Status of Women Committee on May 1st, 2013

[The Chair, NDP, Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe]

You have one minute and a half.

I would ask, Madame Baird, if you could speak a bit louder.

[Kim Baird]

Sorry, I've got a low voice.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Ms. Jack, I made a note that you talked a lot about housing. This is obviously an important issue.

Then you talked about healing and how couples want to heal. I guess my question to you is, if they want to do this, isn't it better for women to be able to do that in their own homes and not from a shelter, or running away or looking for shelter for themselves and their children? Isn't it better if they have the right to stay in their own home? Won't that make the healing process easier?

[Joan Jack]

Not in a small community.

Domestic violence is a really complicated issue. When I was beaten up, I had to decide whether I was willing to live or die. That's the decision that women or men who are abused make. So the house is—

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

I'm saying when they're at the point where they want to heal, the way you—

[Joan Jack]

That's not going to work. How are they going to have access to the house?

There's no court in Berens River. Of those 631 communities, there's no court in about 600 of them. Once a month—

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

But if they have the right to the home, then—

[Joan Jack]

Who's going to enforce it?

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Who enforces it now? Who enforces the fact—

[Joan Jack]

Well, we just got the RCMP in Berens River the other day.

Sorry, I shouldn't cut you off.

[The Chair, NDP, Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe]

I have to interrupt you anyway.

Your seven minutes is done.

I will now give the floor to Ms. Ashton.

You have seven minutes.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Thank you, Councillor Jack and former Chief Baird.

We really appreciate your coming, especially on short notice, given the time constrictions that have been applied to this very serious issue in this committee. We truly appreciate hearing from you.

Ms. Jack, I want to go back to the questioning from my colleague.

What is the reality in a community like Berens River? We're talking about this piece of legislation, and obviously there is a gap in terms of making sure that aboriginal women have their rights respected and acknowledged in the law.

What is the actual reality? Could you speak to the situation in terms of housing—perhaps how long the waiting list is—and in terms of policing and a women's shelter? I'll leave it at that for now.

[Joan Jack]

The situation in terms of the actual violence is bad. We are struggling with our addictions as a consequence of colonization. I had a woman call me the other day because I'm on council. To cut a long story short, I asked where she was and she said she'd locked herself in her bedroom. I asked if she wanted me to come to the house, because that's what leaders in the communities do. The RCMP won't necessarily go to the house—it's all about risk management. I have opened up my own home, because the violence is bad.

As for the waiting list, we have about 2,500 to 3,000 people on reserve, in a fly-in community, and the average house has around 10 people in it. So I guess the waiting list is until your great-great-grandchildren.... There are three or four generations living in each house.

I forgot your third point.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

It was about a women's shelter.

[Joan Jack]

I guess it would be nice. I'd like to see more of a women's healing and training centre, where women could learn that they have a voice and learn ways to disagree with their violator so that he or she heals.

There are a lot of women who beat up the men at home too. The domestic violence is mostly against the women, but there are men who are abused as well.

I would like to see more capacity-building for my people, so they can understand that their behaviour is really not a solution. People don't want to leave. They don't want to leave each other, for the most part. They want to raise their babies and their grandbabies. But they don't know how to do anything other than what they've been doing. It's the same with alcoholism anywhere.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

You spoke in your presentation about the programs that have been cut. I know the Aboriginal Healing Foundation was also involved in Berens River, as well as in other communities, at least across Manitoba, and of course Canada.

What is the situation in a community like Berens River, in terms of the treatment that victims and their abusers need to access in order to heal?

[Joan Jack]

We have the standard NNADAP funding out of FNIHB, but that doesn't really work either. It works well for those who are trained in the NNADAP program. They become enlightened and empowered, and their particular families become empowered. We try to run the programs in the community with what limited resources we have. But people don't want to go to the health centre. They don't want to walk in there and say “Hi, I need help.” It's embarrassing.

I think a broader approach needs to be taken to the whole revitalization of our identity. There are still children in Berens River who don't realize they're Indians. They don't realize that they're Anishnabe. Even though they're speaking the language, they don't realize who they are because colonization is so strong.

We're so filled with cultural self-hatred that we don't even teach that Frontier School Division is not raising up a whole bunch of treaty-savvy Indians on the east side there. No. If you go around Berens River and ask anybody....

That's why when I said “matrimonial real property” the other day, they said, “Where are you going?” I said...well, how do you explain? I'm going to Ottawa to talk? If I even said the words “matrimonial real property in my community, people would be like “What?”

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

One of the messages we're hearing—and we're looking forward to hearing from the AFN, the Native Women's Association, the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, and others—is around the consultation process and the real problems there.

You're obviously a councillor—I know, Ms. Baird, you spoke to the situation earlier—but was Berens River consulted?

As a councillor, are you aware of consultations, or even concerns that other first nations have raised, in the context of Bill S-2?

[Joan Jack]

Because I'm trained as a lawyer, and I'm supposed to be far more articulate and less brash than this, it's a very difficult situation when you actually go home and live in your community. You would think I would know, but nobody calls me—only the woman who's being abused, who I put in my loft.

I wanted to get a chance to answer. I didn't answer your question properly.

What we need to do is move to a land-based approach to healing, where we go out on our land and relearn who we are—to take responsibility for ourselves, to have pride, and to learn our language. Instead of sending our men to court, my husband said we should send them to the bush with the elders and they can't come out till they're fluent in their language. How about that for a sentence? Do you think that maybe while he's out there he might realize he shouldn't be beating up the woman he loves? It's wrong.

The solution to just pick up and leave—this legislation is promoting the further fracturing of our families. To pretend—to pretend—that we're doing something in Berens River about domestic violence, I don't think it will.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

On the capacity of provincial courts to deal with land codes on first nations, do you think they have that capacity now?

[Joan Jack]

No. We could. We're certainly intelligent enough. I did pass the bar. I can do it. But with what money? Where's the money? This is all good just on paper. It looks really good, and I got to fly to Ottawa, you know?

[The Chair, NDP, Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe]

Thank you, Ms. Jack.

Sorry to interrupt you.

I'll now turn it over to Ms. Crockatt.

You have seven minutes.

[Joan Crockatt, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Thank you very much.

First of all, I want to say to Joan Jack that I can hear the suffering and pain in what you're telling us today, and I appreciate that despite all your education and the fact that you've probably testified in many other circumstances, it still requires a lot of emotional reserves to come, and we appreciate hearing your stories.

I can take all the frustration you want to give, because you want to tell us how you've seen it, and we are attempting to hear you. So I do appreciate your coming and telling your stories.

You, too, as well, Chief Baird.

I want to talk about the fracturing of families.

Although this legislation is not a perfect panacea and it won't solve years of problems, we honestly believe that it will help to solve some problems with family abuse. I'm not saying it's going to be everything to all people, but right now the fracturing of families that we see...the women are being forced by band councils to leave the reserve when there's family abuse. They're the ones who are kicked out, who have to go the cities and find someone to live with, or stay in a shelter, and their lives are disrupted. We've heard over and over, through consultation with 103 communities and $8 million spend on consultation, that this is the best solution to the problem of housing that you talked about: give us a house. At least in this instance, the women and children would be able to stay in the house. It may not solve the fracturing of families, because the husband would have to leave, if he was the abuser in that case.

Do you really think it is better if the women and children have to leave the reserve and leave the house?

[Joan Jack]

I don't know. Each case is different.

I appreciate your kind words, and I assume they are real, so thank you.

[Joan Crockatt, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

They are.