Status of Women Committee on Jan. 18th, 2011

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

I will call the meeting to order.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), this committee, the Standing Committee on the Status of Women, is going to study violence against aboriginal women. It's a unanimous decision by the committee to do this.

What we are looking at are the root causes of violence against aboriginal women. We're looking at the extent of violence. We're looking at the types of violence. And we're looking at ways in which to resolve that violence, because I think the committee believes that for a very, very long time various levels of government have done all kinds of things in a well-meaning way, but they have not achieved results.

We feel that by talking to aboriginal communities, and not only to leaders but to community groups and NGOs, we might be able to find a resolution that will work this time. When the committee finishes with its study, it will present a report, with recommendations, to the House of Commons, to Parliament itself. The government of the day will have 90 days within which to respond as to what it intends to do with regard to the report and the recommendations.

Now I'll begin. We have two groups today. From the Ending Violence Association of British Columbia, we have Tracy Porteous and Marilyn George, and we have Asia Czapska from Justice for Girls.

What we do normally is give each group ten minutes to present.

Tracy and Marilyn, you can decide if you want to split it five and five, or if one of you alone will present, because you will get an opportunity to answer questions later on.

Asia, of course, you have ten minutes.

Now, you don't have to use the whole ten minutes--I'm just telling you--and I will give you two-minute and one-minute indicators so that you can wrap it up and we can move on to the questions.

Now we'll begin. Who's going to speak for your group, Tracy?

[Tracy Porteous, Executive Director, Ending Violence Association of British Columbia]

Marilyn is speaking first. I'm going to follow her.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

All right.

Marilyn, are you going to do five minutes? Or are you just going to speak and then whatever's left over, Tracy will take...?

[A voice]

That's correct.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Just to be clear, you're not doing a five-five split.

Please begin, Marilyn. Welcome.

[Marilyn George, Representative, Outreach Services Coordinator, Smithers, British Columbia, Ending Violence Association of British Columbia]

Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Marilyn George. I am the outreach service coordinator in Smithers, B.C., which is almost the midway point on the Highway of Tears between Prince Rupert and Prince George, where, thus far, upwards of 19 women have either been killed or gone missing.

I'm also here today as an aboriginal women's representative to EVA BC, a provincial organization in B.C. that works on behalf of 240 programs located throughout the province that respond to violence against women.

Like the work of my provincial organization, EVA BC, my work is solely related to responding to violence against women, which includes domestic and sexual violence, child sexual abuse, and criminal harassment. I have been doing this kind of work for 14 years.

I am from Sik-e-dakh, or Glen Vowell, B.C., in the Hazelton area. I have travelled here from the north to speak with you about the shocking levels of violence being perpetrated against aboriginal women and girls here in B.C.

I don't think I need to speak about the kinds of violence or the extent of the violence experienced by aboriginal women. By now, through the many hearings you have attended already, you will have heard that over 90% of aboriginal women have either been sexually abused as girls, gang-raped as adolescents, or raped and/or beaten as adults. According to Statistics Canada's 2004 general social survey, rates of physical and sexual assault against aboriginal women are more than three times higher than against non-aboriginal women. Aboriginal women report experiencing more severe and potentially life-threatening forms of physical and sexual violence. Aboriginal women are almost seven times more likely to be murdered than non-aboriginal women. It's like walking around with an X on your back.

In B.C., as you know, our province has more missing and murdered women than anywhere else in Canada--160, according to the Sisters in Spirit report. This is a shocking and shameful reality that must be addressed without delay. I wish to thank you for caring enough to hold these hearings.

I wish to focus my talk with you today on what to do and where we should go from here. I wish first, though, to caution you very strongly against concluding these hearings with recommendations for more reports and more studies. Aboriginal people have been studied perhaps more than almost any other group, and the time for study on the subject has passed. The time for action is now.

Throughout the first decade of 2000, EVA BC, working in partnership with the Pacific Association of First Nations Women and BC Women's Hospital, held a number of meetings, bringing together aboriginal women from across the province to discuss the violence perpetrated against us and what needs to be done. During that time, numerous aboriginal women across B.C. came together for many meetings. We studied the issue very carefully. We looked at all the other studies and wrote two reports ourselves, the second of which I will share with you today. It is entitled “Researched to Death”, and I think the title alone speaks to what many aboriginal women feel today.

The three organizations that were involved concluded that the findings in previous reports were especially alarming given that the violence experienced by aboriginal women is believed to exceed that of any other group of women in Canada. As said by the late Patricia Monture-Angus, “For Aboriginal women, violence frequently begins in childhood and continues throughout adolescence into adulthood.”

That is the same for me and for most other aboriginal women I know. Violence in aboriginal women's lives is pervasive, and is compounded by violence and systemic and institutionalized racism as well as the effects of historical violence, such as residential schools, the Indian Act, and other legacies of colonization. In school, I grew up feeling looked down upon and punished for who I was. I experienced people feeling sorry for me and my sister, and punishing us for being “dirty little Indian girls”.

Violence in many aboriginal women's lives is a daily occurrence, for too many women have died either by murder or by their own hand.

Many governments have been willing to fund studies and reports, but very few have been willing to step up and fund the long-term solutions to the problem of violence against our women and girls. How many more women have to die before any concrete, long-term action is taken?

We need programs designed by us and for us. Anything short of that will not do. We need the kind of big action that will support an ongoing network of anti-violence services run by aboriginal women and for aboriginal women. All across B.C. and, in fact, in every province and territory in Canada, there are networks of services to respond to violence against women. Not all jurisdictions have enough of these services, but they exist, and they have been making a difference.

As I mentioned, I work at one of these services in Smithers and Hazelton. These anti-violence services are mostly what I would call “mainstream” services, that is, services set up by mainstream non-aboriginal social service agencies, women's agencies, and governments.

In looking at these services across the north of B.C., I can say that while many of these programs have aboriginal women on staff and are doing excellent work, and while many reach out to women on reserves, there are many women on reserve who either have no way of getting to town and who are not allowed to engage in these services because of the control their abusive partners have over them, or who don't trust the mainstream services, no matter how good they are.

Without getting into the history of colonialization, which I'm sure you are all familiar with, the issue of violence against aboriginal women on and off reserve is very complex. Many women want the security of confidentiality that comes with going to town for help; therefore, the existing mainstream services must have cross-cultural competencies and training and have aboriginal women on staff. This could be a funding stream you put in place that is for existing anti-violence services. You provide funding for an aboriginal counsellor-advocate position, but in addition, and most importantly, there should be anti-violence services run by aboriginal women and for aboriginal women in communities all across the nation.

I believe that this one-to-one support work, the advocacy, and the community education these programs would also do that will make the difference immediately and in the long term. The solutions that will work will come only from our women, and we need to empower them to act and to help others to speak out.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

Go ahead, Tracy.

[Tracy Porteous]

Well, we may be out of time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

No, no. Go ahead.

[Tracy Porteous]

I'm the executive director of the Ending Violence Association of B.C. and I'm here as an ally to Marilyn and other aboriginal women from across the province and the nation.

I just want to share with you a little bit about the second report that Marilyn was speaking about, which is called “Researched To Death”. A number of times over a period of three years, we brought together aboriginal women from across the province, and we consulted quite extensively about what aboriginal women were saying they wanted and needed in order to increase safety in their lives.

Aboriginal women have said to us over and over that one of the overarching issues is the extent to which racism is alive and in action in communities across our nation. I can attest to that, being a front-line worker for many years, and taking to the hospital women who had just been sexually assaulted, or intervening as an advocate in some way. Whenever I had for myself the privilege of working with an aboriginal woman, I can attest that they are treated differently by the system.... I think it is unconscionable that this still exists.

Therefore, we need to take action in addition to what Marilyn has said, in terms of anti-racism and anti-oppression training for police, for crowns, for all the systems in place, because I think in this day and age, in 2011, that isn't at all acceptable. In addition, we believe that training needs to be provided to aboriginal women before they have...let me just back up. Many anti-violence programs are searching for aboriginal women to hire, but all of the anti-violence programs in B.C. provide post-employment training, and there is no pre-employment training in the area of violence against women.

We've had discussions with Northern Lights College in Terrace. They're interested in providing courses on how to become an advocate or counsellor in anti-violence programs for women; it would be similar to the George Brown College program in Ontario. We believe it would really move things forward if we were able to support colleges and universities to provide courses so that aboriginal women are supported and prepared in order to be able to apply for some of these jobs that exist.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you, Tracy.

I would like to go to Asia. Asia, ten minutes.

[Asia Czapska, Advocacy Director, Justice for Girls]

Thank you for taking the time to hear us today.

My name is Asia Czapska. I am the advocacy director at Justice for Girls.

Justice for Girls is a B.C.-based non-profit that promotes social justice, freedom from violence, and equality for teen girls who live in poverty. We advocate for both individual girls and systemically, to challenge laws, policies, and practices that breach the rights of teen girls who are homeless and low-income.

Over the course of 11 years of our work, we have observed that aboriginal girls are disproportionately the victims of violent crimes. They are subjected to extreme sexual and physical violence and constitute a shocking number of murder victims in B.C.

Justice for Girls has monitored many cases of violence against aboriginal teen girls in this province. Actually, realizing that we have ten minutes, I might be able to talk to you about some of the specific cases that we've monitored and some of the criminal justice failures that we have witnessed in our work.

According to the Native Women's Association of Canada's Sisters in Spirit 2010 report, about one-fifth of the cases of missing and murdered aboriginal women across Canada are actually cases of missing and murdered aboriginal girls under the age of 19. Sisters in Spirit points out that a huge number of the women were actually young women. So if you count women under I think the age of 31, then it's a very large proportion of the women who were murdered and went missing. And as I said, a fifth were girls, just from the number that Sisters in Spirit has documented, which, as you know, is a small proportion of the actual number of missing and murdered women and girls.

Historical and current colonization of aboriginal peoples, lands, and families has created a situation in which aboriginal teenaged girls are one of the most oppressed groups in Canadian society. Aboriginal girls face the deepest poverty, extreme male violence in the form of sexual abuse, rape, racialized sexual assault and racism, as well as institutionalization in prisons, mental health institutions, and apprehension into alienating racist and abusive non-aboriginal child welfare placements, and homelessness when they escape or when they attempt to escape these abusive situations when they face more violence on the street.

The impact of these institutional and colonial assaults on indigenous girls is egregious. A disproportionate number of homeless girls, for example, are aboriginal. A recent report in B.C. in which over 400 aboriginal youth in nine communities were interviewed found that about 60% of aboriginal girls had experienced sexual violence.

In the last 30 years, according to police, at least 12 teenaged girls and young women, almost all of them aboriginal, have been murdered or went missing along central-northern B.C.'s Highway of Tears, as Marilyn had spoken about, within the RCMP's jurisdiction. According to community members, many more girls and women have gone missing.

The extreme violence that aboriginal girls face is one of the ways in which colonization continues to ravage the lives of indigenous girls in modern-day Canadian society. In every court case Justice for Girls has monitored over many years where multiple girls were being exploited by men, either most or all of the girls targeted were aboriginal. It has been our observation in the cases we have monitored that racism and sexism have motivated crimes against aboriginal girls. Aboriginal girls are targeted by violent non-aboriginal men partly because of the vulnerability created by the non-response of the police and the courts to violence against them.

Justice for Girls has become steadily more frustrated and enraged with utter failures of the criminal justice system to respond to violence against aboriginal teen girls in this province. In the last five years we have met with various provincial politicians, including the Attorney General, and, along with other groups, have called for a broad inquiry into the criminal justice system's failure to respond to violence against aboriginal women and girls in B.C. We continue to demand an inquiry into the criminal justice system's deeply inadequate response to violence against aboriginal girls and women.

More broadly, the Canadian government must specifically uphold the inherent rights of aboriginal girls and women and make every effort to remedy the consequences of colonization. In so doing, the Canadian government must follow and respect the leadership of the Native Women's Association of Canada and provincial or territorial indigenous and grassroots women's groups, such as, for example, in British Columbia, the Aboriginal Women's Action Network.

Given that I think I have a moment, I can talk to you about some of the cases we have been involved with monitoring.

As some of you probably know, in 2004 Prince George ex-judge David Ramsay pleaded guilty to sexual assault causing bodily harm, breach of trust, and three counts of purchasing sex, sexual exploitation of persons under the age of 18. All of Ramsay's victims were under 16, aboriginal, and girls. As you may know, he had presided over their cases in court. Some of them had child welfare cases before him, where he was the presiding judge telling them whether or not they could keep their children.

The RCMP began their investigation into Judge Ramsay's assaults in 1999. He was not removed from his judicial duties for three years. The crimes committed by Ramsay continued, according to the media, until 2001, so for two to three years after the investigation began. His judgments in cases of sexual abuse have never been reviewed, so decisions he made on cases of sexual violence before his court in communities in central-northern B.C. were never reviewed.

We asked the previous Attorney General, Wally Oppal, to review those cases. We asked and nothing was ever done about that. Anyway, that's just one of the cases we brought to his attention.

In the course of the investigation into Ramsay's crimes, it was revealed that Prince George police officers and a youth criminal defence lawyer had also been accused of abusing girls in that community. Despite many groups' calls for action, there has never been an independent investigation of the alleged police abuse of girls in Prince George. I think one of the reasons that young aboriginal women don't trust the police is because the police perpetrate some of the violence against them. That's important to point out.

In 2003, coming back to the lower mainland area, we monitored the case of sexual offender Martin Tremblay, who pleaded guilty to five counts of sexual assault against five aboriginal teen girls. He admitted to videotaping and assaulting the girls while they were unconscious in his home. He was never given a no-contact-with-children condition on his probation. Justice for Girls called for the crown to ask for no contact with children. This did not happen, and upon his release he impregnated a 14-year-old aboriginal girl. Since his release from prison, girls have reported that he has given them drugs, alcohol, and a place to party, and girls have reported waking up after lengthy durations of unconsciousness in states of undress and abandoned in various public locations.

In 2010 two teen girls, Martha Jackson Hernandez and her friend Kayla LaLonde, died on the same night from a lethal combination of drugs and alcohol. Martha's body was found in Tremblay's home, and there have never been charges against Tremblay.

Those are just some of the cases we've monitored. I guess I'll just leave it to you for questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

You had one minute left, but that's good. Thank you, Asia.

Now we're going to another part of the hearings. It's the question and answer part. This will be a seven-minute round. As you know, the members of this committee are from all parties, and they'll have seven minutes to ask and have the answer, so you have to be tight if you want to get as many questions as you want.

I will begin with Ms. Anita Neville, who is a Liberal.

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

First of all, let me thank the three of you for being here. I very much appreciate your presence.

You all touched on something that we've heard. Actually you've probably more than touched on something we've been skirting around and have been hearing about, both through the committee and I've travelled fairly extensively in western Canada on the issue of the missing and murdered aboriginal women. We're trying to gather information on systemic racism with systemic injustice, the lack of response by social welfare agencies, the lack of response or the inappropriate responses of the justice system, the court system, the police system.

In one community--not with the committee, but another community I was in--the women who had gathered there said to me that the women in that community do not feel they have protection, do not feel supported.

I'm raising this because, as you can hear by my colleague's response, we're horrified. Some of what you raised, Asia, I've heard before, most notably the circumstances of the judge's situation.

I guess my question to you is what is your best advice to us on the recommendations, recognizing that we are federal members of Parliament and there are jurisdictional issues? We can speak loudly, and I hope that the report we bring in will be a powerful report and a strong report. But what actions should be taken by the government when this report is put before Parliament? And what should they be doing right now? I'm horrified at the situation you've described. Perhaps the people from B.C. are familiar with it. I'm from Manitoba. Give us your best advice on how we should put forward our recommendations.

I open this to all three of you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Who wants to start?

Tracy.

[Tracy Porteous]

I think it's a really important question. I think there are some really concrete things you can do from a federal jurisdiction.

One of the ways systemic racism and sexism is manifesting itself that we're seeing across B.C. is in a really high number of women who have experienced abuse over a number of years being arrested themselves. We've been talking with the RCMP about this for about the last five years, asking them to take some action and to train their officers not to arrest women who are themselves victims. Obviously it can be difficult for police officers to arrive on a scene and there's a lot of emotion and stuff going on, but what we're seeing in the results is a lot of women being arrested and a lot of aboriginal women being arrested.

So we've asked the RCMP if we can look at the training that happens to new recruits in Regina, and that hasn't been made available to us.

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

Can I interrupt you for a moment?

[Tracy Porteous]

Please.

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

I asked a question this morning at the site visit we were at. I'm concerned about the number of women in jail. The number of aboriginal women who are in jail, as you are undoubtedly aware, are disproportionate to the population numbers. The question I asked this morning, and I don't know whether you can answer it, is do you have any numbers or figures on numbers of women who are in jail because they responded to violence--personal, systemic, however you want to describe it?

I don't want to divert you from the other answers either.

[Tracy Porteous]

If I may say one more thing in terms of what you can do, concrete recommendations from the perspective of justice and federal jurisdiction, restorative justice is a modality that a lot of justice system people are using to try to resolve crime and bring it back to the community's hands. We don't believe that it's a safe resolution for women who experience violence.

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

You do not believe?

[Tracy Porteous]

We do not believe.

There are potential uses for restorative justice if it's done correctly, but there are federal programs that are supported by the Department of the Solicitor General federally that.... I think that action needs to be taken immediately to look at whether there are standards and screening guidelines and other protections in place to ensure that women who have been victims of violence aren't revictimized in the process.

We could probably spend a lot more time talking about restorative justice. I won't say more about that today, but if you want to follow up with me at any point....

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

I may well.

Asia, can you respond a little?

[Asia Czapska]

Thank you.

On the numbers, as far as women who are in jail for responding to violence against them, I think the Elizabeth Fry Society nationally used to have those numbers. I don't know how updated they are now, but they used to have those, for sure.

If we're talking federally, then we're missing bodies of accountability. We are missing any kind of accountability in a lot of ways for the RCMP, for example. We need independent police oversight. That's one of the basic things. We need a body that is not police that will investigate violence by police, or misconduct or mishandling of cases, of investigations.

We also need an independent body that enforces the UN recommendations to Canada. We know that the CEDAW committee at the UN has made all kinds of recommendations for the status of aboriginal girls and women in Canada, the violence against aboriginal girls and women, and there is no federal body that is responsible for making those recommendations real.

There needs to be some kind of enforcement, basically, at different levels for the recommendations that, as Marilyn and Tracy have said, have already been made for so many years. There needs to be some kind of body that enforces those recommendations. For sure, there needs to be a department or a section of a department that enforces UN recommendations.

As we have said before, the federal government needs to listen to the Native Women's Association of Canada. And more than listening, they need to take direction from the Native Women's Association of Canada at this point. Also, I know it's provincial, but they need to go to the provincial and territorial aboriginal women's groups.

As far as criminalization, the same is true for aboriginal girls. Aboriginal girls are 40% to 50% of the girls in the prisons in B.C. When we used to do visits to girls in the prison in Burnaby, there would be times when every girl in the room was aboriginal when we were doing outreach. The way we view it, obviously we'd like girls not to be criminalized at all. A lot of the times young women are in jail to protect them from violence. If they're going to the downtown east side, for example, they'll have a condition: “Do not go into the downtown east side, because that's where they use drugs.” The police and the social workers think they're protecting them, but instead they're jailing those girls for their own protection, really, supposedly.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much. We've finished that round.

Now I will go to Madame Demers, from the Bloc Québécois.