Okay.
Good afternoon. My name is Ed Buller. I am currently the director of aboriginal corrections policy within Public Safety.
I would like to take my time to share an approach to preventing violence against aboriginal girls and women that recognizes that reducing violence in the community as a whole will result in improved safety for aboriginal women and girls.
A number of aboriginal communities have demonstrated that cultural processes based on their traditional beliefs and practices are effective in addressing criminal activity, support the treatment of victims, and also provide a platform for sustainable economic, social, and cultural development.
For example, a study of the Hollow Water First Nation healing process in Manitoba showed that over a 10-year period it provided treatment in the community to more than 100 offenders and approximately 400 victims of sexual or physical violence. The recidivism rate for offenders through their healing process was less than 2%, compared to what is generally accepted, a 19% recidivism rate for sex offenders who go through the regular Canadian justice and corrections system. The study concluded that for each dollar invested by the Government of Manitoba, it would otherwise have to spend $3, and for every dollar the federal government invested it would otherwise have to spend between $2 and $11.
While the study showed that support to Hollow Water was a good financial investment, the community also recognized other benefits that impacted positively on its members: substance abuse was significantly reduced; parents were taking a more active role in their children's upbringing; and youth were staying in or returning to school. Approximately 40 children from other communities were fostered in Hollow Water, and former residents were moving back into the community. They saw this community as a safe place to live. While starting as a healing process for victims and offenders of sexual and family violence, Hollow Water's healing process has been shown to have had a significant impact on the safety and wellness of the whole community.
Many aboriginal communities are returning to traditional approaches to mobilize their communities to overcome barriers to common problems. After several decades of government attempts to break them into pieces through the provision of discrete programs to respond to problems, communities are looking to traditional strategies that bring the community together and mobilize to resolve community-wide issues.
Healing approaches move communities from fixing problems to building communities into a civil and sustainable society. This translates into healthier communities for all of the communities' residents directly through integrated programming and indirectly by being responsive to individuals' needs and aspirations.
Over time, we have come to believe that the first step of community healing is a community safety plan, which would enable communities to develop comprehensive and integrated responses to safety issues. These community safety plans would identify key issues and challenges relating to community wellness and safety, while providing guidance and focus for the years ahead.
Community safety plans will enable communities to define risks that lead to crime and victimization, build on assets, and identify gaps in responding to those risks. Because community safety plans are comprehensive in their nature and are not restricted to the mandates of either Justice or Public Safety, these plans provide the opportunity to work collaboratively with other funders to respond in an integrated manner. The community safety plans will then serve as a blueprint to systematically address the root causes of victimization and respond to current community safety issues.
Various funding programs currently exist to respond to violence against women; however, in many cases, these programs respond to specific issues only and do not allow communities to coordinate or combine their responses.
Supporting communities to more strategically tailor their responses to community safety will allow programs to build on existing resources, while optimizing communities' ability to access existing and new sources of funding.