Status of Women Committee on Jan. 13th, 2011

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

I will call the meeting to order.

I don't know if Suzanne Chartrand is here. We have Shannon Cormier, Val James, and Leslie Spillett.

Good morning, everyone. I've called the meeting to order. Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), this committee, the status of women committee, is an all-party committee. This means that the members of this committee come from the four political parties in the House. It is a non-partisan committee, as parliamentary committees are meant to be, and we are looking at a study of violence against aboriginal women.

You will meet the various members of the committee. When they begin to ask questions, I will introduce them to you. I am Hedy Fry, the member of Parliament for Vancouver Centre, and I chair this committee.

It was a unanimous decision by the committee to undertake this study, following on some of the statistical data that we saw from Sisters in Spirit after they had gone around the country and gathered evidence. What we are looking for specifically, which I hope you will address, is the root causes of what seems to be an extraordinary amount of violence against aboriginal women, and not just the root causes, but the nature of that violence, the extent of that violence, and the types of violence. We hope you will also help us with what you consider to be some of the solutions, either preventative or rehabilitative or dealing with the issue from various points of view. I'm hoping that you can explore that very well.

What we're going to do is what we normally do in committee. We give each of you five minutes to present. There are only three groups who are presenting, so if you will tell me who is presenting from your group, with three people you will then have seven minutes. I will give you a two-minute signal and then a one-minute signal so you can wrap up what you're going to say.

After you present, there will be a question and answer period. There will be questions from the members of Parliament and you can answer. If we do well, we may be able to have two rounds. Sometimes we can get in three rounds of questions.

I'd like to start off, then, and I don't know how to pronounce this, so you can perhaps help me: Ikwe Widdjiitiwin--

[Sharon Morgan, Executive Director, Ikwe Widdjiitiwin, Women's Crisis Shelter]

If I may, Madam Chair, my name is Sharon Morgan, and Ikwe Widdjiitiwin means “women helping one another”.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much, Sharon.

Sharon, will you begin, please?

[Sharon Morgan]

It's difficult being the first one to start, because I'm not quite sure what you want to hear.

Ikwe Widdjiitiwin is an aboriginal women's shelter. Most of our clientele are young aboriginal women with children. Our shelter is for women experiencing domestic violence. When they come into our shelter they generally have nothing but the clothes on their backs, with no money and sometimes no ID.

Some of the problems we're facing with some of the women coming in include addiction and mental health issues, which are becoming more visible over time. It becomes very difficult to work with them. There are many other agencies involved, such as child and family, the courts, the justice system, etc.

What we try to do is work with the women--they're there for a minimum of 30 days--and give them programs on domestic violence; advocate for housing; and give them help with legal issues, such as protection orders, and medical, if they have to go to the hospital, for example. For a minimum of 30 days we work with them. That really isn't a lot of time to turn anybody around, but hopefully we pass the seed to them so that in time they will.

Generally we will get quite a lot of repeat clients. They may come in with different partners, perhaps, but they've fallen into a pattern of living in abusive relationships. This becomes, again, more normal for them than it should be. The abnormal becomes normal. They almost look for a relationship that is abusive.

We get quite a few women flying in from reserves, or driving in, or being transferred to our facility. I find that many of them have pretty horrendous stories about what happens on the reserve, such as being under.... Let's say the chief and council are related to the abuser. Well, then, the woman doesn't get any help at all. If anything, she's told to leave the reserve.

So those are some of the stories. When they come into the city, they are really easy pickings for many of the drug dealers and others. We did have our first case of human trafficking, under the new law that passed. Many of our young women are very vulnerable to things like that.

The domestic violence has many effects on the children. They have a lot of difficulty in terms of working out their anger or withdrawing into themselves. You can see a pattern that may be started if it isn't stopped at that time.

We also offer parenting programs for these young women. We offer nutrition programs, etc. Many of them do not know hygiene. We have to teach them how to wash clothes, how to cook nutritious meals for themselves and their children, and how to budget their money, things like that.

We do have many women calling in who are afraid to leave their abusers for fear of retribution. Family members also may force a woman to stay with her abuser, and because those are her only supports, that may be the only thing she can do. But we do encourage them to come in. As I said, we do get a lot of repeat clients who have left several times before. It generally does take them about seven or eight times before they can actually break away.

We have quite a few success stories, thank God. It makes us realize that our job is very important for the ones who we know have broken away from that cycle of violence and are making their own lives with their children. Success stories like those are what keep us going.

We do get some older women into our shelter. Again, it seems that many of them have some sort of addiction to alcohol or prescription pills, which is another big thing. I want to go on to say that many of the doctors our women see just ply them with drugs. I mean, some of the women come in with five or six different types of drugs--anti-psychotics, Valium, all sorts of drugs. They're just overmedicating our women, and these women are becoming addicted. What happens when the doctor stops giving the drugs to them?

These are some of the problems we're facing at this shelter. There are always more things that we wish to do.

Being an aboriginal women's shelter, we also try to organize cultural programs. We request that elders come in and do one-on-one in sharing circles. They're allowed to smudge in our healing room. We also offer counselling 24/7, so there is always somebody there to talk to them.

As I say, 30 days isn't a very long time to work with women, especially when they have all these other things they have to do, like finding housing, get furniture, and just settling down is a time-consuming effort. The staff and the board are all there for one reason, and that is to help these women break away from the cycle of violence and do the best they can.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much, Ms. Morgan.

Now we go to the Ka Ni Kanichihk, Leslie Spillett.

[Leslie Spillett, Executive Director, Ka Ni Kanichihk Inc.]

Thank you.

It's Ka Ni Kanichihk. It's a Cree word that means “those who lead” or “those who go forward”.

I want to welcome all of our members from out of town to Treaty 1 territory this morning and to our beautiful but cold Winnipeg winter. And of course, to the members of Parliament from Manitoba, welcome home. It's the birthplace of our Métis nation as well, and we really need to recognize that.

Ka Ni Kanichihk is a multi-human-service organization located in one of our neighbourhoods, called Central and West Alexander, which has one of the highest populations demographically of indigenous peoples. I believe we are an expression of our right to self-determination and our own sovereignty in addressing both the root causes plus the manifestation of those root causes in a holistic, culturally appropriate, and extremely creative way. It is primarily women-led, but not exclusively, because we acknowledge that we need everyone in our circle to continue on this journey.

We talked about the fact that the committee wants to hear about the root causes of violence and the predominance of the root causes of violence in terms of indigenous peoples in general, and in particular, indigenous women. I believe firmly, and with every fibre of my being, that those are within the colonial history and relationships that continue to exist in our broader culture. The adage that everyone else knows best about what we need to do to proceed in the right direction has been both dehumanizing in terms of our cultural collective, but also has had a profoundly damaging impact on each individual's agency.

We've learned, by the systems we've been engaged in, to be dependent. My sister talked about being medicated when that's not really working out too well. We find our women are experiencing profound and continuous levels of extreme violence. This is not only partner violence, although that certainly is a part of it. It's also a violence of strangers and it's a violence of systems. We try to do our part in some small way to have a correct analysis and then to proceed forward on that basis.

I am not going to use up all of my time. I'm going to ask one of the women who is involved in one of the programs that's being funded by Status of Women Canada through Ka Ni Kanichihk. Her name is Suzanne Chartrand.

Often one doesn't hear from the voices of those people who have lived these experiences. I think it's really important. Moon Voices is all about giving women back their voices and reverse the trend where everybody has believed that they can and do often speak for our women and our collective.

With that, I'll turn it over to Suzanne.

[Suzanne Chartrand, Representative, Ka Ni Kanichihk Inc.]

Good morning. It's an honour to be here.

I want to first of all thank you for having us, and most of all thank Moon Voices, Ka Ni Kanichihk, for taking the time to take this training that is very important to us aboriginal women.

One thing it's enabled me to do, for all the years I've been in this field, is to have my voice when I sit among other cultures, because that's lacking. Going to Moon Voices has allowed me, as an aboriginal woman, to feel safe. It has allowed me to feel secure, and, most of all, not afraid any more that my voice matters. For many years I did live that life. I had a voice, but not to capacity, because I always felt alone. Moon Voices has enabled us to meet a lot of strong women and has encouraged us to speak about the different things that are happening to us in our everyday lives.

We must continue to educate our aboriginal women and encourage them to seek out the sisters we have in this community. As I said, I've been in Winnipeg for 20 years. I feel that I have a place to go if I feel as though nobody's listening, and I'm honoured to do that.

We learn not only how to speak but also how to find out about our tradition, our spiritual part, which is lacking in our society. The aboriginal women in this country are still at the bottom of the barrel. We have a long stride and we've been jumping through hoops. I see that title is important. We've managed to see all the different agencies and different things happen in my lifetime.

Time is running out for those of us who are already hitting 50. We must educate our young people. We must tell them about the issues of how we are decolonizing, and we must get our voices to be heard. I believe that as mothers and women we must be able to continue to focus on trying to help our whole family circle. We have fathers and we have brothers and uncles and grandpas who as yet really have no part in the healing system. Healing is an everyday thing. It's meeting with people like you to take that message further up. We are the ones on the front line.

It's very scary and we feel we're alone when we hear that another aboriginal woman has died. It's sad, because it could be our daughter or it could be our granddaughter. With all these things, I feel peace when I can go to the sisters and just smudge and pray that even with those types of things, we have hope. It's always been that way for generations, and those of us who are first nations, Métis, and Inuit have been able to start finding our places. I'm honoured to be able to share with other young women, and to go to university.

For strong aboriginal women before me and today who are still helping me, I can say thank you. I would say that to them because I think different cultures need to look at how time is changing, and we must be able to have our voices heard. It's no longer about the way society is doing it; it's about asking us. We can tell you there are too many people who try to say they can be our God-given saviour. It's not that way when you find the creator in the meaning of who you are as a Métis, first nations, or Inuit woman. Again, I'm thankful that I can go to medicines, and I can pray, and I can go to ceremonies and find out, and I can direct those to other women who are hurting.

There is no need, in 2011, for women to die at the hands of whoever.

I just want to thank you now and say it's very important that we provide services that are educational. As for funding, if you want to see change, it must start with the people who are affected by the issues that are on the table: poverty, education, murder. The list goes on and on, and I'm sure you ladies have heard it.

I'd like to say ekosi and thank you very much for listening.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much, Ms. Chartrand.

Now we go to the Native Women's Transition Centre. There are two people here, Ms. Sutherland and Ms. Marin. Who will be the speaker, or will you share it?

[Margaret Marin, Board Member, Native Women's Transition Centre]

I think we're going to share it. Good morning.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

All right. So you have seven minutes, and I will indicate when it is halftime.

[Margaret Marin]

That sounds good.

Good morning. I am a board member with the Native Women's Transition Centre. I welcome you to our community.

For the majority of my life, I guess, I've been around the organizations that are around the table today, because it's a passion and an issue that's been ingrained in me by my grandmother, and it's about being able to speak out on women's issues for future generations as well.

To give you a little bit about the Native Women's Transition Centre, they're one of the agencies that has been around for about 30 years. We really have provided an opportunity for aboriginal women to follow their journey with healing. The recovery from family violence is a lot of the work we're doing.

First and foremost is providing an opportunity for them to have a place to talk about their healing, about where they came from, to understand the relationships, both the personal relationships and the relationships in systems, and the places that they've been through the different organizations and within our own communities.

The centre embraces the aboriginal traditional values in order to heal the generational scars of the colonization and the residential schools. I mean, you know...you've heard it around the table. What we try to do is provide an opportunity for them to speak with elders, to talk about who they are as individuals, because that is lost. When you talk about hitting 50, even I, as an aboriginal Métis woman, am still at that place of understanding who I am and where I came from. It's an opportunity to talk with other families, individuals, women, and children about where they fit. It's really a free choice in understanding the values and personal situations for us, to bringing that forth for us.

We provide programs, but I'm not going to get into a lot of the programs, because I can give this information to you about what we've done. One of the things that I think I'd like to talk about is some of the barriers we're faced with and maybe one of the new things that is coming up with us.

Everybody around here has talked about the issues of funding. Funding is an ongoing concern; it seems to gets smaller and smaller and tighter and tighter. With that, we talk about funding issues around what is out there for women and children. There are more standards and there is legislation that comes in; it's harder to get in when policies are developed that sometimes hinder access to services. I think part of that, as Sharon and others have indicated, is around the risk of violence off reserve and on reserve. We talk about the numbers of women who are on reserve and who then come to the city, where there are no resources.

We could talk about housing at 0.5% occupancy; I could be wrong, but we know it's out there. Also, businesses that continue to change housing places into condos make it a lot more difficult for housing for families and children.

We talk about systemic discrimination. There are still youth who have a hard time getting into educational schools or into work because of not having the advantages of support to be able to go to those places. Whether it's discriminatory, whether it's racist, it's out there.

We talk about poverty. On average, nothing has changed in the sense of how living expenses have increased but funding for living has not. We need to talk about that and how that fits in for families who are struggling biweekly or every day to put food on the table.

We're talking about the generational impact of the residential schools. We can talk about this; it's still out there. I don't know how many times in my field I'm asked when we are going to get over this. But the idea is that this is generational. This is historical. I'm sitting in front of you without my language, with having to push myself through mountains and mountains of trying to get where I am today to talk to a standing committee. This is just a small little drop in an ocean, but it still has to be discussed: there are huge impacts for our children because of colonization.

On the lack of safe and affordable housing, again, we're talking about it. You've heard it in the media. We're talking about increasing rents, larger families.... Even bedbugs are out there. That has a huge impact on safe and affordable housing. What do we consider to be safe and affordable? For some, we have families who are living not even in a bedroom, but in a bachelor suite, with five family members.

In aboriginal families we use our extended families as well, so sometimes you also can see aunties and uncles within a one-bedroom apartment. That's how we survive and that's how we support each other. At the same time, I think it has to be opened up and viewed as a major issue that's lacking.

When we fit that into it, we're talking about what else there is for you to do except to maybe get caught up in the gangs and to get caught up in the false image that they're there to support you. You get sexually exploited as young children, and it becomes part of the sex trade, or a way to be able to put food on the table.

If that doesn't work--

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

One minute. Sorry.

Does Jojo want to take over, or do you just want to continue and finish it up?

[Margaret Marin]

I'll let Jojo continue, because part of that fits into it.

I just want to quickly indicate that Native Women's Transition Centre is recognizing that. If you look at the percentage of women in jail, it has a huge impact. If you look at the history of why those women are in jail, you realize that they went there maybe for one particular thing, and that was to help support their families.

Following up with that, we're looking at developing a third facility through Native Women's Transition Centre that will work with both provincial and federal women to come back to their homes and be able to create a healing opportunity. We just wanted to announce that.

I'll let Jojo talk a bit about her story.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have one minute, Jojo.

[Jojo Marie Sutherland, Staff Member, Native Women's Transition Centre]

All right. I can't talk really fast--I'm not an auctioneer--so bear with me.

To begin with, my name is Jojo Sutherland. I'm going to give you my own experience. I had to leave my reservation because of family violence.

On the reservation in the seventies, family violence was an everyday thing. You married the guy and you had to stick with the guy.

The band house gets given to you. The band house doesn't belong to the female, it belongs to the male. If you decide to leave, you have to leave the house.

That's what happened to me. I left my house with two suitcases, one with clothes and the other with pictures of my children. By that time, my daughter was 16 years old.

I became involved with drugs and alcohol because I had no place to go. I prostituted my body so that I could support myself. And deep down....

The guys stay in the home with everything in it and continue with a different family. This is what we suffer as aboriginal women. I went to Calgary and experienced drugs, alcohol, prostitution. I got beaten up a lot there, just as I got beaten up at home.

Remember, when you're just a woman you're without a voice, and if your husband is a family member of the chief and council, they do not hear you. You have no voice. You cannot report it. In the words of the ex-chief, who I knew and who was friends with my ex-husband, it was my fault that I got beaten up.

I moved on and I lost everything. I lost everything.

So that is a little bit of my story.

I am sorry I can't talk any faster. It must be one minute now.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you, Jojo.

What will happen now is that we will go to questions, and then you will be able to speak again and have a chance to add to your story and to say other things. The time you have to present is just for a short little synopsis, and then we get into an interactive mode as we move around the table.

I want to thank all of you for your presentations.

I will now begin our question and answer session. Each member gets seven minutes. The seven minutes includes the questions and the answers. If we want to get a lot of questions and answers in, it means that one would have to be fairly succinct in what one says. That goes for the questioner as well as the answerer; I'm warning my colleagues here.

We will begin with Ms. Anita Neville, who is a Liberal member of the committee.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Let me begin by thanking all of you for coming out today. Thank you for your very personal and professional stories.

I have so many questions, but I'm going to keep them brief at the moment and hope that if we don't get the opportunity, I might have an opportunity to meet with you individually at another time. I live here, so we can pick up on it.

Yesterday we were in Prince Albert and we visited an organization. I asked them about their funding, how they stayed alive. The executive director of the organization must have cited 20 different grants that they got to keep afloat. My response to her was “You must spend an awful lot of time writing proposals.”

I have a couple of questions I'll put out and then let you answer them.

We represent the federal government. In your mind, what can the federal government do, in concrete terms, to address some of the issues you're facing? I guess I'm focusing on funding in that respect.

My second question is directed to Leslie. Leslie, we've heard a lot about colonization, the impact of the residential schools, and whatever. A number of initiatives have been taken over the past years, and whether it's enough—well, it's not enough. Do you have any concrete suggestions in terms of addressing the issues of colonization?

My third question is also to you, and it's a question that came up yesterday from the chair. We've talked a lot about domestic violence in the hearings across the country. I expect that is going to dominate the discussions because it is so prevalent. You also referenced violence against women of other kinds. I would welcome an expansion of that.

I'll leave it there. If I have more time, I have more questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Anita directed her questions specifically to Leslie. We'll start with Leslie, but if anybody wants to jump in, just indicate to me, and I will let you answer some of what Ms. Neville asked.

[Leslie Spillett]

With respect to the question around funding, it's a crazy, huge issue. I want to ask another one of my partners to address that.

With respect to the historical and contemporary manifestations of colonization, I want to reference a study that was done by Drs. Chandler and Lalonde, two sociology professors from the University of British Columbia. They were puzzled about the incidence of first nation suicide rates in first nation communities in British Columbia. The puzzling question was that some suicide rates in some first nation communities were 800 times the national average. This is shocking. In some communities suicide was virtually unknown.

They carried out a study to find the factors and elements in determining what caused such a gap in the suicide rates. They found what they termed “cultural continuity”. Essentially, the control the communities had over themselves was what made the difference. If they were in decision-making powerful positions, and women-led,—and this is another piece of it that I really need to throw out here—communities that recognized women and actualized the leadership of women were those communities that had those protective factors that made a community safe and functioning.

How do you extrapolate that learning from our contemporary situation in Winnipeg? If you were to look at where your dollars are going, I would suggest they are going primarily into non-indigenous communities to help aboriginal people. That's the kind of scenario that we need to start adjusting a little bit to make sure there is a principle in terms of determining where dollars are going, not to non-aboriginal organizations to help aboriginal women. This is because very often I get calls from those very organizations for me to come and help them because they don't know how to implement their programs because women won't go to those programs. I've actually stopped doing that.

It's not that I don't want to help our women, but that scenario is inherent in how the funding goes. Everybody is able to submit proposals for funding. We really need to redistribute in all kinds of ways.

In terms of the federal government, we need to redistribute the funds to indigenous communities. We know there are very large levels of stereotypes that aboriginal people are all rolling in dollars. We know that's not the case. The dollars that are allocated to indigenous people, very few of them actually get to indigenous communities.

In my mind, the first principle of decolonization would be to look at who's being funded. In my mind, it's kind of easy, but maybe I'm being naive here.

In terms of stranger violence, you know and I know that we can find women prostituting themselves on the streets of Winnipeg. I think it's a part of our culture to not look at ourselves and how the culture works to keep these young people on the streets, but to blame the young people for actually being there. If you keep people in profound levels of economic depression, political marginalization, and social isolation, these are causes that will happen in any community.

Finally, we know that as soon as newcomers come to indigenous territories, they see who the most vulnerable people are. Unfortunately, they exploit our children. We know this is happening. There is a cultural normative or something; I'm not articulating it well. We are.... And it's transferred almost in your pores. You know when you set foot in this country who are the people who are most marginalized, and they've exploited that. We've had children.... We just recently lost to suicide another child who was part of a group of men who used them for sex and drugs. Another one of those young women was found dead at the outskirts of Winnipeg last year. Another one of those young women was found dead in a little community outside of Winnipeg last winter.

We don't have value. We are dehumanized by the culture. That reaps...then that causes the violence against us. If you are so dehumanized as a human being that you are “less than”, then that's.... Then the other piece of it is--

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Leslie, we've gone to nine minutes.

[Leslie Spillett]

Okay. Sorry.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

We've gone quite over time.

I'm sorry, Anita, but we're at nine minutes now.

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

I understand that. Maybe it will come up with other questions on the funding issues. I'd welcome it if you could give us some suggestions on that as well.

I didn't want to interrupt Leslie.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

I know. I didn't, so I allowed Leslie to go on a bit longer.

Now we're going to go to Madame Demers, who is from the Bloc Québécois.

Go ahead, Nicole.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

First, I would like to thank you for welcoming us and allowing us to meet with you this morning. This is very important for us. I would especially like to thank you for letting me speak my own language. I'm sure you'll understand that I want to keep it and, therefore, it is important for me to continue speaking it.

I am very moved by everything you've said. What we are currently doing in various regions of Canada is very important.

Suzanne, you said earlier that you are 50 years old and that it is absolutely necessary to pass on to the younger generation the courage to carry on, in order to rise above the effects of colonization. I understand, but I wonder how it can be done, since the damage has been ingrained in the human beings that you are for hundreds of years. Money, the courage that you all have and ideas alone cannot fix everything. So, how should we proceed?

Anita touched on this. I met with some people yesterday and realized that there is a lot of ignorance among non-aboriginals about who you are. The people we met with yesterday told us that 54% of the population in Prince Albert is aboriginal and, therefore, that 20% of the population financially supports everyone else. They did not know that aboriginals who live outside aboriginal communities pay taxes like everyone else.

What do we need to do to get people to understand who you are? How can we build bridges between aboriginals and non-aboriginals, break the taboos and eliminate prejudice and racism? Are you also victims of racism here, in Winnipeg, when you do business with social services and the police? What do we need to do to stop this?

I was moved by a woman named Laurie Odjick, the mother of a young girl who went missing in Gatineau. She touched my heart, and we became friends. Since then, I no longer see things the same way. But who do you need to move so that people understand? How do we do that?

The federal government can indeed give money, but it's not enough. Out of every dollar the government provides, how much really ends up in your pocket? How much? Leslie, could you tell me if it's 25¢, for example? When the Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs decides to provide funding, how much money is actually given to programs? Do you know?