Status of Women Committee on Jan. 18th, 2011

[Michelle Corfield]

I don't know if there's any jump-off point in the sense that at a certain point you give up. But I know from work I've done previously and from different projects, when we start looking at the health and well-being of the children and we work with the young families and the young teenagers, we make change, right? Because we're working with everybody--boys and girls. That's where I think we can make the best headway and have the greatest impact. I say that in the sense that in the work I've done, I've seen it in the reduction of suicide in youth.

I've seen a change when we work with the really young, but we can't ignore what's going on. That's what I mean about a whole person. We have to look after them spiritually, emotionally, physically, and mentally, from birth to death, lifelong, and we have to find ways to create the greatest impact throughout that spectrum in any place we live or any place we find our women or our children.

I don't know if there's a jump-off point, but Shelagh is probably better....

[Sharon McIvor, As an Individual]

As Shelagh said earlier, we did a tour of the province and talked to people who were front-line workers and who worked mainly with the women who were caught up in the welfare cycle. Without help, they can't get out.

We found that the cycle included the apprehension of children. Once the children were gone, that was the death knell to the family. There is no way the women can get them back, because once they're gone, the social assistance is cut and the housing they need to bring them back isn't available. So no matter what they do, those kids are gone. What happens then is that the mom usually goes into a cycle that results in her own destruction.

If you can get them before the kids go...but given the social assistance, the support, the cutting of all the programs, that's highly unlikely. We found, when we toured the province, that there were situations where the children were being apprehended at birth as well. So once they'd gone through it with the children they had, they were taken away. If they became pregnant again, then the welfare worker was hovering at birth. They would give orders to the hospital to say that the child was not to be released. They would swoop in and take the child, and that one wouldn't come back either.

The other thing that was quite prominent in our consultations was that the welfare rate...if you remove the child from the home.... There is a policy that says that if you can leave the child within the community, within the extended family, that's the preference, especially with aboriginal children. The rate for a child in a home of a relative is about half of what it is for a child in the home of a foster parent who is not related. So it doesn't reflect the desire to keep the family together.

The situation is much larger than just putting some money into it, or putting some programs in it. The situation we're talking about is systemic, and we can look at the individual little pieces, but something larger has to happen. A piece of it I think is the education of people like you who actually are in a position to make some difference. If you don't understand what's going on down there on the ground and you're making decisions over welfare rates and all of that, I can't see a way out.

[The Acting Chair, Liberal, Anita Neville]

Thank you.

Nicole.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

You are familiar with the bill on matrimonial rights. Do you think that, if this bill were adopted as it is currently drafted, it would help women in aboriginal communities? Could you specify how it would or would not be beneficial to them.

[Michelle Corfield]

I haven't read the latest draft, I'm sorry.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

It has not changed.

[Michelle Corfield]

I'm embarrassed that I haven't. I'm sorry. I can't give you an honest answer.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

What do you think about it, Sharon?

[Sharon McIvor]

Actually, this is one of the things I've been working on for the last 30 years as well.

Any draft legislation that puts the rights of individual women below those of the band is not good for women. I know this from experience. I've worked extensively when culture is being used to make sure that women's equality rights are not being respected. So every time you say, “We'll pick you out of the regular rights protection”, like you have and Hedy would have, and you separate that out....

There's solid legislation in place; you know you have a mechanism in place that you can use to address the inequity. And the legislation was put there for a reason. That's why it was put there. Somehow in aboriginal communities, the government says, “Well, the culture is different, so these men”—and they're primarily men—“can continue to abuse the women and disrespect their rights, because we'll give them the cultural right to do that.” The legislation that has been put together on matrimonial property, on taking care of property on reserve, has all of that built into it. As long as it's there, the women will suffer, I can tell you that.

We've done a project on that, we've done research, and we've found that on reserve, about 90% of the land was registered to men. That was a policy of the government, the patriarchal policy of the government, that the women couldn't be on the title. Of the 5% or 8% or 10% of women who are on the title, they got it from their father, who did not have a son. That's how they got their name on the title. So if you address it in an equal way, like the family legislation across the provinces, it basically says that on separation, the land is deemed to be 50-50, regardless of whose name it's in. And then there's a mechanism for challenging that.

That's not the reality with the legislation. I think I was there when they threw the first one out—I don't know how many years ago—because of that.

The federal government today continues to tell us, as aboriginal women, that they will subject our basic human rights to somebody else's say-so, to somebody else's consent.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Do you intend to launch a campaign in order to inform women in aboriginal communities that this bill is not in their best interests? We are actually getting e-mails and letters from aboriginal communities asking us to vote in favour of the bill.

[Sharon McIvor]

I wasn't able to get to the committee when it was being considered by the Senate. I wasn't able to go. I really have a lot on my plate.

Just because you asked the question, I know enough about it to say that it's not in women's best interests. But I have no intention of taking it any further than that, as I have too much on my plate.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

So you know that the bill will probably be passed if you do nothing about it.

[Sharon McIvor]

Actually, I have done a lot about a lot of bills, and they've passed anyway.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Sharon McIvor]

So it's not much of a threat to me now. It's just something that I don't have time to address in a really comprehensive way.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Now we go to Ms. Davies for the NDP.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

I think that's very honest of you. It's like the reality of us saying, “Are you going to start a campaign to stop something we started?” This damned bill was first of all not supported, and then it was supported. It has gone back and forth. I think your answer is totally honest to say that somebody is going to take it on. Maybe we'll go back now with some new information and see what we can do. I know that our critic, Jean Crowder, has been staying in very close contact with people on the bill, from a feminist perspective. Anyway, your response was very helpful.

I want to come back to the issue of an accountability mechanism. I think this is so critical, and if we can't get it right in terms of follow-up, follow-through, and making real progress--no matter who the government is--then we're just doomed to another politically vicious cycle, I guess we could call it.

I want to come back to you, Shelagh, because you said we need an accountability mechanism that is cross-jurisdictional. I don't know how we'd do that. I'm not even sure I know what you mean. Maybe you can spell that out some more, because I think it's so important to have something in this report that gives us a road map on how we have to do the follow-up on these recommendations, relating it back to CEDAW and on and on. Maybe you can illuminate that a bit more.

[Shelagh Day]

Okay.

When recommendations come back that have to do with human rights, at least the treaty bodies are clear--Canada doesn't seem to be--that different levels of government may be responsible for the implementation of these rights.

For example, let's say we were genuinely going to implement recommendations that have been made to Canada about social assistance. The treaty bodies have already said it is inadequate and there should be national standards for social assistance across the country, so we don't have huge variations from one jurisdiction to another and we have some adequate standard for everyone. That requires cooperation between the federal government and the provincial and territorial governments to get standards in place that will be acceptable, to get implementation, and to get the right amount of money transferred from the federal government to the provinces and territories to do that. We need to have interaction between the federal, provincial, and territorial governments that's actually working on these issues.

Part of what's so frustrating is that we have a kind of breakdown in that relationship, so the provincial governments blame the federal government and the federal government says it's the jurisdiction of the provincial governments. It happens particularly when things have to do with aboriginal women and girls.

We can't seem to make our levels of government mesh adequately. Unfortunately, I think they're using that to say they can't do anything about these very basic human rights issues. So we've been saying that we need to have an implementation mechanism or accountability mechanism that can bring federal, provincial, and territorial governments together, not issue by issue, because that would break it up too much--to respond to you, Hedy--but with some sense that this is the meat that has come back from treaty bodies. These are the human rights flaws we have, failures, places where we're falling down. We need to have some genuine collaboration between our levels of government in order to deal with this.

Is the federation of the provinces, or whatever we call it these days.... There was a point at which I thought the social union framework agreement would give us that kind of mechanism. It has to be at such a high level that we're actually dealing with people who have the clout or the power to do something. We don't want this federal-provincial-territorial committee of officials responsible for human rights to have no power.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Can I just ask you one thing? Do you think it would make a difference, in that implementation mechanism for federal-provincial-territorial if part of the mechanism also included civil society?

[Shelagh Day]

Absolutely I think that. In fact we--

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

It wouldn't be just governments dealing with governments--

[Shelagh Day]

That's absolutely right.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

--but there would be an element of citizens being at the table, to follow--

[Shelagh Day]

Yes: civil society's direct participation.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

You know, I think this is going to be a very important thing for the public inquiry on missing women.