Thank you, Madam Chair.
Good morning, ministers.
Minister Ambrose, I want to commend you on your French. Thank you very much. I also want to commend you for giving the Native Women's Association of Canada $1.9 million so they could continue with their project Evidence to Action. It was very encouraging to hear that.
However, when we toured aboriginal communities, one of the most urgent problems we saw had to do with shelters. There were not enough shelters, or they did not receive adequate funding to operate properly, or they were too far away from the communities. As a result, shelters were having to take money that would normally be used for operating costs to pay the travel costs of women who wanted to come to the shelter, given that the plane ticket for one woman cost between $1,500 and $2,000.
Did you take that into account in the plan you talked about earlier to reduce violence against aboriginal women? That is one of the biggest problems.
We also find it appalling that there is no transitional second-stage housing for these women after the shelter. They often have to live at shelters for nearly a year, even though they are not normally supposed to spend more than 30 days in a shelter for battered women, and certainly no more than 1 to 3 months.
Minister Nicholson, we know that a large chunk of the $10 million went to public safety, even though a lot could have been done from a justice standpoint to improve the situation of aboriginal women. How much of that money is administered by your department? And what specifically are you doing in your department to improve the situation of aboriginal women?
Lastly, what is happening with prisons? It is a fact that aboriginal women make up a large part of the female prison population, and very often, these women do not have access to the various programs out there. Was that also a consideration when you developed your programs?