communicating about what is happening—

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

I'm sorry to cut you off.

That is very consistent with some of the things we heard as well, a lack of communication.

You know that the federal government is currently contemplating a victims bill of rights which would address some of these issues. Is this something you would suggest be included in a victims bill of rights, that victims have the right to be kept informed through the investigative process, through the prosecutorial process? Would that address some of the issues that you heard in B.C.?

[Meghan Rhoad]

Absolutely, I think that would be very important.