Status of Women committee  I'm sorry. I come from a culture where you just speak. It's true that all these services have been funded by Status of Women Canada, but in the last year Status of Women Canada refused and rejected all applications from women's groups and women's services who are for advocacy.

Status of Women committee  Yes, I want to say that I don't have much hope. I'm joining Darla's call, because the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, in November 2008, in an unprecedented step, called on Canada, within a year, to conduct a national public inquiry about the missing and murdered aboriginal women, and to raise the welfare rate.

Status of Women committee  I think there is consensus among women's groups all over Canada about the importance of the project. There was a breach of trust when the Minister for Status of Women allocated the money to the RCMP instead of giving it to NWAC. There is consensus all over the country among feminists and women's groups.

Status of Women committee  I'll start with the funding challenge. There are two rape crisis centres in Vancouver, WAVAW and Vancouver Rape Relief, and Battered Women's Support Services offer, in spirit, similar services. None of us receive core funding at all for the rape crisis centres. WAVAW and BWSS receive some money for individual workers, but definitely not to the overall operation of women's services, and Rape Relief receives nothing.

Status of Women committee  Ironically, Status of Women—

Status of Women committee  That is it.

Status of Women committee  I'm here on behalf of the Vancouver Rape Relief and Women's Shelter and on behalf of CASAC, the Canadian Association of Sexual Assault Centres. I trust that if you don't understand my accent, you will stop me and ask me to repeat.

Status of Women committee  Yes, I am.

Status of Women committee  I think two months ago I was at a hearing on legal aid, and I was completely misunderstood in the first five minutes. We appreciate the committee's decision to invite women's groups to speak about violence against aboriginal women and about our struggle to end it and achieve liberty and freedom for all women.

Status of Women committee  We know from 35 years of front-line work that men attack women in their own race and down in the racist hierarchy, and that aboriginal women are vulnerable to violence both of aboriginal men in their homes and communities and of all men everywhere they go. The criminal justice system that is consistently failing to protect all women is especially indifferent to male violence against aboriginal women.

Finance committee  I'm proud to say that our rape crisis centre has no government money, provincial or municipal, in what we offer to women, because the community is willing to support us in a variety of ways. Also, my specific collective has been fortunate to rely a lot on volunteer commitments, both of some of our paid staff....

Finance committee  For women who are fleeing abusive relationships, there are enough “beds”, in the jargon of the services, for the first month. There are different agreements, but we will never turn a woman away and we will never tell her that her month is up and she needs to go out. We will make sure that she has adequate housing afterward.

Finance committee  From our experience, most women would not go forward, for two reasons. One is that the criminal justice system is constantly failing women, especially on the issue of rape and sexual assault when there is no collaborating evidence and it is word against word. There is a lot of bias against the victim.

Finance committee  No. We operate a rape crisis centre. There are two rape crisis centres in Vancouver. Neither of them receive federal money or provincial money. We don't receive money from Status of Women Canada or the federal budget. There was no access in the last year for women's groups wishing to advocate and to change the status of women.

Finance committee  There is no money for the Canadian Association of Sexual Assault Centres, which is a national body. It has a lot of importance in terms of sharing and building expertise in a nationwide manner. There is no funding for that at all, not even to gather front-line workers from all over the country to brainstorm, to improve what we know, and to improve our strategies.