Thank you, Madam Chair.
Members of the committee, good morning.
Kimberly Lavoie and I are very pleased to be here today to talk about the programs and initiatives that Public Safety Canada has developed to build safer communities and improve the lives of women and girls.
I will briefly outline the department's initiatives and will then give you more information on a promising practice implemented through the Action Plan to Address Family Violence and Violent Crimes Against Aboriginal Women and Girls.
Women and girls live in families and communities and our work at the Department of Public Safety focuses on increasing community safety and ensuring that these are safe environments for them. These initiatives fall into four main areas: crime prevention; supporting victims of crime; combatting human trafficking, sexual exploitation and abuse; and developing aboriginal community safety plans.
With respect to crime prevention, Public Safety's public national crime prevention strategy provides time-limited funding to communities and organizations to implement and evaluate crime prevention interventions that have proven successful in other jurisdictions. They are focused on four main priority areas: first, children, youth, and young adults who are at risk of becoming involved in the criminal justice system; second, communities that are experiencing high-priority crime issues such as drugs, gangs, weapon-related crime, hate crime and bullying; third, high-risk offenders reintegrating into communities; and finally, aboriginal communities.
In fiscal year 2013-14, the national crime prevention strategy funded 101 projects through a number of different funds. An example of a successful crime prevention intervention supported by Public Safety is the program Strengthening the Spirit: Building a comprehensive response to family violence in aboriginal communities. The program targeted aboriginal families at high risk of violent behaviour from three first nation communities surrounding the city of Calgary. Its objective was to reduce the incidence of domestic violence in families, reduce the risk of violence for children, and support the healing and wellness of families. A total of 34 treatment groups were held and a majority of participants were women. Among the 47% of participants who fully completed the program, there was a 6% self-reported rate of reoffending whereas the rate for those who did not complete the program was 34%. The total cost to implement the program was approximately $700,000 and 71% of that was funded by the national crime prevention strategy. This program continues to run in all of the sites in which it was piloted.
With respect to supporting victims, Public Safety Canada houses the national office for victims, a central resource that offers information and referrals to victims who interact with the Correctional Service of Canada and the Parole Board of Canada. It also provides input on policy and legislative initiatives, education about victims' issues for members of the criminal justice system, and networking and support to victims in their interactions with the criminal justice system.
As well, the Minister of Public Safety co-sponsored with the Minister of Justice the Canadian victims bill of rights, which will enshrine the right of victims to information about the offender, protection from the offender, participation in the criminal justice process including during court and parole hearings, and restitution. It has also created the remedial process for breaches of these rights. This legislation is intended to assist all victims of crime and provide them with a more effective voice in the criminal justice system.
With respect to human trafficking, in June 2012, the Minister of Public Safety launched the national action plan to combat human trafficking. This action plan has a four pillar approach that consolidates efforts by focusing on the four Ps.
First is the prevention of trafficking by enhancing training of our police, border agents, and other front-line workers so that they recognize the signs of human trafficking, and by raising awareness among Canadians and then working with communities to identify people and places most at risk.
It also offers protection and assistance to victims of human trafficking by increasing financial support for victims' services and identifying and protecting domestic and foreign nationals in Canada who are vulnerable to trafficking, including females aged 15 to 21.
It helps in the prosecution of offenders by strengthening the laws within our criminal justice system, providing specialized training and education for prosecutors and law enforcement, and improving intelligence collection and collaboration. To help achieve this, the government launched a law enforcement team to conduct human trafficking investigations.
Finally, it works in partnership with stakeholders to build on existing policies and tools, to ensure a comprehensive and coordinated approach, and to promote strong research and better information sharing to improve our methods of collecting, tracking, and reporting on data related to human trafficking. The Government of Canada is investing more than $25 million over four years to implement this plan.
I'd like to turn to our work on community safety plans in aboriginal communities. This is something I'm very excited about. As part of the government's action plan to address family violence and violent crimes against aboriginal women and girls, Public Safety will expand its successful initiative of working with aboriginal communities both on and off reserve across Canada to develop community safety plans. The action plan, as you know, is built on three pillars: preventing violence, supporting victims, and protecting aboriginal women and girls. Community safety plans support the first pillar, preventing violence.
The driver for Public Safety's approach is that many aboriginal communities do not have the capacity to work collectively to identify and address their safety needs. This leads either to no effort to improve safety or to crime prevention investments that do not target the real problems. The objective of this program is to support communities in developing community safety plans that define the risks that lead to crime and victimization, build on existing strengths, and identify gaps in responding to those risks.
The community safety plans serve as a blueprint to address the root causes of victimization and help communities determine what resources are available within the community and to more effectively target external resources, such as federal or provincial programming. Funding is not given to the community itself but is directed to providing training and capacity building to mobilize the community to find solutions to their safety issues. Public Safety reaches out to communities to determine their interest. These will include communities in regions the RCMP's analysis has identified as having a high incidence of violent crime perpetrated against women and girls.
Once the community's leadership has agreed to participate in this process and created a community core group to promote positive change, a trained aboriginal facilitator delivers a series of workshops to build skill sets and identify gaps and solutions. Ultimately, they will develop a safety plan that outlines an integrated response to addressing the causes of victimization and responds to community safety issues.
This builds on an initiative that was first funded by the Government of Canada in 2010. Since then, 53 communities, including three urban centres, have participated in mobilization workshops where community members discuss needs and resources. Ten of these communities have developed targeted safety plans. Results suggest that this approach supports aboriginal communities to address issues in a more comprehensive way. It allows communities to take ownership of issues and potential solutions and fully participate in the government's response.
Many aboriginal women grow up in marginalized situations without support networks as a result of difficult circumstances at home and in their communities. In some communities violence has become normalized, creating a sense of hopelessness that often seems inescapable. While not specifically targeted at women and children, by working with these communities to build their capacity to develop safe communities, we will reduce the number of aboriginal women going missing, being murdered, or being victims of domestic violence.
We attribute the success to date to the fact that this process utilizes an integrated, comprehensive approach to move communities from fixing problems to building communities into civil and sustainable societies that build upon the strengths and gifts of the people in each unique community. It is not a one-size-fits-all approach, and the strength lies in the ability to allow communities to determine their own priorities and support them to find ways of moving forward using a strength-based approach.
Public Safety will continue to work with partners at all levels of government to continue to support the development of community safety plans: police, the justice system, and most importantly aboriginal families, communities and organizations.