Special Committee on Indigenous Women Committee on June 13th, 2013

[Jamie Crozier, Coordinator, Caribou Child and Youth Centre]

Thank you.

My name is Jamie. I'm Métis, originally from Manitoba, and have been working out of northern Alberta for the last 16 years. I've worked at PACE, which is the sexual assault and trauma centre there. It's a grassroots, non-profit organization that's been in existence for about 30 years. We service the entire northwest region of the province. We have some therapists that drive out to Peace River, Valleyview, and in the past to Grande Cache, which is a pretty large area to cover—

[Ruth Proulx, Therapist and Community Outreach Coordinator, PACE Sexual Assault and Crisis Centre]

And High Prairie.

[Jamie Crozier]

—and High Prairie, High Level.

[Ruth Proulx]

High Prairie and High Level.

[Jamie Crozier]

Okay.

This is why I have her, because we can feed off each other.

[A voice]

In Alberta we get confused—

[Jamie Crozier]

Well there are too many high things.

[A voice]

And prairies....

[Jamie Crozier]

Yes.

I'll let you introduce yourself.

[Ruth Proulx]

I'm Ruth Proulx. I'm originally Métis from Quebec, but I was born and raised in the Northwest Territories. I'm also a second-generation, former residential school student. My father also worked in one of the last residential schools closed in Canada, after he spent his childhood in residential school. I also grew up in foster care so that is a big connection.

[Jamie Crozier]

In my introduction, I forgot to mention a little bit of what my roles are at PACE. I'm a little nervous here, I have to admit.

For the last 10 years I have been a therapist. I worked with victims of sexual abuse, domestic violence, as well as working with sex offenders. Over the last more recent year here or so, I've been coordinating the Caribou Child and Youth Centre, which is a child and youth advocacy centre for children who have to testify and go through the judicial system. I work with the RCMP and child welfare with child witnesses.

What we are here to speak to is that in 2009, Heather King, who is the child prevention and family violence specialist in northern Alberta, and Jacquie Aitken-Kish, who is our executive director, did a research project that included 24 different women from the High Level area. They did a qualitative study over a seven-month period to find out what the climate was, what's happening in these rural remote communities, what suggestions the women who are actually living there and working there have for change, and what they would like to see as possible future outcomes.

Some of the things that were identified as the current crisis that they're experiencing were that victims are afraid to speak out, either from the ramifications coming back from their offender or other community members. There's the appearance of an inadequate sentencing that happens. There's a lack of transportation. I know that was mentioned by one of the other individuals. There's isolation, a shortage of resources and access to professionals and support, and there are high levels of poor health and dysfunction. This is across the board, not just for the individuals who may be victimized or the perpetrators. They're seeing this also in all the strata, including their council and band.

Some of the risk factors that were identified were the ongoing normalization of abuse, whether it be childhood sexual abuse, domestic violence, or just violence in general. This is just something that is commonplace. People grow up with this as being just a part of life, therefore it's easy to fall into the role of victim or perpetrator.

Other risk factors are addictions. We know that addictions are often a result of different types of abuse and trauma. It's a way that people cope. We see a lot of low income and poverty, high dropout rates, low education rates. There's a very transient population in northern Alberta, as well as extreme isolation. A lot of these communities are very difficult to get in and out of. Some of them are fly-in only. There's a lot of easy access to weapons, which also increases the risk when domestic violence is involved.

[Ruth Proulx]

All right, I will go. I also forgot to mention that I've been in Alberta for the last 10 years, and I'm also a therapist and community outreach coordinator and FNMI—first nations, Métis, and Inuit—specialist at my agency.

Obviously we know from what Jamie said and from what all the other speakers said that trauma is all-encompassing. It impacts every facet of life, which means that if it impacts us as individuals and impacts every facet of our lives, it also impacts the community in every facet and stratum. So we know that we have to address trauma. Our work is based on healing and addressing the healing process for individuals. We know that individuals heal in their own time and at their own pace, so it doesn't mean mandatory therapy sessions for individuals. It means creating an environment of therapy, an environment of community, an environment of identity. So when people are able and ready, in their own time, to come and seek support in their own ways, it is available to them.

We know that everybody heals in their own time and through their own measures. Not everybody needs to go to therapy. That's because everybody has different access to resiliency factors in their lives, and the more resiliency factors we promote in society and in communities, the more access to a higher level of health people will have later on in life.

We know that if we promote resiliency in communities—decrease vulnerability factors and increase resiliency factors—we're going to have healthier communities. Our agency, PACE, is really a grassroots organization that just promotes resiliency factors in communities. We don't focus on all the negative parts. We go into communities to see what's working. We get people to tell us what's working and we promote that, because that's their identity that's working. It's not something we've come in and created. Then we ask what's needed and how we can help, how we can help them identify more resources and services they haven't thought of and how we can help create this in their communities. When there's no funding, we find funding. We try to find ways to create therapeutic opportunities for people. It's more than just sitting one-on-one with somebody. It's sitting as a community, sitting individually, and sitting within our systems.

The study that Jacquie and Heather did also taught us that we really need to go in and engage communities. We can't just go in and tell people what they need. We ask communities what they need, what they think is not working, and what they think is working. I think that's one thing we forget, that we don't have the key to open every lock. Some people have their own keys that already work or don't work, and they just want support in how to recut a key, if we need to give that to them.

We also recognize that we need to have checks and balances within services, within all levels of community, with all representations from community. We can't put something in place and then leave the community to run with it. We should have community advisory committees as was mentioned earlier by some of the other speakers. Those things really need to be in place, and this qualitative study identified that need.

One other thing we recognize is the need to engage and support community leaders and natural helpers within communities. As professionals, we try to encourage people to be 100% healthy, regardless of their mental health level. But we know that healing is a process that starts at some level and that every community has natural helpers. Sometimes they're not in leadership. Sometimes it's one of the moms who lives on the street or one of the males who has just come forward about his own experience of sexual abuse. We need to take those natural healers, those natural helpers, and the leadership within the community, those who have some form of health, and promote and support them, so they can give services within their communities.

One thing we're very proud of as an organization is that we go into communities and find helpers and find out how to support them in making their communities healthier. Sometimes it's just going in and teaching paraprofessionals how to do crisis intervention, or teaching community leaders who are natural helpers how to run groups and facilitate different programs within their communities. It's not always rocket science.

We don't say we're the experts and we need to come in and do this. We can tell them how to do it, to run with it, and to call us when they need help. We'll be more than willing to come back and help. We'd love to give that opportunity.

With that is about breaking down the barriers of isolation and no relationships. We know that relationships and connections are the biggest healers of trauma. Regardless of talking about your trauma, having a relationship with someone who can empathize with your trauma is one of the biggest realities of healing and of healing shame. So breaking down that isolation and building honest relationships are important.

We know that historically relationships have been broken down and slandered and hurt. Coming in and building an honest relationship is very important in addressing resiliency, because connection is one of the biggest birthplaces of healing shame. We want to promote healing shame. We want to create a medium, a space of healing, and that starts with a relationship, whether or not it's with the most qualified professional with the biggest degrees behind them.

What else do I need to cover here?

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

You can cover it in your answers to the questions, because we're a bit over 10 minutes.

Now we go to our next witness and we'll start with Assistant Commissioner Brosseau. I understand you are splitting your time with Superintendent Cuillierrier?

[Assistant Commissioner Kevin Brosseau, Commanding Officer, "D" Division, Royal Canadian Mounted Police]

That's right, Madam Chairperson, I will be sharing the time with Superintendent Cuillierrier.

Good evening, Madam Chair and honourable members of the committee. My name is Assistant Commissioner Kevin Brosseau, and I'm the commanding officer of the RCMP in the province of Manitoba.

I'm joined this evening by my colleagues, Superintendent Shirley Cuillierrier, the director of partnerships and external relations for the federal policing sector of the RCMP, and Superintendent Tyler Bates, the director of national aboriginal policing and crime prevention services. Both are currently based in Ottawa, but as you'll find out, have had long, esteemed careers working in a number of communities throughout the country.

I thank you for inviting the RCMP to discuss the critical issue of violence against indigenous women.

The safety and security of aboriginal communities is one of the RCMP's five strategic priorities; the primary goal of which is to contribute to healthier and safer aboriginal communities. The RCMP strives to deliver culturally competent police services, providing the foundation necessary for our officers to build relationships with the more than 600 aboriginal communities we serve. Fostering mutual trust and respect within these communities is critical to advancing our common objectives of increasing personal and community safety. Through consultation and collaborative initiatives, we develop policing approaches to address local priorities, and we tailor our services to meet the distinctive needs of each community.

The RCMP is engaged in prevention and investigative initiatives that are ever-mindful of the prevalence of violence against aboriginal women, and it has instituted training for our officers and a number of policies that focus on this very important issue.

Recognizing that education and prevention are key to eliminating and dealing with many of the root causes that lead to violence in our communities, the RCMP has national policy and procedures that provide the overarching framework and direct our units to participate in multi-agency, community-based initiatives or programs. This policy also directs actions to be taken when violence happens. If evidence exists, charges are pursued. Further, and very importantly, victims must be kept informed of the progress of the investigation. Officers are required to take a proactive and collaborative approach to promoting and managing victim safety. All reports of missing persons, regardless of their background, are given investigative priority and oversight at a number of levels throughout the organization.

Starting at our training academy, training is provided in cultural sensitivity, aboriginal awareness, and in investigating and handling domestic violence situations, and is provided to our members throughout their careers. Very importantly, as we've talked about with my colleagues, is the training that happens on the ground in a community, in conversations with elders, on the trapline, in kitchens, and around kitchen tables. That's very important for our officers as well.

As a partner to the federal government's family violence initiative, the RCMP funds a number of RCMP detachments and community-based organizations to support, last year, 29 projects that respond to relationship and family violence, victim issues, and training for sexual assault investigators.

One of those projects took place last year in Paulatuk, Northwest Territories. Under that funding initiative, 10 workshops provided a forum for women to safely and openly share their experiences with domestic violence. The workshops focused on identifying risk factors, early intervention, and healthy relationships. The women were given the tools and information to work on self-esteem and exercises to strengthen self-confidence. This wasn't an RCMP-led initiative at all. We were a participant.

The RCMP's approach to violence against aboriginal women also includes a clear focus on missing and murdered aboriginal women. The RCMP continues to improve the quality of our investigations by committing personnel, resources, and tools to investigate and analyze these incidents when they happen. Dedicated teams of investigators continue to investigate these cases in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and in Manitoba, the province I represent.

To address the absence of reliable statistics on the exact number of missing and murdered aboriginal women and girls, the RCMP recently conducted, across the RCMP, a file review of missing and murdered women and girls. The Commissioner of the RCMP has also engaged other Canadian police services and police chiefs across the country to conduct similar file reviews. Superintendent Tyler Bates can give you further details about that.

In furtherance of a collaborative approach, the RCMP regularly liaises with aboriginal leadership, and aboriginal and grassroots organizations, and have a member dedicated in fact to communication and integrated prevention initiatives with the Native Women’s Association of Canada, NWAC. This partnership has led to the development of a community education tool kit called “Navigating the Missing Persons Process”. It's actually on NWAC's community resource guide on their website. Recently as well we created a hitchhiking poster addressing hitchhiking and trying to give some information and be an advisory, if you will, aimed at reducing incidents of missing, and in some instances, murdered aboriginal women and girls.

In addition, the RCMP and the Assembly of First Nations signed a joint agreement, a work plan, that aligns the two organizations to work collaboratively on issues related to missing and murdered aboriginal persons across the country. These two important national initiatives and the extensive more localized work being carried out every day are key as the RCMP of course values the collaborative approach, and is intent on doing all it can to ensure the safety and well-being of aboriginal women and girls in all of our communities.

I look forward to answering your questions, but I will turn it over now to Superintendent Cuillierrier.

[Superintendent Shirley Cuillierrier, Director, Federal Policing Partnership and External Relations, Royal Canadian Mounted Police]

Thank you.

Good evening, Madam Chair, and committee members. My name is Shirley Cuillierrier and I'm the officer in charge of the partnerships and external relations team for federal policing.

I would first like to thank you for inviting me to discuss the RCMP's role within the national anti-drug strategy and the important links it has to Aboriginal communities across Canada.

I would also like to touch upon the RCMP's Human Trafficking National Coordination Centre.

I'm especially pleased that the special committee is focused on violence against indigenous women.

An important issue, which is impacting the safety of all Canadian communities, aboriginal and non-aboriginal, is the prevalence and the use of drugs. The national anti-drug strategy, also known as NADS, is assisting the RCMP to take on those who produce and push drugs on our streets and in our communities. The RCMP, through its connection to over 600 aboriginal communities, is supporting the objective of the national anti-drug strategy in helping families and local communities, and steering vulnerable youth away from a life of drugs and crime.

NADS is a horizontal initiative led by Justice Canada, and includes 11 other federal departments and agencies. NADS is based on three pillars or action plans: prevention, treatment, and enforcement. The RCMP is actively involved in the strategy's prevention and enforcement action plans.

The RCMP's federal policing public engagement team supports the prevention action plan to prevent youth from using illicit drugs by enhancing their understanding of the harmful social and health effects of illicit drug use, and to develop and implement community-based interventions to prevent illicit drug use.

Collectively, these actions are contributing to increased awareness and to safer and healthier communities through coordinated efforts to prevent drug use, as well as to reduce production and distribution of illicit drugs across Canada.

The national anti-drug strategy has assisted the RCMP to expand its dedicated anti-drug teams to help locate, investigate, disrupt, and shut down organizations involved in the production and distribution of illicit drugs, and to help law enforcement stop the flow of money that organized crime makes from this illicit drug trade.

Collectively these actions are contributing to increased awareness and to safer and healthier communities through coordinated efforts to prevent drug use, and reduce the production and distribution of illicit drugs across Canada. The aboriginal shield program, and the drug abuse resistance education program, are two examples that fall under NADS and have been implemented in communities across the country. They provide information, tools, and skills on how to recognize and avoid bad situations and make healthy decisions.

The RCMP's Human Trafficking National Coordination Centre works with domestic and international agencies to develop an extensive network of partnerships, monitor investigations from a national perspective, facilitate requests from international law enforcement partners, and provide intelligence analysis to law enforcement partners.

The Human Trafficking National Coordination Centre has developed human trafficking awareness tool kits for the public, youth, and police, as well as an online police training resource and an advanced police investigators course offered to senior investigators. The RCMP has distributed human trafficking awareness materials to aboriginal communities and organizations in an effort to educate and support increased community engagement.

I'd be pleased to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

Thank you very much to all of you.

We'll begin with questions, starting with Ms. Ashton.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Thank you very much to all of the witnesses for coming from across the country to speak to us tonight.

I do want to register that we find it passing strange here that the RCMP contribution here tonight hasn't been entirely focused on missing and murdered aboriginal women. We certainly appreciate hearing about the anti-drug strategy, but our interest here is missing and murdered aboriginal women and the direct issues. I believe we can all safely say, gauging from all of the reports, including most recently the Human Rights Watch report, that the RCMP's actions directly to do with missing and murdered aboriginal women are under question. So we'd certainly appreciate a sustained focus, and if perhaps that decision was made elsewhere—perhaps if the government side suggested witnesses from the RCMP—we find it very problematic that the full scope of this issue is not being presented here in our committee.

Commander Brosseau, certainly in our province, as you know, the issue of missing and murdered aboriginal women is extremely serious. I know the RCMP has been involved with Project Devote and a real focus on the local reality of trying to find solutions. I'm wondering if maybe you could briefly speak to the importance of investing resources into the RCMP in local task forces, but also perhaps the importance of cooperating with first nations and Métis people on the ground in our province. Perhaps you could give just a brief answer, so that I can make sure we have time for others as well.

[A/Commr Kevin Brosseau]

Thank you, Ms. Ashton.

Yes, it's hard to overstate, frankly, the importance of focusing and prioritizing our efforts on the missing and murdered in our communities. Undoubtedly Project Devote, I believe, is a clear manifestation of that commitment, as are the 20 investigators chosen specifically based on their highly skilled investigative abilities from the Winnipeg Police Service and the RCMP to look at and examine clearly a number of those tragic circumstances.

Also, very importantly, in addition to the prong on investigation, is the community outreach aspect of what Project Devote is about as well, where we have dedicated personnel who in fact work with people in the communities, work with grassroots people, whether on the streets of Winnipeg or in small towns or very remote communities, as you know, in the province of Manitoba. Clearly the resourcing is my bailiwick, to ensure that those investigative teams and those investigators specifically targeting or looking at that issue are properly resourced to be able to do what they can.

Your second question with respect to working with, and the collaborative approach, I attempted to deal with that a little bit in my earlier commentary. One of my priorities since coming to the province of Manitoba was to in fact energize community engagement in a meaningful way, recognizing that issues, the underlying causes, if you will, leading to violence are complex and multi-sectoral, and in fact need everyone to be standing shoulder to shoulder and arm in arm to deal with them.

I'm very happy to say that my commanders in the 52 detachments that we police in that province embrace that concept and get it. One thing about police officers is that they're for the most part action oriented. They want to see results. They feel the frustration and want to improve the work in their communities. My members live in the communities that they police, so it's very important for them to work with the community members who they live with.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Perhaps just as a quick follow-up in terms of the importance of the community connection, I understand you work with the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs.

[A/Commr Kevin Brosseau]

I do. I'm very fortunate to have wonderful relationships with the leadership of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs; MKO, a northern Manitoba organization; the Manitoba Metis Federation. As well, I have an aboriginal advisory committee, not chosen from official or political organizations but made up of grassroots community members—all women, in fact, who give me advice on key issues.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Commander Brosseau, you've mentioned a number of aboriginal organizations that advocate on behalf of families. I was wondering if you're familiar with AMC and MKO having their funding cut by about 45% as of this fiscal year, in Manitoba. I'm wondering if you've heard about some of the people who have been let go from these organizations.

[A/Commr Kevin Brosseau]

I have not, in fact, and I should have, I suppose. I have liaison officers who work with both organizations. I've committed to having people working directly with those organizations, which do contribute significantly to the well-being of our communities. I was not aware of that.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

I will point out that I certainly appreciate the collaboration. I've heard from people first-hand that many people are very concerned that, as these advocacy organizations lose funding and capacity, it's actually the communities and the families who are going to suffer very much as a result.

I do also want to put on the record, Superintendent Cuillierrier, that we in the NDP—and we made this very clear when it first happened—are very concerned that NADS' fourth pillar, harm reduction, was removed in 2007 by the federal government. We heard from previous speakers that the cycle of addictions and violence is a very serious one. We believe that losing that fourth pillar of harm reduction is extremely problematic and flies in the face of supporting people through a cycle of healing that needs to take place.

In my time remaining, I want to speak to Ms. Proulx and Ms. Crozier. You obviously do very important work in northern Alberta. I'm wondering, when you're visiting first nations and northern communities, if the lack of capacity on the ground, perhaps the lack of funding in communities, particularly first nations, comes up at all with regard to the challenges they face in providing services, training personnel, and housing people who might be able to provide services. Is that an issue?

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

You're over time.

I'm just going to ask for a very quick answer, if you could do that.

[Jamie Crozier]

This is a large issue we are seeing. We've actually, most recently, started an initiative at High Prairie, which I was talking about. They were doing some really good work. Mary up there was up and running and had an amazing program, which now has been cut. So we're looking at how our non-profit can house that. It is an issue.