Thank you very much to the committee for inviting us.
I also want to start by acknowledging the traditional territory on which we have the privilege of being, which is unceded Algonquin territory. Every day of the last 30 years that I have had the privilege and responsibility of walking in, and more importantly walking out of, federal penitentiaries and provincial and territorial jails, local police lock-ups and juvenile facilities, the colonial legacy that is the reality for our indigenous peoples is brought home.
I start this way because it is very much, in our view, linked to the issue of missing and murdered aboriginal women. It's very much linked to the lack of entitlements that women in particular, and indigenous women even more so, have experienced. It's in my lifetime that enfranchisement has happened for indigenous peoples. It's in my lifetime that we have seen any discussion of violence against women taken seriously. It's been in my working lifetime that we've seen issues of the racist and misogynous treatment of indigenous women by police, by correctional authorities, and by most state actors. I think it's no accident therefore that today we're still having these discussions.
I first started working on the issue of missing and murdered women back when our sisters in the downtown eastside were raising it, particularly the Aboriginal Women's Action Network and then the Native Women's Association of Canada, and many other indigenous groups who started to raise the alert.
What I had not initially linked it to but very quickly did was that a number of the women were women we already knew. It is no accident that in our prisons, particularly our federal penitentiaries, more than 34% are indigenous women, and yet they represent as a group less than 2% of our Canadian population. It's not because they pose the greatest risk to public safety. It is very much linked to their marginalization and victimization and therefore is also linked to the manner in which we criminalize and institutionalize in particular imprisoned people.
One of the ways this became very clear to us was that when some of the first victims for which Robert Pickton was prosecuted were identified, they were women I knew from prison.
Much was made of the fact that they were women who may have experienced violence on the street and from the state and at the hands of people they knew. Not a lot was made of the fact that they had also experienced the violence of the state in terms of the lack of support services for those who were survivors of residential schools, as was identified by our Native Women's Association and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in their work on the Arrest the Legacy project and by the efforts that the Native Women's Association has made in the Sisters In Spirit reports. Nor was a lot linked to the fact that we had then abandoned people to social services and child welfare systems that were also operating with fairly racist assumptions, including assumptions that weren't necessarily supportive of women.
It's partly that legacy that contributes to our having more indigenous children in the care of the state now than we did even at the time of residential schools. It also contributes to the violence that women experience on the street and the commodification of women and girls.
We're in a moment in which we have an opportunity to do a number of things.
We do support the call for a commission of inquiry, not because we want another report. In the area that I work in, we see many, many reports. I wouldn't necessarily say that those reports are bad. But one of the things that an independent commission of inquiry does, in much the same way independent commissions of inquiry have always done, is to bring to light for the Canadian public what is happening and to make very clear that what is happening should not be happening and to allow for a non-partisan means of addressing the issues that need to be addressed.
A commission of inquiry does not have to be only a report. A commission of inquiry can lead to action. I would suggest that an independent, well-resourced commission of inquiry, combined with a number of important recommendations about police, court, and corrections accountability, is also vital.
We also need to be looking—in the next year, the government will have to—at the whole issue of the role of misogynist violence in pushing women into a position of being increasingly commodified. The sexual commodification of women, particularly indigenous women, has been very real for many years. We have tended not to look at it as a separate issue, despite the fact that we know that many women, in the context of the virtual elimination of national standards around needed social services, social assistance, and health care, have been forced to end up literally on the street, in our prisons, or dead.
In a context where we have no province or territory where people can survive on social assistance, in a context where we have a country where far too many reserves don't even have drinkable water, and in a context where we have far too many reserves that don't have adequate accommodation, schooling, or social supports of any kind for children, women, and all community members, it's not accidental that in fact we see more of those individuals at increased risk of both fleeing those situations or being forced out of those situations.
I agree that we need adequate resources in those places. Those are actions that could be taken in the form of national standards. I believe it is the responsibility of all members of Parliament, their fiduciary and legal obligation, to ensure that those kinds of standards exist.
In short, I agree that families want action. Families that I know, women that I know, want action.
I'll give an example of a very concrete action we're involved with right now that links to this issue. When I was in Nova Scotia in November, and when I was doing work in conjunction with a task force on sexually exploited and trafficked women and girls with the Women's Foundation, one of the things we became aware of was that many indigenous communities in the Atlantic region are fearful about the new shipbuilding business going into the Halifax area. The elders and the women in the community are already signalling that they know that this will “invite”—the term that others used—or likely draw a demand for the sexual services of many young women.
I commend to you the work that the Native Women's Association has done in this area. The research they have recently done shows that most of the young indigenous women who end up on the street being traded for sexual services often start between the ages of seven and twelve. The families and communities from which those young women come in Atlantic Canada are very fearful that they will likely see more demand for that kind of sexual commodification of their women and girls in the coming years.
We are calling upon not just the private sector, for instance, in the form of the Irving shipbuilding family who will be going in there, but also government resources, federal, provincial, and municipal, to be allocated to ensure that women and girls have other opportunities and do not continue to face the marginalization, the victimization, and the resulting criminalization and institutionalization that is increasingly their legacy, particularly if they are indigenous women and girls.
We do call on the need for front-line services on reserves, adequate housing, guaranteed livable incomes, and adequate social services, and the need for violence of all forms to be taken very seriously, including sexual violence, not just in the family, not just in a domestic sphere, but also in the context of the increased commodification of women and girls.
I thank you very much, and I look forward to your questions.