Status of Women Committee on June 10th, 2010

[Luc Desnoyers, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Welcome to our witnesses.

As Ms. Simson said earlier, we've been working on this issue for some time now. Every time we hear what you're telling us, shivers go down our spine. It seems to me that it makes no sense for a government not to deal with the major issues you've raised. You've raised some interesting issues. Ms. Laliberté said, among other things, that nothing was being done against the predators or against those who physically assault and kill people. There's complacency. In the communities, the women are afraid they can't say what they have seen or heard. That bothers me a lot. In fact, what can we do to find a solution within the community?

I was watching a documentary on Radio-Canada that showed aboriginal women leaving their reserve to go to Abitibi-Témiscamingue, on the streets, in the clubs, where there was violence against them and where there was racism.

So there's an important connection in the community. Ms. Gabriel said that there had to be intervention in the language and culture of people, with people in the community. the problem is a big one. What can be done from the community? How can we find adequate solutions that we could recommend to the government?

I'd like to hear what you have to say on that subject, both in Montreal and in the communities outside the city, because this situation exists everywhere.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Yes, go ahead.

[Ellen Gabriel]

I'm more comfortable in English. So I'm going to answer you in English.

We talk about decolonization, and colonization was also inflicted by the church, and I mean no disrespect to any people who are Christians here. It affected their sexuality. It affected the role of women and the value of women, and equality with men in our communities.

I think what we need within the communities themselves is to educate our own people. It's not just about educating the government; it's also educating our own people, who also practise discrimination legally because of the Indian Act. They can say to a woman, “Well, you married a non-native, so you can't live here”, or “Your children are not important, they're not considered Indians because their father and grandfathers were non-native.”

To me, we need a lot of work in the community and to discuss among ourselves, but we're busy surviving. We're busy making do with the money that is allocated to each community, done in piecemeal kinds of ways.

I think what we need is in the education system itself, in primary school and in high school, it should be the requirement of anybody who wants to run as chief to know what is the impact of violence. How has colonization impacted us in regard to the level of violence that we see in the communities?

Let's look at the Catholic church. The Pope says don't use condoms. Well, you know what that means to a man who has contracted HIV/AIDS, and he says to his wife or his girlfriend that if she really loved him, she wouldn't make him wear a condom. So we find that aboriginal women, even though we're a small percentage of the population, also have the fastest growing rate of contracting AIDS. Another part of the coin that we fail to include in the discussions with government is how the church or religion is used against us.

Education is I think one of the key factors in educating police, lawyers, social workers, especially Québécois social workers, and I'm just going to talk about Quebec here. One of the things we find with social workers is that they will take away the children of a woman who lives in poverty simply because she's poor. We've asked the Quebec government not to include poverty in their definition of negligence. We have to look at what is the situation in the community—high unemployment, poverty. We can't address this issue of violence without looking at some of the factors that contribute to it, and legislation and how it contributes to the devaluing of women by saying, “Well, you and your children are not good enough to live on the reserve.” INAC creates the membership code, the criteria, and there are four different kinds of membership codes the band can have. It doesn't follow our customs, it doesn't follow our traditions, but it can legally discriminate against an aboriginal woman in moving back into her community. She can have status in Ottawa, but she can't have her membership and access to services in the community.

So what the Indian Act has done is it has broken the family unit. It has broken that and it has severed us from those kinds of wonderful cultural values that make everyone equal, that make everyone know they are precious and that they are part of the world we live in.

I know I can wax philosophical on this, but education at every single level, on what violence is, whether it's sexual violence, institutionalized violence, racism.... The women who are heading to urban areas are doing that out of survival. If they work on the street, they're doing it out of survival, and especially if you're an anglophone in Quebec. If you don't speak French, you're not going to get a job. I'm sorry, you're not going to get a job. So this is another challenge for us in Quebec, if we do not speak French.

We have to learn French and English. What about our indigenous language?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Yes, Nakuset.

[Nakuset]

I want to reiterate that what we're finding in the city is that there is a lack of services for men. So if we want our men to get counselling, if they abuse women or they have violent tendencies, there's nothing out there for them. There's no men's shelter for aboriginal men, as there is one for women, and that's definitely needed, and at the same time, services where they have counselling, where they can work on their issues. I think it would be great if we could also include, as we have at the shelter, the traditional elements—or that we had at the shelter, but we still instill anyway. That's lacking, and it needs to be addressed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

Ms. Vaugrante, and then, Ms. Brown, you can jump in.

[Béatrice Vaugrante]

To provide a concrete response, as far as possible based on resources, in the very concrete aspects of the fight against violence in the community, I believe that there's one important aspect, and that is that the safe houses should be close to the women suffering the violence.

The problem that I've most often seen when I've visited reserves of Indian communities is that the closest centre was 100 kilometers away. They won't go there. They don't have any means of transportation to get there, not to mention the costs. There have to be safe houses that also take in the children. With the safe house come the court workers for the women to then dare file complaints—this is the eternal problem of violence against women in general. Everywhere in the entire world, women must dare to file complaints and break the silence. There has to be a police protocol and court workers who recognize this violence. That would be very concrete result in the community.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Ms. Gentelet.

[Karine Gentelet]

To that, which constitutes more of a micro component of the fight against violence, I would add a macro component. Amnesty International has developed an action plan to try to increase the awareness of agencies that work with women on the specific problem of aboriginal women, on the violence they suffer.

I think that, if a lot of women felt supported politically, it would be a little easier to move forward and develop initiatives to combat violence. There has to be something at the federal and provincial levels. Often, with regard to violence, people act at the community and city levels. There has to be an action plan that is much more widespread, much more extensive.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Ms. Brown.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, ladies, for your most interesting comments.

I have a question, first of all, for Nakuset, if you don't mind. You talked about counselling for aboriginal men. Who would provide that?

And that works into a question I have for you, Ms. Gabriel, if I may. You talked about education being so important. You say it's a lack of education in government. Could I ask you to specify what you see there that needs to happen?

You also talked about economic independence. I recently read an article by Chief Commissioner Manny Jules. He talks about economic independence as well, in a variety of ways for your aboriginal people. He's working on a specific issue: fee-simple land ownership. That may be something you want to talk about.

I guess the question for me is, where does the education start? How do we encourage young people from aboriginal communities to stay in school so that they can become the counsellors and the social workers within their own communities, or the police officers, if they're in their own communities? What I'm hearing from all of you is that it's people who understand the cultural values and the history who need to be providing this. So how do we encourage young people to stay in school and to get those certificates, and beyond certificates, that you say are required within their own community?

Nakuset, I don't know whether you'd like to talk first about all of this, about who you see providing the counselling. And then perhaps we can move to Ms. Gabriel--

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

And anyone else who wants to jump in....

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Yes.

[Nakuset]

Who do I see providing the counselling? I know someone who recently got her master's degree, and that's what she was focused on—dealing with violent men, though not necessarily aboriginal. I guess she would have to do more studies on that, but that's a start. Then it's trying to train them to know about the aboriginal population and the challenges.

We definitely need some kind of shelter or centre for the aboriginal men to turn to, because the women are getting stronger and stronger. We have excellent aboriginal organizations, but they're for women. We can have women and children at the shelter, but if their son is 19 and he needs services--and he received the services a year before because he was allowed at the shelter--he falls through the cracks now. We're not supposed to allow them to come back when they're 19 to receive services. It's a huge issue, and we need to start addressing that.

In a way we are already addressing that through the Montreal urban aboriginal community strategy that's going on right now. There are plans to perhaps work with PAQ—Projets Autochtones du Québec, which is a shelter for both men and women. But it needs to be built up. There need to be more surveys, needs assessments proven in order to get this kind of funding.

It's apparent that there's a need out there, and it's up to us to bring it to your attention, because I don't know if you realize that.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

As a supplementary question to that, would an aboriginal man accept counselling from a woman, and would he accept counselling on violence from a non-aboriginal woman? Is that culturally acceptable?

[Nakuset]

I don't know. I think maybe Ellen needs to answer this question. It's a hard question, because what happens if they don't get the counselling? Then they go to jail, right?

I think something will have to be implemented at some time. I'm sure there's going to be a time in their lives when they're going to have to say they need help.

But we do have staff at the shelters who are non-native and the women do speak to them.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

I guess that rolls into my question to Ms. Gabriel.

How do we encourage our aboriginal people to stay and get the qualifications that are necessary to provide to people in the shelters?

[Ellen Gabriel]

There are two native women's shelters that actually help to counsel violent men. One is in Sept-Îles and the other is Haven House.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

And the men accept that? That's not a problem?

[Ellen Gabriel]

Yes. It's actually a requirement.

I know it has been said many times, but I just want to repeat it again: violence against aboriginal women, or women in general, is a man's problem. Men need to get on board with this. It's not just a women's issue. Men of every race, at every level of society, have to become involved. Men have to start denouncing it. The government has to denounce it publicly. Quebec Native Women was part of a group of organizations from Justice Québec.

Justice Québec created a working group, the women and justice tripartite committee, which issued a report in 2003 with recommendations that talked about educating lawyers, judges, and police officers. They didn't go so far as to recommend educating government, but I think government really needs to become involved.

There should be some kind of training before a person enters a ministry of any kind, to talk about all these different issues that are considered social issues, such as violence, to educate them on what we as indigenous people have experienced in the last 500 or so years. Where does it start? It starts when children are young. If we're going to stop this cycle of violence, whether it's within aboriginal communities or in the rest of Canadian society, it starts with mothers and fathers, if that's possible, teaching their children at home.

Discussion about violence should be an integral part of the school system. Violence is wrong. We teach children about good touch, bad touch. We should also be teaching them about another kind of good touch, bad touch, which is violence. It's violence against their mothers. It's violence from the residential schools.

I'm going to quote something from the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, article 14:

Indigenous peoples have the right to establish and control their educational systems and institutions providing education in their own languages, in a manner appropriate to their cultural methods of teaching and learning.

That's why we hope the Canadian government will fully endorse this declaration without any qualifications, because this is really a guide on how to decolonize. This is a decolonization process.

In terms of staying in school, the Auditor General of Canada, in her 2008 or 2009 report, said it would take 28 years for on-reserve schools to catch up with the quality of education in the rest of Canadian schools. So there in itself we have a huge gap in regard to the quality of education for aboriginal children.

Music and art are the first things to go in any educational system, but music and art are part of the basis of our culture. It's an expression of all our relations. Our languages, as I said before, are all our indigenous knowledge. It's our way of knowing. It's our way of being. So we have to have education systems that do not make traditional languages, indigenous languages, secondary, but that actually support curricula that are developed, that actually support the teachers, whether they're native or non-native, who come to teach in our schools so they can motivate children to love education, to love to learn. If you have excellent teachers, you can be sure that the child is going to want to learn more.

I'll just end with a quote that an elder told me. He had this Hopi friend whose son became a lawyer, and after he graduated he said, “Dad, I'm going to come back and help our people.” The father said to him, “Son, you've learned western culture. Now you're going to come back and learn our ways, and then you're going to be able to help our people.”

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

Ms. Gentelet, do you want to respond?

Go ahead.

[Karine Gentelet]

Yes, absolutely.

We at Amnesty International have been working for a number of years now with a concept which is dignity. This concept is very interesting because—I'm sorry, I'm going to be “Ms. Global” for this meeting—it makes it possible to have an overview of one way of proceeding and of one conception of life.

I'm a volunteer for Amnesty International. In my occupation, I'm a researcher, and I've had to meet a lot of young people, young drop-outs. Those young people don't see any interest in staying in school because they don't have a future. They have trouble contemplating the future and seeing what the past was. In many cases, they don't have the same lives as their ancestors did. So it's very hard for them to find their place.

Some communities are working in an attempt to develop role models, people who could inspire these young people by providing them with positive stories. I believe that working to develop dignity, by leading these young people to be proud of what they are and to instill in them the desire to move forward, would definitely be one way for men and women to fight against the drop-out phenomenon. It would also have positive consequences for violence in the communities and their place in Canadian society.

I know that's very extensive and that it will definitely take a number of generations, but that also goes to what I was saying earlier about this business of an overall plan. I believe we have to fight in the short term, but we also have to fight in the long term for the pride of being what we are, for the place we have in the community and the place we leave behind.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Irene.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

The Sisters In Spirit program was mentioned, and I wonder if you've heard anything about that. I know that $10 million was promised, but that money doesn't seem to be flowing. NWAC is in a situation where they now have to lay off staff because the money is not there.

I wonder if anyone has any additional information about that or could comment about why it's so important that this program get going. I know you've referenced the fact that it's part of dealing with the research that has been done and putting that research into action, but I wonder if you have any additional comments.

[Ellen Gabriel]

I'll speak because Quebec Native Women is part of the board. I know there are challenges in regard to how the funding flows, and cabinet has to decide when and if that money does flow. There was no clear indication or detail on whether that $10 million was for organizations across Canada to access or whether that $10 million...I think it's over two years--I can't remember the details of the Speech from the Throne.

The importance of research is that no policies, programs, or even legislation are created without statistics and research. It's important for us to continue that, especially given the challenges the Sisters In Spirit research program has experienced, with some of the authorities being very reticent to divulge certain statistics or details. We have to overcome some of those hurdles. But at the same time, I think there needs to be more education. It's a lot of money.

You have communities that have been under a funding cap since I think 1996. When they see that, they think okay, let's go, and they end up fighting. I think a bit of it is a political kind of issue. Does AFN get it? Does NFCP get it? But I'm just assuming...so I really couldn't say.

We support the Sisters In Spirit research. I think our only critique is that there is not enough done in this province because they don't have francophone researchers. That's something we would like to see.