Status of Women Committee on Jan. 13th, 2011

[Lisa Forbes]

Yes. I'd like to say that when we did that survey we did find that the negative attitudes are pervasive. It is an element of systemic racism. It's an element of colonialism and those kinds of things, which we've heard before. Those things continue to exist. I acknowledge that there has been some work, as the RCMP representative has said here.

However, for one of the things that was noted there, we've noted it in Sisters in Spirit reports from NWAC, and we've noted it from Amnesty International. We noted it again in our survey of local organizations. There needs to be training for police and social service workers regarding anti-racism. It continues to be a pervasive problem. Women are constantly running against that in all government systems. It continues to exist.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

And the media...?

[Lisa Forbes]

In regard to the media, we have some research. Actually, my colleague here, Shawna, is a researcher on the racist portrayal of victims of violence who are aboriginal--compared to non-aboriginal--and we as a grassroots group are planning to address that issue as well in terms of codes of conduct for journalists and those kinds of things. That's what we're working towards.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you.

[Shawna Ferris]

If I could, I will just say as well that Lisa is one of the members of our group who has been really pushing an initiative to create a charter for journalists to sign, a charter saying that they will not portray aboriginal women in these negative ways and that they'll actually resist these kinds of portrayals as well as things like sensationalizing violence against women.

Did you want to talk a little bit more about that, Lisa?

[Lisa Forbes]

No. That's it.

[Shawna Ferris]

Okay.

I wanted to emphasize as well that education for RCMP and social services workers is very important. One of the places where that begins is before they become those workers, so it's education across levels of education systems--elementary, high school, and post-secondary education--that focuses on colonization and ongoing decolonization efforts in order to start thinking through the ways that racism and colonialism perpetuate our culture and to inform how everybody responds to one another or reads one another.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

You mentioned funding and the fact that there is never enough. We've heard this over and over again. What would you do with $875 million? That's the latest tax cut to the banks.

[Lisa Forbes]

What a great question. Everybody here wants to answer that.

What I think is that we found we were asking that question too. We were wondering what's happening with the money that's being spent on this issue and why we are not seeing satisfactory results.

So we started asking that question. We asked people: individuals, community organizations, and social services organizations across the board. What we're working on now is this integration that we talked about with police forces and Child and Family Services. There needs to be an integration among social service providers, with a singular goal: to have it as a goal to reduce violence against aboriginal women and girls and to have it being to create strategically...to work with each other to create initiatives towards that goal.

I'm talking about domestic violence prevention programs that educate men and boys, for instance; transition services for people moving from a reserve to an urban area; and having the police and the justice folks and the people who do justice advocacy at John Howard and Elizabeth Fry in the same room and having them working together in all the ways, with all the tools we have at hand, to put our efforts towards that one goal of reducing violence against aboriginal women.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Yes. Thank you for mentioning Elizabeth Fry--

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have one minute, Irene.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

--because I know that in northern Ontario their funding was cut off. And that makes it very, very difficult.

I'm sorry, Madam Chair...?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have one minute.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Oh dear.

Very quickly, Carolyn, you talked about the lack of affordable housing and the lack of a national child care project. If the federal government were to step up to the plate, would that help you to do the kind of work that you would like to do in the field?

[Carolyn Loeppky]

With respect to looking to the future, I think if we have equitable and stable funding for services on and off reserve in various disciplinary labels in child care, in child welfare, where we have made great progress, and also with respect to family violence, that would be exceptional in terms of the work we could be able to do.

I want to echo, though, what Lisa talked about. I think coalitions and collaborations with purpose go a long way in improving services. In Manitoba, we have the experience where we've been working with high-risk victims, with StreetReach, and with sexual exploitation and human trafficking. More recently, we're working on a children's advocacy centre, where the sectors are coming together to talk about the expertise they bring to the table, and they work jointly and co-jointly. It's difficult work at times, but when you in fact can reach the conclusion, you see much, much better services for children and for families, and strength of communities improves.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you so much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

We can now go into a second round. The second round will be a three-minute round. If we had a five-minute round it would be very difficult, because we just have a little under 30 minutes. I could make that a five-minute round, but you're going to have to be really disciplined. Okay? Let's do a five-minute round, then.

Let's try Ms. Neville.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I want to pick up on something we heard today and yesterday. It has been prevalent along the way. It is the apprehension of children, which we're hearing a lot about, and the numbers of children. What we also heard is that when domestic violence occurs, many women do not come forward, either to social service agencies or to the police--or to whomever--because of the fear of losing their children.

Can you speak to that in terms of how it can be addressed? I understand that there's always a concern of what's in the best interests of the child, but it creates a whole other layer of issues.

Let me start with Carolyn. What is the province doing and what recommendations would you have to the federal government?

[Carolyn Loeppky]

In looking at domestic violence and children, we started some initiatives a while back in terms of looking at children who witness domestic violence. We tried to put some new programming resources into our women's shelters specifically for children's services, so that when women do enter a shelter and they have the children along with them, there is some specific programming for children. It certainly was an initiative that we felt was important. Over the last number of years, we've been able to increase some of those resources, but--

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

Sorry, but what I'm concerned about--and that's important and valuable--is the woman who does not come forward because she's fearful of losing custody of her children. Are you working with that in some way?

[Carolyn Loeppky]

The area in which we see some promise and/or hope in terms of helping families who have challenges and/or struggles is a lot of the work that we do with family resource centres, with women's resource centres, and also with parent-child centres that you would have in communities and/or in schools, where you would begin to build some relationships with women and try to get some support and services to them that would be community based and not necessarily mandated services.

In Manitoba, we fund a variety of different community-based organizations like Ma Mawi Wi Chi Itata, Andrews Street, and the Wolseley Centre, where we have the opportunity for women--and for men, in some of them--to come forward to get some services and supports and to start to build a bit of a community of support for themselves. So that would be an introduction or a beginning.

But it's certainly a challenge, because when we do look at children, it's the safety of children that does come first. If in fact we're going to be looking at some success factors around our new initiative around prevention and family enhancement, it would certainly be to look at ways in which the family can stay intact, so that if there's an offender in the family, the female doesn't get victimized or punished because of that.

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

Ms. Michell, can you comment on it?

[Lisa Michell]

I just have one comment about who defines the best interests of the children. Who defines that? To me, it would be the grandmothers. In our community, it's the grandmothers who define the best interests of the children--not a child welfare system.

[Lisa Forbes]

I just wanted to say that I can speak to that as well. Respondents we heard from at our survey said that there need to be more beds in shelters for women who need to leave in the middle of the night, no questions asked, and without referrals from CFS. They need to have a place to go. There are some spaces like that, but there are nowhere near enough. Having more funding put towards shelters and safe houses is needed so that for women it can be “no questions asked, middle of the night, I need to be here to leave a violent situation”. We do not have enough spaces like that.

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

Thank you.

Do I have any more time, Madam Chair?