Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Sept. 21st, 2017

[Michèle Audette]

More than 7,000 files that have been transferred pertain to aboriginal issues in Quebec, on all matters combined. As to the files we are still awaiting, I will not answer that right now, out of respect. You can ask us again in a few weeks or a few months. I can say, however, that there are not very many. I can count them on my 10 fingers, so there are not many at all.

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Thank you. That is good news.

Thus far, how many files have been shared between the Sûreté du Québec and the RCMP? What kind of cooperation is there in that regard?

[Michèle Audette]

You should ask the RCMP and SQ that. I do not have that information right now, but I can ask our legal team. If we have that information, I will gladly pass it on to you.

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Okay.

I have no further questions for now.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Would you like to share your time?

We'll go to MP Mike Bossio.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Thank you.

We heard that the commission is organic and that it's learning and adapting, based on the engagements and the community hearings you've had. You said you're focused on constantly improving how the commission operates.

Can you describe or share with us some of the lessons you've learned and how you've adapted as a result of this process, this evolution?

[Brian Eyolfson, Commissioner, National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls]

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, member, for the question.

Particularly with our community hearings, where we're hearing from family members and survivors, there are a lot of regional differences in how we approach these hearings. We had our first community hearing in Whitehorse, and we learned a lot from that hearing. We got a lot of positive feedback. We learned that ceremony was extremely important and supportive to the participants, but that varies from region to region.

We've learned it's very important to have our team go out—that's our health, community relations, and legal teams—in advance into the communities, talk to grassroots organizations, talk to the families and survivors, and find out what's appropriate in terms of local protocols and in terms of the needs of the local families and survivors to be able to tell their stories at the hearing. We're making adjustments with every hearing that we have when we go from region to region.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Thank you, Commissioner Eyolfson.

Michèle Audette, would you like to also comment on some of the transitioning that you've seen as far as the relationships are concerned, once again, to follow up on Ms. Jolibois' question, and the process that you've gone through once you enter into the community—not just the outreach that occurs, but the process of engagement with individuals to try to bring them to the committee hearings, etc.?

[Michèle Audette]

Of course.

I will answer you in French if you don't mind.

One of the changes we made over the summer involves the approach used with the communities. Our unity, family and health branch immediately put families at the centre of the process. We meet the families during our community visits. They guide us on how to conduct our hearings in their territory. This communication has been very productive: in the space of three weeks, we went from 400 registered families right across Canada to 735 individuals and survivor families. This exercise is done internally using a community approach that is by and for the families.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

That's outstanding. Thank you so much.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

The questioning now moves to the five-minute round, and we begin that session with MP Arnold Viersen.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to our guests for being here today.

Whenever we're dealing with these topics I always like to put a face to them, because lots of times we talk about murdered and missing indigenous women and we talk about numbers and say, “There are 1,200 missing.”

Particularly, I want to talk about Bella Laboucan-McLean. Her dad lives in my riding. I know him quite well. Every time we talk, I ask him how he's doing. I've followed her particular case through the entire media; it's an ongoing thing. It's one of those cases that I really hope the murdered and missing indigenous women inquiry can bring us some answers to. I know I've spent a bunch of time trying to help her dad maybe get a private investigator, talking to all the journalists that have done some research on this. From my perspective, that's really where we need to go.

We all have offices. We all have to deal with the rigour of the accounting system around here. It drives everybody bonkers. However, that said, this was announced as a major priority for this government. You've said that it takes a long time to get staff in place, people on the phones and things like that. Do you have a champion in the PCO, or are they actually difficult to deal with?

[Marion Buller]

I'm very pleased to say that all of the people we work with at Privy Council are our champions. Thank you.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Yeah, but that's like trying to boil the ocean a little bit. The trouble is that the PCO deals with everything you see around here. We're all sitting here in Ottawa, and when we don't get an answer we simply go and knock on the PCO door and things happen. Within the PCO, if there is not a particular person dealing with it, is there someone in Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development to whom you can go and they will say “Yeah, it's them”? Or can you call the minister and say, “Hey, can you go chat with the PCO?”

This seemed like such a priority for them, yet we seem to have gotten off the rails a little bit. That's the public perception anyway. That's what we're trying to get to the bottom of.

[Marion Buller]

Madam Chair, to be very brief in the answer, which should be very long and more thorough, we have to maintain our independence from government, but we are tied to government through Privy Council.

I have to say that the Privy Council Office has done a great amount of work on our behalf. As individuals and collectively, they have been creative in solving problems for us. They've been responsive to us throughout, but they have to work within the confines of policy and regulation.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

All right.

One of the other questions I wanted to go into is, what's your social media strategy? For each of our offices, we all have a social media strategy. Twenty million Canadians are now on Facebook, for example. I know in our previous studies on suicide, I've asked, “In your community, who's on Facebook? Is everybody on Facebook?” Pretty much unanimously they say everyone is on Facebook.

Do you have a social media strategy? Can you table a social media strategy, that sort of thing?

[Qajaq Robinson]

[Witness speaks in Inuktitut]

Before I answer the question, I want to express my gratitude that we are able to be here today.

Use of a wide variety of communications tools is really important to this work, as is reaching areas where there is no access to social media and you have Internet services that are incredibly poor. I'm sure some of you have spent time in the north and all of a sudden your phone didn't work.

We have a communications strategy. We've had some capacity challenges to build up internally, and contracting. As my colleague, Chief Buller, indicated, we do have some contracts coming into place to assist us with that, and looking at getting longer-term contracts to make this more robust.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Thank you.

I think that pretty much runs my time out, but I have lots more questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Questioning now moves to MP Salma Zahid.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the commissioners for coming out today and for all the work you are doing on behalf of Canadians.

As you mentioned in your opening statement, the inquiry has analyzed some reports, studies, recommendations, and articles that show the vulnerability of these indigenous communities to violence. I was wondering if the commissioners have figures or statistics that show whether the vulnerability to violence of the women and girls is higher than the men's.

[Marion Buller]

I'm certainly happy to provide those statistics, but I don't have them with me.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

It would be great if we could get those statistics, because it will help us to see if the numbers are higher for girls and women.

Has the inquiry found that any of these studies or consultations reveal possible reasons or causes for the increased vulnerability of women and girls?

[Marion Buller]

Without divulging the contents of our interim report that's coming up, the reports and studies that have already been done point to very important factors such as grinding poverty, geographical isolation, lack of a proper education, and the intergenerational traumatic effects of residential schools. A variety of factors has been identified.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

With the work you have done so far, have you seen, in the migration of women and girls from the reserves to the urban setting, any specific challenges or issues they face in that situation?

[Marion Buller]

There are well-established research and statistics to show the challenges young women face when they go from rural reserves to urban centres. The evidence is well established that they experience a lot of difficulty adjusting to life in an urban centre.