Status of Women Committee on Nov. 14th, 2016

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Good afternoon, and welcome to the status of women committee. I hope all of our members enjoyed a good constituency week.

We are pleased to have with us today, from the Ontario Federation of Indigenous Friendship Centres, Sylvia Maracle and Courtney Skye.

As well, we have from the BC Lions football club, Jamie Taras.

Jamie, I understand you're involved with a program called More Than a Bystander.

[Jamie Taras, Director of Community Relations, BC Lions Football Club]

Yes. It's Be More Than a Bystander.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Excellent.

Thank you for being with us today. We're going to begin with the Ontario Federation providing their 10 minutes of comments. Then, Jamie, we'll let you make 10 minutes of comments, and then we'll go to our questions.

Sylvia, you can begin.

[Sylvia Maracle, Executive Director, Ontario Federation of Indigenous Friendship Centres]

Thank you.

I want to begin by acknowledging the first nation of the traditional territory on which we are meeting. I send my thanks and greetings to the Algonquin Nation, and also to you, the status of women committee, for interest in some of our programs and for giving us this space.

I'm not one to read, although they sent me to school and I can, but I'm much better in 10 minutes if I take you on a little trip. If you want to put your seat belts on, we'll do that.

I work for an organization of indigenous friendship centres. There are 28 in Ontario. We provide the services and programs—cultural, recreational, educational, social support, addiction, and anti-violence work—for people who live in towns and cities. We're part of a national network. There are 118 indigenous friendship centres, and probably some of you have one in your riding.

What we were asked to talk about is some of our programming, specifically working with men and boys about ending violence.

The federation has a long history of doing this. We have enjoyed fairly long and committed support from the province, through a beginning with the NDP, through Conservatives, and through Liberals. Really since we began in 1971, but formally in the early 1990s, we began programming.

For a long time, we worked from the perspective of the victim. We provided supports, circles, counselling, and some court support, through what I think is still called the aboriginal courtwork program. Everybody is changing their lexicon, and we all have to rush to keep up, I guess.

A number of years ago, it came to us that the only way we were going to end violence against indigenous women, which is who I am here to talk about, is for men to stop it. It's a simple answer. It's a hard process. We had to look at what we were doing and what we could do better. We also have learned in the past 30 years of doing this that the answers for our community have to be distinct. They are not going to be the same thing that the mainstream or everyone else does.

We've also found that working with men takes some savvy in getting them to come in and begin to feel and not just to talk, and not having to go to a program. It's not a thing you do while you're in provincial or federal jail, but it's something that's important.

One of the programs in particular that I want to talk about is named Kizhaay Anishinaabe Niin, which is Ojibwa for “I am a kind man”. It speaks to a long history of not having violence, of not behaving in that way. To make it easier—if it is easier for you in English—it means “I am a kind man”.

The elder who named it was very clear that it's about taking responsibility. It's about picking up your culture and traditions, a tradition that does not in any way, shape, or form tolerate violence against women, young women, or girls. It couldn't be packaged nicely in terms of family violence. Sometimes we have to have a verb in this, and it has to be about ending violence. It can't just be about wanting to talk about it forever.

Kizhaay very recently was expanded to a number of sites in Ontario, to all of our friendship centres, and there are a few other places we deliver it. It has four components. The first one is education, acknowledgement that sometimes things become normalized for you and you don't understand that you were raised and taught violence. Children learn what they live, so people who had an experience where there was violence in their lives, of course, went on to continue that.

It was also to re-establish our traditional teachings, long conversations with respect to residential schools, child welfare, federal corrections, to all kinds of reasons that people have been moved and displaced from understanding our culture.

It's to inspire men to help other men, and for them to know that any violence against women can't be solely the responsibility of indigenous women or all women, that men have a role to play.

Last but not least, it's to support men who choose not to use violence. We do that through a variety of programming, including cultural programming. We have a course that runs 12 weeks or 16 weeks. It has a curriculum. It deals with histories of violence, intergenerational trauma. It talks about examining your own attitude and beginning to change it toward your relationships, your intimate relationships in particular. It has one-on-one counselling supports, group-based activities, circles, and a variety of activities where men can network, can support each other. It is a very simple model.

Indigenous men in Kenora supported take-back-the-night initiatives. They got a local business involved. It gave them coffee, and they handed out coffee all night and protected the parade route. They encouraged men to come and be supportive. While they were there they were teaching them very simple ways of dealing with their power and pulling back and, even if they were just walking in the same direction, not having to walk behind a woman. They could wait a few minutes. They could walk across the road. They could do all kinds of very simple things that lots of people unfortunately don't know about. We can have all kinds of public education campaigns, but if they're not targeted at certain people, they're not in a language or if they're not produced in ways that are familiar to our community, they're not going to be particularly relevant.

The other issue I have to mention here is that not all violence that is directed at young indigenous women and girls and women generally comes from inside our community. It's important that a committee like yours take a broad perspective. When taking a broad perspective, you can't forget that indigenous issues may not exactly follow your public education proposals or your campaigns. There may be other things.

We have created a series of recommendations for you. One is that you create a national initiative that is focused on any violence against indigenous girls and young women, which is the mandate you asked us to talk about today. In that program you also need to consider young people and youth. The earlier we normalize positive behaviours, and less violence, the more successful we're going to be. We need to be able to transmit it not just to youth groups where some violence in relationships will already have been learned and will occur, but as early as we can.

In Kizhaay we have a young men's peer program and a young men's mentorship program where a young man works with our Kizhaay workers in the community and learns to talk about this among his peer groups. We also believe that indigenous cultural competency and anti-racism training, which is part of what the Truth and Reconciliation Commission talked about, is good for everybody and we should do that and some of the roots of violence will become clearer. When you understand where they come from, you can understand better the behaviours and we have a better chance of addressing them.

We do support the capacity development of indigenous organizations. We need to do some of this work, but this isn't the kind of money we usually get to work.

The last thing I want to talk to you about is that this committee could play an important role. We have had a number of indigenous women's summits. We're about to have the fifth one. At those national indigenous women's summits across the country, we talk about how the situation for indigenous women could be improved. We've made tons and tons of recommendations. It's a federal, provincial and territorial process, but nobody monitors the implementation of the agreement. You could play a very important role in strategically talking about ending violence against not just girls and young women but indigenous women by monitoring that. If you said every once in a while you wanted to know the kind of progress being made on these things and what is being done, it might make it easier to integrate what is being done. You would play an important role in having the provinces and the federal government actually talk to each other, and not just talk but perhaps be accountable for something for a change.

I'll leave my remarks there.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

That's very good. Thank you very much.

Now we'll go to Jamie Taras from the BC Lions Football Club. You have 10 minutes.

[Jamie Taras]

Greetings form British Columbia. Thank you so much for inviting me to be part of the call today.

I bring regrets and regards from Tracy Porteous, the executive director of the Ending Violence Association of BC. She is in Ireland today speaking about our program. I got to come to this square room with a TV, and she got to travel to Ireland, but I'm delighted to be here to discuss an honour for our organization, the BC Lions Football Club, to be involved with over the last six years. I want to talk a little about how it started, because this truly is a partnership.

Tracy approached the BC Lions organization about an idea she had. In some ways, I was saying it was crazy, but she thought the way to help change the situation of violence against women was to get men involved, and in particular, sports icons and these gruff rough-and-tumble football players.

She came up with this concept because the vast majority of the work to date had been done by women's organizations: how do we help the victims; how do we keep them safe; how do we teach them the warning signs; how do we deal with victims after something terrible has happened; how do we bring back their identity and their confidence; how do we deal with the perpetrators? All that work has been done.

All this wonderful work was being done by women and women's organizations, but the voice of men was missing. This issue had been seen as a women's issue for so many years, when in fact it's a men's issue because men are committing the vast majority of this crime.

She came to us with this idea that we as athletes could use our platform and our voice to help speak to men specifically and boys about what gender violence is and about how we can be part of the solution. That's where the idea evolved.

Tracy always says that we jumped on board right away, but there was much discussion. Obviously, it was a big risk for our organization. If we look at the history and the future of our organization, there is going to be a time when somebody screws up, when a player or someone in our organization does something in a negative way as it relates to violence against women, and we will be sticking our neck out waiting for the axe to come down.

As our leadership said, there is a need in our community. We have an opportunity to make a difference, so we're going to. We're going to deal with any issue that comes up, and we'll deal with it appropriately. We won't hide from it. But we have an opportunity to make a difference, and we want to be part of the solution. That's how it all started.

Anyway, what exactly are we doing? Our program is called Be More Than a Bystander. It's about two things. It's about entering into the conversation. No one was speaking about violence against women. This conversation wasn't happening. It's not something that men talk about. If you bring up the topic in a room, men will go completely silent. There is a need for the conversation, and there is also a need for the call to action and for action. That's what the Be More Than a Bystander program is all about.

While the vast majority of the crimes are being committed by men, the vast majority of men aren't perpetrators. Many of us have friends or have been witnesses to off-putting jokes or negative attitudes about women, or we may know someone, maybe a friend, who is struggling in their relationship, and we don't do anything about it, because we don't know how to. We don't want to get involved. We don't feel it's our place. That's the challenge. How can we get the vast majority of men, who are good men, kind men, to take action and get involved in the conversation, in the solution, rather than being part of the problem? By being silent, we're saying that what's happening is okay.

We wanted to be more than a bystander. We wanted to break the silence on violence against women. That's what we're doing. We're doing it in three ways.

One, we have presentations primarily at the high school level throughout the province of British Columbia. Our players go into the schools and speak to hundreds, sometimes thousands, of students about the issues: what's happening, what the facts are, what the statistics are, what it might look like in their school or their community, and then about how they can be part of the solution, some simple things they can do to be more than a bystander if they witness something. That's the presentation part of what we do.

Two, there is the advertising and promotion, the public service element, in which we have our players on television and radio and in the stadium promoting the message of being more than a bystander and talking about simple ways that we can get involved in a positive way and trying to raise the awareness and get more people to engage in the conversation.

Finally, three, we were able to create a legacy film, which was distributed throughout the province to all of the high schools and a number of the organizations that deal with violence against women, so that we have a resource that will live on when we're no longer around. The program has been an outstanding success.

That's what we're doing. I'll give you some of the numbers.

We've reached over 86,000 students across the province through our presentations over the last five years, and we're going into our sixth year in the program. That's a huge number. We're proud to say that the students are very willing to enter into this conversation. There is a huge hunger for this conversation amongst the students. We've also had over 500 million impressions—and thank God I didn't have to be the one counting them—with our publicity ads, our radio ads, our website stuff, and the hits on our web and on EVA's web, so we're having a lot of success in terms of getting the message out there as well.

I think one of the key measures of success is that we are getting inquiries from a whole lot of other organizations to help them create Be More Than a Bystander programs in their organizations, whether it be British Columbia Institute of Technology, Simon Fraser University, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers or Saskatchewan Football, to name a few of the organizations that we work with, along with the Ending Violence Association of BC, to help them develop their own program to spread the message. We know it's working because people are really interested in what we're doing and the success that we're having in getting the message out.

Certainly we haven't done it without help. Status of Women Canada, the federal government, the province, and even the corporate community, through such organizations as Encana, as well as the unions, and the BC Federation of Labour have been partners. We also have the municipal partners, the City of Surrey and the City of Vancouver. Without their support, there's no way we could do the program.

Tracy spoke to the United Nations. As I mentioned, she's in Ireland. We won a B.C. Association of Broadcasters award, which awarded us, I think, $2 million in free advertising. That really helped us. We've had a whole a bunch of successes in terms of the program itself.

I would say that some of the challenges really relate to the resources that we have to spread around. As I always remind Tracy, while she is a non-profit organization focused on ending violence against women, we're actually a professional football organization focused on winning championships and providing outstanding entertainment. It is challenging our resources. Certainly I would say one of the main concerns we have is with long-term funding for the program. The way we look at it with Tracy, we have to treat this like anti-smoking or drinking and driving. It's going to take years and decades to change attitudes, to change behaviours. Unfortunately, with the process as I know it, you're running a two- or three-year grant, but then, when it's over and you've done all this great work and you have all this sweat work to do, you can no longer apply for the same program, so we have to come up with some unique twists and turns. Maybe that's something you guys can really help with. Is there a place for long-term funding? I do believe that's what it's going to take to change this over the long term.

At the end of the day, this program is all about leadership. I will ask those of you in the room, just by a show of hands, how many of you have a woman in your life that you care about. Really, that's what it's all about. It's not about men coming to the rescue. That's not what it's about. It's about us joining forces with women in a partnership to create a change, to create a solution. I think that's really what the Be More Than a Bystander program is all about. I want to stress how important that partnership really is.

That is one of my main concerns as the director of community relations. We aren't experts on gender violence; we're experts at playing football, and yet we've learned a lot, and with the guidance of EVA BC, we've been able to get the message out. I think it works because of that partnership. For whatever reason, children and young men will listen to us. Perhaps their teacher told them or their parents told them or someone else told them the same message and they never heard it, but they finally heard it when we said it, because for some reason they put us on a pedestal.

Once again, it's been an outstanding six years—we're going on six years—and I thank you for allowing me to speak about it today.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

That's excellent. Thank you very much.

We're going to begin our round of questioning with my colleague Ms. Damoff for seven minutes.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Thank you to everyone for being here and online.

Jamie, I'm going to start with you. First, congratulations on your win.

[Jamie Taras]

Thank you.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Good luck against Calgary. I'm an Argos fan, though, and we weren't even in the mix this year.

I love your program. Have you tried getting it across the country with other CFL teams? You've mentioned a few—I think they were Winnipeg and Saskatchewan minor football—but there are all the teams across the country.

I know that the Argos have Huddle Up against bullying. Each team seems to have their own individual programs. Have you tried to get this across Canada more?

[Jamie Taras]

That's a great question. There are two things that I should have mentioned. One, the CFL itself has invoked a policy on violence against women for all members of the Canadian Football League, including the athletes, the coaches, and all the employees. That's one thing that I'm going to say came out of our initiative, and it certainly came out of part of what we started and the work of Ending Violence BC.

They've also started the Ending Violence Association of Canada and have worked not only with Winnipeg, but with Calgary, Edmonton, and Toronto, and there has been an interest from Hamilton. We are certainly a part of that. One of the long-term goals is to get the rest of the CFL organizations involved. To this point, we've been pretty successful with the ones we've helped.

As strange as it sounds—you know how competitive football is—I'm travelling to Winnipeg, along with the members of EVA BC, to train the Winnipeg football players in this program. For sure we have put the competition aside in saying, “Hey, what's best for the community as it relates to this issue?”

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

That was another thing that came up: getting the right people in the room to listen to the conversation when you're talking about having men and boys being part of the conversation. I went to a seminar recently at Sheridan College in Oakville. In the room, we were 90% women, I would say, so we didn't necessarily have the right people in the room. I think with your program you're getting everyone in the schools involved. Is that basically what you're doing? Is it assemblies?

[Jamie Taras]

Yes, absolutely.

To get into more of the detail, we have a major assembly with the entire school. I remember that when we first showed a video of this to the women who had been on our steering committee and had been involved in the program for 32 years, they literally were in tears, because when they spoke to a school, they'd get 15 people in the room and, to your point, 14 of them were women. We have a thousand people in the room, boys and girls, young men and women, and we speak to the whole group.

We do an overview of the issue and how they can get involved. Then we do a breakout session with a leadership group from the school. We have 20 to 25 students there, and we get more in depth with it and go through scenarios that would be relative to their school. Then we talk about how they can make a difference and create change in their own school.

We have found the same thing that you have, which is that if you leave it open and say to come to a lunch and learn about and meet the BC Lions, you're likely to get more women and not the right people in the room. We've found that working with the schools has been our best approach.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

That's great. Thank you. I'm really happy to see what you're doing.

Does your program focus on cyber-violence as well?

[Jamie Taras]

It touches on a lot of those things. In one of the scenarios, we talk about texting and how if you have a friend who is controlling his girlfriend, and always needing to know where she is or what's she's doing, that's a real sign of a problem. We do get into some of those issues in social media as well. Of course, that is an area that is obviously expanding, unfortunately, and an area where the perpetrator can hide a lot more easily.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Thank you.

Ladies, your program is fantastic. Thank you for what you're doing. One of the things we've heard from other groups working with men is that it's an underfunded area, that there's only so much funding to go around. You probably find this as well in your programming in B.C., where you have funding, but you want to focus on the victims, so after that pie gets cut, there isn't a lot left to focus on the men and boys with. Have you encountered that?

[Sylvia Maracle]

Yes, we've encountered it. We've been doing programming through an initiative provincially called the aboriginal healing and wellness strategy. That's the only comprehensive one in Canada. Through the success of that, to speak to some of the points Jamie raised and you asked in your question, women in our community have been further ahead in their healing. They've been doing it longer. We've found that we have to make space for men to have the conversation. It works well. The Kizhaay group leader is himself a kind man. The people who attend want to be kind men and are prepared over a number of weeks to open themselves up and create that situation.

Our youth groups, both male and female, do a lot more cyber activity generally, whether it's about stalking, bullying, harassment, or whatever. I look around the table, and I'm sure some of you are incredibly savvy, but let's face it, you probably have children who could break into National Defence quicker than anybody else.

We are spreading it out. We are watching it move, and absolutely it's underfunded. In our case, if you look at federal corrections, you're talking about anywhere from 30% of the total population to 70% or 80% in your provinces and territories. It's a captive audience. I guarantee that they were hurt in some way. That's why they're there and why they behave that way. We could run these programs. We're having a conversation with the RCMP right now, but I have to tell you that a lot of men are not going to want to go a circle run by the RCMP.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Yes.

[Sylvia Maracle]

We're talking to them in training about their community liaison people. We have a requirement that you need to have the credentials to be a kind man. First off, a woman who is not related to you, was never involved with you, and who's known in the community has to stand up and say, that yes, she will support this. You need to have an organization support you, and your own references; there are CPIC issues. You have to be ready to want to do this, because there are dangers in terms of creating environments where people can behave even worse.

There isn't a lot of money. Frankly, I have to credit the current premier of the province, who's really committed to dealing with the sexual harassment—

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

I'm sorry, that's your time.

We'll go now to Ms. Harder for seven minutes.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

My first question is for you, Sylvia, with regard to the program you run. I think you are doing tremendous work, by the way, and certainly you're to be commended. When you look at violence against women, particularly against indigenous women, what would you outline as being the main causes for that?

[Sylvia Maracle]

The residential schools legacy, the child welfare system and its legacy, the criminal justice system and its legacy, poverty, the Indian Act and its legacy with respect to gender politics—these are huge, huge issues. I have to be honest that people internalize the poor behaviours they learn, and eventually you don't need to colonize people. They'll do it themselves when they live it long enough. These are huge clocks to try to turn back. When we look at violence and where the learned behaviour comes from, it comes from all those kinds of things in our communities. It comes, frankly, from racism as well. I mean, we're going to be hearing that loud and clear in the missing and murdered indigenous women's inquiry, no ifs, ands, or buts. As to why we tolerated it as a society for so long, we're all not going to like the answer, but those are the underpinnings.

I think that the children going through those systems were hurt. They weren't parented well. They didn't get a hug. They had physical violence, or mental, emotional, or spiritual. They were sexually abused. They're going to act out. Part of the issue for us is to try to get involved earlier and earlier. I was involved in the founding of a national program called aboriginal head start. You can teach children good touch, bad touch. You can talk about who's safe in their life, who they can talk to, and all those kinds of things. What if we didn't have to be 27 years old, or 37 years old, or have a title when we disclosed that we were a victim of violence? What if we could do that earlier? What if we had the supports for girls and for boys to address it? I think we would all be healthier and happier.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you.

How do you go about getting men and boys interested in taking your program and participating in that?

[Sylvia Maracle]

We try to do the kinds of things that Jamie does.

We talk about that we have it, and a few brave people will come forward. Usually they're ready. They maybe have already turned themselves into a kind man, but they want to understand where all this history comes from. We have cultural events. We serve food.

People come to us through court referrals, particularly where the crown will agree. These aren't diversions per se, but in our province we have something called a partner assault response system where people agree to do certain things. Some people are court ordered, and it's a little bit harder to work with them. That's the difference between a 12-week program and a 16-week program, right? I have to convince you a little bit more.

We have people who have picked up the phone to disclose and talk about it, and they go through one to one. They'll come more formally into the program and eventually participate.

We have groups of students at university who are really keen, and in our youth groups, they want to do something different. These people are peer mentors or peer counsellors, peer support, and want to do it. I think people come in all kinds of ways.

We have women involved in healing and wellness programs. If they are with their partner, it's not unknown to us, and Kizhaay will reach out and offer supports. There are things that like it or not are public secrets. There are places where people can go.

They tell me in some small communities it's hanging out at the Tim Hortons, that eventually everybody will come through and you can chat with somebody.

People who open the door for these first steps are really important people, and how they're trained and their orientation becomes really important as well.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you very much.

Jamie, my next question is for you.

I'm wondering if you can outline some of the big surprises that you have found in running this program in terms of going into high schools and interacting with students. What are some of the most surprising things?