Mr. Speaker, I thank the parliamentary secretary for responding to the very important matter of funding decisions regarding the $10 million promised in budget 2010 to address the issue of violence against aboriginal women.
On October 1, I asked the Minister of Justice to tell the House when we could expect to see a plan set in place for the investment of the $10 million promised in the budget. By October 1, it had been more than seven months since the money was promised and the government had yet to disclose a plan. Again, not surprisingly, I was told by the minister that the government would reveal its plan in due time.
Well, we have all read or at least seen parts of the recent research from the Sisters in Spirit initiative, which shows that nearly 600 aboriginal women have gone missing or have been murdered. This number of missing or murdered aboriginal women is the equivalent of more than 19,000 women in the non-aboriginal community.
While it was reassuring that the government seemed to have finally noticed the importance of this issue, it now appears the government's announcement was more of a political diversion than concrete action.
Organizations on the ground have had the solutions necessary to start addressing the issue of violence committed against aboriginal women for quite some time. All that was missing was the funding and the political will from the government to act responsibly.
We need action to stop the overwhelming violence being experienced by aboriginal women. However, when the government finally did make its funding announcement in Vancouver on October 29, more than 40% of the money was dedicated to groups other than aboriginal women.
While we can all see the value of instruments and investments announced in Vancouver, the funding for them should have come from moneys other than those promised to aboriginal women. For example, $4 million of the $10 million promised to address violence against missing and murdered women went to the creation of a national missing persons database.
This creates significant concerns because such a database does not focus on aboriginal women alone, but rather will track both men and women from across Canadian society. While this is also necessary, aboriginal women are at the greatest risk of experiencing violence and should therefore have a specific database, such as the one developed by Sisters in Spirit. That information is already available and must be acted upon.
I also wonder about the way missing persons reports will be filed. In my conversations with Sisters in Spirit, it was revealed that part of the issue related to the fact that police reports did not indicate the ethnicity of the women. Police only report if the subject is white or non-white. This is extremely problematic. Had the government consulted Sisters in Spirit, it would have learned about the problem and could have ensured that ethnicity was addressed in the database.
We have also learned from Sisters in Spirit and from the Native Women's Association of Canada that they were not consulted by the government. How could the government make plans concerning the well-being of aboriginal women without consulting the largest group in the country?
Why did the government fail to consult with aboriginal women before making a funding announcement? Why has it managed to fund something that it will not address the issue facing women in our communities?