Special Committee on Violence Against Indigenous Women Committee on Feb. 6th, 2014

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you, ladies, for being here. Both of you have given us great food for thought. I think you have given us some things we can work on.

When we had the witnesses in front of us, the families—and I cited this last week—we had Bernadette Smith here whose sister is missing. One of the things that she so imploringly said to us was, "Please, no more reports".

Ms. Blackstock, you've cited two more reports tonight just in your own commentary. Last week I made the comment in our discussions that there are an extraordinary number of reports available. One of the committee members challenged me, so I did a l bit of investigation this week. Just in 22 reports that I have downloaded, there are 437 academic reports cited, just in 22.

Ms. Redsky, one of the ones I have here is by the Canadian Women's Foundation. That alone has 66 citations of academic studies that have been done.

The studies are done. Isn't it time we got down to work and put solutions to these problems? Isn't it time that we came up with recommendations?

Ms. Redsky, one of the academic reports you cite is from Amnesty International. I see here they have made recommendations to ensure indigenous women access to justice, to improve public awareness and accountability, to provide adequate and stable funding to the front-line organizations that provide culturally appropriate services, to address the root causes of violence against indigenous women, and to eliminate inequities in the services available to aboriginal children.

All of those issues are hitting the very things you've talked about with us tonight.

I note that, according to another report, which is from Newfoundland and Labrador, 56% of the violent incidents committed against aboriginal people are perpetrated by someone who is known to the victim. It goes on to talk about the domestic violence that goes on.

If we know what the causes are, and you've talked about starting to put together some of the solutions, isn't it time we started to address them?

[Dr. Cindy Blackstock]

I would say yes, but I would also say that shouldn't preclude any investigation of other alternatives or development of a rather organized strategy. You can get rather piecemeal, I guess, with shooting in various recommendations. It's very important to look across these existing reports, identify those common themes, and get to work. There are women and children out there right now depending on the good work that you, as committee members, are doing.

Outside of that though, that doesn't preclude the value of a national strategy or some kind of inquiry, if you like, which has been called for by many groups, to look at a national strategy that's very holistic in terms of preventing and responding to violence against indigenous women.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Ms. Redsky.

[Diane Redsky]

The priority would be action. That was clearly the response of the Canadian Women's Foundation back in July. We need action. We need to know what. We need to uncover the causes and create the solutions. We need action items.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Do you think that with 437 academic studies already done—and those are just some of the ones that I downloaded. Literally thousands of academic reports have been done. Do you not think that from these numerous references we can start to pull together some of the solutions and get acting on them?

Dr. Blackstock, you've talked about some of them, and they start with the children in the home. It is reprehensible that any child has to suffer any kind of violence in the home. That should be reprehensible to all of us. There's one of the suggestions. Can we not take that forward and start finding the solutions to that? Do we really need to do more reports and more study when we have all of these available?

[Dr. Cindy Blackstock]

When it comes to first nations children, we've identified through our work some examples of things that could be done right now. We'd be happy to provide them to the committee, at their discretion. They not only show short-term benefits for first nations families, but also set in play and lay some track around those longer-term problems as well.

I think the real key is to say that we'll get off the rails and do it, that we'll start down this path of action. This is particularly because the most important years for children are those early years. Getting those services in there early really is the best predictor of long-term outcomes throughout their childhood and into adulthood as well.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Delaying that, delaying any action on those things, will impact a whole other generation of children. Action is needed now.

[Dr. Cindy Blackstock]

Right, and I would say fulsome action, courageous action.

I know it's difficult when you're dealing with budget restraints, but I just want to bring this to your awareness. There was a great study by the KidsRights foundation, which is the organization that works with Nobel laureates to hand out the International Children's Peace Prize that Malala received last year. They wanted to look at the performance of children's rights in proportion to the country's wealth. We wouldn't expect poor countries to be doing as well as rich countries like Canada. Then they ranked countries using an economic formula.

They found that Canada, a G-8 economy, ranked 60th in the world. This was in November 2013. There's clearly room to be able to increase what we're doing for the benefit of children and get back up to where our economy is, which is among the top eight in the world.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

You've just cited another study.

Madam Chair, I know you weren't here last week. Ms. Crowder chaired the meeting. I would like to submit these studies as part of the record, just because I was challenged last week on the number of studies that were available. I would like to submit these to the clerk.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

I think we can accept those. You can table them as part of your....

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Absolutely. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

Thank you for that.

I'll let Ms. Duncan take her five minutes.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you to both of you. I'm sure everybody agrees that we need you here for a week, not half an hour, but thank you both for your testimony.

Cindy, when you walked in, and also having heard Diane's great testimony, it occurred to me that really there are two things. One is after the fact, after aboriginal women and children have fallen through the cracks and have become addicted, or are in prostitution, or living in poverty, and so forth, but there's also the other thing, and that's the possibility of prevention.

It sounds to me that a lot of these studies, including this study about the particular areas of trafficking, prostitution, and the poverty of aboriginal women, look at the side of it that is after the fact. The decision has to be made on whether or not we'll continue to dwell on that. It's not that it shouldn't be addressed...and very specific to strategic actions. It sounds like Diane has really thought through a lot of that, not that Cindy hasn't.

The other side is prevention engagement. I'd like to hear from both of you on whether or not you would see a value in....

To me, what aboriginal men and women are calling for is they want the inquiry. That's more about looking at strategic actions to deal with the interaction between police and aboriginal women and children, and so forth, at how many are really out there, and at whether we're properly documenting, identifying, and taking appropriate legal actions and so forth.

The side that you talked about, Cindy, was about the strategic actions that have been taken in other jurisdictions that could be taken.

I'm wondering if each of you could talk briefly about that. Do you think both should be part of a strategy and merit some intensive look, with some sort of a timeline and so forth? In other words, “Here's some strategic action. Get on with it.”

[Dr. Cindy Blackstock]

I would equate it to the analogy of fighting a fire versus preventing a fire.

Right now you have a generation of babies and young children out there. You have the opportunity as parliamentarians to make a substantial difference. It's not only about whether or not they experience violence as adults, but there's also providing them with a healthy childhood. You could reduce the cancer rates, the diabetes rates, the incarceration rates. It's all of these issues that are on the agenda of your various constituents across the country as concerns.

Really, as I often argue, and I think the evidence is very much in support of it, the very best investment any government can make is in children. It's not in the demographic of my age group. When you spend dollars on children, you see big payback down the road. I think it's also true with regard to violence against women and violence in the aboriginal community as well. That initial investment has big payback.

[Diane Redsky]

To me what's different from anything else about the action moving forward—and I really do believe we're at an important crossroads—is the voice of experiential women, the voice of the indigenous women leadership who need to lead. They need to be a significant key player in an inquiry into a national action plan. I do believe that is the biggest difference moving forward in terms of what action needs to happen.

That really hasn't been done as in depth as it has been in the past. Even in our work with the national task force on human trafficking, we have experiential women and survivors on our task force. We have met with survivors across the country. In fact, we had a national round table with survivors. The voices of the people who it affects the most need to be at the table and need to be the fundamental part of the process. They need to be at the centre of anything that happens. That's going to result in action.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

I'm hearing you both saying we need both, but they're different things. We need action on both right now, the inquiry and to hear the voices and those issues. We also need to act with respect to the children.

Is that fair to say?

[Dr. Cindy Blackstock]

Yes. It would be the equivalent of just funding hospitals and not funding the flu shot. It doesn't make any sense. Let's get out there and provide both. As you invest in the early years, you're going to need less of those acute and very expensive interventions that come in adulthood. That's the hope and that's what the evidence suggests.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

You have about 20 seconds.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Shoot. I wanted to give—

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

You know what? Go ahead.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

I was going to share my time, but....

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

Do you have a quick question, Mr. Morin? There's not much time left.

[Marc-André Morin, NDP, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

I will try to be brief.

Ms. Blackstock, my question is for you.

Aboriginal communities have always been excluded from economic life and society in general. I have travelled throughout Canada and that was the first thing I noticed. I was 17 or 18 years old and I could see that a whole segment of society was living as though it were from another planet, as though it were made up of strangers. Could that be one of the sources of the problem? All of these disappearances, as well as the problems related to prostitution and substance abuse... Are they not simply consequences of that premise?

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

I'm going to give you about 30 seconds to answer that.

[Dr. Cindy Blackstock]

There's a great book called, The Spirit Level. I recommend it to you all. It shows that if you want to be a government where there are high trust levels, low incarceration rates, high education rates, and long life spans, you need to do only one thing and that is to reduce the inequalities in your own country.

I think by making that investment a priority as a federal government, you would see all of these good outcomes across the spectrum, and it would address many of the issues you raise.