Good morning.
I would like to acknowledge that we are sitting on unceded Algonquin territory, which is our land.
I would like to thank the committee. First and foremost, I would like to thank my family. This is my family that stands behind me and picks me up when we hit rock bottom, because it is a struggle every day.
A lot of the MPs know who I am. My name is Susan Martin. My daughter Terrie Ann Dauphinais was murdered on April 29, 2002, in Calgary, Alberta, leaving three small children behind.
Before Terrie was murdered, she called the Calgary police department on March 8, 2002, to lay charges for domestic violence against my son-in-law. No one was charged, no one was removed from the home. My daughter told her friend out in Alberta, Theresa Ross, who had my grand-babies for six months after my child was murdered, that she was going to pay for it. Ken told her that she was going to pay for it.
My child was brutally murdered 52 days later. She was naked downstairs in the front door like a display of a piece of garbage, with her three children locked up in the house for 12 to 14 hours. The baby was 10 months old. Another two hours and my grandson would have died.
Gideon and Gabriel were upstairs locked in the bedroom. When the police apprehended the babies, Gabrielle told them that their dad locked them in their room. My two oldest grandchildren were full of pee and poo and were screaming to let them out, let them out. The baby was crying, [Inaudible--Editor] away from his mom's dead body.
I've been fighting this fight for 11 years. You guys have known I brought my child up to Parliament Hill, her remains. I've been doing this for eight years. I've asked for change. I've asked for help. Bernadette, Brenda, and I, and my granddaughter Kaden, went to the memorial on Friday night for the murdered women of Montreal. What do I see? A new mom telling her story of how her child was brutally murdered in domestic violence. Her head was barely there, the guy cut her, and she was barely hanging on with her daughter standing there.
Lots of times I want to throw in the towel and say I can't do this any more, Creator, I don't want to do this any more. Like Robert said, we have anger. We can't show it to the public, we have to address it in a proper way. When I see another mother, another child, another brother, another son, gone missing and murdered here in Canada, nobody seems to care about us brown people. Nobody seems to care. We have to do it on our own.
I do vigils here in Ottawa in my child's name. It comes out of my husband's and my pocket. It doesn't come from begging other family members to help me. Or I sell my jerky. Jean knows that, Carolyn knows that. People know that I do it on my own. We have to do it on our own because we've been begging for help.
I have to give, and I will say it, I said it on October 4, Stephen Harper a little bit of credit for actually assisting the families so that families don't lose everything, but the families are still struggling. We still need more help to have a roof over our head, to have food in our stomach, to pay our bills, because it is a process every single day getting out of bed and dealing with the world. It's a very hard issue.
We also need to train our police officers to deal with family members and not say, well, your daughter was a prostitute. I don't care what that person.... No one has a right to take another human being's life and only get five years for that human being's life. A person who's trying to feed their family and writes a rubber cheque gets more time than a child molester, a murderer, or a rapist. What is wrong with this country? What is wrong with this country?
Look at how many...if you filled this room up, there are over 6,000 on the database, 6,000 men, women, and children on that database, and nothing's being done. A life should be worth a life here in Canada. These perpetrators don't change.
Where are my grand-babies? I got to see my grand-babies twice. They're in Saskatoon with the killer. I'm still waiting for justice. My husband's still waiting for justice. The police in Calgary told us that if my husband went there to camp on the doorstep and address the situation they would apprehend him and put him in jail. That's bullshit. Sorry for the language, people. That's bullshit.
That's my child. Not only that, Terrie's my second baby. This family knows this. Yesterday it was 34 years since I put Terrie's sister in the ground out in Calgary—34 years ago. Sherry died due to health problems. Terrie didn't die due to health problems. Terrie was murdered. Terrie's life was taken away, and these perpetrators need to answer for it. Not five years, not two years, not three years—they don't change people. They don't change, so quit listening to them. Quit listening to them because now it's the children who are left behind who are being targeted.
My grand-babies, Brenda's grand-babies, Bernadette's daughter, Amy and Glen's grand-babies, Lorna's daughter, Connie's family.... Our children are being targeted. Pauline and Herb Muskego's grandchildren are going to be targets. It has to stop. We have to stop it. So I'm asking you. I've been here for a long, long time doing this. I'm asking you, please back us up. Let's make a loud ruckus and change this in Canada.
Our women shouldn't be homeless. There should be no one homeless in Canada. Everybody should have a roof over their heads, food in their tummy, and clothes on their back, but it seems to me—and it's not directed at all of you guys—if you're corrupt, you get rewarded. When you misplace money, and you steal, and you lie to Canadian citizens as a mayor or a politician, yay, let's give you a million.
Well, you know what? I don't care about that. I want justice for our loved ones. I want this to stop, and I want this committee to stand behind the families, the people who are walking and bringing awareness. I want you guys to say, “Enough is enough”, because guess what, people? You work for us. You work for Canadian people.
I'm asking, as a Canadian Cree Sioux woman, help us. Help us change it. Help us stop it so that I won't see a new family member here, so I don't have to come back here and address this, so I don't have to stand on Parliament Hill for eight hours telling my child's story. If it saves a woman's life, which I've done, yay. Thank you, Terrie. Thank you, my baby.
How do women and men go missing off the face of the earth without a trace? I did a search when Laura Spence and Nicole—I'm trying to remember the last name—went missing up in Maniwaki. I worked 16 hours. I got a call from a friend telling me what was happening because she knew it would fuel a fire underneath my butt. Guess what? I stopped work, and I put my food away because I came out. I walked until two o'clock in the morning putting up posters. The word “no” would not come in my vocabulary. People couldn't believe me, how fast I walked and how fast I moved.
I'm 53 years old. People were younger than me, and I was beating them. I had only two people say no to me, and I said “Shame on you. What if that was your mom, your auntie, your daughter, or your sister?” “Oh, we can't do that ma'am. Put it out on the post.” “No. I want it here because the people see it.” People don't look at posts. As soon as there's a woman gone missing we should also have an amber alert. I don't care how old you are, it's like Pauline's sister said. We know our children. There should be an amber alert.
Facebook, media.... It's the families who find our loved ones. It's our families who connect and say, “Okay, we got this and this on missing....” Am I right, families? It's the families who know when one of us is down. We might not know which one it is, but all of a sudden you'll see a text or something on Facebook if you don't have a cell phone or a phone. Are you okay? Each one of us will answer yes, we're okay, but really we're not okay because it is a struggle.
If you look at me....I didn't bring a picture of my child. Jean and Carolyn know what my child looks like. My daughter looks like me. I am a survivor of domestic violence as a child and in my first marriage, and now I question myself. If I had let my first husband take my life like he tried to, would my baby be alive? Those are what-ifs. That's a mother's what-if. What if I had done it differently? What if I had let my first husband kill me? What if I had let my childhood kill me? I came from a very abusive family at a very young age. If I had let my parents kill me....
That always preys on my mind and in my heart, always.
So I don't want to see this anymore. I don't want to be here anymore, but I will as long as there's another person who's gone missing. You will always see my face and I'll always be positive, and I'll always make you feel what we feel on a daily basis. Because trust me, every night I go to bed and I ask the Creator to give me the strength, the eyes to see, the heart to feel, the ears to hear, and the voice to speak the truth—because people don't like the truth. The truth hurts.
Meegwetch.
Thank you.