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.

[Françoise Ducros]

Absolutely, we are working with the other departments. I can't underline enough that we are working with the provinces as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

Thank you very much.

Now, for seven minutes, we have Ms. Bennett.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Thanks very much.

Madam Chair, just because of the timing of this committee, is there a reason we're not televised this evening? I think that was the preference of the committee members.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

Why don't we discuss that at the subcommittee meeting next week?

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Okay. I think the understanding was they would all be televised.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

I know it was discussed, but I don't recall coming to a decision.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Okay.

We have all this expertise here. We'll have a chance at the ministers later, as to why we don't have enough money for shelters, policing, whatever.

I'd like to know how you can help us design a study, and where we should be looking. Some of you have cited in your briefs certain places where things are working, that you funded them and they seem to be getting results. I understand that in New Zealand there's a good action plan on violence against women that includes, in a good way, indigenous women, and I would like to know if you think those are the kinds of things we should be looking for. Obviously, in New Zealand there's much better police data on statistics. If a strategy or a national action plan is to say what, by when, and how, we're going to have to figure out how we do this and how we design a study that will come up with some real recommendations and deliverables, that actually is, as Greg said, working together across government departments and across jurisdictions on how we get on and get this done.

We heard last week from Justice that there isn't a cabinet committee dealing with this, that this has been dealt with mainly by officials, in terms of trying to develop a strategy. How would you suggest that the committee...? Are there people you want the committee to listen to, the experts who you know? Certainly last week, our witness was clearly encyclopedic about everything that has ever been written on this topic.

Where would you advise the committee to go in trying to develop at least the ingredients for a national action plan, let alone the recipe?

[Sheilagh Murphy]

Just off the top of my head, we fund the National Aboriginal Circle Against Family Violence, which is a network for the 41 shelter directors. I think they have a lot of expertise and reflection on what works and what is not working in those 41 shelters. I would suggest certainly that they be invited to present on behalf of the shelters and even shelter directors. I think there's good on-the-ground information about their realities that would certainly be of interest to the committee.

I would also say that it would be important to look at the interconnectedness of services. I think one of the challenges in communities is capacity. A shelter may be there trying to provide services, but if it's not connected to the child and family services agency, which also can provide services, and it's not connected to health services and education services, then you get some disconnects within communities. That's a challenge capacity. Finding ways to see whether there are good examples and best practices there that can be translated into programs and services in other communities is another area of interest that you might want to look at. We can certainly look to see.

In that program review that I spoke to you about, there are some case studies in there that might be helpful to the committee to then look at lines of exploration based on that work. So we'll be providing that, and you could look at those as “some suggestions”.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

I'd love to hear from all of you, but maybe Shawn, in terms of the strategy on trafficking, how would that fit into a national action plan that would actually deal with and stop this sort of...?

[Shawn Tupper]

I guess part of my advice is that I think the committee wants to pay attention to the amount of work that's already going on, as we look at the economics of policing and at the work that's going on around victims and our efforts to find ways that we can better support victims within the criminal justice system. Specific investments are being made within the context of the criminal justice system to reflect on the overrepresentation of aboriginal people as offenders and as victims.

Frankly, I could spend all of the program dollars I have in aboriginal communities to address just the challenges we have in aboriginal communities, and of course I need to do that across the country, but I think there's a huge amount of work going on. The things we're seeing in all of that work are interconnected,

We're seeing the interconnectedness of all of our work. We and Health Canada, PHAC, and INAC have partnered recently on a couple of pilots. This is not necessarily focused on addressing issues; it's focused on being more efficient and effective in how we do our business. For instance, the ability to come together and to sign with communities single agreements that reflect four different departments is an effective way to cut through red tape, but it's also an effective way to make departments talk to one another about the kinds of things they're doing. You learn so much about what we're doing on the same kinds of issues.

I would stress to look not just at the problems but at the best practices as well, because there's a whole lot of stuff going on.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Internationally, like Australia and...?

[Françoise Ducros]

I should tell you that Status of Women Canada actually has a compendium of international best practices, particularly as they relate to culturally sensitive best practices. There are a lot of best practices that are being gathered, I think particularly on the prevention side of things, by the various provinces. We can certainly dig deep into that—

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Fleeing foster care is something that we've been hearing about. Cindy Blackstock.... Are there other—

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

There's no time to answer that question. I'm sorry.

We'll have to move on to Ms. Glover for seven minutes.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

Thank you very much, Chair.

Thanks to the witnesses.

I want to thank you, first of all, Mr. Tupper. I'm just thrilled to be here. I spent an awful lot of time in the aboriginal community. I spent 19 years policing in the city of Winnipeg—I hope to go back at some point—and I've investigated some of these cases of missing aboriginal women.

You mentioned the canadasmissing.ca website, and God bless you, because we're not here just to try to figure out ways to better protect these women and to find them and to solve some of these problems; we want to raise awareness as well. For those who might be following this, I want to encourage them to visit that website. If we can find just one of those missing girls.... Their families need closure.

I'm going to repeat it: canadasmissing.ca. It's a wonderful website that's been developed. I thank all of the officials and people who worked on it. It's a tremendous tool. Again, if we can find even just one of these missing girls for these families, it would be incredibly valuable.

I have to say that when Greg Rickford was talking about some of the incidents that he's lived through, boy oh boy, I started to have flashbacks myself of homicides of aboriginal women that I've been involved in investigating, and the homicides of their children, and so on.

When I was working, particularly in Winnipeg's north end, many of the women would tell me, when I saw them being exploited in the sex trade and was stopping to discuss things with them, that they had been kicked off reserve. Many of them were kicked off reserve and had nowhere to go, so they came to the city. They didn't know what to do, because they didn't know how to support themselves. They would get into prostitution and be exploited, with vicious, vicious beatings—absolutely vicious beatings—yet they had no voice in their communities, so they would come out and do this. I still suspect that many of those women are missing and murdered aboriginal women.

Actually, the stats provided by Stats Canada today seem to support.... In their eighth slide, they say, “Aboriginal women's disproportionate representation [is] greatest in non-spousal homicides.” It's dating, etc. We need to do something to give these women their rights. I've been dreaming of Bill S-2 for many years, but when it doesn't actually work in the communities, where women are not reporting....

You're coming up with these safety plans in conjunction with these communities, but how come we only have 190 in your dissertation? Is that the correct number? Out of the 600-plus communities, why do we only have 190?

[Kimberly Lavoie, Director, Aboriginal Corrections Policy Division, Department of Public Safety]

In actual fact, it's a smaller number than that. We have one completed safety plan, and we have five in the works. We have done community mobilization in 25 communities that are gearing up and getting themselves organized and developing a community vision to move forward. We've trained 190 people to be either community facilitators or community champions to work in their communities.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

So why don't we have more?

[Kimberly Lavoie]

Because we're new. This is an initiative that just started in 2010. We need the buy-in of leadership before we will go into a community, and sometimes that takes time.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

When you say “leadership”—I want to understand this—is there pushback on the government side, or is there pushback in the aboriginal communities? Which leadership do you need buy-in from?

[Kimberly Lavoie]

We need buy-in from aboriginal leadership in aboriginal communities before we go in and work with those communities.

When we started doing this work, they didn't know what we were doing and they didn't know what it was about. We would send them a letter and it would be filed. Now we've gained a little bit of momentum and people are dusting off those letters and saying, “Can we still engage with you?” We're getting folks who we have not dealt with in the past, who are calling our office saying, “We understand that you do this work.”

The beauty of this is that it's community driven. The communities get to decide, which is not typical of government programs. The communities get to decide their priorities, and they get to decide what community safety means to them. We then work with them. We support them and build on the existing strengths within the community.

Far too often we hear statistics that indicate that communities don't have, or they're lacking...whereas this approach is asking what they do have. There are inherent strengths there. There is a resilience. Otherwise they wouldn't have been able to exist this long.

It's a small number now, but it's gaining momentum. I expect there will be a lot more.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

But I hear from you—and I've heard this before—that there are communities that don't want the help. We need to somehow help them, but if they don't want the help, how are we bridging that? There are women who, as we speak, are being beaten. Unfortunately, they are not getting the help they need.

Government cannot be solely responsible for all of that. How do we help them when they say, “We don't want help”?

[Shawn Tupper]

That gets back to the word you heard earlier. It's about capacity within the community. Oftentimes when we get that pushback it's because the communities just aren't prepared and they don't have the capacity to deal with the issues.

I spent 10 years working with the survivors of Indian residential schools. It is a slow process because of the nature of the very issues you're describing. You can't force people to leap ahead in the healing journey when they're not ready, when they're dealing with these kinds of issues.

It really is about helping the communities create the capacity for themselves. In the general policy context we call it place-based or asset-based policy-making, where you really are looking at the ability of the community to move forward. It is the sort of thing we hear oftentimes about seven generations and what not. We are dealing with issues that are going to take an awfully long time for people to work their way through.

You'll also find that it's going to vary across the communities. In my experience, Inuit communities are often much slower on the uptake, slower to get involved in some of these issues than are a lot of first nations communities in the south.

I would offer to the committee that you want to make sure you're not looking at just one singular solution or plan, because it isn't going to work. It has to be varied and reflect the needs and the capacities in the communities.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

You have 15 seconds. I'm sorry.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

Thanks.

No one will disagree, but having heard all of this, I hope the leadership of those communities will call us. We're offering a hand. Please take it. Get 650 of them phoning us to get help, because their women need it.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

Thank you.

We go over to Ms. Crowder for five minutes.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I want to thank you very much for coming today.

Just to follow up on that last comment, if 550 communities called you tomorrow, would you actually have the resources and the capacity to deal with them?

[Shawn Tupper]

No.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

No. That's what I thought.

I just want to clarify a couple of points.

Ms. Ducros, you indicated that the departments are looking at a more integrated approach. Is that formalized?

[Françoise Ducros]

Why don't you talk about that?

[Sheilagh Murphy]

Certainly in the area of income assistance reform, we are formalizing our relationship with Human Resources and Skills Development, as well as with Health Canada, in a regional and a national context to bring the three departments together to work with first nations communities as well as with provinces to get to better integrated programming from a client's or an individual's perspective rather than from the program's perspective.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

That's to do with the proposed changes to the income assistance program, but when it comes to violence against aboriginal women and children and men, there isn't a cross-department formal committee that meets?

[Sheilagh Murphy]

There is the family violence initiative that involves a number of departments. PHAC has the lead for that, and we're a member.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Sorry, who has the lead? “Un-acronym” it.

[Sheilagh Murphy]

I'm sorry. It's Public Health.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

I know it's Public Health, but anybody listening would not know it was Public Health.

[Sheilagh Murphy]

The Public Health Agency of Canada has the lead, but Status of Women Canada, Justice Canada, Public Safety, ourselves...it's a multiplicity of departments.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Are there formal reports that the committee could have access to, that come out of that integrated committee?

[Sheilagh Murphy]

Certainly, we're building an action plan right now for forward planning with a number of elements on it. We are doing a scan, and Public Health could probably speak to this better than I can in terms of taking stock of what programs are available to assist families and women and victims of violence, and looking at how we would, across departments, improve the way in which those services are delivered.

So we are challenging ourselves and putting together a strategy that would look at that, but it's in its early stages. It's reinvigorating the initiative. The initiative has been there for a number of years. It stalled in the last couple of years, and departments did their own thing and got back into their own program areas.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Just out of curiosity, Ms. Murphy, because I've only got five minutes, are the families or actual community members involved, consulted formally, included in any way? I heard Mr. Tupper say, quite rightly, that you cannot solve this problem unless it's community driven. You cannot. Yet with the best of intentions we develop programs and services at the government level that really don't have communities and families integrated into the planning.

Is that happening?

[Françoise Ducros]

If I may, when we talk about community, there are community planning initiatives in Aboriginal Affairs whereby we—

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about in this integrated committee that you've got —

[Françoise Ducros]

No, and I was going to say information is coming from various places, but the communities are not in the process.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

So with regard to the community process, Mr. Tupper, you indicated the importance of community a number of times throughout your presentation, and you've listed a number of programs that Public Safety currently puts on: the northern and aboriginal crime prevention fund, the youth gang prevention fund, and so on. Has there been community involvement in developing those programs?

[Shawn Tupper]

At the broadest level, in terms of framing the generics of the program, no, but indeed, particularly through crime prevention, all our work is done on the ground in communities.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

That's the actual delivery. That's not the development of the program itself.

[Shawn Tupper]

It's important I think to appreciate that we fund a myriad of different kinds of projects and programs out of NCPC, and each of those is individually designed to fit the needs of the community. So we are taking internationally proven best practices that have been proven within Canada and are now working with aboriginal leaders and organizations like the AFN, but equally with local leadership and community organizations, to find the best ways that we can adapt those models into the communities.

So the communities are able to make their own choices about the kinds of investments they want to make. They might include gang diversion projects or youth at risk projects. They might be snap projects that are run in the schools to help with family and child—

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Right. They get a menu and they get to choose how they're going to deliver it.

[Shawn Tupper]

Exactly.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

With regard to the—

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

I'm sorry. You have five seconds.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Does the missing persons database have aboriginal-specific data?

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

Just a yes or no, if you can.

[Shawn Tupper]

Aboriginal?

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Does the $10 million missing persons database you mentioned have a specific component identifying missing aboriginal people?

[Shawn Tupper]

Where they know that information, it's input into the database, but there will be gaps in that data.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

Thank you very much.

Over to Ms. McLeod for five minutes.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

I have a whole host of questions, but I'll start with Stats Canada. You gave us a snapshot. We've heard about a myriad of programs, and I know the policing program started many years ago. Can you talk a little about trends? We've apparently spent significant dollars. Are the trends having any positive impact on the statistics you've shown us, compared to five and 10 years ago?

[Rebecca Kong, Chief, Correctional Services Program, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Statistics Canada]

In speaking about the police-reported information, as you can see from the slides, there is a lot unknown about aboriginal identity. We do get data from first nations police services. I don't have with me right now any trends in those, but we would be happy to provide them to the committee.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

That would be really important. Again, we're hearing about programs to see if there's an impact.

I think many people here have had significant and terrible memories. I look back to a health care career also. At that time, people's care card had some identification information. At that time, I remember the first nations community decided they really didn't want that to be part of their care card. Quite appropriately, that was removed. Certainly from the health care perspective, it created new challenges in terms of really understanding the incidence of different emergencies or chronic diseases.

Could you talk a bit about what your challenges are, and what New Zealand has done? It sounds like Dr. Bennett was indicating she was aware that New Zealand was having fewer challenges.

[Rebecca Kong]

I can comment briefly.

I'm not completely aware of what's happening in New Zealand, but I know that they are far more advanced than we are in the collection of that data. Part of that is having the community buy-in and having public relations and public education campaigns to explain to the indigenous people there the advantages of providing that information.

The issue of collecting information on aboriginal identity of victims through police-reported data had been long-standing. From 2001 to 2010, Statistics Canada worked with partners in the policing community and in the ministries across the country to try to improve the information. We tried to put in place some recommendations. We did some consultations with communities in Saskatchewan. In the end, there were still issues regarding internal policing policies around providing the data and concerns about the quality of the information based on visual identification. There were also concerns in terms of the actual collection of the information and whether that question is always asked.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

My next question is about some of the very disturbing statistics you presented. Is there any delineation between at least on and off reserve? You said you couldn't do micro areas, but....

[Cathy Connors, Assistant Director, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Statistics Canada]

For the self-reported data that we have on victimization, we are not able to separate the information for on and off reserve because the sample sizes get really small. We have to remember that this is a survey of the general population. Basically, we're surveying everybody in Canada, and we're trying to produce estimates for everybody in Canada.

The aboriginal population, as you know, is about 4% of the Canadian population, so you could expect approximately 4% of the sample of that survey to be aboriginal people. The smaller the numbers get of records that we have, the less able we are to produce detailed information.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

Thank you, Ms. McLeod.

We'll move over to Ms. Ashton for five minutes.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Thank you very much.

On a more general note, just a few days ago the UN Periodic Review came out with a report. Part of what was made public were submissions by 20 countries. These are countries that we look to as common-minded countries: Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and the list goes on. All of those 20 countries expressed real concern about what Canada is not doing when it comes to violence against indigenous women. Ireland, in particular, raised the issue of listening to the families and communities that are calling for a national inquiry. This has reached the point where we've got Human Rights Watch reports; CIDA has raised this issue, and now we have the UN Periodic Review. It's like this room here is in another world. The global community has joined so many people in our own country asking what is going on in Canada.

How do you reconcile this? We've heard about the silos and the need to work better together. We've heard all of these things. How do you reconcile that disconnect, or can you reconcile the disconnect? It sounds like they're talking about a different country, compared to the presentations we're hearing tonight.

Ms. Murphy, maybe we can start with you.

[Sheilagh Murphy]

I'm not sure that we can reconcile.

We do have departments with programs that serve.... Our department is focused on reserve. But aboriginal women are across this country. There's a complexity of services and municipal, provincial, and federal jurisdictions that deal with this population in terms of providing safety and security for women and children.

I don't know how to correct the disconnect. We make the best efforts we can with the programs we have. We reach out to partners where we can. We try to work with communities. Certainly there are capacity issues in communities. There's a complexity of issues in families as well. Trying to make it all work is a real challenge, for sure.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

I know AANDC raised the issue around the provinces. Obviously you'll know that two weeks ago governments from each of the provinces, with the exception of British Columbia, came together in calling for a national inquiry. I don't think it's fair to pass the buck when we're talking about extreme levels of violence on reserves that are under federal jurisdiction, or the underfunding, whether of education or basic programming, that exists on reserve, which is, again, under federal jurisdiction.

It's important to recognize that provinces are asking what Canada is doing. Canada should be listening to the families and the communities that are demanding urgent action.

I'll move on to another point. We're hearing about these important programs in place. I just want to point to the case of a community I represent, Garden Hill First Nation, which is under third-party management. They are at the eleventh hour of their ability to fund policing services in their community, an isolated community on the east side of Lake Winnipeg, where there are extreme social challenges. Their third-party manager simply told them they don't have enough money to fund their policing program. As you might know, the RCMP is on Stevenson Island, an island that, if the lake isn't frozen, you can't get to very easily. The end result is that people don't see the RCMP as much as they should, but more importantly, there aren't first nations people in the community, understanding the community, helping with the policing services.

There are many other communities where third-party managers call these kinds of shots. We can all find excuses, but at the end of the day it means communities, including women, are without policing services because of severe underfunding.

Obviously we'd like to see that situation corrected with political leadership.

Mr. Tupper, I'm wondering if you could speak to the situation in terms of underfunding or the need for funding of first nations policing that still exists.

[Shawn Tupper]

Sure.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

I'm afraid you have five seconds left to answer that question.

[Shawn Tupper]

No, I can't.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

Give it your best shot.

[Shawn Tupper]

The thing I'd want to point out, in terms of how you perceive the first nations policing program, is that it is a program that's designed to augment the provincial investment in policing. Policing is a provincial responsibility. The law is very clear on that. The courts have ruled on this, that we have singular access to policing, that it's done by the provinces and the territories. And the first nations policing program is an augmentation to that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

Well done. Thank you.

For five minutes, Mr. Goguen.

[Robert Goguen, Conservative, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, all the witnesses, for testifying this evening.

We'll now move to a skill-testing question.

Mr. Rickford started off the round. He shared some of his experiences as parliamentary secretary for aboriginal affairs. He asked some questions, but not everyone had occasion to answer. I'm wondering if any one of you wanted to share anything further on the topics he raised, if you remember them. There's no buzzer.

Do you want to refresh their memory, Greg, just to be fair?

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

We're talking about this “beyond the silo” kind of discussion...sort of more integrated at the departmental level. There seems to be all these different programs, notably Status of Women, who I don't believe are here today as a department. But that might be something worth pointing out. I guess I have done that. But anyway, I'd like to hear from the other departments. I think Statistics Canada is pulled into this piece as well.

Thanks, Bob, for that indulgence.

[Shawn Tupper]

I'll just give you a quick start. Within the Public Safety portfolio, I think we are starting to really pull together. One of the things I've been able to do, because I have the authority over the various silos within my department, is ensuring that as we look at the investments we make through first nations policing, they correspond to the kinds of investments we're making through the National Crime Prevention Centre.

I want to ensure that we're not going into a community twice, and not really knowing what the left hand and the right hand are doing in those communities. We are starting to pull together in a very clear way those kinds of partnerships, so that certainly works in our favour.

Our partnership with the RCMP certainly facilitates our ability, again, to look at some of the challenges that would be particular in the context of violence against aboriginal women and girls. We are developing our partnerships there, and again can bring together a portfolio perspective.

Even in the context of looking at Corrections and understanding how we better manage aboriginal offenders, I have policy responsibility for that within the department, and I have a very close partnership with the Correctional Service and the parole board. So we are able, in that context, to look at a range of issues that span the criminal justice system and start tying them together. We are doing a better job of that, and we are making our investments so that we're trying to stretch those dollars and get a bigger bang for the buck.

[Lynn Barr-Telford]

In terms of integration and partnerships, the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics at Statistics Canada is an operational arm of what is known as the national justice statistics initiative. This is a federal, provincial, and territorial partnership in which all the partners are at the table to discuss data needs, to discuss operational plans, to determine priorities, and to discuss data gaps and how we might, in a partnership, endeavour to fill some of those data gaps.

We also sit at multiple tables, including a table with police services. We call it POLIS, our police information statistics groups. We sit with heads of Corrections in another group, in which we discuss data needs.

So there are multiple mechanisms that we have in place that help us to govern and to make decisions on priorities for data.

[Robert Goguen, Conservative, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Do I have any time left?

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

A little bit, a minute.

[Robert Goguen, Conservative, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Okay.

I noted that Statistics Canada does not collect information on missing or disappeared persons. Fair enough, but obviously this is a truly serious issue. I'm wondering if we do have any kind of hard data on exactly how many aboriginal women are missing.

I note that the Native Women's Association estimates there are approximately 600 aboriginal women who have gone missing or have been murdered. Do any of your departments have any kind of a ballpark, anything firm to confirm this data?

[Lynn Barr-Telford]

As you very correctly observed, we do not gather information on missing persons. The information that we do gather, particularly in terms of our homicide surveys on homicides that have been confirmed and reported to us, is through police services.

We haven't actually looked at that data source or explored the possibilities with that data source, to be quite honest. I'm not in a position to provide you with any information around the numbers you're requesting.

[Robert Goguen, Conservative, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

I guess it begs one further question, and that is, why?

[Lynn Barr-Telford]

It's an area that we haven't talked about with our multiple various partners in terms of how we might even look towards assessing feasibility of this information. It's an area that exists in a different program, where they are collecting information. It's certainly something that has not yet come to our table for dialogue in terms of various areas to move forward.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

Thank you very much.

To Ms. Crowder for five minutes.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Doesn't he get at least one more “why”?

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Thank you.

I have a question for Ms. Barr-Telford. Our very capable analyst provided some background for us, and apparently your department does a general social survey, the GSS.

I have a paper here called “Whitewashing Criminal Justice in Canada: Preventing Research through Data Suppression”. It was in the Canadian Journal of Law and Society in 2011. They indicate that as of the year 1999, the GSS started incorporating analysis of victimization by race or ethnicity. However, these variables are not available in the public-use versions of the data that are routinely available for university researchers.

They've indicated that this one is a tool for practical longitude analysis of victimization. Can you comment on that? Is information available to university researchers that would be useful for this committee to look at?

[Lynn Barr-Telford]

I'm not familiar with the specifics around that particular paper, so I can't comment on it directly.

In terms of access to information at Statistics Canada, it depends on where that information can be disseminated, so in circumstances, for example, where the quality is appropriate and where there is no divulgence of confidential information.

There are multiple mechanisms through which data can be obtained. We have a network of research data centres across the country that researchers can access information from. We have custom tabulation services. As you may know, the information on our website has recently been made free of charge, so our whole large database at StatsCan can now be accessed free of charge in many cases. There is a lot of information there.

There are multiple mechanisms at play at Statistics Canada, whereby data users can clearly access information from us.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

To take this to the next step, then, am I to assume that we would have to find out which universities were using that data in order to look at the longitudinal victimization?

[Lynn Barr-Telford]

I'm not familiar with the paper, as I said. The general social survey is not a longitudinal survey; it's a cross-sectional survey that we conduct every five years. The theme that we collect on changes over time.

Information on the victimization cycle, for example, is collected on a different cycle. This particular survey we collect every five years. So the last time we collected it we would have historical information available, but it's not a longitudinal survey that follows the same respondents over time.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

I think they were indicating that the universities could use it for a longitudinal analysis, because information had been collected since 1999. That's what I'm presuming they were saying, because they would have the historical data.

[Lynn Barr-Telford]

It's not by design a longitudinal survey. For longitudinal surveys you follow the same respondents over time on multiple occasions. This is a cross-sectional survey, so we're not following the same individuals over time.

I'm not familiar with the specificities around the types of analyses they may or may not have been referring to.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Do I still have time?

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

Yes, you have one and a half minutes.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Great.

I want to come back to the Department of Aboriginal Affairs. In your remarks you were indicating the work that's being undertaken with regard to child welfare and child protection services. It's probably not a surprise that I'm going to ask this question. I wonder if you could comment on why the department has continued to pursue the case at the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal on the underfunding of child and family services, child welfare services, particularly since, given the increases that have happened over the last number of years, there is a tacit acknowledgement that there was underfunding for the services.

I wonder if you could comment on why that case continues to be pursued at the Human Rights Tribunal.

[Françoise Ducros]

I actually can't comment on the case. I can certainly say that the government believes we are funding child and family services and that there's more funding to do. We're using the enhanced prevention approach, and we're continuing to roll that out.

I can't really comment on the case.

Sheilagh is the expert on this particular issue.

[Sheilagh Murphy]

Since that case was launched in 2007, there's been significant augmentation of resources for the child and family services program. We're now at $630 million a year, which is a significant increase, even from 2007. There's an additional $100 million a year going into child and family services over what there was when the case was launched in 2007.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Have you done a comparability to—

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

Thank you.

To end the round, we'll have five minutes with Ms. Truppe.

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you for your briefings. I found them very informative. The stats are very alarming. Clearly there's still more to be done.

Our government is very committed to helping women and girls. The Minister for Status of Women has done a great job in trying to bring more awareness to ending violence against women and girls. I know she's funded over 600 projects.

I just want to ask you something, Françoise. I think one of the members opposite asked a question, and you were talking about best practices. You said Status of Women Canada has some of the best practices. I was just wondering if you could elaborate on what you meant by that.

[Françoise Ducros]

No. What I said was that Status of Women Canada has amalgamated some of the best practices internationally, which they have gathered. They've put together a compendium on that.

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

Thank you.

In your comments, you mentioned that since 2006 the Government of Canada has invested approximately $205.8 million in the family violence prevention program. How does that help women and children?

[Sheilagh Murphy]

That's $205 million over those years, the amount we spent cumulatively. Through our budget, which is about $30 million a year, we spend about $18 million, a little more on the 41 shelters and their operations. We fund the national aboriginal circle that supports that group of 41 shelters. We also provide about $7 million in prevention programming. That goes across the country at the community level and is designed by communities or groups of communities. The final amount is for reimbursing provincial bills in Alberta and Yukon for services they provide for women who seek emergency shelters off reserve.

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

You mentioned the 41 shelters. How many first nations communities does that serve?

[Sheilagh Murphy]

The 41 shelters are available to all first nations communities, but because of their locations, they can't serve them all, so communities that aren't close to those shelters will access provincial services or provincial shelters instead. There are about 3,000...I don't have the figures in front of me, but about 2,300 women and about 2,500 children benefit from the services of those 41 shelters every year.

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

What action has Aboriginal Affairs taken to address the increasing numbers of first nations children in care?

[Sheilagh Murphy]

We've worked with jurisdictions as they've moved their approaches to more prevention, early intervention programming. We've made those changes as well. Since 2007 we've rolled out that enhanced prevention-focused approach to six jurisdictions, and we're working with the remaining jurisdictions to help transition them as they make more investments and design their programs to be more prevention focused.

In all jurisdictions, children and their families receive prevention and protection services that are comparable to that provided by the provinces for the population off reserve in similar circumstances. The difference in the enhanced prevention approach is that more emphasis is placed on family supports and keeping children integrated with their families as much as possible, or providing services so that children aren't taken into care.

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

Thank you.

You also mentioned in your brief that Aboriginal Affairs has dramatically increased funding for first nations child and family services over the past 16 years, from $193 million in 1996-97 to approximately over $600 million for 2012-13. That was a substantial increase. I'm wondering what that is used for.

[Sheilagh Murphy]

Those funds go to cover the cost of the 105 agencies we now have—there's been a growth in the number of first nations child and family service agencies across the country—as well as to reimburse provinces for their services. Certainly when we started a long time ago, we probably weren't providing sufficient funding to cover the needs in communities. As we built capacity in communities within those agencies and we worked with provinces on a partnered approach, we gradually increased the investments so we could provide the appropriate protection and prevention services to all children on reserve.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

You have 10 seconds.

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

I'll forgo my 10 seconds.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

Thank you.

We've got through one round and it's 7:35. We'll start again with you, Ms. Davies, for seven minutes.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much.

I would like to follow up on a few questions.

We heard a little about the community capacity, and you spoke about how communities have to be ready and have to want to take on particular projects, whether it's a safety plan.... I don't know if you were speaking more about on reserve, but I want to get an idea of the capacity on the government side as well.

I know, for example, in the community that I represent, Vancouver East, which includes the downtown eastside, many organizations spend a huge amount of time chasing down various programs to try to get any money to do anything at the community level. I wonder if both Public Safety and Aboriginal Affairs can tell us, or if you have information, about the level of application and how you are able to meet that demand, particularly off reserve, because I think we have huge problems in the urban environment.

There are organizations that have the capacity. They know what needs to be done, but the sense I have is that they can't get the resources to do it. It's a different picture from what we hear about, that maybe the capacity isn't there. Maybe the capacity isn't there more on this side to meet the demand. I wonder if you have that information, and if you do, can you share it with us, in terms of the number of applications you might get for any of the programs you run and what percentage of those get funding?

[Shawn Tupper]

Certainly within the context of crime prevention, we can provide the committee with data on the distribution of our resources that would apply to aboriginal people, both on reserve and off reserve. Part of the challenge there, of course, is that when they move into communities, we oftentimes lose that order of magnitude in being able to sufficiently fund projects that capture enough people to make that investment a worthwhile one, so aboriginal people oftentimes join other kinds of programs.

That said, we certainly have good partnerships with the friendship centres—

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

I don't understand your point there, because the organizations I'm talking about are aboriginal organizations in the urban environment. They're not spread out in any other area. These are organizations that are very focused on aboriginal communities in the urban environment.

[Françoise Ducros]

Just on the programmatic side, on all of the programs that we've talked about, they are generally, as a matter of policy, to provide the programming on reserve that isn't provided on reserve by the provinces in their general program delivery.

On the urban aboriginal issue, which of course is growing and is significant off reserve, we do have the urban aboriginal strategy, which is designed to work with aboriginal leaders off reserve in the urban centres. I actually can provide you with what we're doing to that effect, the way in which it's approached, the projects and the numbers of projects that are funded, and how they are funded—

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Not just the number funded, but—

[Françoise Ducros]

Yes, the numbers that apply—

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

That's right. I think it would help us to see what the disconnect is there in terms of the demand that's out there.

[Françoise Ducros]

I think what I can do, certainly, is provide you with the urban aboriginal strategy approach and where we've done it. The program services that are delivered as a matter of policy on reserve in the areas that we've talked about do fall under provincial jurisdiction off reserve, but clearly the problem and the issues are growing, and there is a lot of transition on and off reserve. There is that whole urban aboriginal strategy, which we can provide you with, both on the application process and the way in which it's designed and on the approach.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

In terms of interdepartmental work, one of you spoke about the PHAC leading a committee you have. I think we'd be interested to hear more about that, what that work is, and how many departments are involved in it, but, as I understand it, at the political level there's no committee that oversees this work. It's basically at an officials level. I just wonder, how senior is that work? Is it line managers? Is it directors? At what level is this collaboration taking place?

[Sheilagh Murphy]

The family violence initiative committee is usually at the director general or assistant deputy minister level, and that group is supported by a working group, which is much more a line managers group. That's the construct that's been operating for that initiative.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Okay. You're able to provide us with more information on that?

[Sheilagh Murphy]

We can get Public Health to provide some documentation, because they collect it on behalf of all the departments. We can let them know that some follow-up is required with this committee on the information around that initiative.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Okay.

I have just one last question to the two departments that are here. What gaps do you see? You've just said that you see the urban situation as something that is growing in severity, and that is I think now reaching crisis proportions as well, as it is on reserve. I think it would be very helpful for us if you could identify for us what you see as the gaps that this committee needs to address in terms of either program delivery or the way that programs are being designed.

We're trying to get at what's wrong with the picture. We can hear about what you think is working well, but unless we know what isn't being done.... Obviously, we'll have other witnesses who will help us grapple with that, but I think from your perspective as well, these must be things you also assess in terms of what you're not doing and what should be done.

[Françoise Ducros]

We try to do that on a daily and weekly basis, as to what the gaps are, and we do have some strong views on that. I think the best way to approach it is for us to proactively get you not only the evaluations that were done, but the management action plans and some of the strategies that we're taking in all of these areas.

I can say from our perspective—and I wasn't trying to avoid it earlier—that we are seeing the interconnectedness of things such as education and lack of work, all of these multi-pronged issues, feeding into much of this, so when we say that we're taking a holistic approach, it really is to get to some of these other issues.

I think what I'd like to undertake to do is to give you the evaluations on a whole range of our projects, or direct you to them, and provide you with the action plans and how we're trying to address them. If we can provide further gap analysis, I'll go back and look at providing what we have.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

Thank you very much.

Back to you, Mr. Rickford, for seven.

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

Thank you.

I want to talk a little bit more about this whole idea of integration. It's probably what most affects what's going on in the communities right now.

Francie, you talked about the multi-pronged approach as a concept, and seeing how the bigger structural macro kinds of things could have a positive impact. I think for the purposes of our discussion here today, uniquely with Public Safety and Aboriginal Affairs side by side, it would be useful to talk a little bit more about how we could start to think about some of the prevention programs that are working on reserve.

I know in Kenora, through the Status of Women, there was funding at the Women's Place there, and we had a violence de-escalation program, which had tremendous impact. I was concerned that there wasn't an evaluative tool after the fact, but people spoke highly about it, and many of them came from first nations communities in and around the city of Kenora. But again, that just goes to how we're talking to each other as departments. When we are funding prevention programs, Francie, on reserve, when Status of Women is funding certain projects, especially in the last intake and beyond in this calendar year, many of these kinds of programs will focus on that.

Then there's the Public Safety piece. Of course, Shawn, we've spoke before, but you spoke earlier about a variety of different programs.

How do we pull this in together a little bit more effectively? I don't know if that's what Libby was trying to get at, ultimately. But on the ground, where I've spent a great deal of my time professionally, I still see great efforts, but a lack of collective inertia, if you will, that helps to give us data that we can use meaningfully, in terms of prevention and more nuanced or focused programs.

I'll stop there. I see a certain eagerness to respond to that.

Go ahead, Shawn.

[Shawn Tupper]

Well, I think about some of the things that Francie and I have been doing, just talking about social innovation, just looking at the different kinds of models and things that we could work on together to address our shared interest in communities. Prevention is a perfect example. A lot of the money that I invest is focused on young children and the basic principle: get to them early. Get them on the right path first. You save a whole lot of money and you ensure that they lead productive lives. So we're looking at ways we can work together through the kinds of investments I do and the kinds of investments Francie does, to figure out whether there are better models.

Equally, on the correctional side, as we talk about the return to communities of offenders, are there things that we can be doing to take advantage of the skills and the employment training that offenders get as they return to a community, and make sure that they're actually deploying those skills in a way that actually benefits the community? Part of the community safety planning effort is exactly that: to figure out ways that we can create paths back into the community that are safe for the offenders, safe for the people in the community who were victims of that offender, and create plans that allow the community to thrive.

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

Is there an awareness issue to this at the community level, in your view? I feel there is. Maybe you can speak to it.

[Françoise Ducros]

I think there is an increasing awareness of it. As we move on the education policies and programs and the first nations education acts and income assistance programs, the communities themselves are telling us that we have to work together. As Shawn said, you have to get in there early. They are aware that their dropout occurs at grade 8, so you have programs targeted at grade 8 students. There is an increasing awareness.

I would be remiss a little bit...Sheilagh reminded me to say that as much as we talk about the integration in how we design the policy approaches, a lot of this is very much integrated across departments, on the ground, in our regional offices. Where we are sometimes remiss, as one member pointed out, in doing the design in an integrated fashion...sometimes the actual delivery is forcing upon us new design frameworks, which is leading to policy approaches around joint management frameworks, as we have as we move forward.

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

In fairness, Francie, too, I don't have statistics to support this, but my sense is, having represented communities in transferred education and health authorities, there's another clearing house there, where they can more effectively integrate some of those resources. It means this filters down and gets to people who can actually get out the information and do something effective with it in the community.

[Sheilagh Murphy]

I'll just add another comment regarding a new approach—I wouldn't say trend—that some communities are trying. We are working, for instance, with Health Canada to try to get to comprehensive community planning, so the communities would put together their plans and the departments would look at them jointly. That forces us to see how we could do better program integration.

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

Pikangikum is doing one right now, for example. We got that off the ground a couple of years ago.

[Sheilagh Murphy]

That's right.

The community is coming to us and saying, “We want one plan. We want one report. You departments need to get together.” So I think there's a growing trend for that, and we're being responsive.

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

That's great. Thanks.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

Thank you.

We now go over to Ms. Bennett for seven minutes.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Thanks very much.

Just following on Greg's approach on integration, I was talking to the chair last evening about our tiny perfect committee on persons with disabilities. This was in a Liberal government. I think we called 12 ministers, and a number of them didn't seem to know that their department had anything to do with disabilities. We found the room would fill every week, as officials of the minister who would be appearing the following week would come. The transport minister didn't seem to know that they had to deal with buying Via Rail cars that weren't accessible.

So sometimes there is a bit of a disconnect. When it is about going to cabinet to get money, it's hard if you don't really know what's going on. Because there are so many things that are important, we ended up with a cabinet committee on aboriginal issues that the Prime Minister chaired. Each of us had to come in with our homework done and then take our “stupid hats” off, because the Prime Minister did not want us to read something sent by the department. We actually were supposed to solve this thing as humans.

I guess what I'm hearing today is that Minister Aglukkaq's department has the lead on these community initiatives, and then there are a number of people trying to fund them through a kind of portal, a “one stop fits all”. And then you're working with HRSDC. Last week we heard from the justice department and today we have Minister Toews and Minister Paradis.

I somehow think, Madam Chair, that we can't really do this without hearing from all the ministers who are actually being represented well by the departments, including, obviously, the two who have been selected, Minister Ambrose and Minister Toews. We actually need all of them to be engaged in this if we're going to get their help at the end of this. For all of these complex things, you have to take little pockets of money wherever they come from in many different departments, but we need this issue to be at the top of their radar when they go to ask for money at cabinet, or in the next budget, or to get their half a sentence in a Speech from the Throne.

You are saying the Public Health Agency of Canada has the lead. Can you just tell us again what that was?

[Françoise Ducros]

The Public Health Agency of Canada has the lead on an interdepartmental approach to strategies to combat violence against women.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

How many departments are in that strategy?

[Sheilagh Murphy]

I don't know the number. There are multiple—

[A voice]

There are 14.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

How often would they meet?

[Sheilagh Murphy]

It did fall off the radar. The committee did meet about a month or two months ago, and it's planning its next meeting. In between, the working group has been meeting to try to do this documentation of all of the programs and services we have as departments with interest in the issue, and then to figure out the lay of the land right now and where we could look for ways to work better and smarter with what we have, and figure out where there are opportunities within those programs to maybe alter how we address the issue and change on the basis of what's now—

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

I know Francie has already offered to provide what you have in terms of evaluations and those kinds of things, but in this interdepartmental committee, can you list all the departments and the pockets they're picking to try to develop a strategy, and the budgets?

[Sheilagh Murphy]

I think the Public Health Agency of Canada committed that we would follow up and have them provide that information to the committee.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

The Status of Women Canada stuff.... Are we planning to hear from the officials from those areas? Clearly we need to hear from the officials from all 14 departments that think they're doing this, right?

[Françoise Ducros]

On the Public Health Agency of Canada and their approach, I certainly think they should be answering to how they're leading this initiative. Certainly we can follow up and have them provide the schedule of meetings and what they've undertaken in their action plan, but they will respond to that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

You have one minute and 30 seconds left.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Let's go back to the data gaps. How would we fix that, and who should we call?

[Lynn Barr-Telford]

We'll tag team this one.

We certainly acknowledge some data gaps, and certainly there are areas—

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Just to help me, did the First Nations Statistical Institute help with that?

[Lynn Barr-Telford]

They're not a part of what I am talking about, in terms of where we receive our data.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

But they're gone, anyway, right?

[Lynn Barr-Telford]

We receive our data from police services or from Canadians who self-report on their experiences with victimization.

There certainly are opportunities, perhaps, to explore the feasibility of looking across other data sources to see if there are opportunities to fill some of these gaps in other data sources that we have not necessarily explored.

There are opportunities to look at the general social survey, ensuring that the resources are there to look at whether or not there are needed enhancements and those kinds of areas.

Rebecca can talk about some of the work with respect to police services that have been undertaken, which we've dialogued on, in terms of data gaps.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

Thank you very much.

Now, I would suggest—

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Rebecca was just going to finish that, I think.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

I'm sorry, you're out of time.

I will say that it is now five minutes to eight. We could continue with one more round, or I would also entertain a motion to adjourn.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Would you entertain a motion to let Rebecca answer the question?

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

Yes, Ms. Glover, you have a question?

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

I would like to continue, if it's okay.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

Okay. It's the government's turn, so for five minutes, Ms. Glover.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

Mr. Tupper, joint task forces have not been addressed, and I know our government has spent some funds providing the opportunity for the RCMP to work with local police agencies. I know in Winnipeg, for example, there is a joint task force, and there are joint task forces working on the missing and murdered aboriginal cases themselves.

Can you tell us a little about the joint task forces and what they're doing?

[Shawn Tupper]

I can't tell you a whole lot, in the sense that it would be an RCMP responsibility.

It does pick up a little on the different lenses the committee might want to consider, in terms of how you look at the issues. It isn't just about the family violence initiative. It is about how policing services work together. I mentioned earlier the economics of policing, how we can look at better policing models that allow us to better gather the data and do the kind of reporting that gets us some of the answers to the questions you're trying to confront.

Certainly the joint task forces are a really effective means, and have proven to be an effective means, for us to share our services, which allow us to do more complete investigations. They allow us to share our intelligence better, and we get better results as a result.

Clearly the federal government is able to support the responsibility of provincial and territorial governments to police in their jurisdictions, so those task forces become important as a signal from the federal government of its priorities and how it invests in its partnership with provincial and territorial authorities.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

I appreciate that, because I know they do some tremendous work, and they really do take this to heart, trying to help find some closure for these families and to find these girls.

We also haven't mentioned yet, and Madame Lavoie could probably answer this the best.... I was very proud to take part in a funding announcement for Eagle Women Lodge out of the Native Women's Transition Centre in Winnipeg. I'm reading from their website. Their goals are “to begin to heal the vicious cycle of inter-generational family dysfunction experienced by many Manitoban Aboriginal families”. Those are their words.

Of course, these are women who are transitioning from prison, and that's why I think Madame Lavoie could answer. The federal government does provide many programs. Many of these women unfortunately were kicked off reserve; they had no rights, they became exploited in the sex trade, and they then got involved in drugs and alcohol and unfortunately committed crimes that led them to jail.

The federal government has put forward an awful lot of programs that I'm very proud of. My mother worked in the jail for kids in Manitoba for her career. She worked with aboriginal kids her entire life. She lives in an aboriginal community and works in an aboriginal resource centre.

I want you to tell us a little about some of the programs the federal government has put forward to help those women, who unfortunately have fallen through the cracks, to transition back to a life that helps them.

[Kimberly Lavoie]

You're talking specifically about aboriginal women. One of the best practices is the aboriginal healing lodges.

Okimaw Ohci in Saskatchewan is a healing lodge designated specifically for aboriginal women who have had horrible experiences and who really want to follow a healing path and reconnect with their culture and go back to the community in a good way. In addition, there is a section 81 agreement in Edmonton with Buffalo Sage Healing Centre. There are 16 beds in that facility, which was opened last year.

Those two facilities certainly play a huge role in allowing aboriginal women to be able to reconnect and to get the programming they need from elders and spiritual advisers, from people who understand their experience coming from reserve and moving to urban centres, and this has allowed them to transition back quite well.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

That's very good. Thank you for mentioning those facilities. I've been to the facility in Saskatchewan. It was absolutely amazing. Again, the stories that came out of the women I met there...very much the women who were kicked off reserve, who have no rights, who can't take care of their children because their children are taken away from them.

I'm sorry to harp on this, but Bill S-2, the matrimonial rights bill for aboriginal women on reserve, is an absolute godsend, and I hope to God that we prevent more women from falling into that cycle and perhaps falling victim to the next perpetrator and becoming the next missing or murdered aboriginal woman. I wanted to make sure we got that on the record.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

Thank you, Ms. Glover. And thank you to all our witnesses for being here. It was very illuminating testimony.

That brings to an end meeting 4 of this committee. Thank you all. Good night.