Evidence of meeting #46 for Status of Women in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was children.
Noon
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
There are 30 seconds left, if anybody wants to drop a 30-second pearl of wisdom.
Ms. Kehler.
January 13th, 2011 / noon
Kate Kehler Assistant Executive Director, John Howard Society of Manitoba, Inc.
Hello.
I don't know about a pearl of wisdom, but I would like to echo the idea that people do access the John Howard Society, because we are a street-level organization, both here and in Brandon. All of the organizations make themselves available to people at the street level. It's not a big, scary building to walk into; it's a small place right in the downtown area. So we make it as comfortable as possible for people to access us.
We are able to offer our anger management program free of charge. All of our services are free of charge, but unfortunately, the John Howard Society of Brandon actually charges for their domestic violence anger management program. They have a two-tiered program that addresses domestic violence, but they are unable to offer it free of charge, so that is an additional barrier that they recognize as well.
Thank you.
Noon
Liberal
Noon
Conservative
Shelly Glover Conservative Saint Boniface, MB
Thank you very much.
I want to welcome you all here. I want to acknowledge the chiefs and the fact that we're on Treaty 1 territory.
I want to clarify something with Chief Kennedy, if I could. When I heard you speaking, I thought you were commending the relationship between you and the RCMP and having an RCMP officer in AMC to help have communication with the missing and murdered aboriginal women. Perhaps there was a language barrier. Were you commending them or were you criticizing them?
Noon
War Lake First Nation, Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs
I was trying to commend their efforts and what they really want to do, especially with what was established by the first nations.
Noon
Conservative
12:05 p.m.
Conservative
Shelly Glover Conservative Saint Boniface, MB
Okay.
I just wanted to get that on the record, because I know it was said, but there was a little bit of miscommunication there.
I did want to address Chief Meeches' comment about counselling. The residential schools apology was long overdue--long overdue. The residential schools situation is a historic tragedy in this country. I'm proud that Prime Minister Harper did make the apology and committed $5 billion towards a settlement agreement. Much of that money was also supposed to go to counselling.
I'm curious to know, if you're looking for more counselling, are you able to access more funds there? Are you suggesting that that's not available? How can we help you to access that if that is what you're looking for?
12:05 p.m.
Swan Lake First Nation, Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs
In our community, we're allowed a counsellor twice a month. That's all our funding from FNIHB will provide.
12:05 p.m.
Conservative
Shelly Glover Conservative Saint Boniface, MB
But through the settlement agreement, did you look for--
12:05 p.m.
Swan Lake First Nation, Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs
No. We don't go through the settlement agreement.
12:05 p.m.
Swan Lake First Nation, Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs
That's not how we.... We're not going into that type of counselling. The counselling we do for our people is for the families in the community, okay, and--
12:05 p.m.
Conservative
Shelly Glover Conservative Saint Boniface, MB
I get that, but I'm thinking that because you have so many victims of the residential school tragedy, they can access--
12:05 p.m.
Swan Lake First Nation, Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs
Yes, but that's separate from this.
12:05 p.m.
Swan Lake First Nation, Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs
Yes, we have. We will access that--
12:05 p.m.
Swan Lake First Nation, Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs
--but what I'm saying is that the counselling we currently have is for situations in our communities, for the young people, the young parents. Suicide is another thing. We were trying to use our suicide dollars, our family violence dollars, whatever dollars we could tap into. We were trying to use what we could. But FNIHB will only allow you to use so much, right?
12:05 p.m.
Conservative
Shelly Glover Conservative Saint Boniface, MB
Right. I'm going to try to help you, because after this is all done, I'd like to have a conversation with you.
12:05 p.m.
Conservative
Shelly Glover Conservative Saint Boniface, MB
Because there's another $199 million on top of the $5 billion that was put towards residential school victims so we could get that help. There are healing centres that are open, so please, we'll meet afterwards--
12:05 p.m.
Conservative
Shelly Glover Conservative Saint Boniface, MB
--and I'll try to help you with that.
I wanted to come back to Cathy, because she hadn't quite finished what she was talking about, and I know this program is tremendous. It also speaks to what Melanie was saying. I think it was Melanie who said that when you have experiences and you can share those, sometimes that's the most influential.
I had a car thief phone me from jail when I became an elected official. He's now incarcerated for murder. Actually, he didn't phone me--sorry--but he sent me a card saying “Please continue what you're doing. When you were a police officer, I should have listened to you. I should have listened. Now here I am. I went from car theft to drug dealing, and now I'm in for murder.”
I went to see him and asked him this question: “With your experience, would you be willing to talk to others?” Because it seems that some kids and some people who get involved in the system don't listen to moms and dads and what not; they listen to peers and they listen to people who've been there.
So I want to ask you about this. Your program, which is funded by the Government of Canada--and I'm proud of that--does exactly that. How does what your program is doing prevent more women from becoming victims of violence? How does it help? Should we continue this and, like Mrs. Demers said, spread it across the board?
12:05 p.m.
Child and Youth Care Program Instructor, Red River College, Ndinawemaaganag Endaawaad (Ndinawe)
Certainly a dream of ours is to see.... The program could be a template model, I think, for other places and could be modified to fit other communities where exploitation is going on.
But let me talk a bit about Sacred Lives, which is a program that was just funded in October as a result of the child and youth care program. Sacred Lives is a program that will employ the alumni of the child and youth care program to go into the schools to deliver preventative workshops on exploitation to kids aged 10 to 17.
The experiential child and youth care workers will be talking to the kids about how to respect themselves and how to spot potential dangers. All of this is also coming from the teachings of the Miikiwaap , so all the workers have taken training. The cultural teachings are also brought into the workshops for the children. We're really happy about developing that program right now and hope to go into the schools next month to start delivering the workshops.
Yes, it's those voices, like I said before, the voices of the people who have been there, who have that life experience. They know best how to approach and talk to kids so they don't get involved.