Evidence of meeting #73 for Status of Women in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was community.
A video is available from Parliament.
5:15 p.m.
Councillor, Berens River First Nation
It's because they have a treaty, and section 35 says that Canada hereby recognizes and affirms “existing aboriginal and treaty rights”. You can't argue that her treaty rights are not existing, because she spent 19 years negotiating them.
5:15 p.m.
Voices
Oh, oh!
5:15 p.m.
Councillor, Berens River First Nation
For my ancestors, on the other hand, the treaty party showed up in Berens River with a draft on September 20, 1876, with a “fill in the blanks”. In nine hours they rolled through Berens River. Apparently it's a done deal.
5:20 p.m.
Liberal
Carolyn Bennett Liberal St. Paul's, ON
So if concurrent jurisdiction is going to be honoured in legislation, what would it look like?
5:20 p.m.
Councillor, Berens River First Nation
Well, we tried that after the aboriginal justice initiative, with the framework, trying to negotiate the implementation of self-government, so that we would have our laws flow out of section 35, which was argued for a lot, and hard. There are still some—there are always going to be some—indigenous people who don't agree with that, but Canada has shown us that they have a very big army. You pretty much have to agree or you get killed. That's how it goes.
I'm hoping we negotiate out of section 35 and not out of the 91(24), and then when there's conflict we go to court and argue about that.
5:20 p.m.
Liberal
Carolyn Bennett Liberal St. Paul's, ON
To answer Ms. Ambler's question in terms of where the pushback is coming from, it's that people feel they weren't listened to.
5:20 p.m.
Councillor, Berens River First Nation
Well, yes. It reminded me of when my husband used to hit me. I'd say, “Stop, stop, stop.” He never stopped. I finally left.
You can say that you talked to a million Indians, but if you don't do what we're saying, what's the point of the talking?
5:20 p.m.
Liberal
5:20 p.m.
Liberal
5:20 p.m.
Liberal
Carolyn Bennett Liberal St. Paul's, ON
At the time, the government was cautioned not to cherry-pick her report, that it had to do all of it.
5:20 p.m.
Councillor, Berens River First Nation
Over the coming days, I think you'll hear from others far more articulate and diplomatic than I am who will make the same point I've made.
5:20 p.m.
Liberal
Carolyn Bennett Liberal St. Paul's, ON
Tell me what a protection order would mean in your first nation.
5:20 p.m.
Councillor, Berens River First Nation
If we had a protection order.... Well, first of all, we would have to determine who owns the house. We would have no idea, because some of them are so old and have transferred between hands so many times...and they may or may not have a mortgage.
Let's just assume that we can determine the legal standing of the house and that council has made a decision on who owns that house. Then I guess the RCMP would take that order, assuming you could get to a judge, because the judge only comes in once a month, and assuming that you could get on the docket.
I don't really know. You'd finally get it and they would have made up ten times and broken up ten times and then made up again.
That's not how domestic violence goes. The cycle of violence is a honeymoon until you can leave or make it up.
5:20 p.m.
Liberal
5:20 p.m.
Councillor, Berens River First Nation
It just looks good. It looks really good.
They joke around in some Métis communities, asking “How is it going?”, and they say, “Ah, they're peace-bonding it again.”
5:20 p.m.
NDP
The Chair NDP Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe
Thank you. I will have to interrupt you here.
Thank you, Madame Bennett.
We will now start our second round of questions.
Ms. Young, you have five minutes.
5:20 p.m.
Conservative
Wai Young Conservative Vancouver South, BC
Thank you so much.
I want to second what my colleagues have said all around. I think we're very touched by your testimony, and very hopeful, too, particularly, Chief Baird, with the results of your treaty negotiations, and that you have, over 16 years, successfully negotiated a treaty.
We've been listening to testimony from numerous people, and we have heard some very startling things. We heard from women yesterday who went through the court system for 12 years and spent a lot of money, only to be told that there is no jurisdiction because they're on reserve lands.
We heard you today saying who wouldn't want to stay in their own home with their own children in their own community. I guess what we can do is go on about how much consultation was done: there was $8 million spent and 103 meetings.... We can go on about that. We can go on about the fact that there are billions of dollars spent, and whether it's for health, justice, or other programs and services throughout, we can say it will never be enough. We know that.
But having said all of that, what this bill tries to do is simply provide some jurisdictional legislation, so that the gap that has existed for 25 years.... For 25 years, if a woman experienced violence in the home on reserve, she had no right to stay in her own home with her own children, to be in her own community; she had to leave—and has been leaving, which has resulted in the host of other issues and problems you talked about. Many of us have worked in the downtown eastside, or in the cities, in shelters, etc.
The issue at hand is that we know no legislation is perfect—that was testimony we heard—and we know that protection orders save children's and women's lives. We also know that this is not an imposition of an act. It is to say that this should happen and that the first nations can develop their own acts within a certain timeframe, and that if they do not do so, this will be the concurrent act in place until they do so.
Here is my question to Chief Baird. You have negotiated over 16 years a treaty under which you now have concurrent jurisdiction. In your concurrent jurisdiction, you actually have matrimonial property rights, because you've accepted for now the provincial family act.
Why was that important you to?
5:25 p.m.
Former Chief, Tsawwassen First Nation, As an Individual
First of all, I have to say I'm not a chief anymore. A lot of people still call me that.
Secondly, it's not a matter of actively accepting the provincial matrimonial act. We were busy passing 23 other laws. Those 23 other laws were more important, because they dealt with property ownership, with who were entitled to be Tsawwassen members, who were entitled to own Tsawwassen property. If you don't have that sorted out, if you don't have that regime, it's really hard to deal with matrimonial property.
5:25 p.m.
Conservative
Wai Young Conservative Vancouver South, BC
And we will take another 25 years and have women and children die because we're waiting for all those other things to be negotiated—because they will take time. It took you 16 years.
5:25 p.m.
Former Chief, Tsawwassen First Nation, As an Individual
There are plenty of other life-and-death issues in first nations communities. Is this the right life-and-death issue to choose at this point? I don't know. In some ways, I'm relieved that the Tsawwassen community is beyond this, because we have replaced the Indian Act.
5:25 p.m.
Conservative
Wai Young Conservative Vancouver South, BC
Because you have the protection that we are offering now to these different communities across Canada.