Status of Women committee  I would quickly add that the federal government should look at making sure there's clean water. It hasn't done that very well. It should make sure there is Internet in all places, including rural places, because that's where people are at risk. Even if they have some sort of dial-up, at least it's a start.

Status of Women committee  I think we can expand that to airports. We could expand that to bus stops. I've seen them in bathrooms, the posters. You shut the door and there's a picture there. I think there are so many opportunities. In some places, because of technology—I'm technologically challenged, so you'll have to excuse me—there could be videos on a screen in an airport, where pictures are being shown while people are waiting to board an airplane, or for a bus at a bus stop.

Status of Women committee  It is absolutely good to have your own indigenous language. Unfortunately, I don't speak Mi'kmaq. Mi'kmaq was taken from my mother as a residential school survivor, so I wasn't fortunate enough to learn it. If the alert were done in the Mi'kmaq language, I wouldn't know it. A lot of urban people have lost our languages.

Status of Women committee  Those are really good questions. I think that people have to have a choice. You can't force people to sign up. You can do a lot around the education of why it's important to sign up and do a lot of promotion out there and campaigns on why it's important to sign up, but ultimately you can't force people to sign up.

Status of Women committee  I think that's a great system. In P.E.I., we don't have a lot of sex trafficking. It's more couch surfing and taking advantage of homeless women. However, sex trafficking is there, and they do move them quickly from province to province, so I think, if you were to set up a system like that....

Status of Women committee  I would have to do some research on that. For me on P.E.I.—I can only speak of my experience—when there's a missing person, they do put an alert out. It kind of goes to all our phones and there is an alert sound that comes. It says that there's a missing youth and please contact....

Status of Women committee  We didn't really create a model with our action plan. It was more or less a learning lesson from the Summer Kneebone case. We were lucky enough in our searches that we had volunteers who were non-indigenous allies and members from the community she was from. We were lucky enough to reach an instructor from New Brunswick or Nova Scotia who was teaching a law course, and he got his students involved online.

Status of Women committee  Thank you. That's a very good question. I think there are models out there that can be used. If you're looking at the Amber alert that's used for missing children.... I think there are models out there. The Amber alert is a Canada-wide one. I absolutely think there can be a model that is done like that.

Status of Women committee  I'm sorry. I said that it was a quick and dirty answer, because I know she's going to cut me off. She said this was going to be a really fast one, so I'm just trying to give you an example that could be utilized.

Status of Women committee  I think it is essential that it be community-led. It needs to be indigenous-led. As I indicated in my speech, the police and the RCMP weren't really aware of what “MMIWG” meant, so there had to be a lot of cross-cultural competency training with them. It's about rallying the community.

Status of Women committee  Absolutely. I can't speak on behalf of all. We are tight-knit in our community. A lot of our women at risk are homeless. They suffer from mental health issues and addictions. It was almost 10 days before the family noticed there was no response from their child. That's what triggered us into the actual search and the connection with the family.

Status of Women committee  Thank you. I want to give a land acknowledgement. I am from Prince Edward Island, which is the traditional, ancestral homeland of my ancestors, the Mi’kmaq peoples. Hello, members of the Standing Committee on the Status of Women. My name is Lisa Cooper, and I am the president and chief of the Native Council of Prince Edward Island.