Status of Women Committee on Jan. 14th, 2011

[Michelle Simson, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Typically, in this particular shelter you've referenced, what would the capacity be? Is it full capacity all of the time, or are there certain times when it would be...?

[Karen Kuzemczak]

What has happened is that due to the lack of housing in the remote communities, this shelter, the one I think you're talking about, has become another building in the community--

[Michelle Simson, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

It's like a community centre, as it were.

[Karen Kuzemczak]

--for the overcrowded homes. So it's not really just a women's shelter anymore. Now it's like more of a safe house, and it's more about the lack of housing. It provides extra beds. So it's not providing the service to the women, and it's not providing the safety and security to the women.

[Michelle Simson, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

So now you don't really have a sense of how many of those women there would be, since the shelter is now being used for various reasons--though its express purpose was to be for women who had to escape domestic violence--and everything has all been kind of wrapped up into one.

[Karen Kuzemczak]

That's right.

[Michelle Simson, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Would that be the biggest priority in terms of what you would like to see, that the federal government would provide more shelters, or would it be a way of funding more affordable housing that didn't involve shelters?

[Karen Kuzemczak]

I think there are more issues to worry about than just the shelter and the housing. I think even just providing resources and education and promoting awareness for these women are really big things.

[Michelle Simson, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

It does seem to me that we have to somehow break the cycle. We heard yesterday, for instance, when we were in Winnipeg, that we--and I'm referring to the government and not to your organizations--are not necessarily doing enough to break the cycle. We heard from some very young people, and I was appalled that once they have to go to high school at the age of 14, they're moved down from remote communities, virtually ripped out of their homes, just to get an education. To me that isn't an ideal situation. We're used to having university-age students. The failure rate in first-year university for a lot of them is horrendous, just because they leave home. Doing that at 14 seems crazy.

So how can we best help break the cycle, in terms of funding or services that the federal government could provide?

[Darlene Angeconeb]

There need to be more services within the first nation for everybody, not just for the women. The women suffer, and they return home eventually, and then the men go to jail, and then they return home. Then everybody ends up back in the same situation. So as far as resources go, the men also need to be treated. We also have an addictions problem in the north. So that's another factor that comes into play.

But for our organization, we do the workshops. We visit the communities. We develop resource materials, kits. We do the training for prevention of family violence. So we do a lot of this kind of work, but for the community to break that cycle you have to treat everybody.

[Michelle Simson, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

I imagine you do see things repeating. As you say, the women maybe go to a shelter and then they come back. The spouse has gone to jail, and you end up right back where you started. It's a bit of a revolving door for a lot of these families.

[Karen Kuzemczak]

And it starts at the top. It starts with the chief and council, and it just falls down. So it really needs to focus in up at the top as well, in the communities, with the chief and council, because of the political pull in the communities, with the family structures--

[Michelle Simson, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

So they have to be at the table as well?

[Karen Kuzemczak]

For sure.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Irene Mathyssen]

I'm sorry. That's seven minutes, but we'll have a five-minute round, I hope.

Madame Demers, please.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Thank you for allowing me to express myself in my own language. As you know, language and culture are essential parts of identity.

Chief Toulouse, Darlene and Karen, thank you very much for being here this morning. I am very moved by your testimonies. During our tour, we've seen that problems are the same everywhere. However, solutions cannot be the same because situations are very different.

You were saying that some of your organizations are not subsidized and do not receive core funding. You also said that you are not members of the Native Women's Association of Canada. Could you tell me why you don't receive core funding and why you are not members of that association?

I would like to talk about organizations. Most often, there are no roads to serve aboriginal communities. How do you manage? Do these communities have access to drinking water, quality food staples, basic school and medical services, core services that every community should have access to? If they don't have access to these types of services, violence can become more prevalent. It's even worse when people live in grinding poverty; violence is even more prevalent.

You talked about shelters and you said that we should also keep in mind the perpetrators. Are you referring to holistic centres that care for the entire family, both victims and perpetrators? Could you tell me more about that?

Chief Toulouse, I understood your first two recommendations, but I couldn't understand the third one because you were talking too fast. Could you repeat it please? Thank you for making clear recommendations. That's crucial.

Could you also go back to the policies that are doing more harm than good? You talked about bills and I would like you to go back to them.

I have a lot of questions and not enough time.

[Darlene Angeconeb]

In terms of the first one, we don't belong to the other women's organizations because we have different needs for our women. Our women are isolated in the north, and there's also the language. The way of living is different from that of somebody who lives in Sudbury or in more urban areas. That's why there was no need to join up with the other women's organizations.

There are so many questions there.

[Karen Kuzemczak]

With regard to your question about the resources for medical treatment, proper food.... There is medical treatment. There is a nursing station in the community. A physician visits once a month for a week, for sure, possibly two weeks. They often utilize the medevacs to bring people out of the communities to Sioux Lookout. If they can be treated there, they're treated there; if not, they're referred to a larger centre.

In terms of food, it is available in the communities. It's extremely expensive, very expensive. It costs $10 for a jug of juice this size and $6 for a carton of milk. It's extremely expensive. Fruits and vegetables are not fresh. Nothing is fresh. It costs $8 for a tray of grapes this big, and they're old; they're getting shrivelled. That is not adequate at all.

I'm trying to think of the other questions.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

What about drinking water?

[Karen Kuzemczak]

Yes. Some communities have a water treatment centre, and that is available to them.

I think Pikangikum does not have running water at this time.

Do they? I don't think so.

So some communities need to boil their water and it's not safe to drink, and other communities are fortunate and have a treatment centre.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

We were also talking about policies that do more harm than good.

[Darlene Angeconeb]

I mentioned children being in care. It takes a long time for a woman to get her children back, and a lot of times she can't. If she tries to go for legal services, the chief is usually a member of that board, so she can't go for legal help that way. A lot of lawyers in the area sometimes service that community, so most of the time the woman won't be able to do anything. That's what I'm saying about the....

Then there are the policies around the children in care. They want to keep the children in the community, and that's where the leadership gets involved. But it means that the women who may have to leave, or who want to leave, can't take their children with them.

So a lot of times the laws get in the way of children being able to be with their mothers.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Irene Mathyssen]

Thank you. We're at seven minutes.

Perhaps we can get back to you, Chief Toulouse. I know you had some things to say. I promise you, I will give you an opportunity.

Monsieur Rickford.

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Before I start, I'd like to acknowledge that we are on Lac Seul First Nation traditional territory. I thank you. And I'd like to thank our witnesses for coming today and for the important work they do.

Chief Toulouse, obviously you've had an opportunity to visit the great Kenora riding on a number of occasions for some exciting projects, which, by your own admission, represent important steps forward on some files that needed to be addressed. I appreciate your leadership and I thank you for that.

I'd like to welcome my colleagues to the great Kenora riding. At over 326,760 square kilometres, we're almost the size of Germany. We have 25 isolated first nations communities that have to be accessed by air. We have an additional 17 first nations communities here that lie in and around four municipalities along the Trans-Canada Highway, here in Sioux Lookout and Red Lake.

I would like to provide a little bit of personal history, which I think is important in the context of why I was looking forward to coming here. I have in fact been a nurse who has worked for more than eight years of my life in isolated first nations communities exclusively across Canada, six of them right here in the Kenora riding. I have worked in almost all of the nursing stations in the isolated first nations communities as a nurse, and subsequent to that as a lawyer actively involved in health policy, physician services, early childhood development, and maternal child health programs, which I continue to work on in my work as a parliamentarian.

So I have a deep appreciation for the structural issues and the definite things that make it different here as a region, as opposed to some of the bigger city centres that my colleagues have visited prior. Certainly, there are some similarities, especially with respect to the Winnipeg region, where I worked. I know that a number of people, for various reasons, have relocated to the city of Winnipeg, where some of those issues would also have arisen.

I appreciate, Karen, what you're saying. Having reviewed the literature that guides this committee, it appears to me, in a general kind of way, that there seems to be a preventative proactive piece to this that decreases the vulnerability of women. And that arises through programs, government, and interns. In the second round, I may speak to some of the other superordinate kinds of things that we've been working on here in the Kenora riding that go to education, health, police, and the Indian residential schools. I was a lawyer for more than 900 survivors right here in the riding just prior to being elected.

Indeed, we've set up a couple of programs in Women's Place Kenora, for example, including an intern. I believe you received some funding for an intern as well through our Status of Women program.

I'm just wondering what your comments are on the success, particularly, of the leadership project you run. We've funded different variations of that here and in other parts of the riding, Darlene, and they've been tremendously successful. I'm not prepared to say that these programs are the reason we're starting to see more and more women chiefs in our isolated and remote communities, but in fact we have seen a growth in that. I think that's important.

Could you take a minute or two to speak to the success of the women's leadership project?

[Darlene Angeconeb]

Deciding to work on women's leadership in the communities came out of the self-government workshops. We didn't want women's voices to be left behind in the self-government negotiations that the men were doing. When we did the workshops, leadership came out as being a very strong issue. We decided to see who was in leadership and how many. At one point, when we started, it was around 12%. The number now is 24%.