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.