Thank you, Madam Chair.
Ms. Audette, good evening. We haven't met before. My name is Bob Dechert. I'm a member of Parliament from Mississauga. It's very nice to meet you.
I'm a new member of this committee, so I'm starting fresh. I hope you'll forgive me if I missed some of the things you said previously, but I did have an opportunity to read your testimony from the last time you appeared before the committee. I appreciated that.
I am here representing the Minister of Justice, in addition to myself.
I appreciate your comment on the things our government has prioritized: justice issues, standing up for victims, making our communities safe and clean, and making our first nations and aboriginal communities safe. I appreciate that and I would like to mention that in a moment.
You mentioned the families. I just want you to know that just before you began to speak tonight, all members of the committee agreed that we will be hearing from the families on the 9th of December. We're going to invite a number of them from across Canada to be here. We want them to tell us their stories.
I can tell you that from my personal perspective, I see them all as victims. We really do want to listen to victims and hear what victims need from our justice system. My view is that we'll find there's a lot of commonality in the needs of first nations and aboriginal victims and the families of missing and murdered aboriginal women and those of other victims in terms of information they have a right to receive from the investigating authorities and others.
I hope you'll appreciate that opportunity we're providing to families. We really want to hear from them. Perhaps you can suggest to us some names of some families you think it would be good for us to hear from. Perhaps you yourself will have an opportunity to attend on that occasion. We want to do it in a respectful way, in a traditional way, if we can, given the buildings we exist in here on Parliament Hill. We want to make it as unthreatening to these victims and their families as possible, because we want to hear from them. You mentioned that talking is a way of healing. I think it's the same in all communities. We want to hear the stories and we want to share the grief and hopefully participate in the healing with you and the victims.
You mentioned that you wanted to see a letter or a contract from the government. I'd be interested in hearing—maybe you can put something to us that we can take a look at.
The other thing I wanted to say to you is that this committee is here to receive recommendations. I know that your organization has provided some recommendations previously, and I assume more recommendations will be coming. We're hoping to collect recommendations from other witnesses we hear from, including the families. Then our report at the end of our work, which will be sometime in the spring, will reflect those recommendations and include some recommendations to the Government of Canada.
I've heard one recommendation that you have set out—and I think we've heard that recommendation before—but presumably there are other recommendations you'd like to share with us as well. I think it would be a shame if we were to cut off this committee now before it has an opportunity to list all the recommendations. I don't think it's the intention of anyone here to prohibit or forgo any recommendation, but we want to hear all recommendations. Presumably, some of the recommendations will not be simply to do some more study but will involve some concrete things we can all move forward together on.
You may have heard that our government has brought in a number of initiatives to address specifically the issue of violence against women. You may have noticed that there have been a number of private members' bills on human trafficking that have been passed by all parties in the House.
When you spoke to the committee previously, on May 30 of this year, you mentioned that human trafficking was a big issue for aboriginal women and that you think many of them are the targets and the victims of human trafficking.
I hope some of that human trafficking legislation, which has been supported by all of us as parliamentarians—I think virtually all of these bills have been unanimously supported—will be of value to the people you represent, and you see that we're making an honest effort to try to reduce the occurrence of human trafficking in Canada and bring it to an end.
As I mentioned earlier, you've probably heard that our government has been consulting with people across Canada for a number of months now on a victims bill of rights. As a lawyer myself and as a member of Parliament, it seems to me I hear from the people I represent all the time that they have lost faith in our justice system. They don't think it serves the law-abiding people or the victims, and there needs to be a rebalancing of our justice system between victims and offenders. When people lose faith in our justice system, they take the law into their own hands, they just don't cooperate with authorities, and the problem gets worse.
It seems to me, and maybe you can tell me where I'm wrong, that the victims we're talking about in this case, the aboriginal women and girls, are victims that our justice system has failed somehow; that we're not paying attention to their needs; that they have lost faith, and the aboriginal community in general has perhaps lost faith, in the Canadian justice system, because it has failed to serve those law-abiding people it is supposed to serve.
So we very much would value your input, the input of the people you represent, the families, on how we can address these issues and add things to our victims bill of rights that address their concerns and the problems they've identified over many years, and we can help restore the faith of all Canadians in our justice system.
I'd appreciate hearing your views on those things.
Thank you.