Thanks so much, Chair.
Martina, I heard you just say that we don't have the resources.
Hilda Anderson-Pyrz, you talked about the need for an ombudsman as stated in call for justice 1.7, and the lack of action. You know, we're three years out from the national inquiry. There's been money allocated in the budget that's not being spent. There's a whole pile of excuses. Meanwhile, we continue to deal with the most horrific violence, and in this study, particularly around resource extraction, there's zero in this budget to deal with this issue. It's abhorrent from my perspective, especially listening to the stories that we're listening to in this study. It's like our lives or our not having lives doesn't seem to matter very much.
Hilda, you did an interview with Amnesty International, and you spoke about the connection between resource development and violence against indigenous women, girls and two-spirit individuals. You noted that, “If there’s activities happening in our territories, there need to be mechanisms to protect us from all types of violence.” We've heard from Ellen Gabriel and Martina Saunders, that's not there. You said, this occurs “so others can benefit economically.”
I'm quoting you on this because I find that since being elected in 2019, they seem to want to uphold our human rights when it suits their political and economic interests and then they just brush them aside when it doesn't, and the brunt of it is indigenous women, girls and two-spirit individuals.
I wanted to see if you agree with me on that and ask you to share what kind of mechanisms should be in place to protect indigenous women, two-spirit individuals and victims of violence. What do you think the hold up is? Why are they sitting on all this money while we're dying on the streets?