I am honoured to have with me today Sharon McIvor, whom I'm sure the members of Parliament will know. Sharon also has a very long history on this particular issue, having been on the panel on violence against women and the aboriginal women's circle on that panel, and a member of the committee that oversaw the healing lodge in Saskatchewan. I'm sure that when you come to questions, you'll have questions for Sharon as well as for me.
The B.C. CEDAW Group is a coalition of women's organizations in British Columbia. We, for the past eight years, have been submitting reports to the treaty bodies that Canada reports to about Canada's compliance with its international human rights obligations, particularly under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, which is where our name comes from, but also to the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. We participated in the universal periodic review process as well.
As you well know, during its last review, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women made recommendations to Canada, specifically about violence against women and about missing and murdered aboriginal women, and asked Canada to report back on this issue on a priority basis. Canada did that in 2009.
We also submitted a report at that time, which I have here for you if you're interested in copies. Essentially, as you can tell from the title of our report, we said at that time that Canada has “nothing to report”. It has done nothing about this issue during this period of time. We see no action being taken on this very, very fundamental issue of the human rights of aboriginal women and girls.
All of the reports--ours and those put in by others, and also the observations of all of the aboriginal women's organizations on this issue--identify two facets of the problem. One is police failure to protect aboriginal women and girls and to respond adequately when there is violence. The second is the disadvantaged social and economic conditions in which aboriginal women and girls live, which makes them vulnerable to violence and unable to escape from it.
Now, those two facets are incredibly important. The second one I'd like to say a little bit more about, because it seems to me that this is a place where--at least in the afternoon I've been here--it hasn't been talked about enough. I really appreciate hearing about it from AWAN, and then from Michelle as well, because I think it's so important.
We have to deal with the social and economic conditions of aboriginal women and girls as an integral part of this issue of violence or we'll never eliminate it; we will never get rid of it. We are dealing with women who are stuck in the most vulnerable conditions, and that funnels them into prostitution, where they experience violence again. It makes it impossible for them to in fact provide safe places for their children.
Sharon and I have been around the province within the last year talking to women who are front-line workers in this province. They describe to us a cycle of conditions that women find very hard to escape from. That cycle is made up of these components: male violence, inadequate welfare, inadequate housing, loss of children, addiction, mental illness, and collapse. Once you get into that circle, it's very hard to get out of it.
In fact, I would say that in this country, specifically for aboriginal women and girls, we don't believe we should end violence against them. We don't have policies in place that actually make this a reality. On December 6, when we all put on our white ribbons and make pious statements about how we're against violence against women and against violence against aboriginal women, we don't have the policies in place that actually will deal with the issue.
When women encounter violence, they need adequate economic resources and adequate housing. They need not to have their children taken away because of what's called neglect, which is actually poverty, and they need to have the capacity to have their children come back if they are taken away. They need to have addiction services to actually make real, safe lives for themselves. We don't have those policies in place.
We say nothing's happening here. The federal government has given $10 million. Ten million dollars was 0.003565% of the $280.5 billion budget for 2010. That's not a solution to this problem, nor is the commission of inquiry in British Columbia, which is going to deal with a very small part of it. Maybe that's a good thing, but it's not dealing with how big this issue is, how important it is, and the many dimensions of it.
We need a national inquiry. We need a national investigation into the police and how they need to be coordinated to deal with this. We need a national action plan and--I'm sorry--I have to say I don't care about federal, provincial, or territorial jurisdiction. I care about the human rights of the women.
Would you please get over your jurisdictional problems and help us?