Status of Women Committee on Jan. 12th, 2011

[Angie Bear]

Yes. I just had a healing circle last night and that was a major thing: there are women who will not come forward. They have the security of that healing circle to be able to say those things confidentially. I asked them if I could mention this if something should come up. That's exactly what's needed: they do need that support there and it's not there for them.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

It's not there, so they're fearful of coming forward. Is that it?

[Angie Bear]

Well, there are a lot of women I'm working with. One lady in particular said she was walking down the street after she left her partner, and her partner saw her walking on the street and attacked her. A neighbour saw what was happening and called her into his place of residence. The police were called. Then her child was apprehended: social services didn't believe that she wasn't with her partner, because it was her partner who attacked her.

She felt that if she hadn't reported the violence to begin with, if she hadn't put it on the radar, maybe she would still have her child. It's in those kinds of incidents where that type of thing happens, where social services doesn't believe what the women are saying when they're saying, “I'm not with my partner anymore.”

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

I'm sorry, I did want to follow up on Hedy's point, but this really is distressing. To what do you attribute that? I know it's difficult to generalize. Is it because they don't believe the women? Because they're interested in protecting the best interests of the child? What is it? Because that's a real conundrum for women.

[Angie Bear]

It is. I think it's because they do want to protect the best interests of the child. I think that's important, but you can't do so by walking over the woman's rights. That further victimizes that child as well, because then the children don't want to come forward. They don't want to be pulled from their home.

If you can somehow work with the family so that they're not being torn apart and somehow deal with the abuser.... If it's the abuser who needs to be put out of the home, then deal with that. Have him go to court. Have him attend a program. Have him away so that he can't further victimize the family. Something needs to be done in that respect.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Thank you.

Are there any comments from anybody on Hedy's point?

Lisa, go ahead.

[Lisa Goulet-Cook]

You asked about how a woman faces repercussions from phoning in. I worked as a health worker at Cumberland House for many years and I did have to work with women when they were going to court. They'd ask me to go in there and help support them.

As for what they were going through, believe it or not, it's in the Criminal Code.... Their partners come in, practically kicking in the door, kicking and screaming and threatening that they're going to kill them, yet when she takes one of their children's toy trucks and hits her husband or boyfriend with it, the woman gets charged with assault. She gets put through the whole judicial system, gets embarrassed and humiliated, and has a criminal record. Then when she applies for a job later on, it comes up on her criminal record check that she assaulted another individual.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

So what's your recommendation, Lisa? What should we be recommending on that?

[Lisa Goulet-Cook]

Can you go to the people who are in charge of the Criminal Code of Canada and--

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

We can look at it, certainly--

[Lisa Goulet-Cook]

--look at that? Because that's not right either. That's not right, especially when the woman has been threatened and the RCMP say it's all her fault when that's not the case.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

Now we'll go to Cathy McLeod.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I've been hearing a number of things. I can appreciate the concerns around core funding versus temporary funding. Certainly it's not just the federal government. I worked in the provincial system, and I really came to be very leery of.... It's great to have project funding that builds things. It's great to have project funding that pilots something, but it really is tough once you have a program that is achieving success but it's only for five years. Again, that is throughout the system. You almost wonder if you're in for a penny, you're in for a pound if you have programs that have proven their value. I know it happens provincially.

I would be curious about two things. I heard “train the trainer”, integrating the traditional with the modern-day, and certainly in health care the chronic disease self-management program that was then adopted had some great success. Is that something that has been envisioned for some of the more northern remote communities where you have lay leaders who have been trained? Have you had any success as it relates to violence and abuse?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Shirley, do you have a comment?

[Shirley Henderson]

Yes, we have had some really good programs in place. As I mentioned before, the funding seems to cease. Once the program is up and running and going very well for the community, the program ceases. Even with our women's commission, I'd say about 10 or 12 years ago we had a family violence training program where we trained individuals from each of our communities to work in a community on family violence. Well, they provided the training dollars but no funding to the community after to employ them. It was a really good training program. We tried again to get further funding for a future training program for family violence but were unable to.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Sometimes the jurisdictional issues do tend to complicate what are logical community-based solutions. Is there enough flexibility when programs become available to do what makes sense at the community level?

I'll use health as an example, where we have on reserve, off reserve, and it was very costly because we were almost duplicating; there wasn't the ability to connect and partner in a way that made sense. Is that an issue at all?

[Lisa Goulet-Cook]

At Cumberland House, where I was a health director for many years, at one time when we wanted to partner and build a health centre together, because of jurisdictional issues and other political issues as well, it became impossible.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

What about as it relates to violence and programs? Are there any issues, or is it more of a health issue?

[Lisa Goulet-Cook]

They've always put it on the health issue front. They always have. They always put it on our plate, and they have always said, well, because this person needs transportation, it should be coming from the health budget. A lot of our health budget, I think 75% at that time, went to transportation to bring the victims out, only to bring them back to the same dysfunctional domestic home, I guess you could say. A lot of our dollars went to transportation.

We tried in so many ways to partner with our provincial counterparts, to say “Here's a program; let's develop a program where we not only educate the mum and the children, but let's get the dad involved as well.” What we basically had to do was go to the judge and the government and ask if they could please mandate this man who had been charged with domestic violence or assaulting his wife to come to the counselling with his wife and children. About 99% of the time he did, and a lot of the time it worked, as long as the support services were there, but as soon as you take out those support services, without providing core funding, a lot of it falls by the wayside.

Some people had great success with it. I can guarantee you that. It was about 60%, but it's the 40% that you really need to help. We've transitioned these families to become more independent. That's what you really ultimately want to do.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Yes.

Thanks, Lisa. We've gone over on that one.

Nicole.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for allowing me to speak in French.

Based on everything I have heard this afternoon, I believe that one of the key causes of the violence is the extreme poverty first nations women live in. In my opinion, this extreme poverty is also reflected in the lack of social housing, lack of education and lack of power among women.

Should we not use programs provided by Status of Women Canada related to the empowerment of women? First nations women would gain a lot by participating in these programs and by taking charge of their lives, taking charge of who they are and becoming proud of what they are, becoming proud of being aboriginal women and becoming leaders in their community, as you undoubtedly already are. That way, they could become leaders within the Prince Albert community and within other communities, sit on city councils, hold decision-making positions in order to change the power structure and the way things are done. That is the only way to truly change the situation and stop the violence.

I appreciate that you are all working very hard, but you are going against the current because the violence continues to be a problem. To stop the violence, we must put an end to poverty and we must encourage women to believe in themselves and love themselves. That is how we will put an end to the violence.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Does anyone want to tackle that issue--that if poverty ends, violence will end?

[Angie Bear]

Poverty is a major issue with everything. Part of it is why are people so impoverished? Whenever we talk about poverty we need to go back and look at when Canada was first colonized. We have no rights to our resources and our minerals.

I live on a first nations community, and when we try to get programs and some economic development there are always those barriers: you have to do this and you have to do that. There are so many things that you're mandated to do before you can even get a small business operated on a first nations community. With those barriers put in there, if that's what's holding people back and that's where the poverty is coming from.... It's twofold: yes, it's poverty, but there are many poor people who don't have violence in their lives and who can live good lives. Part of it comes from understanding where they came from and understanding their traditional values, connecting with those values and being able to be in a place where they can practise those traditional values in a respectful way with people in the community accepting that.

Even a simple thing such as--and I'm not sure if you understand the term--“smudging”, where you take the sweetgrass or the sage and you burn it. A lot of our buildings don't allow for that. So when we run groups or put programs together, even a simple thing such as smudging becomes a major issue. We end up not being able to practise some of our traditional beliefs. When we put meetings together we feel that's an important part of practising who we are as first nations people.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

We will now move on to Ms. Mathyssen.