Status of Women Committee on Jan. 18th, 2011

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

You would like there to be more women in positions of power, right?

[Nancy Cameron]

Yes, absolutely: more women in positions of power, more women who have more of a women's voice, and, for those women who are sitting in those positions, that the solidarity is there as well in terms of how they're viewing the issue and how they're looking systemically at how these issues came about.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Leslie.

[Leslie Wilkin, Violence Prevention Worker, Crabtree Corner Community Program, YWCA of Vancouver]

This is the first time I'm speaking. I apologize for coming in late.

In terms of women joining in solidarity to end violence, I was just going to add that when we talk about the issue of violence against aboriginal women, the leadership has to come from aboriginal women themselves. White women can join as allies and support that, but they cannot take over the movement and cannot take over the activism, because historically that has happened as well.

Diluting the aboriginal perspective and the needs that aboriginal women are putting forward is not productive to the goal of ending oppression and racism, so non-aboriginal women would stand in that solidarity but would not be the leaders of that advocacy. It's about sitting on panels like this and really deferring that expertise to the aboriginal women themselves and to what they would like to see happen.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

We now have to move on to Ms. Davies for the NDP.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you.

Just briefly coming back to the question about an apology and what that means, I do think that probably we have an understanding about the systemic nature of violence. There are individual acts of violence, but I think we understand that it comes from a systemic base, so maybe we need to view an apology in that way as well.

To verbalize an apology and to have a formal thing is very important, but it has to be ongoing. I think that's what you're saying to us today: that an apology has to be acted out in terms of the programs, the resources, the laws, the ways things are...to deal with the inequalities, right? So it's also systemic.

Really, the question I have, because we're coming to the end of this session, is this: how do you feel about the future? Are you at a point where you feel that although things are pretty bad, there is a greater awareness, and therefore you feel optimistic about what might happen, say, within the next decade, whatever governments we're dealing with, whether they're civic, provincial or federal? Or are you actually feeling that it's going to get worse? I'm just very curious to know what your own sense is.

We're here and now; we understand the reality of what here and now is. But how do you yourselves see what the future might be in terms of how it's tough but it's going to get better because there is greater awareness? Or is it that we're going to sink down still more and things are going to get worse before they get better?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

Darla.

[Darla Laughlin]

Personally, I feel unsure about the future. Right now, with the apology...and I say that term loosely because to me an apology speaks to what happened and why, and no one told us why they did this. It wasn't spoken for, so I have a hard time with the apology, as do many aboriginal people I know.

However, with that apology comes reclamation, I guess you could say; there's supposed to be some kind of reconciliation happening. I wonder what that reconciliation is going to take; it took hundreds of years to get to the apology. So for me and in aboriginal circles everywhere I go, I think the question is, okay, we said we're sorry, here's 50 bucks, shut up now.... That's really the question. Is there going to be real sustainable programming that is going to heal the next seven generations of people who are coming...?

As we've spoken about, the abuses that are entrenched now in aboriginal families and that were placed there strategically are well ingrained. It's going to take a lot to undo...to decolonize the aboriginal people of this country. Decolonizing is a huge piece of work and we don't have nearly enough workers. We don't have enough funding. What we're dealing with now isn't even a drop in the bucket compared to what we're going to need to heal the young people and their families, to create healthy relationships, and young people who are fighting systemic violence that has been passed down generation after generation.... It's a huge piece of work.

So what do I see in the future? I guess that all depends on what all of you have to give and offer to the aboriginal people of this country and whether or not that commitment is true, is steadfast, and goes on for the long haul.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

Lisa.

[Lisa Yellow-Quill]

I have hope. I really believe in our people, aboriginal people, and I see them moving forward. I don't see us and don't want us to be these people living within programs, and program to program, sitting here at the table and asking for money all the time. That's not who we are. That shouldn't be. We weren't put here by the one who gives life to be asking for money from somebody else.

We have hope. I see, with a lot of the work we've done at the grassroots level, at different levels, that there's some movement, but the issues, of course, are always there. I always try to remember that the stronger we get the stronger the opposition gets too.

So I keep that in mind, but I'm really hopeful, because I know that I'm going strong in this, in my indigeneity, in my feminist indigeneity, in this movement, and that's still alive. So, yes, I have hope. I'm very hopeful.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you, Lisa.

Now we have finished this round. I'm sorry, but that went to six minutes. We're doing five minutes, guys. I'm really trying to give leeway here, but I can't keep adding minutes all the time. I can see my next panel sitting out there, ready to come on.

Before we move to see if we can do a third round, which I doubt very much we can do.... I sometimes don't ask questions, because if I think the answers are being given, I don't necessarily intervene, but there was a lot said at this panel that I want to reflect on, and maybe more so than by asking a question.

We've been across this country. If we've heard one thing over and over, we've heard that the root causes of violence stem originally from colonization. I heard Nicole asking if you can tell us of any country that's better. Well, in 1997 when Canada--and I was the minister in charge at the time--took to the Santiago conference the issue of aboriginal people and their rights as peoples, not population demographics, there was a lot of pushback from Latin American countries that also are “new world countries” and therefore have been colonizing their people.

We've seen Australia. We've visited. We've heard from New Zealand and from the Sami, etc. While I think there is a sense...and I believe you have spoken very movingly about the continuing systemic discrimination. It is systemic, and therefore, apologies are fine and wonderful, I think, but if you don't have the system changing...and the institutions of the system have to change. I have heard very moving testimony across this country that those systems have not changed, that the nice words aren't followed by respect, by empowerment, and by allowing us to move away from the sense that aboriginal people are some second class of people, some savage groups who are no longer capable of living with us and who are stereotyped as being all of the things you hear people stereotyping aboriginal people as--and who were here over 40,000 years before the colonials came.

So you are absolutely right, and I want you to know that this committee has heard from all over this country the testimony that you do not want to be patronized anymore; that you don't want people to study the issue anymore; that you don't want people to say okay, thank you, and then pat you on the head and move on; that it's going to take generations for the intergenerational harm to heal; and that healing does not occur right away. I have heard all of that, and I just want you to know that it has been extremely moving for many of us who have been here and for all of us who have heard it.

If the political will around this table will have effect, I can tell you that for the members--whether they are people who have been on the committee for a long time or people who have moved into the committee to participate just temporarily--that message in many instances has been given. But you are absolutely right: political will is what is necessary to change things. That is something this committee has always been very clear on in regard to what we want to say, but political will is what it's about at the end of the day. So for your issue of hope, I think the hope will have to be within the strength of our report and the political will to ensure the report is listened to.

I want to thank you very much for coming.

Lisa, you reminded me at the very beginning--you didn't actually say it to me, but you reminded me--that we want to thank the Coast Salish people for allowing us to meet here today on their territory.

Thank you very much to those of you who have come here today and for your very frank discussion.

Before you leave, we could do one more three-minute round if you want to say anything, but it means that I'm going to be brutal about the three minutes. All right?

Okay, I'm hearing....

[A voice]

[Inaudible--Editor]

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

If we do that, though, we don't have a lot of time, so why don't we suspend? For two minutes?

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Order.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), this committee, the status of women committee, is studying violence against aboriginal women. In this study we have a parliamentary committee that is made up of members of all political parties. There are four political parties here. We are non-partisan in many ways, in which we really try to come together and as Parliament resolve some of the issues that we believe need to be resolved.

What we're looking at is the fact that violence against aboriginal women has been going on now for a long time, and that to be kind, with the best intentions of everyone....

Everyone has put various efforts into this--governments, institutions, and community groups. We haven't really been able to make a difference, and it continues, so we want you to talk to us a little bit about the root causes, about the extent and the nature of the different types of violence against aboriginal peoples.

We have been going into reserves. We've been going into isolated areas. We've also been going into cities. We know that the forms of violence against aboriginal women in isolated areas, on reserve, and in the cities have actually different elements to them and may require very different solutions. So we're also asking you for solutions. We hope you know that you can speak freely and that we will listen. We want you to be as frank as you possibly can.

We will begin with a presentation of five minutes from each person. I will give you a two-minute signal and then a one-minute signal so that you can wrap up. I know you might think that in five minutes you won't have time to say all your things, but that can be fleshed out within the question and answer period. You will get an opportunity, as we do in question period in the House, not to answer the question but to make sure you get your point in. You can at least make up for the time if you don't get any of the statements you need to make.

We do not yet have anyone from the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs. They were supposed to be here today. If they come late, we will welcome them and have them make their statement to us.

I just wanted to recognize in the audience Mabel Todd. Mabel is 76, and she was part of the Walk4Justice. She walked across Canada.

Mabel, would you stand up and let us all honour you?

[Applause]

Thank you very much for gracing us with your presence today. We're honoured to have you here.

We also want to thank the Coast Salish peoples for allowing us to be able to have this meeting on their territory.

I'll begin with Russell Wallace, Warriors Against Violence Society.

I want to thank you, Mr. Wallace, because we don't often see a lot of men coming to speak at these issues. I know that men care, but it would sometimes be really nice to make sure that they want to stand up and be counted. So thank you for coming.

You have five minutes, so please begin. I'll give you a signal at two minutes and then at one.

[Russell Wallace, Vice-President, Board of Directors, Warriors Against Violence Society]

All right. Thank you for having me.

Huy chexw a, ha7lh kwakwayel. Welcome.

I sit on the board of directors for Warriors Against Violence. Actually, I got wrangled into this at the last minute, so please bear with me: I might not have all the facts on hand.

Warriors Against Violence started out in the late 1990s with Daniel Parker and Joseph Fossella. It grew out of a need in the community for men to gather together and talk about the violence that they were perpetuating themselves.

Both Daniel and Joe were abusive in their relationships before, and they came to a point where they realized they couldn't continue on, and their wives wouldn't let them, so they came together. They went through programs like Change of Seasons. In that, there was cultural sensitivity to finding ways of ending the violence. So after all these other programs finished, they formed Warriors and decided they had to keep programs going on for men.

Warriors Against Violence gathers together. One of the things they do is improve awareness through education, health promotion, and training. They also have the ability to provide counselling and support as needed. They train participants to be facilitators themselves, because since we are based in Vancouver, out of the Kiwassa Neighbourhood House, a lot of times facilitators are asked to go to different communities, a lot of remote communities. They found that the need to train facilitators was there, so they had programs through the Native Education College and also programs within Warriors.

Warriors encourages participants to respect traditional perspectives. The men gather together at a sweat lodge or they gather together to sing. These are ways to find, in some ways, a spiritual connection, but also a bonding together of men that you don't find in the city.

Warriors also believes in confronting violence through culture. That is like finding traditional responsibilities of men in the community and realizing that violence isn't one of the responsibilities we have, so we should end that.

We also believe that first nations women and children are basically held hostage by the current values and beliefs of the dominant society. That basically means there are different types of violence against women, and one of them is social, economic, and systemic violence. A lot of the women who come to the program talk about how social workers have threatened them that under certain circumstances their kids are going to be taken away. We encourage the women to document anything of that nature, and we provide support when needed.

We also want to address all the issues that affect and damage first nations families and communities, whether alcoholism, drug abuse, sexual abuse...a lot of the social problems that have happened. There are also the effects of residential schools on generations afterward.

We meet together. It started out as a men's program, but we've expanded to include women, and now we have a youth program. The youth program is also getting younger and younger, so we're providing cultural events for the youth. Last weekend, for example, the youth went out and watched some eagles. A lot of youth in the city have no access to go to the land, so this is one way for them to see eagles in their natural environment.

We have also started specifically a women only program. So we provide the family program, the women's program, and the youth program, and we meet three times a week.

I believe that's all I have to say.

Thank you for your time.

Kukwstum'ckacw.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Now I would like to ask Jane Miller-Ashton from Kwantlen Polytechnic University to speak.

Jane, welcome. You have five minutes.

[Prof. Jane Miller-Ashton, Professor, Criminology Department, Kwantlen Polytechnic University, As an Individual]

Thank you.

I want to correct this right away, because someone thinks a criminologist has arrived; it's my second career. I don't think I'm here in my criminology capacity, although I am teaching in areas related to the subject matter we're talking about today.

I think it's my experience...33 years with the criminal justice system, and my volunteer work now, both with the residential schools dispute resolution process and as a member of the Keepers of the Vision for the healing lodge for Corrections Canada and Okimaw Ohci in southwest Saskatchewan. The main files I looked after with CSC were related to aboriginal women, women in the corrections system, victims, and restorative justice.

That's just by way of background so that she doesn't hit me with the criminologist questions. I'm not self-identifying as an academic. I try to bring to my students the real-life experiences I've had in 33 years in this type of work, just to balance some of the academic. Of course the academic is important, but it's probably not my strength area.

Unexpectedly last year on January 3, my 60th birthday, an aboriginal woman who I knew in prison and had reconnected with in the community showed up on my doorstep with her young baby. She asked if my husband and I would take her young child while she sought in-patient treatment.

I have to start there, because my year has been about on-the-ground experiencing what I felt I knew, and did know, in many ways, through the work I've done over the years as a volunteer and as a paid employee of the government. But the last year has just affirmed for me the state that we are in, the brokenness of our system.

I don't want to imply that there are not good people working in the system. I was one of those people who tried hard, who tried my best, when I was in federal government. And I've seen over the last year.... We're now on our fourth worker. She's as lovely as the other three, and trying her best, but there are many, many struggles.

We did take this young child in so that this mom could try to rebuild from an addiction problem. Her history, if I were to describe it, would be familiar to you, probably, from what you've been hearing as you've travelled the country. My fellow witnesses today would probably say that her story sounds much like the stories that we know are tied up with the complex situation of violence against aboriginal women. Her background was violent as a child. She then inflicted violence on others, and she hurt herself as well. She spent most of her life in provincial, juvenile, and federal facilities. She's been crime-free since she got out a few years ago, but has struggled with the challenges of re-entry.

That's why I've decided to focus just a few recommendations around re-entry, because it's such a big topic that you're tackling, and I know that we're one of your last stops. You've heard it. You've heard from experts that have far more experience and expertise than I, so I just wanted to focus a little bit out of that lived experience this year and also my experience at the back end of the criminal justice system.

Recently I came across an aboriginal model called Circle of Courage, whose principles on native American child development became the basis for a book called Reclaiming Youth at Risk: Our Hope for the Future, written by a native American called Martin Brokenleg and others. It began a movement that's showing success in working with young aboriginal youth at risk. I'd like to use its principles to frame a few recommendations that I'm just going to make about the back end of the system and aboriginal women coming out of the prison system.

The four principles are belonging, mastery, independence, and generosity. Belonging is the organizing principle in partnership cultures such as first nations. Mr. Brokenleg says that in an aboriginal culture, one feels significant by belonging, whereas in dominating cultures, one often gains significance by standing out from others, often seen as the hyper-individualism of our western society.

That makes me think of how when aboriginal women are returning to the community, they need the chance to create a sense of belonging to their culture and to the larger society that, through long incarceration, has become unfamiliar and unfriendly to them. They can't create places of belonging unless the larger society is welcoming. This means to me that a public that understands that a system of graduated release from prison is a key component of successful re-entry is important, as is a public that can shed its fear and its us/them mentality.

Collectively as citizens we need to have the courage to be more hospitable. As we do that, we will strengthen our bonds of community and our confidence to prevent crime in the first place.

Education programs are essential to this end. The media should be a major target of such campaigns so that they can educate others.

I can remember being on the planning committee for a conference called “Prison, Parole and the Media”. One of the aboriginal women prisoners we invited to be part of the planning committee said to one of the journalists, also a planning committee member, “I'm getting out on parole in a few weeks. Can you tell me if it's really as bad out there as your headlines suggest?”

One of the key ideas of the task force on federally sentenced women was that every woman should have a community support worker from the beginning of her sentence to the end of her sentence.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Jane, I'm going to have to ask you to wrap up. You're now at six minutes.

[Prof. Jane Miller-Ashton]

I'll stop right there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

We can flesh out the other parts--the mastery, and independence, etc.--in our questions.

[Prof. Jane Miller-Ashton]

Excellent. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

Now I'm going to go to Beverley Jacobs, former president of the Native Women's Association of Canada.

We're honoured, Bev, that you're here, and we welcome you.

[Beverley Jacobs, Former President of the Native Women's Association of Canada, As an Individual]

Thank you very much.

[Witness speaks in Mohawk]

I'm speaking to you in my language, Mohawk, from the Six Nations of the Grand River territory, and I told you my real name, which is Gowehgyuseh, which means “she's visiting”.

This presentation is actually dedicated to my cousin Tashina, who was missing and was found murdered in my own community. Her body was found in a shallow grave in my own community of Six Nations. She was also pregnant, and this is dedicated to her unborn child, to him as well. She had already called him Tucker.

Also, this presentation is dedicated to all of the missing and murdered aboriginal women in this country, their unborn children, their children, and their mothers, fathers, and their families. I have come to know many of these families across Canada. I still have very close relationships with them. I pray continually for justice for those who are still waiting for their loved ones to come home, or those families like ours who had to bury loved ones as a result of horrific murder and horrific violence.

I also am well aware of violence. I'm a survivor of violence as a child, as a young girl, and as a young woman. But I'm a survivor of violence, and I devote the rest of my life to ending violence in all forms.

I wanted to come here because the families I have been communicating with and still advocate for have concerns about this committee. It's about the mandate and the fact that there have been so many studies. The royal commission, inquiries, reports, Aboriginal Healing Foundation reports, women's organizations, aboriginal women's organizations, aboriginal organizations, inquiry reports, research reports, the Stolen Sisters report, the Sisters in Spirit report--all of them talk about root causes. All of them talk about the nature and the extent of the violence that's occurring on reserve and off reserve, in cities and towns and rural communities.

So we know there have already been millions of dollars poured into these research studies and thousands of recommendations that need to be implemented. How much did it cost for this committee to do this study? We don't need another study. We need action.

I believe that the House of Commons study and its process are creating more silence for aboriginal women, and this silence is violent.

Let me explain. The families of the missing and murdered were and are unaware of this process. When they did find out, they were unaware of the process to actually present. When they did attend some of your sessions already, they were unable to present because they didn't know the process. So they continue to be frustrated, not only about the continued injustices they face. They are frustrated and angry that a study is being done without their input, input that is well needed since they have direct experience to present to this committee. So I would respectfully request that this committee meet specifically with families of missing and murdered aboriginal women.

In my speech in response to the government's residential school apology, I said that respect is needed for aboriginal women, that action by government is needed. It's action that's needed. As I said, there are so many of those recommendations. It's about implementing those recommendations.

The impacts of residential schools are a root cause. They are a root cause of the cycle of violence that continues to this day. There are all types of violence--physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, sexual, racialized and sexualized--of which aboriginal women are direct targets, as were Helen Betty Osborne and Pamela George.

All of these issues of violence have been studied, and there have been tons of recommendations, as I said, so we need to look at the resources that are needed, or the resources that are actually being put into communities right now. What is working? What is not working? What is the type of study that has to be done in order to address it? What is really working?

If there are resources being put towards violence against women, why is there still a continuance of violence? Why are there still so many women going missing? Why are there so many women being found murdered? Where are the prevention services? Where are the educational resources?

Although I have total respect for this study that's being done and for hearing from the people who are coming here, what I do find is that there's no political will to put the resources where they are needed to actually end violence against aboriginal women. The resources are needed to revitalize traditional teachings about respect for women as life-givers, to revitalize the language where those teachings originate from, and to provide needed counselling and healing services both for men and for women to heal from violence.

We are dealing with violence internally from our communities, from our own men who are doing the violating. We are dealing with violence externally from white men and the impacts of racism and sexism--those women like Helen Betty Osborne and Pamela George. But today there is a momentum growing in grassroots communities, without government resources. We see Walk4Justice and these women who are here today representing Walk4Justice, Grandma Mabel being one of those, women who took on and have the strength to be able to do that grassroots work that needs to be done.

The families of the missing and murdered, as well as individuals, are healing and leading the charge to end this violence. But in order for there to be redress and reconciliation, with government actually taking some responsibility for the root cause of violence, which is residential schools--and which they have accepted that they have done to our people in this country--government must provide those resources.

There are specific needs. There are different needs for families of the missing and families of the murdered. Resources for the families of the missing are resources for searches, rewards, travel when families receive tips, publicity, healing services, loss and grieving counselling, and family gatherings. Needs for resources for families of the murdered are for assistance in court, knowledge of the process, victim services with training on cultural knowledge about what is needed for families, healing services resources, and family gatherings.

I'm going to end there, but the one final recommendation I have is that if this government really wants to make a change to end violence against women, what it can really do is actually enact legislation, as they did in the United States, to end violence against women. I'm going to end there.

I really want to make sure as well...there is also a direct relationship in violence against women and violence that's occurring to our mother, the earth. Until we as human beings recognize that there is a direct relationship, we will continue down this road, to the destruction of all life. I know that I have made the commitment to end this violence for my future generations. Are we all thinking seven generations ahead?

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you, Bev.

We'll hear from Janine Benedet, as an individual.

[Prof. Janine Benedet, As an Individual]

Hi. My name is Janine Benedet. I am a law professor with the faculty of law at the University of British Columbia, where I teach, among other things, criminal law and the law of sexual assault.

I've been researching the legal treatment of different forms of male violence against women for about 15 years. My current research focuses in particular on sexual violence, including prostitution. I use my research and the public platform that my position gives me, in alliance with a number of women's equality-seeking and anti-violence organizations, both locally and nationally. So I am very pleased to take part in these hearings on the very important issue of violence against aboriginal women and girls.

I'm sure you have many experts appearing before the committee who are speaking to the scope of the problem, to its enormous cost for aboriginal women and their communities, and to some of the root causes of male violence against women. So while the brief remarks I have necessarily touch on some of those things, I want to confine my remarks to the committee in the main to the legal aspects, which is where my own expertise lies, both the law on the books and its application in the criminal justice system.

The first question that I think is worth addressing is whether we need new laws or tougher penalties. I heard with interest Bev Jacobs' suggestion about a violence against women act, in the sense that the statute exists in the United States.

In terms of the criminal law, it is always tempting, when faced with a crisis, to think that more severe criminal laws or criminal penalties are the answer. In fact, we have a fairly comprehensive set of assault and sexual assault laws on the books. The potential penalties for those offences are quite severe. Obviously the primary concern in this area is violence prevention, and we know that the criminal law is not a particularly efficient or effective means of preventing violence.

The reality is that the vast majority of acts of both physical violence and certainly sexual violence are never reported to any authority and never enter the criminal justice system.

The other preliminary point I want to emphasize is that I think the government, and the federal government in particular, has a real role to play in this area. That role goes well beyond the idea that more punitive measures are necessary to address this problem to being one of ensuring that women are able to realize their very fundamental rights to security of the person and to sex equality. And that's not done simply through the criminal law and through punishment of offenders.

I'd like to talk for a moment specifically about how sexual violence against aboriginal women is treated by the criminal justice system and where it seems to me that in the application of the laws there are some real causes for concern. The most important of those, I would say, is that we continue to see aboriginal women as offenders rather than as survivors or victims. We continue to see, in many jurisdictions, double charging in domestic violence cases, where the woman is charged along with the man who is assaulting her, or we see women who are charged for fighting back against men who have done them violence, including women in prostitution who are charged for assaults against johns and pimps.

We continue to see women routinely pleading out to lesser offences, offences they may not be guilty of at all, simply to avoid the threat of federal sentences or life sentences, depending on the offence with which they are charged. That, to me, is an area that deserves some urgent attention.

I am also concerned that the very important attention that we are now paying towards stranger violence, when we look at the issue of missing and murdered aboriginal women, may result in a neglect of the issue of violence within aboriginal communities and its roots in a long history of regrettable government policies.

To return just briefly to the issue of sexual violence, we also continue to see a number of what I think are really disappointing trends in the way these cases are prosecuted when they get to court, if they ever do get there. We continue to see many cases in which aboriginal women are treated as consenting even when they are highly intoxicated or nearly unconscious. And we see a stubborn reluctance on the part of judges to invoke the bias sentencing provisions of the Criminal Code, so subparagraph 718.2(a)(i), which indicates that where the offence is motivated by factors including sex and race the penalty can be enhanced if those are aggravating factors--it is really difficult, if not impossible, to find any cases in which violence or sexual violence against aboriginal women and girls is treated as a crime of hate or bias. But that's exactly what it is.

The final point I would make is in relation to the question of prostitution as it relates to the issue of violence against aboriginal women. I think we continue to see, both in the media and, regrettably, in some public facets and government facets, violence against aboriginal women being dismissed as being about women's high-risk lifestyles: prostitution, hitchhiking, drug use, running away.

That really replicates a pattern that we've seen in the criminal justice system historically of blaming women for their own victimization, or at least locating the source of the violence in her rather than in the men who are inflicting it, and in the greater societal system of sex inequality. I think that's also something that is important and needs to be considered, as is the current trend to encourage the legalization of men's prostitution of women as a solution to aboriginal women's poverty and violence.

I'll end there and just say that I hope the focus of this committee, given that it's the status of women committee, stays on sex equality.

Thanks.