Madam Chairperson and members of the Standing Committee on the Status of Women, woliwon. Thank you for this opportunity to present to you a briefing on behalf of the National Association of Friendship Centres.
Allow me to begin by acknowledging the Algonquin Nation who first inhabited this land that we are on today. Woliwon. Thank you for welcoming us to your territory.
My name is Conrad Saulis. I am the policy director with the National Association of Friendship Centres. I am a proud Maliseet First Nation citizen born and raised on the Tobique First Nation community in New Brunswick.
The National Association of Friendship Centres is a national, non-profit aboriginal organization that represents the views and concerns of 120 friendship centres and seven provincial-territorial associations across Canada. Our mission is to improve the quality of life for aboriginal peoples in the urban environment by supporting self-determined activities that encourage equal access to and participation in Canadian society and that respect and strengthen the increasing emphasis on aboriginal cultural distinctiveness.
Along with the Department of Canadian Heritage, the National Association of Friendship Centres delivers a cadre of priority federal programs to Canada's urban aboriginal population. From the core funding we receive from Canadian Heritage, our 120 friendship centres, located from coast to coast to coast, generate $114 million in programs and services to urban aboriginal people, in partnership with federal, provincial, territorial, and municipal governments. I've also provided a map of the locations of our friendship centres across the country.
Annually, we produce a report called “The State of the Friendship Centre Movement”. In our 2009 report we state that friendship centres continue to provide programs to urban aboriginal people in the following areas: culture, family, youth, sports and recreation, language, justice, housing, health, education, employment, economic development, and “other”, which includes services such as food banks. There are a combined total of 1,295 programs offered within friendship centres nationally. As of 2009, the friendship centre movement employs 2,338 people nationally, of which 74% are females. The friendship centre movement takes great pride in its mission to serve urban aboriginal clients, thus the friendship centres keep a record of the number of times this is done. Each time a client accesses a program or a service at a friendship centre, it is referred to as a point of contact. Across Canada, in 2009, there were nearly a million--about 977,000--points of contact.
In 2007, the Ontario Federation of Indian Friendship Centres and the Ontario Native Women's Association sponsored a summit. The summit resulted from the ongoing high rates of violence against aboriginal women and the lack of progress in ending this violence, The Ontario Native Women's Association and the OFIFC convened a strategy meeting in 2007, entitled “A Summit to End Violence Against Aboriginal Women”. The intent of the summit was to bring together community leaders to develop a framework for a strategy to end violence against aboriginal women. The summit was a follow-up to a national policy forum on aboriginal women and violence, which was held in Ottawa in March of 2006, hosted by Status of Women Canada.
I just want to read off some of the things that were noted in the final report of the gathering. They say the experience of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse in residential schools meant that large numbers of aboriginal people suffered long-lasting effects of abuse and were denied the opportunity to be exposed to the examples of positive parenting, which was reported in the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples of 1996. This may contribute to higher rates of violence in aboriginal communities across generations.
A study by the Ontario Native Women's Association, entitled “Breaking Free”, found that eight out of ten aboriginal women in Ontario had personally experienced family violence. It is important to note that while not all violence directed at aboriginal women comes from the aboriginal community, violence against aboriginal women must stop, regardless of the type of violence or the origin of the offence. Participants concluded that in order to achieve this, a comprehensive strategy must be developed, supported, advanced, and resourced immediately. Action on this issue is long overdue by all organizations, governments, and society as a whole.
The framework is proposed on a medicine wheel design to provide a continuum of approaches to address the issue, and it will require strategies at many different levels and around different issues to successfully deal with violence. Each aspect may be developed separately but must be integrated and consistent with the overall approach. In order to be successful in this initiative, a community-based, cultural, and holistic healing approach focused on ending violence will have to be established. This cannot be done if all levels of government do not provide supportive policies, legislation, resources, and approaches for it to occur.
The recently released report by the Native Women's Association of Canada, entitled, “What Their Stories Tell Us”, states that not only did aboriginal women report the highest rates of spousal violence in 2004, but they were also significantly more likely than non-aboriginal women to report the most severe and potentially life-threatening forms of violence, including being beaten or choked, having had a gun or a knife used against them, or being sexually assaulted. This happened to 54% of aboriginal women, as compared to 37% of non-aboriginal women.
The percentages for aboriginal women remain unchanged since 1999, as reported in the general social survey of 2004. For non-aboriginal women, at the same time, the percentage who experienced the most serious forms of violence declined from 43% in 1999 to 37% in 2004.
The Native Women's Association report also states that it has been found that mobility among aboriginal women, particularly as they move from small communities to large urban centres, makes them vulnerable to violence. Many young people from the rural communities relocate to urban centres to attend school. Family and community members, as well as other key informants, have shared stories that women and girls raised in rural and isolated communities are often unprepared for the transition to the urban environment.
The evidence collected indicates that the majority of cases occur in urban areas. Of the cases where this information is known, almost 60% of women and girls were murdered in an urban area, 28% of cases occurred in rural areas, and 13% on reserve.
This distribution is even more striking in terms of missing cases. Taking a broad look at the different locations where women and girls have disappeared, it was found that over 70% of women and girls went missing from an urban area, 22% were last seen in a rural area, and 7% disappeared from a reserve.
Going back to the OFIFC, the Ontario Federation of Indian Friendship Centres, and--