Justice Committee on March 30th, 2010

[Monique Guay, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I congratulate you on the work you are doing. It is quite extraordinary, particularly in the case of such a large and significant aboriginal community. I think you are the most appropriate resource people for that community. Earlier, we were talking about funding. Our communities and other organizations are also facing this situation. They get funding for a year and begin their work, but as soon as they start to get their head above water, their funding is completely cut off or they are asked to prove themselves. I understand your situation very well. You are working with a community that has specific needs that are different from others'.

Could you tell me whether you have sources of funding other than the federal government?

[Diane Redsky]

The Ma Mawi Wi Chi Itata Centre operates a safe house for sexually exploited young women, as well as a number of homes that work with young people. Tragically, those kids are all involved in the child welfare system, so the funding and resources to operate those homes are child welfare dollars.

Because they are considered to be shelters for kids, there are some capital resources for renovating and purchasing properties to run these homes.

[Monique Guay, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

This situation in relation to young people is somewhat the same everywhere, perhaps more in your community than elsewhere. The parents have experienced exactly the same thing and they in turn are putting their children through the same situation. There has to be education done from the start, to be able to save these young people.

I would like you to tell us about success stories. You must have some. Successful experiences that would enable you to get more funding. An organization that is able to help people can use those examples to get more funding or recurring funding. In that case, you would not have to spend half your time doing the paperwork to get funding. You could be out on the ground and working with young people.

[Leslie Spillett]

A couple of things. At Ka Ni Kanichihk, we are reliant on provincial, federal, municipal, and United Way Foundation dollars. We know that we have to go into many pots to run an organization. Our federal portfolio is the most difficult to manage. I will give you a couple of examples.

Canadian Heritage has what used to be called the Urban Multipurpose Aboriginal Youth Centres. Now it is called Cultural Connections for Aboriginal Youth. You submit a proposal within the timelines they request, but they vet it within their own processes. By the time it reaches the minister, six, seven, eight, or nine months have often expired when the project was supposed to start by April within the fiscal year.

Then you're catching up. It's very difficult to manage those kinds of things, especially if you're a single-entity organization. It's impossible. At Ka Ni Kanichihk, we have built up enough of a cashflow that we could manage that, but for some organizations it's simply just not possible.

The other piece of it is the reporting. I totally understand accountability, but the reporting is crazy; it's significantly onerous. Those are two very difficult things. As Diane said, when you get a three- or five-year project, that's just awesome. We really try to turn our federal dollars into provincial dollars. Where we can demonstrate that we're successful, we really start lobbying the province. But then they are limited as well, or they say they're limited. We are often in a crunch.

Right now we have about 14 young boys between the ages of 12 and 17 who are regularly attending our program, Circle of Courage. They are learning about themselves as young people. At Ka Ni Kanichihk, we set up our program right in the community. We don't set it outside the community and then have them come outside the community for the service. Like Ndinawe, we operate within our community on Pacific Avenue. I'd really love you to come by.

We do lots of cultural identity work. We do skill building in terms of life skills. The best way out of poverty is a job, so we're hooking them up to Sobeys. They don't want this to be their only choice. They want to have other options. We are successful when we're given the opportunity. People love themselves as powerful, young aboriginal children who are going to be making a difference in their own families. We have multiple success stories.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you.

I'll give Ms. Anderson an opportunity to respond, because you haven't spoken yet.

[Jackie Anderson, Program Development Coordinator, Ma Mawi Wi Chi Itata Centre Inc.]

Good morning. I just wanted to make reference to your question with regard to the success of programs and the young people we work with. I think what really needs to be recognized as well is that when you measure the success of an individual, you need to measure success on how the program was developed.

In particular with our agency, when we are looking at developing programs, we go to the community. We involve the young people and the adults with lived experience. To me, they are the professionals. They are the ones who know what they need. To make reference as well to funding the programs, whether it is one year, three years, or five years—when you look at the victimization that our young people are experiencing right from birth, for many of those children, that developmentally delays them.

Once we get those children and we start working with them through their healing journey, they are already developmentally delayed by three or four years. If a program is only funded for one year...you're doing so much work with that child and you're opening up so many boxes for those children, and then the program is stopped. You're putting that child at further risk of crisis.

I wanted to make reference to that. It is important. I guess that's how we value success and celebration of our children: through those baby steps of their healing journey.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you.

I know there are others who want to jump in, but unfortunately you are one and a half minutes over your time. We want to make sure everybody gets a chance to ask questions.

If there are others in a position to follow up on that line of questioning, that would be great. Then we could get others to jump in and respond to that question.

Mr. Comartin.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

It's okay, Mr. Chairman. Just let them go ahead and respond.

[Renee Kastrukoff]

Thank you.

In terms of responding to Ms. Mendes' question about funding and what would be helpful, I believe reference was made to this already.

We do see success stories. I've had the opportunity to be involved with federally funded projects like CAPC, the Community Action Program for Children, the Aboriginal Healing Foundation project, Aboriginal Head Start, and funding through the National Crime Prevention Centre.

Where we see our greatest success is when we utilize the social discipline window model. That is working with the community, with our funders--not “to”, “for”, or “at”, but “with”. That is absolutely key. You have to engage the community and the population you're intending to work with, and you have to be able to mobilize and inspire. You can't do that by yourself. It has to be at all levels of the project, right from community to funder. It's very important. It's critical.

[Diane Redsky]

I would like to bring attention to the reality of community-based agencies, that we are for the most part--certainly here in Winnipeg--already underresourced.

While we have the best practices stories, for the most part all of the organizations sitting at this table here hire those youths who are success stories. We engage and utilize them in helping others and give them an opportunity to give back.

The reality for an executive director in any of these organizations is that we're the ones writing the proposals, answering the phones, doing payroll, and buying fish for the feast on Friday. That's because the administration dollars that we ask for are, 90% of the time, either reduced or denied.

Organizations are underfunded to build their own infrastructure in order to be able to focus on getting the word out. When you're doing something, you're not doing something else. For most community-based agencies, we're on the front lines with our sleeves rolled up, working in the communities.

One last thing. With some federal funding and opportunities to build priorities and funding programs together, we can take a look at the reporting requirements and the value differences we have with that. Currently, most of the reporting requirements to the federal government are counting heads and counting problems. That's just not our approach in the work we do in the communities. It's about building people and communities from the inside out. That doesn't always jive with the need you have, so it becomes something in addition to the work we do.

There's a lot of stress that organizations are already under, and there's not a lot of help coming our way.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Ms. Spillett, the point you made about the grandmothers and one of the goals being to reassert the historically more traditional role of leadership by women within the communities, how is it coming? Are you having any success in doing this?

[Leslie Spillett]

Yes, I believe it's developing. First of all, women have come together. Lots of women have come together. We know that's important. It has spread to northern Manitoba, northern Ontario, southern Manitoba. Grandmothers are coming together. So it's catching on. It's always been there, but I think women are organizing in a much more visible way.

Now, with respect to how other people see that, I think that in our cultures we are in this.... We are walking in both canoes, in some ways. We have a system of leadership that is determined by Indian Affairs and by provincial government incorporation. As Diane said, we are doing the work within a particular context, but we are trying to make sure it fits with our values and world views.

It's not a mistake that you're not seeing a lot of aboriginal men here. Although there are men in our communities who are doing great work, it you look at who has built the aboriginal community in Winnipeg, it has been the matriarchy--women's leadership. I think it's working and it's working brilliantly.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

In terms of the exploitation from non-first nations, Métis, aboriginal members of our society, are there any recommendations you can make to the committee as to how we could reduce the potential for that exploitation from outside the community? Whether it's drugs or prostitution or--

[Diane Redsky]

There are challenges with eradicating the exploitation. But first I'd like to acknowledge that there is a federal committee operated by Senator Roméo Dallaire. Jackie is a member of that committee, and she brings a young person with her every time.

The help we need the most is with resources for victims. We do that well. We have women with experience who are a significant part of that healing journey.

The second one is that we really need some help with addressing the demand. We are limited, both provincially and federally, in the tools we have to protect our kids--for example, we have perpetrators who sit outside our safe house waiting for one of the girls to come out, or they are there to intimidate them. We can call the police, but he's not breaking the law.

We can see a young woman we know is being exploited and we can call the police, but the police can't do anything. She has to be a victim. You have to prove there's a crime going on. An older man in a car going through the north end can pick up a 13-year-old, a 10-year-old, and there's limited.... Unless she can say she's a victim, which most will not, for a variety of reasons, there is nothing that can be done.

We need a national strategy on this particular issue, and what can happen--

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

I'm going to have to cut you off there because we're--

[Diane Redsky]

If we had the laws to be able to call somebody to get help and stop it from happening--

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

You're not advocating tougher laws, are you?

You want the ability to allow the police to do the work to intervene in those situations. Is that right?

[Diane Redsky]

To have the criminal charges.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you. You will get another chance.

I'm going to go to Mr. Dechert, for seven minutes.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ladies, I'm going to pursue a similar theme so you will have an opportunity to expand on your answers.

Many of you have mentioned the outside non-aboriginal, sometimes well-organized, sometimes financed, and sometimes international groups that prey upon and exploit aboriginal women and young people.

A few weeks ago, I was on a plane from Ottawa to Toronto and there was a woman sitting beside me who works as a nurse in Pangnirtung on Baffin Island. She was on her way back from Baffin Island. She is of aboriginal heritage herself, from a nation in southwestern Ontario. She was telling me about the health problems that are caused by drugs in the community of Pangnirtung, which has about 1,500 people, a remote community. I asked her where the drugs came from and she said there were three full patch members of the Hells Angels in Pangnirtung. So I asked if they were local people and she said, “No, they're from Montreal and they're supplying the people in Pangnirtung.” They sat down in their clubhouse in Montreal, looked at a map of Canada, and asked themselves where they could find new customers. And believe it or not, they're going to Pangnirtung. There are three flights a week and these guys must be easy to spot.

Secondly, yesterday we heard from a very courageous woman in Edmonton who herself had been on the street. She told us the story about how she had been preyed upon by a biker gang organization. This was quite a few years ago, but she had been abused and put on the street by a biker gang organization, who then exploited her and lots of other women like her who she knew. She's now working with those women to try to help them get off the street.

So my question to you is, who are these groups that are preying upon indigenous people and youth? How should we deal with them? How would life be different for aboriginal people in Canada if we could eliminate or drastically reduce the number of these outside criminal organizations that are preying upon our indigenous young people? I ask specifically Ms. Redsky and Ms. Omelan to address that, and if we have time, some of the others as well.

[Melissa Omelan]

I think you make a really good point. It's what they call an outlaw motorcycle gang. I believe Diane spoke earlier about this. There's this feeling that within street gangs, especially aboriginal street gangs, there's all this money and power and affluence. That's really not the case. If you look at the Hells Angels and the Bandidos and those kinds of gangs, those are the groups of people who are predominantly financially sound and making large amounts of money.

I will go back into my own history here a little bit. Fifteen years ago the sex trade in Winnipeg was dominated by those groups as well as immigrant groups, including African populations, Caribbean populations, and American populations. That's not to say they're solely responsible, but that's just predominantly what we've seen. I don't know what the process is.

I'm not an expert as far as immigration laws, but I think when we look at the African populations in Winnipeg, the cultural values they're bringing from their countries and the things they've lived through are definitely contributing factors in how they become perpetrators. In saying that, what are the processes, and how are they educated when they're coming into the country against perhaps these cultural biases that are putting them in situations of becoming perpetrators?

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Should we increase the enforcement of our current laws on these outside criminal organizations that prey upon aboriginal people? Should we treat them more harshly than other types of youth gangs and criminal organizations when we get them in the criminal justice system?

[Diane Redsky]

Organized crime, in regard to exploitation and harming aboriginal women and children, is allowed to flourish because there's a demand for it. If you don't address the demand, they're going to continue making money, so--

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

I agree with you. There are two sides to the coin. There's demand and there's supply. You talked about demand previously this morning. What do we do with the supply? How do we address the supply and get the drugs away from these communities and these kids in the first place and keep these motorcycle gangs, or whoever they are, from getting the women and exploiting them and putting them on the street? How do we stop that from happening?

[Diane Redsky]

One thing is that we do not have a national strategy on this particular issue--exploitation. It doesn't exist. I think only two or three provinces have strategies. So we need a national strategy, a national database, a national sexual offender list. We need to be doing way better at immigration.

Our experience here in Winnipeg...there are cultural groups, the Asian gangs—