Status of Women Committee on Jan. 13th, 2011

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

I'd like to hear from somebody else.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Well, we don't have the time, because with 30 seconds left we can't do it in a fulsome way.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Can Lisa Michell answer briefly?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

No.

Seriously, if you can do this in 20 seconds, Ms. Michell, do so.

We will have to go to Ms. Loeppky in another round to answer the rest of your question, Anita.

Ms. Michell, you have 20 seconds.

[Lisa Michell]

In terms of the RCMP, there is a relationship issue. It stems from the Indian residential schools, when they came and removed our children and took them forcibly. And yes, we realize they're working towards it. They're coming into the schools and building partnerships, but when they're on the street, it's a little bit of a different story.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you. Very good.

Madame Demers from the Bloc Québécois.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Good morning. Thank you for being here today.

I find the group of witnesses testifying here very interesting. It is a very different, but very interesting, group than the others we have heard from this week.

Carolyn, I'm wondering about something. Problems with children are starting to crop up in the other provinces. The services responsible for protecting children are starting to remove them from aboriginal communities when there are problems with the family, with young mothers, and so on. These services remove them and take them outside the community for a certain period of time. The same problem existed during the era of residential schools. Even though they aren't being sent to schools or residential schools, they're being sent to foster families and homes where they are cut off from their culture and environment.

A little earlier, you said that you wanted to try to do something different and focus on prevention. That gave me a big smile. We learned yesterday that we're doing the same thing in Saskatchewan as we're doing in Quebec, and that's a mistake. I think that, in 15 or 20 years, we'll see the same problems cropping up as those created by the residential schools.

Could you explain further what you're trying to do here, in Manitoba?

[Carolyn Loeppky]

In Manitoba we have 17 child and family services agencies that are specifically managed and run by first nations and/or Métis people. They have the responsibility for oversight and for mandating those agencies, using provincial legislation that gives them the framework with which to protect children and provide services. The agencies are responsive to a governance model that is also managed by first nations and Métis people.

We still have the problem of increased numbers of children in care. We are now working on a model where we're going to try to look at providing additional resources and services for prevention and early intervention services. It's really focused on enhancing the capacity of the family. New resources specifically dedicated to looking at ways to try to reduce the number of children coming into care is something that has started, and will be growing over the next number of years.

We feel, as one of the panel members said early this morning, that the place where children belong is with their families and in their homes. In order to do that, we have to look at different ways of helping family members in order to support them in the parenting and in the nurturance of children.

It's a challenge--

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

I'm sorry to interrupt, but I don't have a lot of time.

Lisa, you have talked at great length about young women who end up on the streets and have no choice but to become sex trade workers. We know that most people who are in prisons in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta are aboriginal. The government is currently investing a lot of money in making existing prisons bigger and in building new prisons.

Do you think this is a good investment, or should the money be spent on prevention programs to help these people to get off the streets, to stop drinking and doing what they are doing to feed their children?

[Lisa Michell]

Absolutely I would say that is 100% true. Housing more people in jail--that's not the solution.

One of the big things is that when a mother or a parent needs her family the most, what happens is that the children get removed. There was an incident where a violent offence happened to a young infant. All of the children were removed from that home, at a time when she really needed her family the most.

One of the big things, too, is that we need to really look at working extensively with the family, with the grandparents, the uncles, the aunties, the cousins--all of that. We need to look at that.

I worked in the child welfare system 10 or 15 years ago. Back then it was like this: you can't have the foster parents and the parents together.

Well, about a year and a half ago, I worked with an agency where that wasn't the point. The program was all about the child.

That's what needs to happen. The programs need to be all about the child, because you know what? The child is now going to be removed and placed into a different setting. I'm a product of the “sixties scoop”, so I have a little bit of an understanding of that. When you take the child away from the community, and if there's no access, then how is that child going to learn about their culture? How is that child going to learn about who they are?

At the age of seven, I knew already that there was something missing in my home, but I didn't know what it was. It wasn't until later, when I met my biological dad, that I realized, “Oh, now I know what was missing: my culture.” Still to this day, unfortunately, I don't have my language.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Mr. Robinson, one of the problems we've experienced in Quebec is the fact that the RCMP does not work well with the local police. For example, when two young girls disappeared in Gatineau, RCMP officers were in charge of one of the missing girls, and local police forces were in charge of the other. They did not compare notes and, unfortunately, the case remains unresolved. Those two young girls are still missing.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Irene Mathyssen]

Very quickly, Mr. Robinson.

[A/Commr Bill Robinson]

We have an integrated task force where our police agencies are working together. We've reviewed approximately 84 files, and we're reviewing more. We're looking for similarities between the investigations. So we're working very closely together. All of the files from all of the police agencies will be touched, they will be reviewed, as will the relationships across the country.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Irene Mathyssen]

I'm so sorry, but time is up. Thank you.

Madam Glover, please, for seven minutes.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

Thank you, Madam Chairman.

I too want to welcome you here and thank you for the hard work you do for our communities on a day-to-day basis.

I do want to acknowledge, for the police officers who are present here today, the loss of a police family member: Sergeant Ryan Russell, of course, was lost in the ultimate sacrifice yesterday.

I also want to acknowledge, for the RCMP's benefit, a first that has occurred; I want to acknowledge the appointment of Chief Superintendent Russ Mirastyi, who will officially take over as the commanding officer--the first first nations commanding officer--of “F” Division. I commend these aboriginal success stories. I want to highlight them, and the reason I do that is because during these kinds of sessions we hear the bad, but we rarely hear the good, and I want to give the RCMP an opportunity to address some of the things that have been said here today. I guess I'm a little bit spoiled because I happen to be a police officer on a leave of absence, so I've had relationships with the RCMP and other jurisdictions. It is a family. So it's unfortunate to hear that sometimes they don't get to talk.

But with the RCMP, when Ms. Michell mentioned jurisdictional problems with task forces, can you address how we overcome that? There's $10 million that has been allocated to the missing and murdered aboriginal women's file, and I believe a part of that money may help to prevent that gap from reoccurring. So if you would, tell me your impression of how that would help and what your experience is here in Manitoba jurisdictionally.

[A/Commr Bill Robinson]

Just starting in Manitoba, I think we've had many success stories here, going as far back as 2003. The creation of the task force and the missing persons project that we undertook in 2007, to identify all missing women where foul play was suspected and looking at all missing persons, I think was a huge step forward for us.

The relationship here is one where the homicide units within the WPS, the RCMP, the Brandon Police Service, and all the police agencies would need routinely to discuss cases of interest. This is certainly not done in isolation in Manitoba. I think the money that's going to be put into improving systems and altering systems like CPIC, where you have a broader ability to put case pictures and information on CPIC--which of course is the Canadian Police Information Centre and is used by all police agencies across the country--will be a great step forward in the child exploitation area and in the missing children area, where you're going to create a database. It will again provide all police agencies and all agencies across the country the step forward in order to take us from where we are today to a formalized system where we will be able to track this stuff.

In Manitoba, as I've said, we have Winnipeg Police Service members and their files sitting in the same room as RCMP members and their files, and actually doing analytical comparisons. We've identified 84 files to date that are getting very stringent looks. We will be progressing further and looking at more files. You know--

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

Can I interrupt?

It sounds like those measures that you talked about that are being implemented, particularly CPIC, would prevent what Ms. Demers is talking about. It's tragic to hear that that happens, and it's good that we're addressing that.

I do want to also take note of what Ms. Loeppky said about some of the relationships. I know when she was talking about social workers having challenges--because they can't do this alone; they can't help aboriginal women alone. But I know, just from my experience in the Winnipeg Police Service--we had a domestic violence unit that partnered police officers and social workers. Again, we removed that jurisdictional bias.

I'm aware that there are already measures in place in the Winnipeg Police Service to do that in the vice unit, because they work very closely with many of our vulnerable aboriginal women, many of our abused aboriginal women, working shoulder to shoulder with social workers.

Does the RCMP do something similar?

[A/Commr Bill Robinson]

Yes, absolutely. We begin working with the youth, of course, in schools, with our youth workers and with our in-classroom officers. We work shoulder to shoulder with Child and Family Services. In fact, recently I worked with a member in Thompson. We worked one full evening beside a Child and Family Services worker, looking at some of the problems, and of course they were right there when we needed them. This goes on every day across Manitoba, not just in RCMP jurisdictions and Winnipeg jurisdictions, but also in our smaller municipalities like Brandon and Rivers and this type of thing.

I think another important piece to all of this, of course, is what the next step of this review capacity is going to be and how we continue to talk to one another as police agencies across Canada. I think the days are certainly behind us where we no longer talk.... Our analysts continually talk. We have ViCLAS, the violent crime analysis system, which is where we enter data on murdered and missing women. Of course, this is a nationwide system, and it provides clarity to similar types of acts and offences against women and men right across this country. The additional moneys will do nothing but increase and broaden these programs we have out there.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

Thank you.

I don't have much time left, but I did want to acknowledge all of the yellow T-shirts in the audience. Thank you so much for representing.... You're doing a great job of portraying a message without having to say anything, so thank you for being here.

I read something in the newspaper about an exhibit in another province on missing and murdered aboriginal women, which your group spoke up about and tried to stop. It was a depiction of Robert Pickton's victims. Do you know anything about that, Lisa? Can you tell me why this is something that you would say no to and why we shouldn't bring about awareness this way? To counter that, what would you like to see done to bring awareness to where it needs to be?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Lisa, I'm going to have to ask you to take 20 seconds to answer that, please.

You're over time.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

You can submit it in writing to the committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

But I think the committee might like to hear the answer.

[Lisa Forbes]

Actually, if I have 20 seconds, what I'd just like to say is that we would like to echo some things we've heard today regarding stable core funding towards organizations and programs that are working on domestic violence and other social programs, including shelters and safe houses.

I'm sorry, but I'm not able to answer that question directly anyway, as I'm not familiar with that initiative.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

Now I'd like to go to Ms. Mathyssen for the NDP.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you for being here. I very much appreciate the expertise you bring to us.

I would like to ask everyone a question, but I'm going to start with Lisa Forbes and Shawna because I know the time is limited.

My question is in regard to the survey you outlined. There were some very interesting things there. I would like to hear more about it, particularly in regard to some of these things that have been asked by my colleagues pertaining to what we heard in Saskatchewan about the very negative attitudes young women face when they go to social services, or that are sometimes from the police: that passing of judgment that makes it impossible for them to get the help and support they need. You mentioned some of that.

You also mentioned the news media in terms of anti-racism training. Now, we know there is some training going on, but if you could touch on that survey and some of those specifics, I'd appreciate it.