Justice Committee on March 30th, 2010

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

We'll reconvene our eighth meeting of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. We're continuing our study on organized crime.

We have with us, on our second panel this morning, a number of different witnesses. I'll name each of you and then you can introduce your organizations yourselves. First of all, we have with us Diane Redsky and Jackie Anderson. We also have Velma Orvis, Melissa Oleman, Leslie Spillett, and Renee Kastrukoff. Welcome to all of you.

A couple of these witnesses will be showing up in a while, I hope. While we'd like to start with Grandmothers Protecting our Children, Velma Orvis is not here yet. So we'll go to the second person on our list, Leslie Spillett.

Could you introduce your organization and then make your presentation?

[Leslie Spillett, Executive Director, Ka Ni Kanichihk Inc.]

I just wanted to say Anin and Tansi, in our languages, the languages of this territory. I welcome all the committee members to Winnipeg and Manitoba.

In our work, we call Winnipeg the largest reservation in Canada, because the greatest number of indigenous or aboriginal people in all territories, even the eastern, southern, and northern territories, now reside in Winnipeg. Officially we think that probably about 15% of Winnipeg's population is aboriginal, but it's really much larger than that. We think it's probably anywhere up to the low 20% range of the population. So we represent a significant population.

The organization I represent is called Ka Ni Kanichihk. It's a Cree word that means “those who go forward” or “those who lead”. We are very much about doing work in our community that is culturally congruent with our value systems and our cultural paradigms.

One of the things I'd like to start with is a quote from a young aboriginal man who was a gang member. I think he represented Indian Posse, one of the larger native gangs in Winnipeg. He was being interviewed by a professor of sociology at the University of Manitoba. That research, by the way, is online under the CCPA, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. He said, “If you want to change the violence in the 'hood, you have to change the 'hood.” To me, that means that if we're going to have any success with prevention and intervention, we really need to make some structural and systemic changes that give people an opportunity to participate in a way that they feel values them and that will stop young people from joining gangs.

I've worked in this community since about 1977 or 1978, and I have worked with many gang members. I work with aboriginal gang members, not with the gangs you heard about earlier, the Zig Zag Crew and the Asian gangs, although there is some connection, and we will get to that as well.

We really need to understand this. I use an analogy like mould, which grows in certain conditions, those being damp and dark conditions, etc. It's a natural process. Similarly, gangs grow in the same kinds of structural conditions. When people find there are no alternatives, gangs are the natural outcome of those conditions. So we need to change the conditions.

In our communities we talk about a human rights approach to service delivery. In my mind, a human rights approach to service delivery demands that indigenous people be given the opportunity to take care of indigenous people. If you talk about all of the indicators—who's in jail, who's in gangs, whose children are engaged in the criminal justice system, whose children are prostituting themselves right now on the streets of Winnipeg—you will find that the vast majority of those children are indigenous children. We really have to understand the conditions those families and children emerged out of.

For the last 20 years, the indigenous community in Winnipeg has really been defining our own agendas. We've really been actively trying to engage resources that permit us to do this work based on our own knowledge and practices.

I would submit in a very humble way that those people and those organizations that have long done this work for us have very poor outcomes, very poor levels of success. I think if they were evaluated independently, it would show that.

I want to just talk a little bit about research that was done in British Columbia. This is accessible by Googling Michael Chandler and another professor of sociology from the University of British Columbia by the last name of Lalonde. Those two sociologists were puzzled by the youth suicide rates in British Columbia among first nations communities. They looked at that because in some communities the youth suicide rate was 800 times the national average--which is profoundly significant--and in some communities in British Columbia the youth suicide rate was virtually unknown. So they were really puzzled by what made the difference.

The difference they found was that the community that had the most control over its own self, self-determination, was the community that had lower youth suicide rates. They called it cultural continuity, those elements of self-government.

To me, that's really big. We need to look at that research and then act on that research in a policy-driven way, including justice and human rights. I'll restate that it's absolutely a human right of indigenous people to look after indigenous people's issues, because it has all been taken away from us. It has been systematically eroded and taken away from us: our language, our culture, our political, social, and educational institutions. Every institution that we knew that held us together as peoples has been distorted, eliminated, or destroyed through the process of colonialism.

That is what we need to begin to change around, to make a difference in our indigenous people's community. And we are doing that. We are doing that in a major way in this community, in a significant way. But one of the things we really lack is a real solid understanding and analysis of that. Gangs come out of those places where mould grows, in those places where people don't feel good about themselves, who have no access to material or social power or status. They will take matters into their own hands to be able to change their own social condition.

It really broke my heart this morning to hear one of the presenters talking about a young guy who masterminded three murders. I can assure you, I know our children are in places of desperation. They're not masterminding criminals. They just aren't. They're 17-year-olds. He was just a baby; he was a young boy. He did a really bad thing, but he's not a mastermind criminal. I don't know one of our youth who would fit into that level of criminality.

Writing people off and labelling them in such a decisive way.... He did a terrible thing, there's no doubt about that, but in my mind, he is our child. He is the child of all of us, and we do have to find ways to support, because there are many who are like this young man.

I just wanted to begin those comments to the committee and thank you for your attention. When our presenters are finished, I'd be very happy to respond to any questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you.

We'll move on to Ms. Omelan for 10 minutes.

[Melissa Omelan, Gang Prevention and Intervention Program, Ndinawemaaganag Endaawaad (Ndinawe)]

Good morning. I'm here today as a representative of the Ndinawemaaganag Endaawaad (Ndinawe). Ndinawe is an aboriginal organization located in the north end of Winnipeg that was established in 1993 as a community-driven response to the high number of aboriginal youth experiencing sexual exploitation.

It was recognized that a significant number of youth were regularly without a safe, stable living environment, which was putting them at high risk. Since inception, the organization has increasingly expanded in response to the needs and complexity of issues facing the young people it serves. Today, Ndinawe is an integrated service organization for aboriginal youth, focusing on shelter, culture, education, recreation, intervention, and support.

I am the project coordinator for the Turning the Tides gang intervention project. It is a three-year pilot project that serves to support and guide gang-involved and at-risk youth. To date, we have had 56 youth, ages 14 to 19, participate in this project.

I am here today to speak on behalf of these young people, to shed light on their realities and the issues that have pulled them into gangs.

In the north end of Winnipeg, aboriginal youth often face daunting challenges, such as poverty and economic marginalization, which restricts opportunities for youth and contributes to a loss of hope; family breakdown, which then interferes with the nurturing and socialization of children; and loss of culture and a sense of identity.

Many urban aboriginal youth are subject to negative stereotypes that include racism, fear, and stigma, which contribute to the lack of identity and lack of a sense of belonging.

Multiple barriers, coupled with serious gaps in services or problems with how services are provided, allow many youth to fall through the cracks of the social safety net and place them at risk. Youth are at risk of systems that do not value or understand them, resulting in inadequate living conditions, exploitation, a loss of hope, and tragic consequences.

Winnipeg is home to the largest urban aboriginal population in Canada. Here they account for over 20% of the population of 14 different census tracks, a concentration not found elsewhere in Canada.

This same community is home to neighbourhoods experiencing some of the highest poverty rates in Canada as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

I'm going to get you to slow down a little bit so our interpreters can catch up.

[Melissa Omelan]

Okay.

In Winnipeg a large proportion of aboriginal households fall below Statistics Canada's low-income cut-off.

Manitoba has the lowest rate of school attendance among aboriginal youth of any province in Canada. In the north end, one in five youth graduate from high school. Not surprisingly, aboriginal youth are twice as likely to be unemployed.

In Manitoba, as across Canada, aboriginal children and youth are drastically overrepresented in the child welfare system, accounting for 85% of children in care. Many of these youth in care are torn away from their families only to be bounced from placement to placement, never finding stability or a place to belong.

One of the youth in my program has seen over 18 placements in his time in care. For this young person there is no healthy attachment; experience has taught him it will be taken away soon enough, don't get comfortable, don't trust, don't feel, you are on your own.

Street gangs provide an alternative, a sense of family, belonging, and acceptance. For others, gang involvement is intergenerational; their mothers, fathers, siblings, aunts, and uncles are gang involved. For them, it is the lifestyle they were raised in. It's all they know, a legacy that has been passed on. Despite the negativity that comes with that lifestyle, it is at the same time their family, their identity. To reject the lifestyle is to reject their family. The expectation is that the youth should leave the gangs to be healthy community members, but in asking them to do so, we are asking them to isolate themselves and alienate themselves from everything they know.

Despite all of this, our youth, with the proper resources and supports, are capable of creating brighter futures for themselves. Youth indicate that they require positive spaces where they can go and not be treated as somehow defective or a problem to be fixed. They want a supportive place to go where they can tap into their interests, develop their talents, and nurture their leadership abilities, a place where they are more than just the sum of their problems.

Becoming enmeshed with the street lifestyle often means cutting ties. Youth become alienated from those systems that normally keep them anchored in mainstream society, including family, school, community, child protection agencies, and youth correction systems. Their focus becomes solely on the present: make money, get food, find shelter, fill your basic needs, which often leads to involvement with gangs, which only further alienates them from society.

For many young people, gangs provide what society fails to. As a front-line service provider, I have been tasked with making recommendations. In referencing the statistics I quoted earlier, there needs to be a commitment to keeping families together. Taking children into care and leaving the family to fix the problems does not work. Families have to be healed as a whole.

Recreational facilities and programs that provide access to youth and families in all communities to afford the opportunity to engage in healthier, safer ways of coming together need to be provided. Education systems need to be provided the resources to work with youth who do not fit into mainstream programming.

We have transitional schools that I am aware of in the north end of the city, but their class sizes are limited and they're not equipped to deal with some of the issues surrounding youth who are engaged in that lifestyle.

Mental health and FASD are rampant and often undiagnosed. The difficulty in receiving resources for an undiagnosed youth is astounding. Many youth who do not have a diagnosis don't receive supports or services until they are already in the justice system.

There is a lack of service to address the substance abuse issues initiative. One youth in our program waited five months on a waiting list to enter treatment. What services are available are not geared to address surrounding issues and are not culturally sensitive, and many youth who do manage to enter treatment are rejected from programs because of their behavioural issues.

Many efforts are focused on reacting to gang activities. Unfortunately, this focus tends to be punitive and does not address the factors that created the vulnerability of youth and empowered the gang members seeking to recruit them. Stiffer penalties are not the answer. While locking up youth serves to provide a short-term sense of safety to the broader community and certainly to the victims, it fails to have a long-term impact. For every youth in custody, they can see within the gang structure it has created. The loss of gang members to the penal system does not deter gangs; it triggers further recruitment of younger and younger youth. Until the issues are addressed, it remains a revolving door.

Government needs to commit to rehabilitation, reintegration, and restorative justice rather than “a lock them up and make an example out of them” attitude. Jail does not rehabilitate; it breeds stronger, more organized criminals.

After individuals are housed in prison, the expectation upon release is that they will be productive members of society and not reoffend. Unfortunately, the underlying issues that got them incarcerated still remain, and in most cases have worsened. There is no rehabilitation or treatment.

It needs to be heard that incarceration is no longer a threat. For many it is like going home, because they are unable to function in mainstream society.

Restorative justice models provide a form of restitution that requires the offender to take accountability for their actions, but it also serves to bring a sense of healing to the victim and the communities affected by the crime.

In summary, I would like to leave you with the following thoughts. While the aboriginal population in Canada is generally growing, aboriginal children and youth are the fastest-growing segment of the population, with aboriginal youth 25 years of age and younger accounting for 48% of the aboriginal population. The time to act is now.

Aboriginal communities believe they can overcome these challenges by fostering a sense of cultural identity in their children. Leaders and child development experts know that youth with positive self-identity feel a stronger sense of belonging to family, community, and peers, and are better able to deal with adversity. What's more, they believe that raising children with a strong sense of cultural identity is essential to healing the wounds in their communities and to the survival of their culture.

Since the overall aboriginal population is much younger than the overall Canadian population, the healthy development of aboriginal youth is especially crucial to the future of our communities. Put simply, today's youth are tomorrow's leaders. How we foster and nurture their gifts, energy, and creativity today will determine how they enact leadership in our communities long into the future.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you.

We'll move on to Diane Redsky and Jackie Anderson.

Go ahead, Ms. Anderson.

[Diane Redsky, Director of Programs, Ma Mawi Wi Chi Itata Centre Inc.]

I will be presenting on behalf of both of us this morning.

Thank you, first of all, to my sisters in our sister agencies for being here this morning and giving that perspective of the challenges and opportunities within our community with regard to organized crime and gangs.

I'd like to begin my presentation by acknowledging a report that I use quite often in the fundraising for the work that I do, and that is by the Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples. It's a 2003 report on “Urban Aboriginal Youth: An Action Plan for Change”. Through this document there was a very similar process to what I understand you're going through here across Canada, with consultations with experts and witnesses on what at that point would have been urban aboriginal youth.

I just want to quote a component on page 75 of that report:

Marginalized and powerless, many Aboriginal youth are left searching for a sense of belonging, community and identity. Gang affiliation and membership can provide Aboriginal youth with a feeling of empowerment, purpose and acceptance.

The key words that really jump out on the page are empowerment, purpose, and acceptance, and I'll talk a little bit more about that when you get to know us a little bit better.

A recommended action in this part of the report—the title is “Exiting Gang Life: The Need for a Safe Place to Go”—acknowledges some collaboration between the province and the federal government and the municipal government:

...in consultation with Aboriginal organizations, support the establishment of Safe Houses to assist urban Aboriginal youth exit gang life. Initiatives should be targeted to “high-risk” cities.

I'd like to share with you another paragraph that jumped out at me:

We wish to emphasize that the underlying factors contributing to the presence of gangs and criminal behaviour has much to do with the wide-ranging limitations in the lives of Aboriginal youth. Cultural isolation, racial segregation and the anomie of social structures and supports in many inner-city neighbourhoods must be addressed. Governments must adopt community-development models, providing for safe and secure housing and economic revitalization measures in urban neighbourhoods most at risk for social disintegration.

So this report, again, has been helpful and really is the key message for this panel around services to communities and working with community-based agencies, but with an emphasis on aboriginal community-based agencies doing the work and working in collaboration.

With that introduction, I'd like to share with you that Jackie and I work for an organization called the Ma Mawi Wi Chi Itata Centre. We are an aboriginal-directed and -controlled community-based agency that provides resource support services for aboriginal families living in Winnipeg. That involves the whole spectrum, from services for women and teens who are pregnant to our seniors and our elders. We provide resource support services for the four stages of life, focusing in a holistic way in which people heal, making sure it is a balanced approach.

We are quite busy in the work we do, being in the aboriginal capital of Canada. While that is very much celebrated by the aboriginal community, we still have our challenges and opportunities as a community to do the healing we need to do and to be involved in our communities in meaningful ways.

I wanted to acknowledge where we are at in terms of our aboriginal community and our aboriginal youth and our young people who are joining gangs. As an organization, quite a few years ago we developed a youth cultural development strategy that involved a lot of youth in its development.

As Melissa from the Ndinawe mentioned, aboriginal youth are a dynamic component of the city of Winnipeg. They are the future leaders and educators, professionals, and role models of their neighbourhoods and community at large. They are the links to the history and tradition of the past, but they also hold the knowledge and vision for the future. That's our foundation and our value base for supporting our young people in our communities.

In these consultations we learned four key things, which are the core foundation of our youth cultural development strategy. A sense of belonging to either a group, family, culture, or organization needs to be firmly established and maintained. A sense of belonging brings about positive change in confidence and self-esteem levels and helps support positive lifestyle choices. Positive resources support positive life experiences. These include such things as tangible recognition of jobs well done, opportunities for outings and events, and quality training in skill development. Opportunities to experience and understand one's responsibility within the broader community provide for personal growth and understanding.

Developing personal responsibilities through exposure to different parts of the community and one's role within it are seen to facilitate the steps that are involved in making positive lifestyle choices. Being identified as somebody special builds self-esteem. Increased self-esteem provides opportunities to act more independently and somewhat less subjectively to peer pressure. So as an organization we have made a commitment to building resources and services around supporting our young people.

Before I conclude my section, I want to bring to your attention the fact that there's an organized crime factor outside of the aboriginal community, and because of that we serve a different purpose. That is the organized crime that exploits and harms our women and children across Canada. While we have many issues around our young people joining gangs, they're not getting rich, for sure. The gang lifestyle is filling a void, and it's really basic to survival.

Then we have an organized crime component that is very organized and very wealthy and is making lots of money through the exploitation of our women and children. That happens in Manitoba, from north to south, and it happens across Canada, where our young women and children, from northern Manitoba to southern Manitoba, are trafficked from coast to coast. I think one of the presentations you had was very focused on exploitation, but next to drugs and weapons, human trafficking is the third most profitable industry to get into.

You need a heck of a lot of organization from coast to coast in order to maintain that. As community-based agencies, we are totally underresourced and just can't keep up with how organized and creative they are, how they're really going under the radar, and how a lot of this is allowed to happen. Our aboriginal women are the targets of this organized crime of sexual exploitation.

It's been our experience in Winnipeg and in the rest of Manitoba that with regard to much of the exploitation, the ones involved in the organized crime are immigrants or new Canadians in immigrant and refugee communities who have formed based on their culture or their country of origin. They are the ones who are opening up these drug houses and brothels and places where our young children are exploited.

There have been some things going on in the province of Manitoba. We do have a government that has really worked with the community and the aboriginal community towards creating a strategy to end sexual exploitation of our children.

There is a Manitoba strategy called Tracia's Trust that has helped a lot of community-based organizations with delivering service and being able to gear service around the victims of sexual exploitation.

We have been working with a greater community coalition on exploitation as well. So lots of work has been done, but we still have so much more to do.

Our recommendation is to look at our young people and the prevention and intervention of young aboriginal people going into gangs, and help us protect our women and children from organized crime that really does a lot of harm to women. Victimization requires a long-term healing process. We need the resources to walk with them in their healing, but we also need to address the demand part of it. Until we do that, the victimization and trafficking of aboriginal women and children across this country will continue.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you.

We'll move on to Renee Kastrukoff. You have 10 minutes.

[Renee Kastrukoff, Director, Pas Family Resource Centre]

Good day. I'm from a community called The Pas. It's about 600 kilometres north of Winnipeg. Right across the bridge is the community of Opaskwayak Cree Nation. There's a bridge separating the two communities. The communities are very engaged and work together.

I guess what I'd really like to talk about today is prevention.

I just want to mention the name Daniel Wolfe. I don't know who is familiar with Daniel Wolfe, but Daniel Wolfe was originally from The Pas. He was in and out of foster care for the first 12 years of his life, and then he basically grew up on the streets of Winnipeg. Daniel Wolfe was charged with two counts of first-degree murder and three counts of attempted murder and was in the Regina penitentiary. He and a couple of other guys escaped from the penitentiary and were eventually apprehended and placed back in the penitentiary. At the hands of six of his own, Daniel Wolfe was murdered.

Basically, when you look at a story like Daniel Wolfe's, people will see him as a hardened criminal. At one point, Daniel Wolfe was a little boy. Daniel's mother has spoken of drinking with him and smoking pot with him. She says that he turned to gangs, because he was looking for a home that she didn't give him.

Parenting is probably the most significant factor we can look at when we talk about prevention. So many of our parents today, our aboriginal parents in particular, are living in conditions of risk. They don't feel they have the supports. They have had their ways of parenting basically taken away from them. Many of them are affected by the residential school system to this day. Those needs have not been addressed.

I know that the Aboriginal Healing Foundation was established to address those needs. I think at this point in time it has basically opened a can of worms. People are left with open wounds, and there's no way to address them at this point in time. It's the children who continue to suffer.

Every day when I walk outside the organization I work for, I see a huge gang presence. We are located in the Manitoba housing units, the Kelsey Housing Estates in The Pas, which is commonly referred to as “the ghetto”. You walk through the yard in the morning to get to your office door and you come across broken beer bottles. You see broken windows. You see gang tags. You see little kids wandering around. Parents are sleeping or are not home, or whatever. I mean, basically, it's very dismal going to work in the morning.

As a result of that, we developed, based on a promising model, gang prevention through targeted outreach. We are observing in our neighbourhood kids at the age of eight or nine wearing gang colours. They're in and out of the apartment buildings. You know they're running stuff for gang members. They're little kids. They are being exploited by gang members. I know it has been said that many of them have gang members in their families. It's their parents, their uncles, their aunts, and their grandparents. It's a vicious cycle for all of them.

Through our project, we are basically looking at reaching the kids by providing alternative activities for them, starting at the age of six. We feel it is really important to start working with them young, because a lot of times, by the time they're 14 or 15, they're quite entrenched. At that point, if they haven't been reached already, it's quite a task, as I know some of the other people sitting at the table can attest to.

In just the last three years, four youth from The Pas have been charged with six murders and three attempted murders. Most recently, just after New Year's, there was a gang-related incident; a man was killed at gunpoint--shot--uptown.

This may not be gang related, but it does speak to the subculture within our community. A couple of weeks ago, a six-year-old girl on her way to school in the morning was abducted by a 17-year-old boy and sexually assaulted. And in the last couple of weeks, a young man from The Pas was killed up in Thompson by a fellow gang member.

That's basically what it comes down to and what the people in our community, in particular in our neighbourhood, come to expect. I think the kids look at that and most of them see that as their future. They don't believe there's something else for them. The parents are at their wits' end. They're saying things to us like, “My kid is 12. He's out running around. He won't come home. He's smoking. He's drinking. He's swearing. He's quitting school. He's doing all this kind of stuff.”

If we had been able to work with mom when that child was born, to address attachment, to look at preventing FASD, to meet the parent's needs in terms of how to parent, to provide that parent with the supports, we might not have this issue when that child reaches the age of 12. He's 12. What's further down the road for him? Is he the next Daniel Wolfe?

You know the saying that it takes a whole community to raise a child. Well, it takes a whole community to save a child. In the words of Dr. Mark Totten, the best way to prevent crime is to prevent child abuse, and the way to prevent child abuse is to educate and support parents and caregivers.

Thank you for your time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you.

Is Velma Orvis--

[Leslie Spillett]

I'd like to say a few words on behalf of the Grandmothers Protecting our Children's council, because our grandmother was called away to an emergency.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Sure.

[Leslie Spillett]

I just want to talk very briefly about the work the Grandmothers Protecting our Children are doing. It's been a voluntary commitment of love by a group of women.

About four years ago, there was a newspaper article about an elder from a northern Manitoba community who was incarcerated at the time for incest on his granddaughter. At that time he was before a parole board, and the community significantly got behind him to have him released back into the community. It was successful. At the same time, they banished the young woman from the community. He came back home to his first nations community and reoffended on another granddaughter.

At the time, this was making the front pages. Anything that has to do negatively with indigenous people always ends up at least on the front page, so this obviously was one of those things that was on the front page.

At that time, a group of grandmothers and women got together and said this is just enough. We were going to assert our indigenous women's leadership once more, because before, in the past, that was very much at play in our communities. No decisions would have been made without the input of the grandmothers, and very often their input would have been the information that would form a community decision. That, again, is one of those institutions, those values, that have been compromised because of the history of this particular country.

So we said we need to organize ourselves and have the opportunity to speak out against this kind of profound violence that our children are experiencing, because we know those children who are so hurt in their own families then become a part of the other systems. Again, it's another way of perpetuating that cycle of violence, including the 500 missing and murdered aboriginal women, the trafficking of aboriginal women.

We are led by three kookums. They're our spiritual leaders. Velma is one of them, and she has sent a message that she apologizes. An emergency has come up. She works for a group that works for residential school survivors, and sometimes these things happen. But I know she would want me to say that we are in the process of empowering ourselves or claiming our own responsibility again to be leaders in our communities and in our families.

For the past four years, Grandmothers has organized a sacred walk on a significant day in the indigenous people's calendar, September 21, which is moving between summer and fall, because everything we do is connected to the values that define us as an indigenous people. So our sacred walk has been very much supported by the community over the past. This will be the fourth year that we're doing it, and the message is to stop the violence perpetrated against aboriginal children—and all children, but of course we know that in this town it's primarily aboriginal children who are being hurt.

In my view, it's interesting that this committee is looking at justice and human rights, because I know that these are inextricably linked, that justice is a human right or a human right is justice. It's reversible. Again, that empowerment—first of all, the profound levels of disempowerment of people who think their only choices are to be something negative have been a part of a historical process that has led to this.

These systems are creating these monsters and nobody knows what to do with them, but underneath, they're just scared, frightened little children.

I have a friend who's on our board of directors. His name is Patrol Sergeant Cecil Swinson, a first nations police officer, who says, “You know, they act kind of tough out on the street, but you get them into the police car and they're crying for their mommas.” We can work with them, but we need the tools. We need the resources.

My sister here talked about turning the tides. It was one of five gang intervention programs through the youth gang prevention fund. Funding for that is coming to an end in March 2011, without any extension. We know that after that particular envelope of money was announced, by the time the project started rolling out, a year and a half had already expired in that envelope year, and now we're running out of funding in 2011. So we really need resources and support from our federal, provincial, and municipal counterparts to help us do this work.

Getting back to the grandmothers, it's 100% volunteer-driven, and one of the really neat little things that we just did recently, as a part of the provincial government's sexual exploitation awareness week, is the grandmothers went to the streets. I drive the streets of Winnipeg a lot and see young girls, children, on the street, sexually exploited children, but when you go to those places and see street after street of mostly aboriginal women in the dark and the cold and being sexually exploited, and when you target certain areas and you go and see them, you just see it in a very different light. It's very, very sad and there's lots of despair, but we also know that's not all of what defines them.

They were so happy to see the grandmothers come to them, offer them a sandwich, offer them a cup of coffee, offer them some love, letting them know they were more than that. They are so much more than that. They are our children and we love them, and we need to have the opportunity, as a fundamental human right, to work with our own children.

We can change this around. There's no doubt in my mind about that. I and these other women who have been working in this area don't need to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results. We know how to work with our people. We know it and we know that we are successful when we do it. We just need the institutional support behind us to be able to do it.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you.

We'll start off with some questions. First of all, Mr. Murphy.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

I'll defer to Ms. Mendes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

It's for seven minutes.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Thank you all for your testimony, which confirms a lot of what we've heard these last two days.

I'll start with the last question, that of funding. Being a federal government, just about all we can do is to help fund some of the activities you're engaged in.

On long-term funding specifically, I think one of the big complaints we've heard from all groups is that three-year projects do not really ensure long-term care or prevention, or the change in society that we all wish for. So when we're talking about the prevention of organized crime and youth participation in such crime, how would you suggest the federal government go about supporting what you do, how you do it, and the tools you need to proceed with that?

[Melissa Omelan]

I think my project is another one of those project-funded programs. We were talking downstairs earlier on, and we were saying that ultimately we want to provide stability for the youth we work with; yet we as a program are not stable, because we don't know, this coming March, where we will be.

The youth we work with ask us on a consistent basis what is going to happen and we can't give them answers. I think there definitely needs to be some responsibility put back on the government to continue funding—

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Are you part of that?

[Melissa Omelan]

Yes, I am. Responsibility needs to be put back to the government to continue funding these programs. They're not fly-by-night programs.

With our program specifically--and I know with Circle of Courage--it took us two years to really start figuring out what we were doing, what was working, best practices, what wasn't working, and the relationship that is the cornerstone of what we do with the kids we work with. You get three-quarters of the way there--and it's done.

We need to look at instituting some core funding for projects that have proven what they're doing is working; that the outcomes are there--and to continue to grow. Having five projects in Winnipeg that are federally funded is not nearly enough.

[Leslie Spillett]

I would like to add two points. I think education is one way to break these cycles. There are different ways, and there isn't one thing that is going to do it. Continuity of services will make that difference, because it isn't just one issue. It is not just housing or lack of jobs; it's everything.

In Winnipeg, one in five children in the areas we work in completes high school. That's significant. We know that those children will go from dropping out of schools into the criminal justice system. There's a trajectory that we can see happening. We can see it taking place.

The City of Winnipeg engaged in a process in the last couple of years around crime prevention. One of the suggestions that came out of that was an aboriginal school division. We have a small aboriginal-identified school that is part of a larger Winnipeg school division system, and it is extremely successful in graduating healthy kids. It was showcased in Maclean's magazine as one of the best schools in Canada. Why can't we make that a bigger operation?

I believe it's not about what the program is; it's about who's running the program. If aboriginal children see aboriginal people working, being healthy, being engaged, and being successful, they're going to emulate that behaviour. But if they only see us as being weak, insignificant, and not engaged, and see all other cultural groups providing services for us, then that's what they're going to see. So it's about who does the program, not about the program.

I know those are the key concepts, and those are the messages we need to send today.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

I think you have said from the start that aboriginal people should be taking care of aboriginal issues.

But going back to the very practical, we've been told this morning that one of the biggest problems is the fact that federal funding is difficult to access. It's very bureaucratic and very difficult to access.

Are there suggestions on your part on how we could make it easier and simpler for you to access that?

[Diane Redsky]

As one of the largest aboriginal organizations here in Winnipeg, we are always looking for ways to be in a meaningful relationship with funding partners. It's a two-way street around really building the relationship with the community to identify what key resources we need to facilitate the work. Those opportunities don't happen very often with the federal government.

So it's a matter of looking at common tables to develop what those priorities are going to be and then looking for the resources that can come from that. It would give us an opportunity to say that when we are looking in particular at victims of organized crime, the current system is very siloed. But having the opportunity to sit down...it's very complex. It takes a long time for a woman or even a child who has been victimized...and we need to have a long-term plan and long-term resources for that.

In the current situation we're lucky that it's three years. That's a bonus. But you just start building and start women and children on their healing journeys and you need to fight for the buck again.

I think there are always opportunities to sit down and create strategies together that come with resources that are holistic.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you.

Madame Guay, you have seven minutes.