Hilla, I'm sorry.
Have you finished with your question, Madam Grewal?
Evidence of meeting #49 for Status of Women in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was women.
Evidence of meeting #49 for Status of Women in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was women.
1:35 p.m.
Liberal
1:35 p.m.
Conservative
1:35 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
All right. Just put your hand up if you want to speak, because I should really keep things flowing nicely so that one person doesn't answer all the questions.
Hilla, go ahead.
1:35 p.m.
Collective Member, Vancouver Rape Relief and Women's Shelter
I'm sorry. I come from a culture where you just speak.
It's true that all these services have been funded by Status of Women Canada, but in the last year Status of Women Canada refused and rejected all applications from women's groups and women's services who are for advocacy. It means there is no federal government funding for women's groups that want to advance the status of women or to advance women victims of male violence. Those services that have been implemented and funded cannot replace the work of women's groups seeking advocacy and equality.
1:35 p.m.
Program Manager, Crabtree Corner Community Program, YWCA of Vancouver
I'd just like to add that $28.7 million--if you look at the cost of running our programs--is a very small amount of money to be adequately supporting the staff in doing these programs. With that amount of money, it typically means that the woman herself is not going to be making a very high wage, and there wouldn't be many additional dollars for training or for resources that would go along with that kind of money. So even though it sounds like a large amount of money, when it's divided up, it isn't much money for the various programs.
1:35 p.m.
Aboriginal Outreach Coordinator and Youth Counsellor, Women Against Violence Against Women
I'd just like to say that I'm happy to hear that there is money coming forward for aboriginal women's programming. But I'd also like to add that both Vancouver Rape Relief and WAVAW, the only rape crisis centres in Vancouver, serving a very large population, have not received any funding. This is one of the major cities in Canada, so that speaks for itself, I think.
1:35 p.m.
Co-manager, Aboriginal Women's Program, Battered Women's Support Services
About those moneys, did you say they were for on-reserve or off-reserve groups?
1:35 p.m.
Co-manager, Aboriginal Women's Program, Battered Women's Support Services
So on-reserve; okay. There are many.
1:35 p.m.
Conservative
Nina Grewal Conservative Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
I have one more question. We have been hearing about violence against aboriginal women for only a few years now. Previously the problem seemed to exist only in the background.
Why is this the case? Why have we been hearing about this and talking about violence against aboriginal women for only almost half a dozen years now?
1:35 p.m.
Co-manager, Aboriginal Women's Program, Battered Women's Support Services
In terms of the $28 million or so that's been divvied up between over 500 bands across the nation, what I want to say is that those are the band-aid solutions that we don't want, right? We're looking for structural change, attitudinal change, socio-political change. That's what we're hoping the moneys would be invested into, as well as the shelters on reserve and off reserve.
January 18th, 2011 / 1:35 p.m.
Conservative
Nina Grewal Conservative Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
No, what I mean is that this problem has existed there for quite a long time. Why have we heard about this problem only for the past half a dozen years? This has been there for a long time.
1:35 p.m.
Co-manager, Aboriginal Women's Program, Battered Women's Support Services
What problem?
1:35 p.m.
Conservative
1:40 p.m.
Aboriginal Outreach Coordinator and Youth Counsellor, Women Against Violence Against Women
Well, there's been violence against aboriginal women in this country for 500 years. The reason behind why we are, I guess, only hearing about it....
I've heard about it my whole entire life, being an aboriginal woman, and my ancestors before me heard about it. I think there's been a huge blanket lifted off the eyes of some of our Canadian people. I think what needs to happen is that there needs to be mainstream education and curriculum in the high school education system that portrays a real portrait of colonization, the residential school and its legacy. This legacy is going to go on. People are going to suffer from the legacy of the residential school for a very long time.
Aboriginal women have been victims of violence for decades. This is not a new subject. Unfortunately, the media do not portray what's happening in our country. Most aboriginal issues are swept under the carpet. Most people don't hear about them. It's no secret that women were murdered and went missing in Vancouver, in this city where we sit right now, for decades. The police knew about it. People knew about it. Politicians knew about it. But it wasn't until a non-aboriginal woman went missing that something was done about it.
So once again, the responsibility rests within our government to take action and to let the citizens of this country know what's going on in this country with aboriginal people.
1:40 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Thank you, Darla.
We have 30 seconds left. I'll go to Hilla, and then I'll go back to Lisa.
1:40 p.m.
Collective Member, Vancouver Rape Relief and Women's Shelter
I've been here five years. I cannot speak to why it was not an issue on the government agenda before that. It's just ongoing colonizing and indifference towards aboriginal women. It's just a symptom.
1:40 p.m.
Co-manager, Aboriginal Women's Program, Battered Women's Support Services
You know, as far back as I remember.... I think I was born when Helen Betty Osborne went missing--the violence against an aboriginal woman in northern Manitoba. Then of course there was an inquiry as a result of it.
So violence against aboriginal women isn't new. It's always been on the agenda. I think it's gotten louder as a result of aboriginals standing up.
Prior to that, in terms of media attention and so forth, aboriginal peoples weren't getting that very much--unless you wanted to prove a stereotype--i.e., “Look how sick these people are. You think you've got it bad? Check out this.” There were those kinds of things and attitudes, right?
I just think that maybe the Conservative government is just now open to hearing about it, because violence against aboriginal women has always been on the agenda. It has always been very, very present. This is how—this is how—Canada was built. You had to oppress us. You had to kill us.
1:40 p.m.
Liberal
1:40 p.m.
NDP
Libby Davies NDP Vancouver East, BC
Thank you very much.
First of all, to all of you, thank you for coming today. You're major organizations in our city, so the work you do is really important.
I'm very tempted to continue the discussion on the funding side because I think we could spend hours on that, on the lack of advocacy funding and the lack of core support, but I also want to switch gears just so we get as many sorts of responses and issues into the record as possible.
But I did want to say that I really hear the sort of level of cynicism that there is, right? You know: another committee, another parliamentary hearing, and another report.... This goes on and on. I think that's partly our challenge. How do we deal with that? I mean, we're all people who want to see change, and yet we're dealing with this culture of denial. We're dealing with these huge systemic issues that just go on, and it's about how you tackle that. I just wanted to put that out there.
The question I have--because a number of you raised it--is about the relationship with law enforcement, because that is so important. It's not the only thing, but in every single group that I've ever talked with about violence against women, particularly aboriginal women, the police come up: how they respond, how they don't respond.... For sure, there are good individual officers out there. We've met them. There are individual people within those systems who are doing their very best. But there is a bigger issue about law enforcement, and we do have a couple of fairly senior RCMP officers speaking later, so we will have an opportunity to actually question them.
There's a question I have for you, though. You guys are very active in Vancouver. What kind of official relationship do you have with the police? Is there any sort of ongoing process whereby you can actually bring forward issues of an overall nature about how law enforcement is done to deal with this whole issue of women who are already victims being re-victimized, in effect, or being charged with whatever because they're poor, because they're sex workers, or whatever their situation?
Is there any relationship you have? Now, you're all in Vancouver, so I presume that mostly it would be with the Vancouver Police Department, and of course outside Vancouver it would be the RCMP, but it's just such an important element in what we're talking about, the relationship with law enforcement overall. I just wonder if (a) you have any experience, and (b) if you have any suggestions about what you want to see changed that we can focus on, pick up, put in the report, and make sure we follow up on.