There were several reports that were actually done in conjunction through the Native Women's Association with Amnesty International. There were actually five key recommendations that do address developing a mechanism to address this kind of discrimination, or address that issue of responsibility. Instead of pitting provincial or federal dollars against each other, restoration of funding to fulfill the commitments of the Kelowna accord would end the inequalities in our health, housing, education, and other services for our people. There are those five recommendations that are key.
Also, there was another report I believe from the UN--they call them CEDAW, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. They reviewed the compliance of Canada with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.
So there have been recommendations put forward. I'm not sure where they end up, but they don't end up trickling back down. That's one of the things I've always been vocal about. There's been policy paper after policy paper.
We've shown mechanisms, maybe minus the budgetary point, because maybe we're not quite there yet, but we have been speaking our voice. I know that there are a lot of national aboriginal organizations, national, provincial, and even community level organizations, that have forwarded mechanisms, recommendations, up to the government. But when we're doing budget cuts to such an important program as the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, which was doing such wonderful work with our survivors and attacking that cycle of violence at the root, when we're removing those funding sources and removing access to those projects for our community members, we lose out at the local level, we lose out at the community level.
The recommendations have gone up. I believe there are mechanisms that are out there that have been successful. I hope through your study that you're going to be able to pick up on those recommendations that are already out there that have actually been proven to work in our communities. Maybe sometimes they're not published as much as we need them to be published. That's another issue we might want to take a look at, publishing the good. For too long we've always focused on what colonialism did to us.
As Tamara said, we already know the definition of violence. We already know what it looks like in our communities. I think that is what this committee is asking: how do we move forward together as sisters, as mothers, as wives, as daughters, as friends? How do we move forward as brothers? We know what violence is. Taking it back to our traditional teaching, we've forgotten our traditional wisdom, we've forgotten our traditional ways. So even in our own traditional teachings and those wisdoms is a root of the mechanism that you probably seek. With discussion with beautiful sisters like this, I think you will find your answers.