Thank you very much, Mrs. Chairperson.
First of all, I'd like to say thank you for inviting us here today. We don't get the opportunity very often to have a standing committee arrive in Prince Albert. I know it's the first stop here in western Canada, and I really appreciate that you've come here today despite how the weather is treating us outside. Maybe some of you are not used to this, but once it gets started here in Saskatchewan, it really gets started.
I'd like to briefly introduce myself. My name is Lisa Goulet-Cook. I currently reside here in Prince Albert. I live here with my family, which includes my husband of 19 years and my three teenaged children. I currently work for the Prince Albert urban aboriginal steering committee. We are being housed over at the Prince Albert Métis Women's Association office building. Actually, they're the capacity-holder. At this point in time, I've been employed by them for about six months. They do quite a bit of work with not only aboriginal women and children but also the entire family.
But the organization I work for, as I said, is the urban aboriginal steering committee. We receive an allotment of funding from Indian and Northern Affairs Canada. With that funding we are supposed to carry out, as a steering committee, basically the action orders from the steering committee itself. We make selections and then we put out a call for proposals to the city of Prince Albert.
Whichever agency wants to submit a proposal to enhance their current programming can do so. They state their proposal, and then we as a committee rate those proposals. Basically, we don't want a duplication of services. We want an enhancement, such as capacity-building for their employees or changing the programming they currently have, when it comes to our mandate.
Currently our mandate is basically to help aboriginal women and children, first and foremost, and the way we do that is by improving their life skills. We try to liaise with different agencies around Prince Albert to try to assist these women in finding further help for the situations they find themselves in.
We support a lot of off-reserve Indians. Our mandate is to try to help off-reserve Indians who are currently living in Prince Albert.
If you know Prince Albert's population, we are currently sitting at 54% in terms of aboriginal population. That comes from a census done by the community development department of First Nations University. It's not an official census population statistic, but it comes from a census that First Nations University students completed.
So when you look at the ratio across Canada, Prince Albert has the highest ratio per capita when it comes to aboriginal people. When I say “aboriginal” people, I mean first nations, Métis, and Dene people, and non-status as well. There are a few people who declare themselves as non-status.
That ratio of 54% is not surpassed by any other city in Canada. The population may be higher in other cities, but the population ratio is not that high. Other cities are averaging around 35% to 40%. Here in Prince Albert we're sitting at 54%, which means that over half of the population is aboriginal. A majority of those are children.
That's the highest population ratio of aboriginal persons throughout Canada. We have a diverse population as well here in Prince Albert, but as I said, our mandated focus deals with aboriginal women.
You said in the e-mail you sent me from the procedural clerk that you guys are looking at the root causes and at ideas for solutions. On the root causes that we see for a lot of our individuals and clients--not only those who I'm currently working with but those who other agencies are currently working with--we're running into a lot of individuals who have faced many abuses, such as sexual abuse and physical abuse in their past, and they think that's okay to carry on into future generations.
That, I find, is the most detrimental factor in the root causes. Individuals who go through those types of abuses don't have the self-esteem to say that it's not okay to live in that type of situation, so that whole scenario is perpetuated generation after generation. It didn't help that we went through residential schools; that didn't help either.
But what is most needed at this point in time is really accurately getting statistics in order to start giving more funding to aboriginal agencies that are operated by aboriginals. There is nothing more discouraging to a woman than going to an agency and not getting the help she needs. Ultimately, the children suffer in the end.
What we basically would like to see is more funding coming to aboriginally run agencies so we can help our own people. That's the only way we could see this cycle of violence--in any form, whether it's systematic, personal, domestic, what have you--this system of violence, being basically dragged through the dirt over and over again...it has to stop by having our own people looking after our own people.
Thank you very much.