On the issues around children involved in the child welfare system, there is an extremely high level of aboriginal children involved in the child welfare system for a variety of reasons, mostly because there are intergenerational issues, but also because there's maltreatment, and that has to be addressed.
A recommendation is that there be a stronger effort to outline, if you like, either through a first nations child welfare act, or what have you, stronger standards around what services will be available on reserve so we don't have these terrible gaps. Much like we're talking about in the education side, we need this. In the U.S. they've had the Indian Child Welfare Act for almost 40 years. This has allowed communities to have a fairly strong role in order to support and look into issues around persistent maltreatment and abuse of children, and respond to them appropriately. We haven't had that type of national coordination in Canada that's needed.
I think these initiatives are crucial.
Around the issue of special needs, just the committee recognizing the intersecting vulnerabilities that happen when you have a girl or a woman who is not only facing these life issues, but may have a developmental disability.... In particular, it might be something for which there isn't adequate support and understanding, which might lead to an expressive language disorder or other things that make it very difficult for her to protect herself or to be able to find a position of safety. That recognition that there are these intersecting vulnerabilities that occur in the first nations community.... It is very important to recognize and make sure that it's a component of the response.