Special Committee on Indigenous Women Committee on May 2nd, 2013

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the fourth meeting of the Special Committee on Violence Against Indigenous Women.

Thanks to all of you on our large panel for being here this evening. We really appreciate it. We'll be very interested in what you have to say.

We're going to get started right off the top with the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development.

Françoise Ducros, welcome. You have 10 minutes.

[Françoise Ducros, Assistant Deputy Minister, Education and Social Development Programs and Partnerships, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development]

Thank you for having me here.

Madam Chair and honourable members, I want to thank you for inviting the Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development department to appear before the committee. It's a privilege for us. Sheilagh Murphy and Jo-Ann Greene are also with me and can answer questions specific to social programs and matrimonial property.

Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, of course, continues to be deeply concerned about this issue and appreciates the opportunity to assist the special committee.

In the June 2011 Speech from the Throne, the Government of Canada committed to address the problem of violence against women and girls. The federal role is only one part of the overall efforts.

Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada supports aboriginal women, girls and families through funding for programs and services that directly address violence, such as the family violence prevention program. They also address violence indirectly through support for child and family services, on-reserve housing, economic security and prosperity, education and urban living.

Since 2006 the Government of Canada has invested approximately $205 million in the family violence prevention program. Economic action plan 2013 announced further funding of $24 million over two years for the program, allowing the department to continue to offer its programming at a funding level of approximately $30 million in 2013-14 and 2014-15. The investment contributes to the enhanced safety and security of on-reserve residents, particularly women and children.

The family violence prevention program provides funding to assist first nations in providing access to 41 family violence shelters and prevention activities to women, children, and families who are ordinarily resident on reserve. There are two components to the program: core shelter operating funding and proposal-based prevention projects in aboriginal communities.

Prevention projects may include public outreach and awareness, education campaigns, conferences, seminars, workshops, counselling, support groups, and community needs assessments. Since 2006 the family violence prevention program has funded 1,886 prevention projects that address family violence in aboriginal communities, 302 of which were supported in 2011 and 2012. They include the following projects.

The Alberta First Nations Regional Board for Family Violence Prevention is an example of prevention and partnerships. It manages the prevention project funding from Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada for three treaty areas and has formed partnerships with other organizations in hosting a series of youth gatherings.

The Lac La Ronge Indian Child and Family Services Agency in Saskatchewan delivers a comprehensive program in four schools that offer high school education. The program includes students, teachers, parents, and communities in reducing violence and risk behaviours.

Also, the Naskapi Nation of Kawawachikamach in Quebec currently delivers a multi-approach prevention project. It offers family violence education awareness workshops and radio talk shows in the community, parenting courses, training on bullying for teachers and school staff, workshops for children of alcoholic parents, and group sessions for alcoholics.

The project has also led to the development of a crisis intervention protocol for all partners involved in responding to family violence crises, such as the police and social, youth protection and native health workers.

The family violence prevention program also provides core funding of approximately $370,000 to the National Aboriginal Circle Against Family Violence, a national organization that supports aboriginal women's shelters and their staff through training fora, gatherings, development and distribution of resources, and research and collaboration with key partners.

The Government of Canada has also introduced legislation, the Family Homes on Reserves and Matrimonial Interests or Rights Act, Bill S-2, which protects vulnerable men and women on reserve.

Bill S-2 seeks to provide basic rights and protections to individuals on reserve regarding the family home and other matrimonial interests or rights. The bill would also help to address incidents of family violence against aboriginal women and their children on reserves by providing for emergency protection orders that grant temporary exclusive occupation of the home. Through this legislation, the government is addressing a long-standing legislative gap and ensuring that women, children, and families on reserve can live in safe and stable home environments.

The health and safety of first nations children is also a primary concern for this government.

The first nations child and family services program provides funding to assist in ensuring the safety and well-being of first nations children on reserve by supporting culturally appropriate prevention and protection services. These services are provided in accordance with the legislation and standards of the province or territory of residence and in a manner that is reasonably comparable to those available to other provincial and territorial residents in similar circumstances within the department's programming authorities.

In 2007 the first nations child and family services began shifting to an enhanced prevention-focused approach. This is consistent with provincial practices, which have largely refocused their child and family services programs by placing greater emphasis on prevention services.

The implementation of the enhanced prevention-focused approach is expected to improve services, cohesion of the family, and life outcomes for first nations children and families on reserve. Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada has increased funding for first nations child and family services dramatically over the past 16 years, from $193 million in 1996-97 to approximately $618 million in funding in 2012-13.

The enhanced prevention-focused approach is now being implemented in six provinces and is reaching approximately 68% of first nations children who live on reserve in Canada. Under the six current tripartite frameworks, more than $100 million per year in additional ongoing funding is now dedicated to implementing the new approach.

AANDC continues to share lessons learned and remains willing to work with other jurisdictions as they shift their own practices to enhance prevention. The government is also working to ensure that first nations students have access to education that encourages them to stay in school, graduate, and get the skills they need to enter the labour market. While the government invests significantly every year in first nations elementary and secondary education, we recognize that more remains to be done to make progress in improving outcomes.

In the economic action plan 2012, the Government of Canada committed $275 million for first nations education over three years for improving school infrastructure and to provide early literacy programming, as well as other supports and services to first nations schools and students, and to strengthen their relationship with the provincial school systems.

The Government of Canada is now consulting with first nations and other stakeholders on a proposed first nations education act, to be in place by September 2014. The purpose of the legislation is to establish the structures and standards to support strong and accountable education systems on reserve and to encourage students to stay in school and achieve better outcomes.

The government is also exploring mechanisms to ensure stable, predictable and sustainable funding for first nations elementary and secondary education.

An overarching goal of the Government of Canada's education programming remains to provide first nations students with quality education that provides them with the opportunity to acquire the skills needed to enter the labour market and to be full participants in a strong Canadian economy.

Perhaps the last thing I'd like to mention is that Aboriginal Affairs also provides support to national aboriginal women's organizations. In 2012-13, the Native Women's Association received approximately $1.5 million in project funding and annual core funding. This amount supports basic organization costs and provides a minimum level of capacity so that the organization can advise governments of its members' needs and interests.

In 2012-13, the Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada received approximately $1.4 million in basic organizational capacity funding and project funding from our department. These are some of the ways in which Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada is working to support and enhance the safety of aboriginal women.

We're certainly prepared to answer questions as best we can.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

Wonderful. Thank you very much for that.

Next we will hear from the Department of Public Safety.

Mr. Tupper.

[Shawn Tupper, Assistant Deputy Minister, Community Safety and Partnerships Branch, Department of Public Safety]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I submitted a rather lengthy submission. With your indulgence, I'll race through it. It'll take me a race to get through the 10 minutes, so....

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

I saw that it was long, and if there are paragraphs that you need to shorten or skip over, I understand. But we do appreciate your reading that into the record.

[Shawn Tupper]

I'm happy to.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

I think it helps us to absorb it and ask better questions.

[Shawn Tupper]

I'm here with Kimberly Lavoie, who is our director of aboriginal corrections within the Department of Public Safety.

As you undoubtedly heard in your initial meetings, and as you will hear tonight, this is a very complex issue that is going to touch on a variety of programs and initiatives that are supported through the federal government across several departments.

Public Safety delivers programming that proactively strives to ensure safer aboriginal communities as part of the government's plan for safe streets and communities.

As part of this initiative, on March 4 the government committed $612.4 million in funding over five years to renew agreements under the first nations policing program. The FNPP ensures professional, dedicated, and culturally responsive policing in first nations and Inuit communities, which supplements the responsibilities of the provinces and territories in the delivery of police services. Since 1991, the FNPP has supported the government's commitment to reduce crime and has facilitated positive relations between communities and the police.

Public Safety has worked with first nations and Inuit communities in provinces and territories to significantly improve public safety in their communities. The FNPP has had a significant and measurable positive impact on the safety and security of communities that receive policing services funded under this program.

Through the national crime prevention strategy, departmental funding is provided to support community-based projects that are responsive to local crime prevention needs. The priorities of the NCPC are to address early risk factors among vulnerable children and youth at risk; to respond to priority crime issues, for example, youth gangs, youth violence, and school-based bullying; to prevent recidivism among high-risk groups; and to foster prevention in aboriginal communities. The government invests $43.1 million annually through four funding flows.

The crime prevention action fund, the first of those flows, provides time-limited funding to assist communities and organizations in two areas: one, developing and implementing crime prevention initiatives that address known risks and protective factors associated with offending behaviour; and, two, developing and implementing knowledge transfer initiatives that focus on the application of research-based evidence to inform crime prevention practice.

The northern and aboriginal crime prevention fund provides funding to support culturally sensitive crime prevention initiatives to reduce offending among youth at risk and high-risk offenders in communities. It helps to disseminate knowledge and develop tools and resources for aboriginal and northern populations. It builds capacity for the development of culturally sensitive crime prevention practices for aboriginal and northern populations.

The youth gang prevention fund provides funding to invest in communities where youth gangs are an existing or emerging threat and it supports initiatives that clearly target youth who are in gangs or are at greatest risk of joining gangs.

We also have the smaller program called the security infrastructure program, which provides funding for security enhancements for not-for-profit community centres, provincially recognized educational institutions, and places of worship linked to communities with histories of being victimized by hate-motivated crime.

Close to $15 million of the crime prevention funding envelope goes towards preventing crime in northern and aboriginal communities.

Human trafficking is another stream of work that occurs within our department. It impacts on Canada and is often considered a modern form of slavery. In June of 2012 the Minister of Public Safety launched the national action plan to combat human trafficking. This action plan has a four-pillar approach that consolidates efforts by focusing on the four Ps: the prevention of trafficking, the protection of victims, the prosecution of offenders, and the development of partnerships. The action plan applies to all communities, including aboriginal communities.

I would like to provide some information about these four pillars. In the first pillar we focus on the prevention of human trafficking through enhanced training of our police, border agents, and other front-line workers to recognize signs of human trafficking, raise awareness among Canadians, and work with communities to identify people and places most at risk.

The second pillar aims to enhance efforts to protect and provide assistance to victims of human trafficking by increasing financial supports for victims services and by identifying and protecting domestic and foreign nationals in Canada who are vulnerable to trafficking. This includes young females aged 15 to 21.

The third pillar increases our capacity to detect, investigate, and prosecute offenders by strengthening the laws within our criminal justice system, providing specialized training and education for prosecutors and law enforcement, and improving intelligence collection and collaboration. To help achieve this, the government has created Canada's first integrated law enforcement team dedicated to identifying, disrupting, and prosecuting human traffickers in our country.

Finally, the government will work in partnership with relevant stakeholders to build on existing policies and tools to ensure a comprehensive and coordinated approach and to promote strong research and better information sharing to improve our methods of collecting, tracking, and reporting on data related to human trafficking.

To further ensure the success of the national action plan, the government is directing more than $25 million over four years to implement this plan.

In addition to the programs and initiatives I've already highlighted, in 2010 the Government of Canada made an additional investment of $25 million over five years, from 2010 to 2015, to address the disturbingly high number of missing and murdered aboriginal women.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police received $10 million over five years to provide enhancements to the Canadian Police Information Centre, CPIC, and to create the National Centre for Missing Persons and Unidentified Remains.

On January 31, 2013, the RCMP launched a national public website for missing persons and unidentified human remains. The URL for the website is www.canadasmissing.ca.

Canadasmissing.ca provides law enforcement, medical examiners and chief coroners with a powerful tool in resolving missing persons and unidentified remains cases, and gives the public an easy-to-use access point to ensure that relevant information is received by investigators.

I would encourage the committee to hear from the RCMP, who can provide additional details about their activities.

In my department of Public Safety Canada, we received $5.7 million out of the total $25 million to support aboriginal communities in the development of community safety plans to improve the safety of aboriginal women. The rationale for Public Safety's approach under this initiative is that by reducing the likelihood of aboriginal women being marginalized, we will reduce the number of aboriginal women who go missing or who are murdered.

The premise of this initiative is that many aboriginal women find themselves in marginalized situations, without support networks, as a result of difficult circumstances at home. In some communities, violence has become normalized, creating a sense of hopelessness that often seems inescapable.

Aboriginal women leave their communities for various reasons, some to escape an abusive relationship, others seeking better opportunities such as education or employment. None leave hoping to be a sex trade worker or homeless.

To achieve positive and sustainable change, solutions have to come from the community. Imposing solutions or quick fixes from the outside will not have a lasting impact. Communities need to be supported and sometimes assisted in moving toward their goal, but the vision, plan, and desire to move forward has to come from the community itself.

A moving and model example of what can happen is brought to life by the experience of Alkali Lake, a first nation community in British Columbia. In 1972 a seven-year-old girl told her mother, “I don't want to live with you anymore.” The little girl refused to go home until both her parents quit drinking. That single event was the catalyst that led to 98% of the people of Alkali Lake completely abstaining from the use of alcohol seven years later, in 1979.

This story demonstrates that only when people take ownership of their community can positive change occur. Fostering this type of positive change is the type of community-led initiative that inspired the thinking behind the community safety plans.

The objective is to support communities themselves develop safety plans that define risks that lead to crime and victimization, build on their existing strengths, and identify gaps in responding to those risks. The community safety plans would then serve as a blueprint to systematically address the root causes of victimization and respond to current community safety issues.

Public Safety Canada funds the community safety planning process through contribution agreements. Generally the agreements cover the cost of a coordinator in the community, plus some funds for training or engagement activities. Most agreements are between $45,000 and $50,000.

Public Safety staff—

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

Sorry to interrupt, but I just want to remind you that you have one minute left. You might want to pick and choose at this point.

[Shawn Tupper]

Great. Thank you very much.

Public Safety plays an active role in the communities in helping them work forward on these plans.

Through the questions, we can get into the processes against which we work with the communities and the kinds of things that we support and help them to develop. We have an ongoing process for receiving proposals and working with communities and identifying those that are most at risk.

We also have developed a network of aboriginal facilitators. Within the communities we're trying to build up the capacity across aboriginal communities that allow them to facilitate for themselves the kinds of processes they want to work through. We can deliver these processes every six weeks in communities and do follow-up work to ensure that we sustain that momentum.

To date, over 190 people have been trained as community mobilization trainers or community champions. That's another aspect of how we can sustain and ensure that the momentum we're building is continued. We anticipate that five additional safety plans will be completed this year. We will work with federal, provincial, and local partners to help harmonize our responses to identify these needs.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

And we'll be happy to hear about the rest in answer to questions. Thank you so much, Mr. Tupper.

Now to Statistics Canada. Ms. Barr-Telford, thank you for being here. You have 10 minutes.

[Lynn Barr-Telford, Director General, Health, Justice and Special Surveys Branch, Statistics Canada]

Thank you. I invite the committee to follow along in the presentation deck that we have provided.

Thank you for the opportunity to present to this committee. In the presentation today we used data from both administrative and population-based victimization surveys to show the representation of aboriginal women as victims of violent crime, with the important caveat that these data have limitations.

All data sources are clearly indicated on the slides, as are any pertinent notes. My colleagues, Ms. Cathy Connors and Ms. Rebecca Kong, are here to help answer any questions.

Please turn to the next slide in your deck. We've included slide 2 to provide a brief overview of the demographics of aboriginal people. We know that the population of aboriginal people is growing at a faster pace than the non-aboriginal population. In 2006 the census indicated that about 1.2 million Canadians reported aboriginal identity. This represented an increase of 20% from the previous census in 2001 and was four times faster than the population growth for the non-aboriginal population. Overall, aboriginal people represented almost 4% of the Canadian population in 2006.

As you can see, the aboriginal population is younger than the non-aboriginal population. This is important to note when looking at victimization because young people are overrepresented as victims of violent crimes.

Slide 3 shows aboriginal women's risk of violent victimization relative to non-aboriginal women, based on findings from self-reported victimization data. Violent victimization is defined to include sexual assault, robbery, and physical assault. In 2009 the rate of self-reported victimization for aboriginal women was almost three times higher than for non-aboriginal women in the preceding 12 months. Expressed another way, close to 67,000 aboriginal women, or 13% of all aboriginal women living in the provinces, stated that they had been violently victimized in the last 12 months.

The higher prevalence of violence against aboriginal women compared to non-aboriginal women was found for both violence between strangers or acquaintances and within spousal relationships. This violence was not always an isolated event. More than one-third of all aboriginal female victims were victimized two or more times. There is no difference in this regard compared to non-aboriginal women.

Although not shown in the chart, many aboriginal female victims of crime are relatively young and tend to be highly represented as victims of violence. This is consistent with violent crime overall, where young people are overrepresented as victims. In particular, close to two-thirds, 63%, of aboriginal female victims were aged 15 to 34. This age group accounted for just under half, 47%, of the overall female aboriginal population.

Data for the territories is limited, but we do know that aboriginal women living in the territories were also more likely than non-aboriginal women to report being victimized by a spouse in the last five years, 18% versus 5%.

Slide 4 shows the impact of violence on aboriginal women compared to non-aboriginal female victims. Aboriginal women victimized by a spouse in the previous five years were significantly more likely than their non-aboriginal female counterparts to report being physically injured. They were also more likely to report fearing for their lives. However, there was no difference between aboriginal and non-aboriginal victims in terms of emotional consequences or taking time off from everyday activities as a result of violence.

It should be noted that the higher incidents of injury and fearing for their lives reported by aboriginal women may be partly related to the type of violence aboriginal women experience in spousal relationships. Close to half reported the most severe forms of violence, such as being sexually assaulted, beaten, choked, or threatened with a gun or a knife.

When violence involves someone other than a spouse, aboriginal female victims were more likely than non-aboriginal victims to report an emotional impact, but there was no difference in the level of physical injury.

Slide 5 shows that violent incidents, including those against aboriginal women, are often not brought to the attention of the police. Overall, many incidents of violence committed outside spousal relationships were not reported to the police, and a similar trend is seen for spousal violence.

The most common reasons cited by aboriginal women for not reporting the spousal violence incident to the police included feeling that the incident was a personal matter, not wanting to involve the police, and dealing with the situation in another way. Non-aboriginal female spousal violence victims cited similar reasons for not reporting to police.

On slide 6 we present police-reported information collected through the national uniform crime reporting survey. This slide illustrates the difficulty in gathering information on the aboriginal identity through police services. Of all the victims of police-reported violent crime in 2011, 2% were reported by police services to be aboriginal people, 30% were non-aboriginal people, and for 68% of victims the information was reported as either “unknown”, “not collected by police”, or “not provided by the victim”. Given the high proportion of “unknowns”, Statistics Canada does not include these data in published reports.

Slide 7 shows data from the homicide survey, which collects data from police services across Canada on the characteristics of every homicide incident, victim and accused. We see that aboriginal females were also disproportionally represented as homicide victims. In particular, aboriginal females represented at least 8% of all homicide victims in Canada between 2004 and 2010, despite accounting for 4% of the total female population in Canada. You can see from the third set of bars that in almost 50% of homicides, we do not know the aboriginal identity of the victim. This represents cases where police services did not know the aboriginal identity of the victim and have not collected or have not provided the information to Statistics Canada.

On slide 8, aboriginal women's disproportionate representation as homicide victims is particularly seen in cases of dating homicide and homicides involving friends, acquaintances, and strangers. Over the last decade, aboriginal women represented at least 11% of dating homicide victims and 10% of homicides involving friends, acquaintances, and strangers.

Aboriginal women 15 years and over represent 3% of the total female population 15 years and over in Canada. The proportion of women victims killed by a spouse where the aboriginal identity was known, at 4%, was close to their representation in the total population aged 15 and over. You will notice that we use the term “at least” in all these findings because of the high level of “unknowns”. It is likely that aboriginal women may represent an even higher proportion of homicide victims than the percentages being shown here.

On slide 9, in addition to measuring the prevalence and nature of crime and victimization, Statistics Canada also collects data on services for victims of violence. Based on findings from the transition home survey, a biennial administrative survey of shelters for abused women, there were 593 shelters for abused women operating in 2010. Of these, 7%, 39, were located on reserves and 25%, 146, served people living on reserves. Most shelters in Canada reported that they offered some type of culturally sensitive programming for aboriginal women, including traditional health methods, involvement of spiritual elders, and access to materials in aboriginal languages. In particular, 79% of shelters serving on-reserve populations and 59% not serving on-reserve populations provided culturally sensitive services for aboriginals.

Slide 10 outlines some important data limitations and challenges in collecting and analyzing data on the victimization of aboriginal women. For self-reported victimization data, the information is collected using the general social survey, which collects information on the general Canadian population. Because of this, there are limits to the extent of analysis that can be done on subpopulations, such as the aboriginal population, because sample sizes become small.

Police-reported data also have limitations. In working with stakeholders, Statistics Canada has identified two main issues driving the high rate of unknown aboriginal identity. First, operationally, police face challenges in accurately determining whether a victim is an aboriginal person. Second, there are conflicts of interest with privacy legislation and policing policies in various jurisdictions.

StatsCan collects information on all reported and confirmed homicides that occur in Canada, but missing persons data are not included as they are not in and of themselves a Criminal Code offence.

Finally, we've provided a list of other references for the use of the committee in which we have done further analysis on victimization and aboriginal women.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

Wonderful. Thank you very much.

We'll now begin our rounds of questioning with Ms. Davies.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much, Chairperson.

First of all, thank you to all the presenters who have come here today. I think certainly what we have just heard from StatsCan, of the information that you are able to gather, is very disturbing and very sobering in terms of the picture you present.

We're dealing with a very major, critical emergent issue here. I almost feel like there are two worlds. There's the world that we see here, and we hear what government departments are doing and we hear all the acronyms and the programs, and then there is the world out there, where reality is and where aboriginal women are facing a lot of violence. There's systemic discrimination. There's the impact of colonialism. I think one of the issues we're trying to get at here is, what's the disconnect?

I would like to begin by asking the departments we've heard from—which is basically two—if there are any external audits your departments do to actually measure the effectiveness of the programs. When you read the briefs, there are millions here and millions there. Sometimes it's handed out in very small amounts: $30,000, $50,000. What kind of independent assessment goes on to tell you whether or not what you're doing is effective?

I think common sense tells us that there's still a huge issue, so something with the picture is not right. What is it that's not right? Do your departments know what it is? Or is it just people working in silos and we don't yet have a grasp of what the underlying issues are and how to tackle them?

There are many questions in there, but I think my main one is, do you actually have outside audits that examine for you what it is that you're doing? And is the community involved in that?

[Sheilagh Murphy, Director General, Social Policy and Programs, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development]

I can answer on behalf of AANDC. Last year we completed an evaluation of our family violence prevention program, and that is actually available on our website. It looks at the effectiveness of our programming in the 41 shelters, as well as our prevention programming, and it made a number of recommendations. Concurrent—

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Was that done in-house? Who was it done by?

[Sheilagh Murphy]

Normally we hire external firms to do the evaluation for us. They put together surveys. They go out and survey shelter directors and others in the community. It's an evaluation. It's not done by staff of the department.

So that is available. It looks at how our program performed over the last five years.

Concurrent to that, we hired another firm to look at a review of the program that wasn't considered a formal evaluation. They did 10 case studies, I believe, of 10 shelters, and they looked at some of the challenges the shelter directors were having offering services. That's also available, and we could share both of those with the committee.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

And in terms of Public Safety?

[Shawn Tupper]

It will vary a little bit by program.

In the context of first nations policing, we undertook what we call a comprehensive review of that program in 2009-10, and in that context part of that comprehensive review involved a departmental evaluation of the program. But it also involved external consultations with our aboriginal partners and with our provincial and territorial partners. We were able to gauge largely how our partners viewed the program. The results were unequivocal in the sense of the support. We had something like an 80% positive review from aboriginal communities in terms of their support for the program. I think it was because we really have focused this program to provide appropriate and culturally sensitive policing in those communities.

We can certainly look at the data we're seeing with respect to those communities, in terms of the impact these programs have had, the way they are in those communities, in terms of the crime severity index, where we see a clear differentiation between those communities where the first nations policing program exists and those communities where it doesn't exist. The reduction in the crime severity index is quite significantly different. So we have fairly good data that I think is independent of the department's assessment that would indicate that this is a good investment and it's making headway.

On the other side, within the context of the National Crime Prevention Centre, we do extensive investments in evaluation and audit of those programs, and those are done independently of the program. They are part of the formation of each of the projects as we move forward. We don't audit and evaluate 100% of the projects externally because that would just simply be too expensive. But we do a very good cross-sampling of our projects that we support. Again, the whole ambition of this program, designed in 2008, is to make sure that we are looking at community-based, on-the-ground, community-needed crime prevention activities. So the evaluations really pay attention to whether these investments are being effective in the communities.

We're having very good results in that context, and I think we're building an evidence base for Canada that would suggest the right kind of prevention investments are being made.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

I'd love to follow up on that, but I want to quickly switch to StatsCan, if I may, in whatever remaining time I have.

I think your graphs and information have presented, as I say, a very disturbing picture. From the agency's point of view, what is it that needs to be done to actually ensure that there is better reporting from a statistical point of view?

You speak about the number of police services that don't even collect or provide information to StatsCan or don't collect information about aboriginal identity. Is this something you've looked at in terms of what it is these departments and the government itself need to be doing in terms of ensuring that we do have a proper database and proper information on which to make public policy decisions?

[Lynn Barr-Telford]

It is certainly the case, as you've seen in the data, that there is a significant amount of missing information around police-reported data and aboriginal identity. This is a known fact and is something that we have dialogued on with police services as well as our multiple partners.

There are some significant challenges in gathering aboriginal identity information through police services. There are operational challenges that police services point to, such as difficulty in assessing aboriginal identity, for example. In some cases, there are conflicts between the different jurisdictions in terms of privacy legislation. It does remain a challenge, and it is an acknowledged challenge.

We dialogue on a regular basis around what the information needs are of the various players in the justice community in terms of victimization data and how we can improve that. We talk about the types of questions we ask, the sampling information, and so forth.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

Thank you for that answer.

For seven minutes, Mr. Rickford.

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses, especially my friends at Aboriginal Affairs who have spent a lot of time working and talking about a lot of issues, including this.

Colleagues, I want to share very briefly some of my own experience of—perhaps exposure to—violence against women and segue into some questions that I think are quite important for the departments today.

Over the course of an 18-year nursing career around North America, I had a lot of great experiences. Most of that time I spent in isolated and remote first nations communities and regions across Canada, including the Arctic. I had a lot of great times, but I saw some unfortunate things, and a couple things in my nursing career I just cannot erase.

One was an experience in a level one surgical intensive care unit. As a nurse on shift that night, I received a 27-year-old woman who was shot in the head and who passed away over the course of my shift. There was other domestic violence that I was exposed to in my capacity as an extended role nurse in the north, but another in particular was when I was on call in a northern reserve in Saskatchewan. At about two o'clock in the morning in the middle of winter, I opened the door to a first nations community member, a woman and her three children. She had been beaten seriously, not seriously enough that she couldn't walk to the nursing station, but perhaps just as alarming were her three children, who were screaming because of what they had just witnessed.

Over time, I was left with an inability to get those two—there are others—out of my mind. In coming to this committee, I've thought, as an ordinary, average Canadian guy with four beautiful sisters, not just about the complexities of violence against women, and I have tried to reconcile that, but specifically about my career in first nations communities across northern Canada. Since becoming a member of Parliament, I've tried to make sense of some of the things we do right and some of the things we could obviously do better. I share the concern expressed by my colleague just prior that there is some kind of silo effect on the go. It precedes this government. Frankly, I think it has been a structural challenge for a very long time.

I appreciate the MRP legislation that we're moving forward. In particular, the exclusive occupation of a family home and emergency protection orders—as a pragmatist and somebody who's been there and dealt with this—were probably the most important pieces of that legislation for me in terms of family violence, keeping in mind that this is an important piece of what ultimately goes to the vulnerability of women and children on reserve and leads to some other things that we'll be talking about over the course of time.

I see that we have increased investments in prevention of family violence, particularly through your department. It makes sense that although we have increased the number of shelters, the better investment is on prevention. We still have a way to go, I would submit, in dealing with the reality that more shelters could be in some communities. We are focusing on outcomes.

But my concern—and this might draw a grin from Francie—has been, as you know, in Min/DM meetings, when I talk about how these big departments are doing things focused on the same social, economic, or health challenge. And are they talking. It goes a little bit beyond the silo concept. It says, is there a coordinated exercise, or could there be, at the departmental levels that put together all of these pieces? As a senior health policy analyst while Minister Rock was the Minister of Health, we stayed largely within the health building in Tunney's Pasture. We rarely went out and talked to people on some of the files we were working on at the time.

I'm going to put that question out in the last three or four minutes here for you to talk about, whether that goes on, and if not, to inform our work as to whether we could make recommendations in time as we gather more information on how and what kinds of activities could go towards what I've expressed as a concern.

Thank you.

[Françoise Ducros]

My short answer would be yes, it goes on, and it goes on more and more. We certainly understand the interconnectedness, not only of bringing together the different government departments. As we move toward income assistance, we very much link it with both our department and HRSDC, and also with Health Canada, to deal with all of the mental health and well-being issues.

One of the other things we're doing more and more, besides connecting the different government departments through both formal and informal mechanisms—and certainly we could formalize that and restructure it better than we have—is to move in a very integrated fashion with the provinces. They are the first line of service providers with the expertise, and they have changed their programs to be proactive and preventative.

For some of the issues being touched upon, including children and family services, we've moved toward tripartite agreements. We're working with the provinces and first nations on issues of cultural sensitivity in service provision, and we're bringing in our colleagues from Public Safety and Health Canada so that we're working in a holistic way.

I read the deliberations of the last committee regarding the ongoing complexity of these issues and the dangers of not being able to attack this in a multi-pronged way. There was a lot of focus on the justice side.

More and more, as we move toward the enhanced prevention approach, these examples I talked about—bringing it into the schools, moving with education reform, dealing with how we get to the health, education, child and family services, and the family supports, and frankly, getting rid of some of the barriers to things like access to training and income assistance.... We have, through good policy intent over the years, created barriers. In some instances—for example, if someone wants to improve their ability to go off and work, or to get the supports they might need for mental health issues, or to gain access to training, or to move off reserve to get some of that training—we have created some of those barriers through other policies, like having housing and housing supplements only on reserve, so there is an inability to move off reserve. We're trying to address those through education and training, and through moving with things like the—

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

But you are working with those other departments.