Special Committee on Violence Against Indigenous Women Committee on Feb. 6th, 2014

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

What is your view of the so-called Nordic model for prostitution?

I take it from your comments that you and the foundation you represent view prostitution generally as harmful to women and vulnerable persons. You mentioned that you've had an overwhelming number of people involved in prostitution who are not doing it by choice. Where does that lead us in dealing with prostitution? Do you think it should be legalized, or do you think we should try to prevent prostitution in some other way?

[Diane Redsky]

If I did this presentation in a month from now, I'd be able to answer that question on behalf of the Canadian Women's Foundation, because that is actually where we are currently. We are deciding what our recommendations are as a foundation after we go through everything.

What we do know at this time is that vulnerable women should not be criminalized. We know there are a whole bunch of reasons why criminalizing vulnerable women is a bad idea and does not work for them in the future. They can never get a job. They have even more working against them to rebuild their lives.

We also know there's not enough attention to the purchasers of sex, even in the trafficking legislation. There is no criminal provision for purchasers of sex. That is a huge gap in the trafficking legislation, and there aren't enough people talking about it. We want to raise that issue.

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

I think all parliamentarians will be looking forward to the foundation's report on this.

Let me ask you about some of the other things that Canadian Women's Foundation does.

I understand that it has funded and participated in emergency shelters, support programs and follow-up programs for women who have experienced violence, and programs that help women and girls avoid or escape sexual exploitation. Certainly, it has helped them deal with situations of domestic violence.

Can you tell us your views on where there's a connection between domestic violence against aboriginal women, and what leads them into, perhaps, say, prostitution and human trafficking?

[Diane Redsky]

Yes I can. Particularly for aboriginal women and girls, what we have seen across the country is a common theme of their not meeting the trafficking definition, and that means they have to be in fear for their safety. Aboriginal women oftentimes are not in fear for their safety because their traffickers are their boyfriends or husbands. That is very common across Canada. That's actually a shift which traffickers are now moving towards, because then there's no crime and they don't have to worry about being charged down the road. That is the intersection between domestic violence and trafficking.

A lot of women are presenting themselves in women's shelters. It's even harder to get to those women when they're trauma bonded with their trafficker. It requires a whole new set of interventions and services and consideration when we're looking at the long term on intervening and then helping them rebuild their lives.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

Thank you.

Over to you, Ms. Bennett, for seven minutes.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Thanks for all your work, and also to the Canadian Women's Foundation. It's really important.

I'd like to tap into your expertise on trafficking and how that intersects with the issue of missing and murdered indigenous women. I heard this time last year that even at some of the Idle No More rallies there were signs that said that they go to the ships and then they disappear. During the summer we also heard of, perhaps, Duluth-Thunder Bay access in terms of this.

Last week we heard that you can't really have an action plan without the inquiry that outlines what the issues are such that you can deal with them in an action plan.

You said that you'd like some of the trafficking legislation tightened up.

Perhaps you could tell me how you see going forward, in that it seems that domestic violence against women, trafficking, missing and murdered women, these are all intersected. How would you draw the diagram for us in terms of the various areas? What would you like to see in our report that would allow us to deal with these issues?

I guess the bottom line is, how is the national action plan on trafficking working? Do you think we have all the information to actually do that piece properly, when so many people are calling for the need for a national public inquiry before we get to a national action plan on missing and murdered indigenous women?

[Diane Redsky]

That's a big question too.

There are clear intersections with trafficking and missing and murdered aboriginal women. Not all missing and murdered women are trafficked or sexually exploited or involved in prostitution. Across Canada we find a clear intersection. There are without a doubt missing and murdered aboriginal women as a result of being trafficked, as a result of sexual exploitation, and as a result of domestic violence. A number of moving parts are happening at the same time. It's not only what government can do, but also what philanthropy can do and how those two together can support organizations working on the ground.

There's lots of work across the country that local grassroots women's organizations have been working on for many years. They already have some solutions about what it's going to take to deal with missing and murdered women. It's important that all of us hear them out, support them, and be organized about it. If it takes a national action plan to do that, then I would like to see a role for the private sector. It is something that the Canadian Women's Foundation is very serious about. It's serious enough that we've taken a position on missing and/or murdered women. Somebody do something. Let's all work together and figure out what's going on. This is not acceptable.

Through that type of leadership as well as with government leadership coming together, there are lots of opportunities for that to move forward. I think it's a common table where there's an opportunity for families to be involved and for aboriginal women to be involved as well.

I know I'm not answering your question entirely. It's probably more process oriented. How we do it is just as important as what gets accomplished.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

You have two and a half minutes left.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Seeing it's 6:30, Madam Chair, if you wanted to go to Cindy—

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

I was going to ask Dr. Blackstock to speak right after you, or did you want the opportunity to use your two and a half minutes afterwards for Dr. Blackstock?

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Yes. There's the whole issue of foster care and fleeing foster care. Let Cindy speak and then I'll finish.

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

Madam Chair, can I speak?

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

Yes, Mr. Dechert.

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

We would be pleased to hear Dr. Blackstock now and then we can all ask her questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

Sure, that would work.

Welcome, Dr. Blackstock, executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada. We're delighted to have you here. I'm sorry for the mix-up. You have 10 minutes.

[Dr. Cindy Blackstock, Executive Director, First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair and committee members.

It's an honour to be here on Algonquin Nation lands and also to talk about such an important topic. As parliamentarians and as citizens, we have so many challenges before us in this wonderful country, and some of them feel like they can never be solved. They seem to pass from one generation to another, and despite our goodwill across all the political spectrum they seem to remain undone.

I am here to talk about a challenge that we not only can solve, but we must solve, and that we're morally compelled to solve as Canadians.

You've heard the stories by others much more expert than I and closer to the matter about the perils many indigenous women face in this country, but some of those challenges in many of those cases could have been prevented had the women received the right service at the right time when they were children themselves.

I'm going to go through a little bit of the evidence to tell you how compelling it is that the very best investment any government can make is in its children, not only in terms of setting up for a robust society we can all be proud of, but economically, too. Then I'm going to turn to how that relates to violence against indigenous women. Finally, I will put forward to you some solutions that you can take to the table and get done.

Children only have one childhood, as you know, members. We can't spend three or four budget cycles trying to figure it out because we miss the opportunity to do the right thing by them.

We know the statistics. First nations children are more likely to be in child welfare care. They're placed there at 12 times the rate of non-aboriginal children, driven primarily by neglect that's fuelled by poverty, poor housing, and substance abuse, all things we can do something about, members. Those are not unsolvable problems.

Graduation rates are at around 35%, not because children don't want to be educated, not because they're not intelligent, but because they don't have the same opportunity that other Canadian children have. There are health statistics that none of us around this table would feel proud of.

What does this mean for them not only as children but as adults? I'd really recommend that you read, and I've provided the reference to the committee clerk, “Adverse Childhood Experiences Study”, an experience study in the United States. This is a sample of 20,000 Americans. They asked how much does what you experience as a child affect you down the road as you grow up.

One of the things they found is that the more adverse experiences you have—and when I talk about adverse experiences, I'm talking about child maltreatment, family violence in the home, suicide, poverty. The more of those that you have, the higher the likelihood is that as an adult you yourself are going to suffer from mental illness, have challenges with addictions, that you are going to grow up and live your life in poverty. Not only that but it actually predisposes you to very serious diseases like cancer, diabetes, lung disease. All these things could be really prevented and, of course, once they develop, they are expensive for taxpayers to intervene.

The cost of child maltreatment in Canada is expensive. There is a great study by McKenna and Bowlus. What they say is the cost of doing nothing, because somehow we feel that doing something, investing more money costs us, but sometimes we don't sit back and reflect on the cost of doing nothing.... The cost of child maltreatment in Canada in terms of loss of taxation revenue, more social assistance programs and those types of things, as of 2003 when they did the study, was close to $16 billion.

I'm sure if I announced to all of you today that you had $16 billion to invest in other things that Canadians care about, you would all have a number of things come to mind. We can get there by investing early with children. The key things are that we go after those drivers that cut across those disadvantages for first nations kids: poverty, poor housing, and substance misuse. How do we do that?

I'd like to bring to your attention one of the innovative programs coming out of the United States. For far too long, people have said, “Well, poverty, that's too big for us to tackle. That's outside of my department, outside of my ministry, outside of child welfare.” That's naive thinking, quite frankly, because poverty is at the centre of so much disadvantage in Canadian society.

What the American government did—and I think you'll agree with me that $15 million from the American government is a very modest investment—was to decide that they would provide $15 million to child welfare workers, because they noticed in their own data that 30% of American children who go into child welfare care are going there primarily for housing-related issues. That's not dissimilar in Canada, and of course, is even more the case for first nations children.

They said that they were going to give those people housing vouchers so that child welfare workers could work in tandem with housing professionals to pay the first and last months' rent, to pay for heat, or to pay for renovation of a bathroom for a child with a disability.

What ended up happening with that $15-million investment is that they saved 7,500 kids from going into foster care, and they saved the taxpayer $131 million, because placing a child in foster care costs far more than keeping kids safely in their homes. I think you could all agree with me that the best place for kids is in their family homes.

There are investments out there that we can make.

We know that the federal government is directly involved with first nations children. Although we can make the argument that for other children, education and child welfare are a provincial jurisdiction, for first nations children the federal government has a direct role in the provision of child welfare for 163,000 children.

You are custodians. You have the opportunity to influence the well-being of those kids directly.

One of the ways you can do that is, of course, by remedying the long-standing inequalities that exist in child welfare, education, and health. There's no sense denying it. Every report that's done independently and even by government itself confirms those inequalities.

What people have been too slow about is addressing it in a bound.... What do I mean by that? There's been this process in Canada where we've become really comfortable, I guess, with the notion of incremental equality for first nations children. I remember reading a report back in my office that asked if anyone could “hazard a guess as to what year or what century” real progress will be made towards the equality of first nations children in education. When that was written in 1967, I was three years old. The same is true in child welfare.

What do we do about this? We have an opportunity to avail ourselves of the solutions that are before us. These are not problems that have not been costed out. There are evidence-informed solutions that we could be undertaking and funding so that we know the money is actually going to where it needs to go. However, we must have a government and a cross-party commitment that we are not going to save money on...that racial discrimination will not be a fiscal restraint measure.

We are before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal at the moment trying to get equality in first nations child welfare funding. I tell people that the most shocking thing about that case is that it's even necessary at all in a wealthy country such as ours.

I want to draw back a little bit on Jordan's principle. Many of you were there on that day in December 2007 when that passed in the House of Commons unanimously. What Jordan's principle says, simply, is that where government services are available to all other children, first nations children should be able to access them on the same terms. It's the fairness principle that all Canadians, regardless of party, believe in. That's why it got a unanimous vote.

However, it has not been implemented properly. In fact, the Federal Court recently ruled in a case against the federal government about its implementation. It's the case of Beadle and Pictou Landing versus the Attorney General of Canada. It comes out of Nova Scotia. It's the case of a single mother who is caring for a son with high special needs, with cerebral palsy, etc. She did so for 15 years with very little public support, but then she had a double stroke so severe that she cannot care for him physically. All she wants is the level of care respite while she recovers from her stroke and is then able to resume her responsibilities.

There's a Supreme Court of Nova Scotia decision that says children in cases like Jeremy's should receive whatever level of care according to his needs and not some arbitrary value. It's called the Boudreau decision. The aboriginal affairs department decided that no, they weren't going to pay attention to the decision. They were going to provide a fixed value for Jeremy's care, which was assessed by health professionals to be insufficient.

They said to the mother, “Well, you could place the child in child welfare care and we will pay for that, or we can place him in an institution and we'll pay for that.” As you can imagine, as parents yourselves, or grandparents or aunts or uncles, that's not an acceptable option when you love your kid. She filed an action against the federal government suggesting that the failure to implement Jordan's principle was a violation of the charter. The Federal Court agreed that the federal government had erred in its decision-making in denying the service and ordered the federal government to pay for it.

The Department of Aboriginal Affairs, through the Department of Justice, is now appealing that decision at the Federal Court of Appeal. Most difficult of all is they're actually asking Ms. Beadle to pay for the court fees. It's difficult for me to understand how this is in the interest of public policy at all.

In terms of some solutions, we have them before us. Implement Jordan's principle fully. At a minimum with the implementation of Jordan's principle, please reflect on the question of whether recovering legal costs from a single mother, who is caring for a high special needs child and recovering from a stroke, is in the best interest of Canadians, or whether investing those funds and keeping him at home is in the best interest.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

Could I ask you, Dr. Blackstock, to wrap it up as quickly as possible. Thank you.

[Dr. Cindy Blackstock]

We need equitable funding in child welfare. There's an opportunity before us with Premier Selinger putting on the next agenda of the Council of the Federation, the request that first nations child welfare be put at the top of the agenda, which is great news. It provides a political platform for discussion and cooperation among governments. I'd encourage the federal government to do that as well.

We should consider something along the lines of a Canadian version of the adverse childhood study, not only for the provisions of good public policy for children, but because it cuts across so many areas in the federal government, it would be a good predictor for health outcomes, as they are a big part of the budget for the federal government.

All these things could be informed by this very insignificant, relatively, amount of funding. You might want to consider that family unification program.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

Thank you.

Because we're so far over time, I'm going to give you back the floor, Dr. Bennett, for your last two and half minutes, which you can use to allow the witness to finish, or however you wish.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Seeing we have very little time, I'd rather hear from you as to what would make your heart go pitter-patter if you saw it in our report.

First, Cindy, we've heard some of the terrible stories, the Highway of Tears. Do you have any experience of the reasons, including violence, why sometimes people are fleeing foster care?

[Dr. Cindy Blackstock]

We hear lots of stories that show that children who are maltreated themselves are more likely to end up in violent situations as adults. We also have the situation where women who are in domestic violence situations in their families are in a difficult situation, because child welfare jurisdictions require that this be reported. Witnessing domestic violence is considered to be a definition of maltreatment in most jurisdictions, but many women are therefore reluctant to get the help they need because they're afraid their kids are going to be taken away. This whole cycle is in place.

That's why the answer of investing in children's services and in family supports at the earliest stages makes good economic sense. It also would be a good predictor of trying to roll down the incidents of violence against women as women grow up, and keeping families safe for those women who are in that situation where domestic violence is a reality in their families.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Diane.

[Diane Redsky]

I would just like to say that in terms of a profile of who are the young people who are being sexually exploited and trafficked, if you look at a province like Manitoba and at Tracia’s Trust and their statistics, 400 sexually exploited youth are currently on the streets in Winnipeg, 70% of them are aboriginal and 80% are female. They're as young as 13. We've actually seen younger, from my experience. Some 70% of them are children in care. That's another really important risk factor for kids. Some 90% have a history of trauma. This is also really important: the average grade level is seven.

These are really important opportunities to address those gaps and barriers, particularly when it comes to young people and what makes them vulnerable.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Thanks very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

Thank you very much.

We now go to Ms. Brown, for seven minutes also.