Special Committee on Violence Against Indigenous Women Committee on Feb. 13th, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

Good evening, everyone, and welcome to this meeting of the Special Committee on Violence Against Indigenous Women.

We have a technical glitch today, I'm told, so Ms. Turpel-Lafond from Children and Youth cannot be seen presently. Apparently there are technical problems in Victoria, where she is based. We will be hearing from her, so we will have to use our ears and not our eyes tonight because she's only going to be available to us by telephone.

Mary Ellen, can you hear us?

[Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, Representative, British Columbia, Representative for Children and Youth]

Yes, I can hear you. Can you hear me fine?

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

Yes, actually, perfectly. Good, okay, this could work.

We thank you very much for joining us tonight, and we do apologize. I'm not sure where the problems are based, but we're glad that you're with us, even if it is just by telephone.

Mr. Saganash.

[Romeo Saganash, NDP, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Yes, just before we start, Madam Chair, we heard today that an organization that was supposed to be one of our key partners to this process withdrew from the process, and I'd like to have an opportunity, perhaps after the testimony and before the consideration of the draft report, to discuss the implications of that withdrawal. NWAC is one of our principal and key players and partners to this process. They announced today in a statement that they're withdrawing from the process, so I'd like us to have an opportunity to perhaps discuss the implications of that decision if that's possible.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

Thank you for that.

I would suggest we do that in the 7:00 to 8:00 p.m. time slot, drafting instructions, which is—

[Romeo Saganash, NDP, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Absolutely.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

—in camera. That's wonderful. We'll do that at 7 o'clock, then, and that way we can concentrate on the witness for the next hour.

For those of you who are observing our meeting today, I would welcome you and ask that we remain calm and respectful of the fact that there is a meeting going on here. I will insist on order so we can hear the witness and get everything we possibly can from her testimony in a respectful way.

Without further ado, Ms. Turpel-Lafond, please begin. You have 10 minutes, and then we'll begin with questions until 7 p.m.

[Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond]

Thank you again, Madam Chair, and thank you to members of the committee.

I'll just give you a very short background on my role. I am an independent officer of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia and in that role I'm the representative for children and youth. I do a number of things. I oversee the child welfare system in British Columbia and investigate whether it's effective and responsive.

I have a very particular focus and mandate on supporting and understanding the needs and services and whether they're effective and responsive to aboriginal children and youth. I investigate, and review, and report on the injuries and deaths of children and youth, particularly those who may have needed or received services. In that regard I have reported quite frequently, including just last week, on an instance of a suicide death or a death of first nations children. Last week I reported on the death of a 14-year-old first nations girl by hanging in her community, a girl who had been physically and sexually abused.

I also provide advocacy support to children and youth throughout British Columbia and have had in the past six years approximately 11,000 advocacy cases. Easily half of those cases are aboriginal children and youth and primarily first nations children and youth.

My work, as I say, is primarily here. My broader professional expertise is that I'm on leave from the Provincial Court of Saskatchewan, where I'm a judge in the provincial court. I'm originally from Saskatchewan and a member of a first nation called the Muskeg Lake Cree Nation in Saskatchewan. Before I was appointed to the court, I practised law—including family law and criminal law—representing largely first nations clients including the Native Women's Association of Canada and others over the years.

That's just my personal background. I'm also a mother of four children myself, including three girls, so I have a very strong interest in the work of the committee and would like to certainly recognize the importance of the public service this committee is doing by examining these important issues.

I'd like to talk a little bit in my introductory comments about my views from my professional experience around the vulnerability, particularly of indigenous girls, and the pathways that I see they have to deeper vulnerability as women and, in particular, frequently as victims living on the margins of Canadian society.

With respect to girls, I would particularly like to share with the committee my view that there is not adequate safety for first nations girls, whether they're living on reserve or off reserve. In the province of British Columbia, 80% of the aboriginal population is off the reserve. Other provinces and areas have different ratios, as you know, but there are very significant issues around safety.

While there are deep factors that cause communities to struggle, such as the deep intergenerational issues around residential schools—we're now into the third generation of survivors of residential schools, if you like—we continue to grapple with some very serious issues around neglect and maltreatment of children, particularly girls. There is their experience of gender discrimination, and in particular there is the fact that they are disproportionately victims with respect to sexual abuse and do not have as easy access to the regular civil remedies and protections as, arguably, other Canadian girls and women when they make disclosures around having been abused or neglected.

There's a significant challenge around having, for instance, a seamless child welfare system that will work appropriately and effectively within first nations communities. In the province of British Columbia there certainly is no meaningful program on reserve for children with special needs. A child who has special needs may be more inclined to be vulnerable to abuse and neglect and may be less likely able to protect and support themselves, and may be less resilient and need services. Certainly, on reserve these services are not equivalent or close to equivalent; there's no equivalent program on reserve for special needs.

The same applies for a program and service for children with mental health challenges who require some additional supports as they recover from trauma in order to be more resilient to face many of the challenges that they can face.

This service gap that we see in the lives of aboriginal girls, particularly first nations girls, is significant.

We also see significant gaps with respect to the level of achievement, for instance in academic achievement. Speaking again specifically about British Columbia, looking at it nationally we have some of the best education outcomes in the country for aboriginal children. Close to half of the aboriginal children will graduate in British Columbia. That compares to about 83% of all British Columbian children, so it's really still nothing too much to brag about. But it is in some ways the envy of other provinces and territories. Yet when we look particularly at the population of first nations children living on reserve, attending school on reserve or living on reserve and being bussed to attend school off reserve, their achievement drops considerably. It's closer to 20% to 25%. So we still see some very significant gaps, which also speak to some big service gaps.

When we look at the issue of vulnerability more broadly in terms of the lives of indigenous girls and first nations girls in British Columbia, we can see that many of the systems of support that are normally in place for other girls have not adequately met them. They haven't had an adequate in-reach into their communities, or outreach from the communities. As a result, when they do struggle, whether it's with a lack of safety, whether it's with a special need or need for support, they cannot necessarily access the types of services that are required in order to protect them and allow them to reach their full potential.

I think my overarching concern, particularly as representative for children and youth, is that there are far too many first nations girls in a position of deep vulnerability for whom there is no easy access to services and supports to overcome that. The consequence of this is that we see girls leaving the community, sometimes in rather perilous situations such as hitchhiking. Certainly in my work as representative, when I attend first nations communities across B.C., which I do frequently, meeting with young girls who ask me to please get them out of the community, they aren't sure what they're getting out to. But they feel quite uncomfortable with the situation that they may face, especially if there is abuse and neglect, because they feel that they don't have adequate support in the community. I don't think it's the stereotype about communities, but the fact is they do not have the level of service and support that they require. This creates, as I say, this deep vulnerability where they want to come out of the community, yet their ability to cope, their ability to succeed outside the community, is going to be extremely challenging because they have experienced some difficult situations and the services outside the community may not be well organized for them as well.

For instance, in our province the pathway to vulnerability—to for instance participating and being preyed upon in vulnerable areas such as the Downtown Eastside and elsewhere, which sometimes ends up being the end point of that journey from a situation of abuse in the early years—is a difficult one. We are not effectively working to disrupt those pathways.

The work of this committee is important. It requires actual services and actual targeted supports with a strong understanding of the unique discrimination and challenges that girls face early, so that they can be more resilient and also be more supported to succeed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

Thank you very much. You do have a little bit more time if you'd like to use it. Otherwise we can go straight to questions.

[Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond]

I'd like to speak just a bit about a few other topics that I think increase vulnerability for women in particular. I did a report, and my reports are publicly available at the website of the B.C. Representative for Children and Youth. I apologize for the fact that it is not the policy of the legislature of British Columbia to translate all reports into French, so I know that they are not going to be automatically deposited with your committee, but I invite committee members to look at them.

I did a report in the fall of 2013 on a first nations child who was transferred from British Columbia to Saskatchewan, where she was severely abused by her caregivers, a grandparent and step-grandmother. They were later convicted for failing to provide the necessities of life to that child. In that report I spoke quite a bit as a result of my investigation into the circumstances of her mother. She is a mom who as a girl was abused in a community in Saskatchewan, a first nations community. She basically ran from the community to try to start a new life in British Columbia, found herself in the Downtown Eastside using IV drugs, having serious addictions, in part because she couldn't cope and was overwhelmed with her childhood experience of being physically and sexually abused. She had a child, a little girl, who was the subject of the report. She was still struggling with addictions and asked the state, the Province of B.C., to take the child and see that the child could receive a better home than she could provide because she was so deep in the addiction cycle.

Certainly in investigating that case and dealing with the mom, I think it is really important for Canadians to understand how much struggle moms such as this one experience in their lives and how, while she was in an addiction cycle—and she has periods of recovery—she never received adequate support during her early years. She has not been given adequate support to recover from some of the difficulties she experienced around physical and sexual abuse in her community.

Her child then came into care and was sent to Saskatchewan. Ironically, the child was sent back into the very community where the mom said she had been abused, and the child was abused in the very same family. That child is now in a foster care situation and is approximately 10 years old. I do have fear about intergenerational abuse. How will we disrupt these cycles, not simply saying, “Here's the problem that we see but we're not actually disrupting it by addressing the cycle and the fact that there is both physical and sexual abuse occurring”?

It was quite an informative process in terms of being able to, in a very non-judgemental way, in a very supportive way, speak to indigenous women about the struggles they've faced, the difficulties they've faced, and to try to understand their pathways to vulnerability, but also how to protect and support their children so that they can have greater success. This is an area that requires some direct front-line experience from service providers, but also an engagement with indigenous women and children so that we can come to a much stronger understanding of what types of interventions are needed to support the resiliency.

Certainly understanding the pathway is one thing, but you have to actually provide services to disrupt it. I think that we need to be cognizant in Canada that this is the pathway that continues. I certainly share the concern at the national level about women who may be missing, women who may be tragically murdered, or who take their own life early in very tragic situations, and the loss that their families experience. But the fact is that there may often have been multiple lost opportunities to intervene in those lives positively and supportively to disrupt those pathways and I think that is one of our key challenges in Canada.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

Ms. Turpel-Lafond, I just want to thank you very much for your perspective and I think we're all anxious to begin with some questions for you, if that's all right?

We'll start with Mr. Saganash for seven minutes.

[Romeo Saganash, NDP, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Thank you and a big meegwetch to Mary Ellen. How are you?

[Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond]

Fine, thank you, Romeo.

[Romeo Saganash, NDP, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Well first of all, three thank you's.... First of all, thank you for being with us this evening. Thank you for the work that you have done over the years, specifically on and directly related to indigenous people's fundamental rights, I think that work is important. And thank you for this testimony this evening.

Enough said about that part from me because I would rather hear from you, hear your words and your thoughts on this very dramatic issue that we are dealing with in this committee.

First of all, I know that you have done a lot of work on many aspects of the issues that we are dealing with. In your experiences—and I would say in the multiple positions you have held over the years—what do you see as being, I know there are many factors that contribute to the crisis that we're going through today, but what do you see as the biggest factors contributing to the crisis that we face regarding missing and murdered aboriginal women and girls?

[Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond]

I would say that among the issues we face at a national level—we have a greater awareness of the issue perhaps in the public eye—is the lack of a federal presence to disrupt some of these known pathways. Just as examples, there are the absence of strong protections for the rights of children, of the concept of the best interest of the child being a very significant issue around keeping them safe, keeping them supported, and keeping indigenous children connected to their families and communities, which they have a right to. They have a basic human right, not only to their individual rights, but the right to be connected to their communities. We don't see enough meaningful implementation of mechanisms to see those rights happen.

For girls who experience abuse in the community, often the presence of the child welfare system has meant they've been removed from their community. They've lost contact with their community, or it's been disrupted, and the community hasn't been empowered to address the issue or to actually protect children.

If we look at the federal Indian Act as an example—I appreciate we do have some treaties and self-government agreements—you can regulate beekeeping, we can regulate dogs on reserves, but we actually don't have the powers to deal with fundamental issues around family policy, and we don't have powers to deal with issues to create the degree of safety needed to address this. So the fairly archaic regime that we have in place to govern the world of on-reserve in Canada is completely inadequate. It is something of a 17th century model that continues in Canada and, as a result, creates these enormous gaps, not only in accountability, but gaps in services.

Many of the provincial systems—I'll point to the B.C. Family Law Act as an example.... It was very comprehensively changed as of last March with a strong provision to make sure that indigenous children have a right to be connected to their culture and their language, that the family law could be important and it could be protected, that children could be well supported by caregivers and important people in their lives. But we still have many challenges around how that can become meaningful on a reserve and for indigenous children. The absence of any really strong federal understanding of how this will work on-reserve or interprovincially continues to be a gap. Taking away, if you like, the power, the policy, the ability to create safety, good regimes for safety on reserve in Canada.... You really see the absence of that.

I thank you for the question, but one of the biggest challenges is the archaic machinery at the federal level and then the inability of provinces, which largely have the responsibility, to know how to fill that.

[Romeo Saganash, NDP, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Thank you.

[Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond]

So we have these very big gaps around what actually happens, for instance when girls are not safe.

[Romeo Saganash, NDP, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Thank you.

I want to stick on the topic of the federal government's role. In your recent report to the B.C. government entitled “Lost in the Shadows” you recommended that the governments of B.C. and Canada work with first nations leaders to remove barriers to those services for children and families in first nations communities.

At the moment in your province, do you believe that Canada is meeting its domestic and international commitments towards children in care?

[Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond]

I really don't feel it is because of the fact that these basic issues, as I said earlier... A standard of service on reserve that is equivalent to off reserve.... So levels of support for victims, standards of policing and safety, and standards of child welfare are not equivalent to what are available off reserve.

There is a significant expenditure. I believe federal Aboriginal Affairs spends about $67 million per year for aboriginal child welfare. In British Columbia the province spends about $150 million per year. There is an expenditure, I'm not sure it's adequate, but it certainly doesn't lead to equivalent services. One of the key issues I recommended repeatedly is that there be a stronger strategy and a stronger national presence on that strategy.

The approach the federal government has taken, at least in British Columbia from what I can see, is they contract for services with a province, and the province provides the service. They contract only for a very narrow scope of service. They take no fiduciary or other obligation for whether or not those services actually meet the needs of people or reach them, and when they clearly don't reach them or meet the needs, it's left up to no man's land to resolve. On the ground this is where things really fall apart in the lives of vulnerable citizens and particularly first nations girls.

[Romeo Saganash, NDP, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Thank you. How much time do I have left?

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

You have thirty seconds.

[Romeo Saganash, NDP, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

A lot of witnesses who have come before this committee support a call for a national inquiry into the missing and murdered aboriginal women and a national action plan. They go together, I believe. Do you agree with this request?

[Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond]

I think it's extremely important that the issues be looked at. I certainly don't disagree with it. I think I see the issue a little bit differently. I think there are unique issues around murdered and missing women that require attention, whether something's a cold file or a police file. If there has been an inadequate level of care and investigation or there are patterns that need to be looked at, then absolutely that work has to be done.

In my work I really focus on what happens before someone becomes missing or murdered, and that is the early experience of vulnerability or abuse for first nations girls. The need to have—

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

We're a bit over time there, so I'm going to move on.

We'll go over to you, Mr. Strahl, for seven minutes.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Hi, Ms. Turpel-Lafond.

I met you for the first time when we were both at an event in Vancouver with Minister Valcourt at the announcement of the coming into force of the Family Homes on Reserves and Matrimonial Interests or Rights Act. “Matrimonial real property on reserve” is perhaps another way to put it. This act served to close a legislative gap that previously existed, which barred a spouse from having police officers remove the other spouse from the family home in the event of domestic violence. We certainly heard frustration when we heard from families of victims about that very issue, about the inability of police to remove from a home an offender or someone who had committed domestic abuse.

You talked about the ability to create safety. What effect do you believe this legislation is going to have in helping prevent violence against aboriginal women and children?