Evidence of meeting #8 for Special Committee on Indigenous Women in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was women.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Stella Ambler
I call this meeting to order.
Welcome, everyone, to the eighth meeting of the Special Committee on Violence Against Indigenous Women.
I would like to welcome our witnesses. Ms. Marie Sutherland is here with us. Ms. Bridget Tolley is also here with us, and by video conference from Prince George, British Columbia, we welcome Mary Teegee and Wendy Kellas.
Ms. Sutherland, perhaps I could ask you to begin our meeting today.
Marie Sutherland As an Individual
Thank you.
You'll have to talk up a little bit; I could hardly hear.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Stella Ambler
There is a bit of ambient noise right now, but it will settle down. You also have an earpiece, which I would recommend that you use when you're listening. It helps out a lot.
Before we begin, do you have a comment, Mr. Goguen?
Conservative
Robert Goguen Conservative Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB
Madam Chair, on a preliminary matter, could the clerk, when he gets the witnesses, try to make some determination as to their willingness to come personally or appear via video conferencing. I know that in some instances it's difficult for the witnesses to pay for the expenses up front and then be reimbursed. I don't want to take away from their ability to testify, but if it's easier for them financially to testify via teleconferencing, I think all efforts should be made to determine whether or not that's really better for them.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Stella Ambler
That seems reasonable to me. I'll ask the clerk if that's okay with him, and I think it is.
Thank you. That's a very good suggestion. I appreciate that.
Ms. Bennett?
Liberal
Carolyn Bennett Liberal St. Paul's, ON
I don't think we can have two tiers of witnesses, so that the people who can afford to put the money up ahead of time get to come, and the people who can't afford to put the money up ahead of time don't get to come.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Stella Ambler
I think the suggestion was more about up-front costs. The witnesses who travel to Ottawa are reimbursed. The comment that I heard was more about giving the option to the witness. Sometimes people don't know that they have the option of appearing by video conference. I have no issue with giving them the option or letting them know that this is an option.
Conservative
Robert Goguen Conservative Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB
I'm facilitating their testimony, not impeding it.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Centre-North, AB
With respect to both my colleagues, I think we had agreed to take such matters to subcommittee so that we can respect the witnesses' time.
Conservative
As an Individual
Thank you.
My name is Marie Sutherland. I'm known as Waseskwan Biyesiw Iskwew. That's my Cree name. I work for the Native Women's Transition Centre, and I also work for two different high-risk groups. I am here to voice, as an elder, the violence against aboriginal women and girls, and the missing and murdered aboriginal women and girls, and to address the root causes of the violence against aboriginal women and girls. I have a few examples.
One is women who are leaving abusive relationships on the reserves and coming to the big city to start a new life. Some come with their children, while some have to fight to get their kids back from their ex-partners. These women are very vulnerable. Some come to the city without money when they're leaving abusive relationships. They're tired of getting beat up and abused, and the abuse is not stopping. Some become addicted to drugs and alcohol and are controlled. Women and girls are forced to prostitute themselves. They get raped and beaten. They go missing and they are murdered.
Every day, there is a woman or girl who has been raped and beaten. I hear those stories every day in the kind of work I do. As aboriginal women, we need help from the government to enforce more police services to protect aboriginal women and girls from violence and murder and from going missing.
Every day, I hear stories about girls being raped and girls being beaten—every day—and instead of the government spending millions of dollars in hearings over the next couple of years, we need your help now, today, to hear us as aboriginal people, and to put some money into the police forces to find who's responsible for the violence, for the missing and murdered women and girls.
We need funds and resources to develop awareness and education programs on the reserves and in schools, programs about violence and the missing and murdered women, because some of these women come from the reserves. They have really big dreams of starting school, but they get grabbed by a pimp and the next thing we see is that they're in the newspaper because they've been murdered.
What I'm asking for most is the protection from violence for the women and children and to find who's responsible for the violence and the murdered women. The government and the police services have the responsibility to provide justice for victims and end the violence.
[Witness speaks in Cree]
That's it: no more violence against aboriginal women.
That's all I have to say. I don't have all the documents because this was given to me as I was leaving from Winnipeg for a different meeting.
Thank you very much for paying attention to me.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Stella Ambler
Thank you.
Thank you for being here. We appreciate your remarks.
Next we have Families of Sisters in Spirit.
I believe, Ms. Tolley, that you are sharing your time with Ms. Cardinal?
Conservative
Co-Founder, Families of Sisters in Spirit
Kwe; hello.
I would first like to acknowledge the territory we are on. We are on Algonquin territory, the territory of my ancestors. Meegwetch for inviting me here today to speak on behalf of Families of Sisters in Spirit.
It breaks my heart to be here again. I was invited to speak two years ago by the Committee on the Status of Women and here I am again, two years later. I started this journey for justice in 2001 when I lost a very important person in my life, my mother, Gladys Tolley. Tonight I'm here to speak as a family member on behalf of all our families.
As a family member for almost 12 years, I have not seen any change for our missing and murdered women. We know that so many of our sisters, so many—I don't want to put a number here because there are too many different numbers so I'm saying “so many”—of our sisters are missing and murdered and it continues even more today.
I know this because I post these women. Almost every day I post two or three, sometimes five or six, during a week. Today, I'm here to ask you to hear from the families. These families have been left out. The same voices are being heard all the time, but with no result and with very few families involved. So many people are speaking out on our behalf, but nothing is coming out of these meetings except another meeting.
We don't want to wait any longer. They had a national aboriginal summit in Winnepeg in 2012. They had an AFN-NWAC assembly in April. We haven't heard anything. All we know is that there's going to be a meeting in 2014 for the missing and murdered women. Well, families don't want to wait that long. We want action, and we want action now.
Enough studies—here's all the studies and even more. Recommendations, if you guys want recommendations they're all here. Books and books and books are here. Is this what we need, more reports, more recommendations? How about starting right here with Amnesty's “Stolen Sisters”? There are so many recommendations. We don't need any more recommendations. We have them all here. All we have to do is come back and look at these. We don't need to make any more recommendations, there are so many here already.
What we need are financial resources to assist families. We need resources for anti-violence work, prevention work, grief and counselling, community safety, programs for men and women and children, for families going through trial. We need billboards. We need front-line workers. We need so many services and we need them now.
How much did this committee cost? We could have used those resources to help families. I also wonder what the RCMP are doing to help indigenous women and families. There was also a national database. What is it doing to help families? We don't need any more studies. We need action.
In one of the interviews with Prime Minister Harper, he said the issue has been studied extensively and “it is time to pass to action.” I think it's time to pass to action, too. This is why we shouldn't have any more studies.
No one has the right to condemn you on how you repair your heart, or how long you choose to grieve because no one knows how much you're hurting. Recovering takes time and everyone heals at their own pace.
Meegwetch. I'm going to pass it over to Colleen Cardinal.
As an Individual
My name is Colleen Cardinal. My adopted name is Colleen Hele. I'm Plains Cree from Edmonton, Alberta. I was adopted and raised in Ontario. My family has been tremendously affected by historical colonial violence. I'm the daughter of a residential school survivor who is now deceased. She went to Blue Quills Indian Residential School in Alberta. She spent four years of her childhood there. I'm also a “sixties scoop” survivor.
I have lost two women in my family. My eldest sister, Charmaine Desa, was killed in Edmonton in 1990. She was a mother of two. She was married. I also lost Lynn Jackson, who was my sister-in-law who was married to my brother. She was the auntie of my boys. Her murder is unresolved and she is one of 35 women over 10 years who were killed outside of Edmonton in surrounding areas and left in ditches, in fields. These murders are still mostly unsolved. That's alarming.
My biggest concern is how media portrays indigenous women as deserving to die. By deserving to die I mean they dehumanize us by perpetuating racism and stereotypes in the media that somehow we are high-risk people and it's our fault that these things have happened to us. I want to know what's going to be done to challenge that. Why isn't the media being challenged on how they're perpetuating racism towards indigenous people?
Also, I'd like to talk about why our funding is being taken away from addictions, healing, and treatment centres when our people are just starting to realize the damage of the colonial violence that's been happening to them. We are just starting to heal and we're just starting to learn about what happened to us. That funding is now being taken away when it's so greatly needed. I am just learning of what happened to my family and having insight, and being able to express myself and my story.
We need that. We need more funding. We need more health-care services. We need more addiction centres, and we need more healing centres.
Thank you.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Stella Ambler
Thank you.
Now, Ms. Teegee, welcome. Will you be sharing your time?
Mary Teegee Executive Director, Child and Family Services, Carrier Sekani Family Services
Thank you.
If need be Wendy will just interject if I miss something.
Executive Director, Child and Family Services, Carrier Sekani Family Services
Madam Chair, I would like to thank the committee for allowing me this time to speak to you.
My name is Mary Teegee. I am from the Takla Lake First Nation. I come from the Wolf Clan. I am the executive director of child and family services here at Carrier Sekani Family Services. What we do is provide child welfare and health services and preventive services to 11 first nation communities here in north central British Columbia. Also we're the host agency for the Highway of Tears initiative. Of course, the Highway of Tears initiative is to really look at all of the recommendations that came from the symposium we hosted a few years ago and to implement those recommendations so that there are no more missing and murdered women in northern British Columbia.
The reason I'm here to testify today is to speak for those who can't speak because they are no longer with us, and I'm here to speak for those who have lost their spirits, who have lost their voice because of violence. When we're talking about violence, we have to look at the context of where it comes from and we have to look at the root causes. I think sometimes when you're looking at some of the research or the recommendations, I really emphasize that it needs to be culturally specific—it cannot be a pan-Indian approach—and it has to meet the needs of the first nation communities, where they're at.
We know that there have been missing and murdered women. There's also the domestic violence issue we have to deal with within first nation communities. We have to somehow figure out how we're going to break the cycle. Just recently we lost a very beautiful young woman, 22 years old, who had a three-year-old child, in one of our first nation communities. That is no longer acceptable. We have to figure out how we're going to work together. I don't mean just aboriginal service agencies. I think it's all society in Canada. We have to look at how we can collaborate to ensure this doesn't occur again.
We've had enough here in northern British Columbia. I think for probably for most northern provinces the same issues are there: the lack of services, the lack of resources, the judicial system failing our people, failing our nations. I do believe that one of those issues is around the judicial system. It has to be a part of the healing and it has to be part of the solution. In the northern communities—and I can only speak for northern B.C. right now—that isn't always the case.
When we look at some of the root causes of the violence, we think about, of course, the residential schools. It's interesting to note that while Prime Minister Harper did apologize for the atrocities that occurred at residential schools, I don't believe there has been enough action with that apology, so the apology rings hollow, especially when it comes to the issue of violence against women. I believe we have to look at what residential schools took away from our communities and our nations. That's what we must rebuild, and that is what's going to keep our young women safe, and that is around the culturally appropriate servicing.
I think when we're looking at the violence against women in indigenous communities, too many times we're just looking at the one case. We're not looking at it in its whole context. We understand the cycle of the abuse, the trauma, all of the mental health issues, but when we're looking at that, we also have to look at how we are going to overcome that. We're not giving enough credence to the traditional roles. Many times we're looking at dealing with just the women. We're not looking at the men's programming we need. Traditionally, everybody had a role in our society: the men had a role, the women had a role, elders had a role, and the youth had a role. Because of residential schools, that has been fractured; that has been broken. So when we're looking at services, definitely a key piece is to ensure that not only are we empowering our families and our women but also we're looking at what we can do to assist men who have also been victims of abuse, especially when it comes to residential schools. Sometimes that is overlooked.
I believe that when we're looking at the recommendations—and I do absolutely agree with the previous speaker, my sister Bridget Tolley, who talked about so many recommendations—we need to look at how we are going to implement those recommendations. Those implementations have to be community-specific, culturally specific. They have to meet the needs of where the women and families are at.
They have to be holistic types of services. We can't just look at one phase of life. As indigenous people, we are holistic. We also follow a life-cycle model. Any preventative service that we develop and implement has to take that into consideration.
We're looking at some of the issues that have occurred here in B.C. over the last few years and at some of the report recommendations that we've provided in British Columbia to deal with the issues. We also had, just recently, a Human Rights Watch report entitled “Those Who Take Us Away: Abusive Policing and Failures in Protection of Indigenous Women and Girls in Northern British Columbia, Canada”.
We also have the case in northern British Columbia of Judge Ramsay. Judge Ramsay was a predator who beat and sexually assaulted young girls who'd been in front of him at court. Yet, to date, we still do not have any assurance that this will never happen again. There have been no changes to the judicial system or to any system to ensure that we are going to keep our young women safe.
In Manitoba in 1991 there was an aboriginal justice inquiry, the Sinclair inquiry, that talked about the failings of the judicial system. There was also an implementation committee or an implementation body that was tasked to oversee that those recommendations were brought to fruition. To this date, that still hasn't occurred.
There should be the same thing in British Columbia—some type of an inquiry into northern British Columbia, into the treatment of our young women, into the missing and murdered young women, into the Highway of Tears. We need to ensure that there are changes within the judicial system to ensure that nothing happens again to our young women and to our families.
We have other recommendations. I do believe we're supportive of a national commission or an inquiry into the murders and disappearances of indigenous women and girls. I definitely think that has to happen. We need to ensure that there are independent civilian investigations of reported incidents of serious police misconduct, including incidents of rape and other sexual assault, in all jurisdictions. If you have a young woman who is afraid and is running away, in northern British Columbia there's very little trust right now in the RCMP or in the judicial system, given the history we've had to date. That has to be changed. We also recommend that a public inquiry has to take place into the violence experienced by indigenous women and girls in northern British Columbia. This inquiry could be part of the national commission of inquiry or a stand-alone inquiry from the province.
From these inquiries, we could really see where the gaps in service are and what needs to occur immediately and in the long term. I believe it has to happen in a specific way. One of the things that happened within northern British Columbia, and I'm sure across the province, was that there was more concentration in the bigger urban settings. Everybody hears about eastside Vancouver, yet all of the violence and everything that's taking place in the north has not really been concentrated on. There hasn't been enough concentration on that.
When we're looking at funding, we need money to provide prevention programs to make sure our girls are safe, to have community awareness. Look at something as simple as the AANDC funding, the aboriginal affairs dollars. They have family violence dollars of, like, a couple of thousand dollars—if you're lucky—for first nation communities. That needs to be looked at. We need to ensure that first nation communities have enough dollars so that they can figure out what they need to do in their communities to keep their women safe. Right now the family violence program that is federally funded—I don't believe it will be helpful when it's so minimal.
When we're looking at isolated communities in the north, there are no services where we are. There are maybe two or three safe houses in the small rural communities. I'm not talking just first nation communities here. I'm talking about northern British Columbia. I'm sure some of the other provinces share the same thing. There are hardly any safe houses, so where do young women go? I don't care if they're aboriginal or non-aboriginal, where do they go? It's no longer acceptable that we have no place to keep them safe. I do believe this is across northern Canada.
My isolated community is about six hours from the closest urban setting where they have a safe house. In Fort St. James, for example, they have one little safe house, and they serve quite a large area. So those are the issues that we're talking about in the north, never mind the lack of mental health therapists, or the lack of any kind of preventative programming.
We also have to look at safe, reliable transportation. Some of our young girls have gone missing because of hitchhiking, or they have been on the highway. Yet there still is nothing concrete that says here is the transportation system that we have worked together to fix. I believe in a simple fix. We have many recommendations in the Highway of Tears recommendation report. We now have the Oppal commission and their recommendations. I agree with the previous speaker that we need to ensure we have an implementation plan that is absolutely funded.
There is another thing that I strongly believe we need to do, and I look to our southern neighbour. The United States has the Violence Against Women Act, and that's for all women. But specifically, they have a new section that meets the needs of native women in the United States. Obama recently reauthorized this act, which came into being in 1994. Within that act, there are specific policies and things that we need to be a part of. I believe that Canada needs an act like that to show that it is doing something. Right now in the broader sense—the UN, the international human rights cases, all of these issues that are going on in Canada—we are all failing our families and our children, especially our women. Our young women are the most vulnerable and the most marginalized in our nation.
I think Stephen Harper could learn something from Obama and look at developing that act. If we had an act, ministers of the provinces and federal ministers alike would have to designate dollars to deal with violence against women.
My closing comment is that this is not just an aboriginal issue, and I think that's what needs to be mentioned. It's not an aboriginal issue; it's a Canadian society issue. That is the only way we are going to deal with it, by coming together and collaborating in every aspect of our society.
With that, I would just like to thank you for your time. Thank you. Meegwetch. Mahsi.
Conservative
NDP
Libby Davies NDP Vancouver East, BC
Thank you very much, Madam Chairperson.
First of all, to the witnesses, thank you for coming. But more than that, I want to begin by acknowledging the tremendous sense of frustration, maybe anger, maybe a loss of hope that you have, Bridget, when you tell us that you haven't seen any change in 12 years. You went to the status of women committee two years ago—and you hold up your stack of reports. Mary, you tell us that you're still waiting for some of the basic recommendations from the Highway of Tears report to be implemented.
I want to say on behalf of the NDP members on the committee that we get that, we understand it. This is not an issue we need to keep going over and over. There are so many reports.
Mary, I really like it when you say we need an implementation plan that is funded. This links the problem directly back to the services that all of you have spoken about—whether it's the police services Marie talked about, or the grief counselling and the healing centres that Bridget mentioned.
I'm the MP for Vancouver East. That includes the downtown eastside. Our whole community is in grief, and the amount of time that people spend trying to find money to get a healing centre up and running is just mind-boggling. So I value what you say when you talk about needing services that are culturally appropriate and locally sensitive. It isn't one thing that fits all communities. There are differences, whether it's urban, rural, different nations, different experiences. Northern B.C. is very different from the downtown eastside. There are commonalities, too.
It's hard to ask a question, because it's all been said. I just want to say that we know it. So what do we do? We want to focus on an implementation plan. We want to focus on solutions. I will give you a simple question. For the services that are needed, how many funding sources would you have to go to? How frustrating is that? How much time do you spend on it?
I think this is a universal issue for all community services, but it's particularly difficult for aboriginal services. It's a patchwork. You're going here and there, trying to get another $5,000, or this or that. If any of you would care to share a little bit more about that, I think it would help us match this up to the solutions in these recommendations and emphasize that these services have to be provided as part of an implementation plan.
Would any of you like to respond?