Now we will go to Ms. Mathyssen, from the New Democratic Party.
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.
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.
9:05 a.m.
Liberal
9:05 a.m.
NDP
Irene Mathyssen NDP London—Fanshawe, ON
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you for this generous welcome to Treaty 1 territory. It's a privilege to be here. I thank you for your courage and your willingness to speak to us.
I have three basic questions. I have no illusions that I'm going to get to all of them.
The first question has to do with funding. I was looking at the projects that have been funded by Status of Women Canada in Winnipeg. There are 13. Of those 13, six have been completed. What concerns me is that many of the projects seem to be very, very short-term. When you're dealing with the kinds of realities that first nation women face, 16 months or 18 months is not going to begin to touch the problem, much less a solution. My concern is the ad hoc nature of that funding, the fact that it is so brief.
We heard in Prince Albert that very often there is a situation, a reality, where community groups have to manage to provide programming that fits funding rather than reality, and that's a problem. A lot of energy is involved in securing that.
Finally, there is some fear on the part of groups that if they say the wrong thing, if they upset the powers that be, that funding will be cut off. I assure you that is a situation we find most egregious.
My second question has to do with this discussion about young women arriving from the reserve. They're vulnerable. We heard in Prince Albert and we've heard elsewhere that there's a judgment placed on these women by authorities, social services, the police, that they're bad, and no understanding of how they got to that place. I'm wondering if the group could describe what happens to a young woman. How does she arrive in such a terrible situation?
The third thing.... Suzanne, you alluded to the apprehension of children. We've heard that is profoundly destructive to the community, to women. I was hoping that you could touch on that.
I know that's a huge amount of information I'm asking for, but if you could, please, I'd appreciate it so much.
9:05 a.m.
Representative, Ka Ni Kanichihk Inc.
I read the report where it stated that residential school kids in care outnumbered the children who resided in residential schools, and shouldn't Canada be ashamed of that? We need to be able to understand. Again, I will stress it, because it's the only thing that made me get to where I am. We must encourage that. When we look at programming, I think in total, if you look at the aboriginal directory, there are over a hundred organizations fighting for dollars. If you want to make a difference, make sure that you know where your funding is going.
In the past, I've seen that when something goes good for aboriginal people, and we start to let our crutches go, and we start to heal, those programs get cut. At that level, for us women, we need to make sure the message goes out that you take a look at each and every one, what is happening, how we all link together as sisters fighting for the same cause but may do things just a little bit differently because we women are at different levels.
For me, I'm living in a time when decolonization, if you were to put it into the computer.... When I put it in maybe seven years ago, the computer didn't know what that meant. A professor who was an English woman asked, “What is decolonization?”, and I was able to reply. It means to turn the things that have been done wrong and turn them back, so we can make sure this will never happen again to the generations of our children.
My vision and goal is that children belong at home with their families. We need to take a look at that, too. When you look at mothers and children, when it comes down to being able to care for them, that doesn't happen. The people who are missing at the table are social services and income. I've never sat at the table with them. The government, the day they put social welfare into the system—I was told by an elder—was the day they crippled our people.
We do want to work. We do. For a Métis woman, I do pay taxes. I am contributing to society. We don't need only small programs. We need to get our degrees. We need to be able to go to school full-time. In the past, I saw these training programs, but they lasted only so many weeks. We need longer education.
9:10 a.m.
Executive Director, Ka Ni Kanichihk Inc.
Just indirectly specific to the whole funding regime, one thing that's good about the Status of Women Canada funding is that it's multi-year funding, so you can do a project within a particular timeframe. Lots of federal funding does not permit for multi-year funding. So I would recommend that this would be a policy change in some of your other systems.
For example, for the Canadian Heritage funding you have to come up with a project every year. While you get your project done within the deadlines, very often the funding decisions don't come out until six or seven months after the clock starts ticking. You're always kind of stuck in this no person's land or on hold, and then it's a hurry up kind of thing, and then you report. It's a little bit challenging to manage a project like that.
Very often we're told now that food, which is so critical for people who are coming from places of real hunger and real challenge in terms of their food security, can no longer be considered part of the supplies that we're using.
The other thing is administration. None of the project-based funding will permit paying for the executive director, for the management structure. The challenge is that you need a management structure to effectively administer an organization, and the project-based funds don't permit that.
Reporting is a challenge. We have multiple reports, monthly reports, and we're doing it.
One other thing I'd like to add is that we recognize that in Manitoba there is a French school division. French families can go to school in the French language. I'm kind of like Suzanne, in that my children are part Métis, part first nations, and part Irish. My children are educated in French through the immersion system. There is no aboriginal school division here in Manitoba or off reserve in Winnipeg. The highest number of aboriginal people living in Manitoba is up in Winnipeg. There's a French school division but no aboriginal school division. It's a legislated thing within the Manitoba act of whatever year it came to be. On top of that, in the current school system, only about one-quarter of our children are graduating.
So we think there are some issues there. Again, it could be that we need to look at a different model of delivering education. We believe that once children have a strong identity and cultural identity, they'll be okay in whatever system they engage in as adults. My recommendation has been, in Manitoba, to move courageously, and similarly in the francophone community, in upholding our rights.
The other thing I'd like to add--
January 13th, 2011 / 9:15 a.m.
Executive Director, Ka Ni Kanichihk Inc.
Okay.
We have a framework now that's been passed by all nation-states in the world, and that's the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. That's our standard. That's where we go. That's where we move. That's where we get out of this situation that we're currently in.
Thank you.
9:15 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Thank you.
We have 15 minutes left. We have another panel waiting to begin on time at 9:30, so it would be really difficult if we ate into their time. I'm going to ask you...or I'm going to try. There are four questioners. If I give three minutes to each group, that time will have to include the answers. Otherwise, I will just have to cut you off or else we don't go to a next round.
So I will go first, just very quickly, to Ms. Neville for three minutes, please. Answers will be cut off, because we cannot encroach on others' time.
9:15 a.m.
Liberal
Anita Neville Liberal Winnipeg South Centre, MB
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I'm going to direct my question to one person, and that's Ms. Morgan.
You've been quiet, and you haven't had an opportunity in the responses. You went through a very important list of your concerns and issues. You spoke about the fact that you had many come back into your shelters who were repeat “visitors”, for lack of a better word. Give us your best advice on how we can help you, and help them, in terms of the recommendations we make from this committee.
9:15 a.m.
Executive Director, Ikwe Widdjiitiwin, Women's Crisis Shelter
Well, I guess there are different ways to work with these young women. One is that we would like to perhaps make the residential stay a little bit longer and do more work with them one on one.
Secondly--
9:15 a.m.
Executive Director, Ikwe Widdjiitiwin, Women's Crisis Shelter
We get our funding from the family violence prevention program, which is also funded by the Manitoba government. We don't get any federal funding at all.
Part of the problem, of course, is that when the women leave the shelter, sometimes they have absolutely no place to go but back to their abuser, back to their community. What we'd like to see is perhaps more work being done with them, just for the continuity and longevity of working with these young women.
Secondly, you'd asked a question earlier that I wanted to answer. It was about the non-aboriginal women coming to shelters. We do get a lot of immigrant women coming in--from Ethiopia and other places in Africa, from the Philippines, and so on. That takes up, say, 10% of our clientele.
To get back to how we can work with these young women, we do programs on domestic violence--how to see the pattern, how to break the pattern--but there are all the other things that come into play and that have been talked about around this table, including education, housing, and more mental health workers. Oh, my God, it's so hard to find somebody to help these young women who need that help right away. And most of them, if they do see a psychiatrist, are medicated.
So what we'd like to see is more work with these women for longer periods of time, and just generally more work with the family as well. If this woman is in a dysfunctional family, then there's work to be done in the family as well.
9:15 a.m.
Liberal
9:15 a.m.
Conservative
Shelly Glover Conservative Saint Boniface, MB
Thank you, Madam Chair.
We have three minutes, so I'm going to try to be brief.
There are other funding pots. Leslie did mention Heritage Canada. Of course, there are the ones that Ms. Mathyssen mentioned under Status of Women Canada. There's Cultural Connections for Aboriginal Youth. There's the Department of Indian Affairs and Health Canada. Funding comes from a number of places.
There are a number of other programs going on here in the city of Winnipeg, programs that I'm quite proud of, that do fall under different pots of money. One of those programs is from the Native Women's Transition Centre. It has to do with community-based succession planning for aboriginal youth.
I'm hearing all of you talk about education, and I'm wondering if you mean these types of programs. Is that the education you're talking about? Are you talking about K to 12? Specifically, when you talk about education, are you talking about educating our aboriginal women in protecting themselves and moving forward to raise their families, etc., or are you talking about the basic K to 12?
Perhaps I'll ask Ms. Marin, and then maybe Leslie will want to answer that.
9:20 a.m.
Board Member, Native Women's Transition Centre
First of all, when we're talking about education, I think we're talking from the time of birth right to the time of death.
Right now, the age I'm at, I don't know how much more you could teach me. You could probably teach me a little bit more, but I think right now the grain is the education and identity and self-respect of our children. We've always made that a central, important part of our lives. When we develop programs, the programs are set for families. They're set for the mother and the children at the time they come in, from birth to the time when we see the children who are struggling to stay in school, ages 12 up to grade 12.
When we try to look at the programs, especially for the success of native transition, it's always been that we've asked the community what their needs are. We ask them, and they bring forward to us what they feel their needs are. It's been working, and it's been working for a long period of time.
9:20 a.m.
Conservative
Shelly Glover Conservative Saint Boniface, MB
Thank you. I have only a few minutes, and I just want to make sure that Leslie has a chance.
9:20 a.m.
Liberal
9:20 a.m.
Conservative
9:20 a.m.
Executive Director, Ka Ni Kanichihk Inc.
Similar to what Margaret said, it's all of it. In the education system, we know that for grades kindergarten to 12 it's critically important that our children start experiencing success, at least at the same rate as other Canadians, and go on to post-secondary. That will be part of what supports them and us to have our good life, our bimaadiziwin.
But the other piece of education--
9:20 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
I'm sorry. Thank you, Leslie. Maybe you can fill it in some other time with another question.
Madame Demers.
9:20 a.m.
Bloc
Nicole Demers Bloc Laval, QC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Suzanne, to have access to education—something that is very important—a woman must have access to childcare services and affordable social housing. Are quality childcare services and affordable social housing accessible here in Winnipeg?
9:20 a.m.
Representative, Ka Ni Kanichihk Inc.
From the beginning, no, they have not been. We can see that, given the poverty going way back 20 years to when 60% of aboriginal women were living in it. I don't know today if that has changed. It hasn't, I guess, since the last time.
No, it's not available. That's why our women are on the streets. That's why they're prostituting themselves, because there are not enough funds there. Social services and the federal and provincial governments must bring those people to the table. You cannot find suitable housing, and we must look at the slum-lords and slum issues, because for a single woman to get 200 and something dollars for rent is not realistic. I think we need to be able to allow you to remember that so you can bring that forth too. It's a long, long road, so we have to continue to encourage.