Thank you very much for asking me to be here; I'm very honoured. I hope I can give you some good recommendations.
As you know, I'm the executive director of a 24-bed crisis home. With the women who come through the shelter, what we see is generational violence. What we see are very vulnerable aboriginal women, and poverty, extreme poverty. Those are just some of the issues that I will speak about, because I'm on such a time limit here.
We see a lot of recidivism--generational, of course. The residential school system of course plays a big role in all of that. There's a lack of parenting skills, but not no parenting skills, and I will never say that; I believe the women have very good parenting skills, considering, so I give them a lot of credit. They're very, very strong women. However, the system certainly needs to be improved in some areas to help the women and children.
One of the first recommendations I want to bring forward is about the disparity in funding dollars between INAC shelters and the provincially funded shelters. There's a huge disparity. I know that the dollars are also funded from the bands or chiefs, and I do know that there are probably administration charges there. I have heard that they can be as high as 30%. I don't know that for sure. That's just some of what I have been told. This means, of course, that those dollars are then taken away from the women and children and the shelters. So what I would like to see and what I recommend is that those dollars be flowed directly to the shelters.
Another issue that concerns me is the low amount or lack of funding dollars for the aboriginal and off-reserve pre- and post-natal program as well as the CAPC program, which is for children zero to six years old. We barely make it: we almost beg, borrow, and steal in order to run those programs. We have people who are very capable of running those programs and want to do a very good job, but they're very limited in what they can afford to do.
The other one is the NADA program and its very low, low funding dollars: $35,000 a year to run the program. That's supposed to be considered a full-time position. You can't do it. For the worker we have now, we very fortunately were able to swing her into another piece of work so that we can try to pay her a decent wage, yet this program asks for certification for a person to be able to do it. Well, if you want somebody with certification in those types of qualities, then we need to be able to pay a comparable salary or wage, and we also need more dollars to sufficiently run these programs.
On homelessness, I'd like to see forgiveness in the housing arrears. I'd like to see the arrears alleviated in some of the government housing, because it means that if a woman cannot pay her arrears, she is not allowed to go into the housing. Those arrears have to be paid and can be anywhere from $800 to $1,500. That means homelessness. Now we get to that issue, because women can't afford to go into homes, or if they can afford to go into private housing, it means their entire cheque goes towards that. Again, that amounts to poverty, and it also can amount to child welfare agencies coming in, because it seems like she is inadequate and is not able to take care of her children: there's no food in the fridge, there's no warm clothing, etc. On it goes.
I would like to see more funding dollars in terms of mental health and addiction training--concurrent disorders--because right now in the shelters that is exactly what we are seeing, with very extreme mental health issues that put the entire shelter at risk.
Homelessness, of course, is another big piece for aboriginal women. They're out on the street. They have no place to go. They don't fit our mandate, unfortunately.
I'm telling you, we coach them sometimes to tell us they've been abused, because we don't want them out on the street. If that means I have to coach her to be able to say what I need to hear to get her in, I will do that. In the meantime, that doesn't solve her issue; it's only for a short period of time.
We need some long-term programs for homelessness. We need single units in particular, because we have some huge difficulties attempting to find apartments for single women. We probably need more funding and ongoing funding dollars for violence prevention work, initiatives for the aboriginal men's programs. I won't attempt to say the aboriginal name; although I am aboriginal, I cannot pronounce it. But “I Am a Kind Man” in particular is a wonderful program. We do run some programs here in Thunder Bay for men, and I would like to see some of the shelter workers and the shelters get involved in that work, which is our work as well. We want to be able to work holistically. Coming from a shelter, we work with the women and children, but we don't have the funding dollars to be able to work with the men, and we would like to do that. So increase the funding dollars for that, more funding dollars for that.
We'd also like support and dollars for the aboriginal women's crisis line. I have attended two meetings so far, and I'm hoping to see the fruits of the labour that went into that.