Special Committee on Violence Against Indigenous Women Committee on Dec. 5th, 2013

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

Welcome to all, and good evening.

I'd like to officially open meeting number three of the Special Committee on Violence Against Indigenous Women by asking for a minute of silence to honour the victims. We are coming up tomorrow on the anniversary of the École Polytechnique tragedy, so a minute of silence to honour the victims of violence against women would be in order. We'll do that now.

[A moment of silence observed]

Thank you.

To begin with, I'd like to welcome our witnesses today. From the Ontario Provincial Police, we have Susanne Decock, superintendent, aboriginal policing bureau; and from the National Aboriginal Circle Against Family Violence, we have Dr. Anita Olsen Harper and Carole Brazeau.

We're going to start with Superintendent Decock.

Welcome.

[Supt Susanne Decock, Superintendent, Aboriginal Policing Bureau, Ontario Provincial Police]

Thank you very much.

Good evening everyone.

It's certainly my pleasure to be here. I appreciate the opportunity to contribute to this important discussion and to provide information from the Ontario Provincial Police, in particular the aboriginal policing bureau, and our work to address the critical issue that is the work of your committee.

My appearance here today reflects a strong personal and professional commitment to working to understand and respond to violence being experienced by women, and working with our youth—girls and boys—to break destructive cycles and encourage lifestyle choices that are healthy and responsible.

I've been a police officer for more than 20 years, and I currently serve as a commander of the aboriginal policing bureau of the OPP. As well, I am a very proud member of the Alderville First Nation.

Let me begin with a few comments on the policing landscape in Ontario. In Ontario policing responsibilities are delivered by a variety of services. The OPP, 53 municipal police services, and nine self-directed first nation police services share the responsibilities within the province. The OPP primarily polices smaller urban and rural areas, as well as highways, waterways, trails, and many isolated parts of the province.

I understand you've spoken with representatives of the First Nations Chiefs of Police Association. In Ontario, the nine self-directed first nation police services police some 94 reserve communities, many of them very remote locations. As well, the OPP directly polices 21 first nation communities and administers policing for another 20 communities under the Ontario First Nations Policing Agreement.

The Aboriginal policing bureau was established in 2007 to focus on the OPP's first nation policing responsibilities and to advocate across the organization on behalf of aboriginal communities and peoples. Our overall role is to ensure the OPP develops and sustains the ability to appropriately respond to aboriginal issues in the province.

Internally, our focus is building organizational cultural competency. A better, broader understanding of aboriginal issues is essential to providing appropriate policing and meaningful community supports.

Externally, our focus is relationship-building, and advocacy and support for community wellness, safety, and security. Here, youth programming and community wellness initiatives are a particularly important part of our bureau's work as a way to support community partners, and particularly young people who may be at risk. I'm very proud of this work that our unit is doing, and I'd like to come back to that in a moment.

In terms of OPP front-line assistance and prevention, the issues that you asked me to focus on this evening, there are several things I'd like to highlight, including front-line education; training and supports to improve prevention and investigative work; crime prevention; working with community partners in supporting community and public awareness and prevention activities; ongoing analysis of cases of missing and murdered aboriginal women; and aboriginal youth programming.

Our organization really has made quite a shift, a very large organizational commitment, if you will, to the education piece. Our native-awareness training unit is the foundational piece of this OPP training. It helps broaden awareness, knowledge, and understanding of the issues as they pertain to the work the OPP does. This training is provided by the unit within my section in a variety of formats. There are 18 five-day off-site sessions per year for approximately 500 officers. There is recruit training. Every OPP recruit spends time with our native-awareness trainers. They receive almost two days in total in training, as well as the piece that they get at the Ontario Police College.

We also provide an annual lunch-and-learn series at our headquarters. We do about five to six sessions per year for roughly 100 staff members, which is very important, because we're also reaching our civilian employees, who are a very big part of our organization.

Domestic violence investigators' training includes an aboriginal cultural component and dynamic, and really focuses on the issues specific to many first nation communities and women. The OPP has some abuse and domestic violence coordinators. These are the more on-the-ground types assigned to detachments throughout the province. We have approximately 100, and they are very key in terms of both the front-line investigations and prevention. They provide the ongoing training and support for the front-line officers doing investigations. They collaborate with a lot of local community partners, provide education, and focus on ways to improve how our officers are responding to incidents.

The OPP has an ongoing focus on the analysis of case files of missing and murdered aboriginal women, which began with the concerns raised by the Native Women's Association of Canada's findings. We're looking to understand the situation within OPP jurisdiction and, to the degree possible, in Ontario. We're engaged in ongoing discussions with our policing partners provincially and nationally to compile information of interests, of analysis, coordination, and information-sharing.

Turning to our focus on youth, I'd like to start by saying how impactful this work is and how proud I am of some of the programs we're delivering, because I really see the youth as a priority. Our native awareness section of our bureau deals with delivering this programming. The youth programming and community wellness initiatives are important elements in how we support the communities, and particularly the young people who may be at risk. Many of our initiatives deal with identity and helping young people understand and reconnect with their roots. They help them find and build self-worth, self-esteem, and pride in who they are, and develop respect and healthy relationships—all essential building blocks, of course, for healthy development. It's very important that I point out that any of these initiatives and programs we deliver, we do in partnership with the first nation communities, often with the local first nation police services, other policing partners, and community groups as well.

I'll give you a quick example of some of the programs we deliver. Walking the Path really is a program that has become the foundation for most of our youth programming. It's a 10-week program designed for kindergarten to grade 12 in schools and through community venues. It's delivered directly to youth and through facilitator training as well.

Niigan Mosewak is a culturally relevant youth intervention program. It's a week-long summer camp experience for vulnerable youth. It includes a leadership component for continued development of youth mentors. That's an important piece, of course.

We deliver the Medicine Wheel youth initiative in Pikangikum, where we work with the Pikangikum members in northern Ontario. You probably know that this is a community that faces many systemic challenges, including high rates of substance abuse and youth suicide. We've been doing some ongoing monthly work there for close to a couple of years, and we've made some great partnerships with community members and elders, as well as the local school.

Continuity and sustainability, of course, are key to success in any of these initiatives. As I said, these are all built on partnerships with the local community and schools, and elders as well.

That's a little bit about the aboriginal policing bureau, and I've mentioned some of the other programs we're doing within the OPP around the investigations piece, but I'm very happy to provide you with this brief overview.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

Thank you very much; we appreciate it.

I believe you'd like to use your 10 minutes, Dr. Olsen Harper, and then Ms. Brazeau will help you with questions.

You have 10 minutes. You can use it—

[Carole Brazeau, National Project Coordinator, National Aboriginal Circle Against Family Violence]

We'll be sharing.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

Oh, you'll do it together. Okay, wonderful. Thank you.

Please go ahead.

[Carole Brazeau]

Mani nindjinicoz. Kitigan Zibi nin donjiba.

Good evening.

My name is Carole Brazeau. I'm representing the National Aboriginal Circle Against Family Violence. The acronym is NACAFV. Our primary mission is to end violence in our aboriginal communities.

The NACAFV also provides training to the dedicated front-line professionals in on-reserve AANDC-funded shelters primarily, and transition houses across Canada. In response to violence against first nations women, NACAFV president Sheila Swasson stated the following nearly a decade ago, and it is still true to this day:

NACAFV is well aware of the enormity of the issue; our front-line workers, the women in the trenches, are usually the first ones in contact with the women and children who have been exposed to some of the most extreme cases of violence.

As well, the NACAFV pointed out that the inequities of funding to first nations shelters is a contributing factor causing the disparities in the quality of and access to services in our country amongst first nations women and children who require these services. Today, the NACAFV is calling on the federal government of Canada to support a prevailing request for a national strategy to address the issues of violence against Indigenous women. This must be in tandem with addressing the inequities in funding programs and services for first nations women and children who need to access shelters for their own safety.

The NACAFV is willing to collaborate with all levels of government and other organizations for finding effective strategies and solutions to end violence against first nations women and children. Women's shelters can take a leading role in coordinating, designing, and planning educational and training offerings.

This year, in February of 2013, at our annual training forum, I asked the front-line workers to provide ideas on how to prevent family violence and domestic homicides, and their answers were mainly about education and prevention.

This is where Dr. Olsen Harper's expertise comes in.

[Dr. Anita Olsen Harper, Consultant, National Aboriginal Circle Against Family Violence]

Thank you. Meegwetch.

My name is Anita Olsen Harper. I'm Anishinabe from the Lac Seul First Nation in northwestern Ontario.

Our opening statement on addressing the issues of front-line assistance and violence prevention proposes the following proactive thoughts. These are split into two broad categories: education and prevention.

Education needs to be offered to children, youth, women and men, and parents. The goal of this type of education is to break the cycles of violence in the home and the community. The study of how western-based gender roles made inroads into first nations life is important for youth to learn. It is never too early to start learning this history: start in kindergarten and don't finish until the last grade.

Gender history can help native youth recognize and unlearn harmful male-female expectations and stereotypes. It helps reverse the production of gender that makes male privilege and female submission appear natural, rather than it being deliberately created and specifically nurtured.

As well, this type of teaching helps students understand the matriarchal systems by which many first nations were governed in times past. A community-based, school-based approach to education can involve the entire community, and particularly target young parents on how to be involved in their children's anti-violence education. Parents must also be taught by example, and themselves teach by example. This is an intergenerational approach to teaching.

The deterioration of healthy relationships between men and women and boys and girls is largely rooted in eurocentric gender values and placements. In older first nations societies, men and women had different but complementary gender roles and responsibilities. These were based on respect and honour. Children and youth were educated to fulfill their places and responsibilities toward peaceful living in society.

Youth involvement is vital to anti-violence learning and being accountable for one's own activities. It takes only one person to produce a violent household. Consequently, unlike most contemporary first nations populations, social problems were held in check by specific protocols and ways of doing that left youth free to fulfill their individual human potentials as active, contributing tribal members.

The accomplishment of gender is perpetuated by cultural beliefs about underlying and essential differences between women and men and the establishing of social structures that support these beliefs. It is indeed very important to teach about gender violence in schools. One academic stated that "My research over the past two decades on peer-to-peer sexual harassment has confirmed that schools may well be the training grounds for domestic violence through the practice of and permission for sexual harassment".

While such insights may be too intense for very young children, they can still be involved in identifying the gender prescriptions in media, with which they are undoubtedly already very familiar.

Foundational curricula can be established to explore various western-based expressions that ground the inferiority and subjugation of women in cultural norms. Students can be taught how to detect these normative portrayals. The values, ideals, and suggestive prods that emerge from popular gendered representations that are meant for children and youth should be seriously examined and questioned. Skilled instructors can teach parents how to initiate and further students' discourse and lead to the realization that such idealized and patterned gender arrangements can readily enable bullying and violence against women and girls.

Teaching first nations-specific gender discrimination could include a study of the legal categorizations of an "Indian" as defined by the Indian Act. Creative and imaginative teachers can help youth, male and female, locate themselves within federal legislation. They can develop curriculum that is interesting and involves students personally through a study of their placement within the Indian registry. Knowing one's identity strengthens individuals and helps them seek proper ways of non-violent self-expression.

From a broader perspective, such discussion can help students realize the violence of the Indian Act, and also the resilience of the first nations in withstanding the extermination efforts that are embedded therein. Specifically, Bill C-31 is a worthy area of study, including the history of its development by women who were actively opposed by governments and national native organizations because of internalized sexist discrimination against them.

Schools, communities, and parental protocols must complement one another so that maximum effectiveness of anti-gender bullying, anti-harassment, and anti-violence policies is achieved. There is evidence that sexist behaviours and attitudes are so much a part of the ethos of schools that they actually go unnoticed; they have become normalized.

Number two, prevention programs are needed. More parenting programs that help all parents with violence-free households are needed. There must be strict laws on abuse. The community must take a stand. Leadership must be an example and advocate for violence-free living. Leaders need to be healthy and violence-free themselves in order to support the families in their communities.

More male-based programs for boys, youth, and men are needed. Teach how to create safe spaces for genders to develop, starting in the classroom. Have a full week on a family violence prevention campaign, for example.

Prevention programs must include actual hands-on activities that include real-life case studies. They must involve workshops with elders, community leaders, and experts in the areas of health, justice, and sports. For example, teach how domestic violence negatively impacts on sports involvement.

The whole community must offer support for everyone else in the community: for the victims, for perpetrators, for youth, for elders, and for shelter staff. As appropriate, circles for discussion should be used among groups of women, women and men, and for families. Gatherings specifically for women on specific topics would work also. This format should be extended to men.

Community members who may not have a special community leadership profile, such as youth and elders—grassroots people—need opportunities for empowerment. Everyone needs opportunities to find and express their own voices for their own wants and needs in their own lives. An array of healing and teaching techniques would be needed for this, conducted by competent facilitators.

People need to go back to their own cultural teachings and stories, especially of their origins of creation. They need to know their own traditions and have strong, resilient foundations to protect them from the bad things that will for sure happen in their lives.

Prevention includes awareness-raising activities and being cognizant of public safety.

Finally, prevention work must always address systemic oppression, since it is the foundation of internal oppression. Oppression breeds violence: violence against the most vulnerable, who are the women and the children of aboriginal communities.

Meegwetch.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

Thank you very much.

You have given us two wonderful presentations and a lot to chew on, so we'll move right into questions, beginning with Ms. Mathyssen.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Thank you so much for being here and sharing your expertise with us. We're very grateful.

I have a couple of questions. I am going to share my time with Ms. Ashton, so I'll try to be succinct.

Here's the first thing I wondered about. Three years ago, the Standing Committee on the Status of Women undertook a consultation across the country with first nations communities and with organizations that helped women, that dealt with women. One of the things we heard all too often was that there was a lack of trust among these women in police services. They felt very often that they weren't dealt with properly or fairly. In some cases, they were incarcerated. Their children were taken away.

My question is, how do you create that trust? How do you go about establishing a positive relationship in that regard? Is it a national awareness campaign? Is it education for police services? How do we do that?

That's for whoever would like to answer.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

Is that for both sets of witnesses?

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Yes.

[Supt Susanne Decock]

Thank you. I'd be happy to answer that.

It's a very good question, of course, and one that we've certainly all asked ourselves many times.

Some of the education that I spoke about that we're doing with our officers really has shown our commitment as an organization to take a step toward this.

There is a lot of long-standing history between police services across Canada and the first nation communities. Of course, not all that history is positive. As I mentioned, in our case, in the OPP, we saw a real organizational shift and commitment to educating the officers. We need to give them the tools they need to go out and police the communities, and, in your words, it's all about trust.

One of the other sections that our bureau has is a provincial liaison team. These are front-line officers who are specially trained in communication and conflict resolution skills. They're deployed around the province when we have a critical incident going on. They spend an awful lot of time investing in the communities, getting to know the community members. We talk about that a lot, about the investment you can get by just getting to know your community. Those relationships often payoff in times of strife and conflict.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you.

Madam Brazeau and Dr. Harper, have you anything to add?

[Carole Brazeau]

Yes. I feel that it's important.

The role of the police is to serve and protect, I believe. When women do call in cases of family violence, it is important that the police intervene. It is a criminal act. We did have reports from shelter directors that in certain communities the police were not intervening. It would be important for them to intervene.

Regarding trust, of course, it's justified. In my capacity as a justice and public security coordinator previously, when I was working with the Quebec native women we did give workshops to the police who were in training on how to intervene with first nations women and children, victims of family violence or victims of violence, and after the training they received from us they felt more comfortable to intervene in these cases.

So I believe that if they do have some training from an indigenous organization, it could be beneficial.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

You have just under two more minutes. I'm not sure when you're switching over.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Perhaps I should allow Ms. Ashton to take over.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Perhaps I can direct the question to Dr. Harper—and Ms. Brazeau, if you like, you can add to it.

Dr. Harper, building on the discussion and your presentation, I want to thank you very much for these presentations. I also want to acknowledge very much the analysis you brought forward. Unfortunately this committee is very rushed in dealing with such a serious issue, and your analysis is unique and very important for what we are doing here.

I've put forward a motion calling for a national action plan to end violence against women. Canada is alone amongst like-minded countries in not having a national action plan. Our motion suggests that there are guidelines and there needs to be a main focus on indigenous women and violence against indigenous women.

I'm wondering if you believe that we need a national action plan that involves reaction, prevention, and all of these things with respect to indigenous women, and all women as well.

[Dr. Anita Olsen Harper]

Thank you for that.

Yes, I certainly do see a need for a national action plan, a national strategy, something that is proactive and that acknowledges the history. The previous question was about mistrust. It's not just a surface mistrust, it's deep-seated, it's historical. Those things have to be addressed, and a national action plan has to acknowledge that. It has to acknowledge what the prevailing Canadian sentiments are toward aboriginal people, and specifically toward aboriginal women and children. It is very much a necessity.

Thank you, Niki. Meegwetch.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

Thank you.

Over to you, Ms. Truppe, for seven minutes.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Welcome, and thank you for being here.

Susanne, I think you mentioned something when you were speaking about partnerships, and I just want to assure everyone that certainly our government does take the issue of violence against aboriginal women very seriously, and does continue to work in partnerships with provincial governments, territorial governments, aboriginal people, and other stakeholders, in order to develop effective and appropriate solutions. We work quite a bit with partnerships.

I'm also parliamentary secretary for the status of women, so I know we've also funded some great projects that address the needs of aboriginal women and girls. For example, in B.C. I think it was around $186,000. That was a 24-month project that responds to the specific needs of aboriginal women who have experienced abuse, as they transition to violence-free lives. In the Yukon, it was about $265,000 for a 36-month project that assisted aboriginal women to transition to violence-free lives. We also committed funding of over $24 million for two years for the family violence prevention program. That allows the programming to be offered at an annual funding level of over $30.4 million.

I would like to ask maybe Carole or Anita if you could speak to the importance of this funding and how your organization has benefited from it.

[Carole Brazeau]

Certainly. Our core funding at the NACAFV is $250,000 per year. We do receive $125,000 for our annual training forum and our annual general assembly, as well as training for shelter directors and transition houses annually.

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

How has that helped? That's the funding you got for different areas, but how does that benefit the women?

[Carole Brazeau]

Mainly we initiate, design, and deliver culturally appropriate programs and services, and training for front-line shelter and transition house workers, and we've also produced some publications. Dr. Olsen Harper authored one of them. That one is called “Addressing Funding Policy Issues: INAC-Funded Women's Shelters”. That can be found on our website, and that goes into details regarding funding.

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

Great, thank you.

Maybe you could just talk about a few of the programs your organization runs to combat violence against women, and which ones you think have the highest success rate. Do you have one that works better over another one, perhaps?

[Dr. Anita Olsen Harper]

I would just like to point out that the membership of the National Aboriginal Circle Against Family Violence is mostly the on-reserve women's shelters, so we ourselves only offer programs from the funding for the annual general assembly. We don't run shelters. The shelters are run by the executive directors. We're a national association of the on-reserve women's shelters. We're sort of the coordinating body of educational endeavours.