Status of Women Committee on June 11th, 2010

[Renée Brassard]

I would like to comment on the issue of skills development. I think this is a good example of a situation where caution is required. We are in an era of leadership skills development. Over the course of its history, Canada has often had a tendency to adopt cross-cutting policies without considering the special reality of Aboriginal nations and the Aboriginal peoples of Canada.

As regards leadership skills—we are obviously talking about empowerment and developing training programs that deal with domestic violence, for example—I don't think it's possible to apply the same strategy to all Aboriginal groups, because their socio-economic conditions vary considerably.

For example, you referred to monies made available under the strategy to address school dropout rates. But let's just close our eyes for a moment and imagine an Aboriginal child, or a very young teenager whose parents have alcohol and drug abuse problems and who has been living in a family where domestic violence has been a reality ever since he or she was a baby. Juxtapose that to repeated moves, changes of spouse, and victims of violence of all kinds. In terms of priorities, how can you expect a child to want to attend school regularly?

I know that comments like that are not popular. But combating poverty is complex. Combating the problem of underdeveloped structures in Aboriginal communities is complex. I believe that as long as their socio-economic circumstances are not enhanced, leadership and skills development will not really be possible. Of course, there are Aboriginal nations who have probably reached a stage in their development where they are able to produce leaders. There are some, and they are proud to be playing that role. We have to take inspiration from these leaders. At the same time, I think there is a need to be cautious in terms of applying this kind of strategy across the board.

In 2008, there are still people… I am thinking of a Quebec filmmaker, Richard Desjardins, who produced a film in Quebec in 2008—not in 1960, but in 2008—entitled The Invisible People. The film was intended to raise awareness among Quebeckers of the fact that there are Aboriginal people living in their province who still do not have electricity or clean drinking water. And we are now in 2010.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Monsieur Duchesneau.

[Guy Duchesneau]

You were saying that governments passed budgets of $285 million and $200 million for skills development. But when that money reaches the community, it is really a drop in the bucket compared to what is needed to provide services and focus more on prevention. Of course, we have to make do with those budgets in order to focus on prevention. And, in fact, we are lucky that the communities are very resilient and determined to help their own people and try to get by with the budgets they're given.

We are dependent on money from the government, because it is only with that money that we can continue to exist and provide services. But how can we retain staff when the environment… In Quebec, people's salaries are much higher. In our communities, experience is not taken into consideration and we hire people at a lower cost, because budgets are limited and do not allow us to pay a salary equivalent to what people are receiving in the neighbouring community. Once people are trained, we're all the same. In my opinion, the priority is to survive, to get along as best you can, be able to earn a living and live reasonably in the world we live in. Wealth gets a great deal of praise, but in the communities, there is a great deal of poverty, often connected to lower wages than what our peers in the governments of Quebec and Canada are generally earning. Compensation is lower.

Earlier someone was saying that because we don't pay taxes, we earn less money. In fact, that is an acquired right. It is a form of recognition we are given because our ancestors lived on this land. We are regularly told that. We are told that we are earning less because we don't pay tax on our income. But a pound of butter costs the same amount of money.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

Ms. Demers.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Thank you very much for being here this morning. I really appreciate it.

Ms. Archambault, you said there are no services in the communities, that the Aboriginal peoples of Canada are ranked 63rd in the world by the United Nations. I have trouble understanding that, in a country as rich as Canada, Aboriginal nations would be ranked 63rd compared to other nations in the world.

But this is not something that people talk about in public, unless there is a major event or a disaster, such as the forest fires in recent weeks. Nobody speaks publicly about the problems in Aboriginal communities. Why this silence, in your opinion? What can we do to break that silence?

[Grand Chief Anne Archambault]

Would you like to start? Then I can add my own comments.

[Stéphane Savard, Suicide and Family Violence Prevention Counsellor, First Nations of Quebec and Labrador Health and Social Services Commission, Assembly of First Nations of Quebec and Labrador]

As you say, we mentioned that there are few or no resources available in the communities. I don't know whether you are aware of this, but the annual budget per community is about $18,000 to combat violence, specifically for violence prevention. It has been that way for a number of years now. I believe the representatives from the Wendake community were saying that $18,000 is enough to cover the work of one person, two days a week. That is the reality in the communities.

And again, that money is not necessarily being invested in prevention. That is another thing that should be looked at. When action plans are being developed, we should be looking at whether this is a priority for the community, because it may not be. It's important to realize that there has never been much money invested in prevention.

There are the front-line services developed in the communities across Quebec, which are prevention services provided to families to create safer environments for young people. We have not yet talked about youth protection, which is a troubling phenomenon, even worse than what happened in the residential schools. Their cultural connections, the few family-type resources available in the communities, and the fact that young people have to attend school outside, and so on, reflect a completely different reality.

There is the violence, and Ms. Denis-Damé mentioned as well that this requires a comprehensive approach because, whether we like it or not, everything is interconnected. Reference was made to drug addiction and violence; but people don't talk about suicide, which is the consequence of factors such as alcohol and drug use. Anything can lead to suicide; we don't talk about sexual abuse either, which has other consequences and can lead to suicide.

I will just give you some figures I was able to collect. In the last year, there were 13 suicides in Quebec communities by individuals between the ages of 13 and 22, including eight young girls. So, we should be taking a serious look at this.

You referred to prevention earlier, Ms. Brown.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

I am sorry to interrupt you, but I don't have much time.

I have another important question for Ms. Brassard. Please accept my apologies, Mr. Savard. I would like to put a question to Ms. Brassard because she touched on this earlier.

In your opinion, how would a signature on the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples change things?

[Renée Brassard]

I'm inclined to let my colleague answer that question, because that falls outside my area of expertise. I think she has it with her, and she will be more convincing than I could be.

[Grand Chief Anne Archambault]

Thank your for your question, Ms. Demers.

You referred to the silence that prevails with respect to violence against women. But the Aboriginal Women's Association was created several years ago. Mary Two-Axe Early, who lobbied in favour of Bill C-31, did a lot of advocacy work towards combating violence against women and poverty quite a few years ago. Naturally, a lot of Quebec and Canadian media seize on these issues. But there are few Aboriginal journalists. For a number of years now, we have been denouncing violence and women's poverty. Mary Two-Axe Early and Evelyn O'Bomsawin, the two founders of the Quebec Aboriginal Women's Association were engaged in that work. In fact, they took me by the hand and showed me how to continue the struggle.

In public, people say that Indians drink and take drugs. We are speaking out against this in whatever way we can, but our demands seem to fall on death ears.

As regards the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, my view is that this document is written in simple terms and tells the truth about Aboriginal peoples, particularly the article dealing with women and children. From the very beginning, we have been victims of discrimination. We are also victimized by the poverty imposed on us. We are trying to extricate ourselves from this cycle of victimization, but we have neither the means nor the budget to do so. Using the little we have to work with, we are trying to make our voices heard.

Yesterday we met with parliamentarians, including one senator. We are at the point now where we are prepared to do anything and everything. Our quest is one that began a long time ago. Many women have been living through this for many years. There was Bill C-31, and then there was Bill C-3, some of which is discriminatory, and there are also a number of other articles in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

[Renée Brassard]

Just to answer your question, this is something that was internationally recognized. A few minutes ago, we were talking about invisibility. Why are the Aboriginal people so invisible? The answer to that is because politicians have good reason to ensure that they remain invisible. As long as they don't bother anyone, they keep on drinking and are kept in systems of dependency, they are not about to become the third political force in Canada.

As Quebeckers, we make a lot of noise in Canada about negotiating our distinctiveness, our distinctive character, our cultural character and our right to institutional self-governance. But it must never be forgotten that politically, the Aboriginal people form the third founding group. So, there is a vested interest in ensuring that this third group… At the same time, it is paradoxical, because we are in an era where skills development is in the forefront, and yet we can't seem to recognize—first and foremost, at the international level—that there are people living here who have rights. It is somewhat paradoxical.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Merci.

Madame Desnoyers.

[Ann Desnoyers]

This is the clinical practitioner in me speaking now. I would just like to come back to skills for women. I think it's important to develop women's skills. At the same time, we too often neglect resources for our men. Our men are engaged in violence, whether it's domestic violence or another form of violence, but the men are victims as well. So I think we need to stop always talking about “the women, the women”, and pay more attention to our men.

At present, this is what's happening in our communities: our women are taken out of their homes to be put in safe houses, but we leave our men there who are suffering. So, when the women come back, the men will be experiencing that suffering even more acutely. They will never have received any services and the cycle will begin all over again. So, we really have to focus on resources for our men.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Madame Hughes.

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

There are a number of issues involved here. When I was a manager for the province and worked for Probation and Parole Services, even the employees there spoke of the importance of rehabilitation and the fact that programs needed to be set up to ensure that an offender receives all the help he needs to avoid re-offending. That is one of the things I am hearing here. These days, the government is ready to invest millions of dollars in prisons. We know who is in those prisons. We know the percentage of Aboriginal people who are in prison.

Should we really be investing in prisons or, as was pointed out earlier, I believe, should we be focusing on programs that can help offenders to put their lives back on track?

I had a cousin with an alcohol dependency. He told me he ended up in jail because he made a mistake after drinking. Because there is a long list of people waiting for access to prison programs, he was told that, in his case, he would not be able to take any of them until the end of his term, once he was ready to be released from prison. Does that make any sense? My cousin ended up committing suicide.

Education is very important. You are absolutely right when you say that you are not receiving as much funding as the rest of the population. That is causing a lot of problems. Are you really second-class citizens? I really think that education should begin when our children are small. We saw the difference this can make in terms of sexual abuse of children. We saw what happened in their families when they were educated starting in primary school. Now children are starting to tell us what goes on at home. So, it is important to educate them. At the primary level, we should be teaching them what is right and what is wrong in terms of what goes on at home. We need to give them the proper tools and hope that, later on, we will see a difference.

You have serious social problems. You talked quite a bit about what is going on in your communities, and the fact that people who don't live in a community are still having trouble finding affordable housing in the city. Where will people go when they leave prison? They won't have a choice: they will go back home.

These issues are completely ignored by governments, as is the lack of funding for First Nations. Funding is a must. I would be interested in hearing your comments on prisons. Then I will have another question. I do want to give others a chance to ask some questions.

[Ann Desnoyers]

Basically, the Aboriginal people are like a hot potato that is tossed from one government to the next. Nobody really wants to handle it.

With respect to prisons, we note that it is mainly our men who end up being incarcerated. What happens is that our men are removed from our communities and directed to programs that are not culturally appropriate and which therefore serve absolutely no purpose. Why not ask what they need and what our communities need? Why are decisions always made from the top down? Why do we develop all these great programs which we throw at the communities and to which we, as small groups of people in small communities, are then forced to adapt? Why is it not the other way around? Every nation is different, and within a single nation, there can be differences between communities. Why don't we start from the grassroots up? So many problems could be solved that way! We are on the ground, in our communities. We know what our reality is. Let's start at the grassroots.

That's what I wanted to say.

[Grand Chief Anne Archambault]

When you are at the stage where you're a prison inmate, your future is already mortgaged. You have a criminal record and it is more difficult to be reintegrated into society. Unfortunately, these individuals are often lost. But prevention programs would allow us to do something before they go to prison.

We should be working with young dropouts who are having trouble by setting up an institution or a group that could work with these young people and help them go back to school. That is when you have to go in and save them. I worked with young dropouts who were having trouble. When they get into drugs and alcohol or end up on the street, that is when you have to go in and get them, find them some work and pay them to do some kind of gratifying work. You don't want them to end up in prison, because that will mortgage their life. We can't control everything, but it is critical to work with young people, men and women, so that they don't end up in prison. And that work is being done. We have seen young people go back to CEGEP. We have seen young men and women who are able to get away from the drug scene. We have seen some who managed.

As for the First Nations, it is important that they have an opportunity to develop their own institutions. Who could possibly be more concerned about a problem than the person actually experiencing it? We have our cultures and our language. Unfortunately, we have no laws to protect our language, and so it has been forgotten. I'm speaking in general terms. The First Nations have different cultures. They have ways of expressing their culture, through ceremonial practices, for example. I don't think filling our prisons is the solution, because all it does is mortgage people's future, particularly youth. It's not really a good idea. The answer is still education. Education is the key.

We need to put programs in place to get dropouts back on the right track. That is what is critical. We have to go out into the streets and take them back to their roots. That is where the street work has to happen. It's important. Who is in a better position to solve these problems then the communities that are suffering? That is how I see it. I always come back to the idea of our having our own institutions, because we can identify our issues as First Nations.

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

I would like to add one thing. Not only do we have to invest large sums of money to build more prisons, but they're probably also considering privatizing those prisons. As you know, if prisons are privatized, the companies that own them will want to be funded. The only way to do that is to keep these people in prison. I just wanted to add that.

I have a question--

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

I believe Madame Brassard wanted to answer.

Madame Brassard.

[Renée Brassard]

That is my niche. I actually did my Ph.D. thesis on Aboriginal women who are incarcerated in Quebec. I am currently completing a study on prison trajectories among Aboriginal men. At the same time, officials with the Correctional Service of Canada refused to allow me into the penitentiaries, because I wanted to collect information on Aboriginal spirituality programs in Quebec penitentiaries. My study was a little too touchy, politically speaking. So, I was not allowed access, but I was able to meet with people outside the grounds of the penitentiary.

I'm not trying to make political capital from this, but with respect to the question about building prisons, I just wrote an article called Painting the Prison ‘Red’: Constructing and Experiencing Aboriginal Identities in Prison. If we do build prisons, I can predict that we will end up filling them all, particularly with Aboriginal people. Proportionately speaking, Aboriginal women represent the social group with the greatest representation in prison.

The Commission of Inquiry into Certain Events at the Prison for Women in Kingston resulted in the creation of eight healing lodges. These are correctional facilities adapted to Aboriginal culture, with spirituality programs that focus on traditions and healing. Initial assessments of these healing lodges show the lack of independence of Aboriginal women. These women are still under the yoke of the Correctional Service of Canada and the same laws. The problem is governance; they don't want to give them any power. They do so very sparingly. They let them manage their dogs, dog barking and fences, because that is not too dangerous in terms of governance.

The problem with governance in Canada has always been the same. Canadian authorities are asking the Aboriginal people to convince them that they are capable of governing. If they can do that, they will be given a little bit of power. However, the current socio-economic status of the Aboriginal peoples is such that they are incapable of showing their capacity to govern. On the one hand, they say they have very high rates of suicide and levels of violence, but the government only hears what it wants to hear.

As regards rehabilitation, as you know, since 1996, Canada has taken a cross-cutting approach to corrections. They talk about risk management. But this approach is problematic. As soon as an Aboriginal person enters a detention facility, they ascertain his risk level. Unfortunately, however, several studies in Canada have shown that the risk of recidivism among Aboriginal inmates—women and men—is so high that they don't have access to rehabilitation programs. In order to access rehabilitation programs, you must have demonstrated that you pose a low or medium risk. It's quite paradoxical. Even if they did have access to rehabilitation programs, the fact is that the correctional system changes individuals, in terms of their beliefs and their way of behaving.

If you take that individual who has been changed by the system and put him in a criminogenic community… I am writing something now which is called:

“When Two Worlds Collide”.

It talks about what happens when two worlds collide as an individual is transformed. That is what the inmates tell us. They try to escape from prison, even though they're extremely fragile. When they're in prison, they don't want to go back to their community because they know they will start drinking again and that there's violence. So, they are prisoners of these two worlds.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Mr. Pomerleau, please.

[Roger Pomerleau, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Thank you, Ms. Fry.

I want to thank all of you for coming to meet with us today and for your very interesting comments. I have a question for anyone who wishes to answer.

Some of you talked about a lack of political will to really tackle the problem at all levels of government. From time to time, we see signs of some political will. For example, Joé Juneau did some remarkable work with the Inuit in the Far North. He decided to do it on his own. It was quite remarkable. That guy should be given a medal every day. We also saw the Canadian government in action, but not for the Aboriginal people; it was for the G8 and the G20. One billion dollars was invested to protect a few people for three days from anticipated violence. That would be like hiring 10,000 nurses and paying them each $100,000. That is what was spent to protect these people, when this gentleman was talking about the fact that the Aboriginal nations are only receiving several thousand dollars a year.

At the same time, we have to recognize that, for a certain number of years, the government has been providing funding and some resources. But the results aren't there. So, I would like to ask each of you what you think the main issue is. Is it the lack of money, the fact that it is poorly allocated, poorly defined, is not going to the right people or that the criteria are not clear enough? What is the fundamental issue, as you see it? Perhaps we could take you in order, starting with Mr. Savard.

[Stéphane Savard]

Could you repeat your question? There are several parts to it.

[Roger Pomerleau, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

What is the priority, in your opinion?

[Stéphane Savard]

I would say it is prevention. You named a number of programs and initiatives that have been implemented. Often money is given to the communities and things do get done. Everything happening in the communities is not necessarily negative.

One example would be community healing. The Aboriginal Healing Foundation was funding a program. I want to talk about this, because it has funded a number of projects for more than three years, all across the country. They are yielding good results. You just drew a comparison with the G20. That program was cut on March 31 of this year.

Certain expectations were created. Services were made available in the communities and, from one day to the next, they found themselves with no more funding.

There are other examples that could be mentioned, but there is the whole matter of priorities in the communities. We talked about this. Communities are all independent, in a way, in terms of identifying the issues and so on. If it's not a priority for the community, money won't be invested in these different areas.

People often talk about large amounts of money being provided, but by the time it gets down to us, there is less money there. It's true that there are budgets of $285 million or $200 million, but at the bottom of the ladder what is left is just $18,000 for prevention.

At the same time, there is the matter of intervention and development. I come back to what Ms. Archambault said. Money has to be invested across the board and we need our own institutions. We talked about the fact that this is necessary for a number of reasons, including language problems and the cumbersome legal system. In closing, I would just like to say that, in a way, our communities are also prisons.