Status of Women Committee on Jan. 18th, 2011

[Beverley Jacobs]

My only comment is “action”.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

Russell.

[Russell Wallace]

End violence by preventing violence.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much. I want to thank you for spending so much time with us and for being absolutely frank with us. It is always an extraordinary thing to deal with this issue. I've always found it extraordinary, from the beginning, the lack of hope....

I just want to say this. I had a grandmother in Nunavut sit down at the kitchen table and say to me, “I buried my last child on Christmas Eve.” She said, “You know, that was my last child. I had 12 children. I'm now looking after the grandchildren.” But when her last child killed himself, because no matter what he did and no matter how much he tried, he couldn't get work, and he was turned away and he was treated like an Indian, she said, “When I saw him lying there dead, I was glad because now he was at peace.” I don't think that's a reasonable thing for anyone to have to say, that they are glad their child is dead because they finally found peace. We have to do something. We all have to work together to make sure the political will comes from this committee and that we do what we need to do to bring the hope to people that they can live reasonable lives, find opportunity, and pass on hope to their own children.

Thank you very much.

[Applause]

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

I'd like to call the meeting to order.

This is the Standing Committee on the Status of Women. We are studying, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), violence against aboriginal women. This was a unanimous agreement by the committee. It's a committee made up of all four political parties in the House, and all agreed that there should be a study.

This isn't a study inasmuch as everyone is going around sort of trying to figure out what's going on, but we really wanted to meet with aboriginal people across the country, to hear from them. Based on and picking up on work that Sisters in Spirit did, we wanted to know from aboriginal people, and from people who have been involved with them in any way, shape, or form, what are the root causes of violence against aboriginal women? What is the extent of that violence? What forms does that violence take?

We have been going on reserves. We've been going to isolated areas. We've been going into cities. We've been looking at the issues of women on reserve, women in isolated areas, and of course women in urban areas.

We're hoping that you can speak to us on these issues and that you can then give us some solutions that you think would work, because nothing seems to have been working at all over all the years that everyone has been doing whatever it is they thought they should do. So maybe we figure we can hear it from you and it might work.

What I'm going to do, because this is a huge panel, is give everybody five minutes. I'm giving the organization five minutes, not every individual, so you're going to have to decide who's going to speak. I'm really going to have to cut you short. What I'm going to do, to help you out, is indicate when you have one minute left so that you can wrap up. You're going to get a chance to answer it as the talk goes on. Many of you who have been sitting in the audience have seen how it works. During the time that you get asked questions you can throw in the bits that you didn't get into your original statement.

I'm going to begin with the Aboriginal Women's Action Network. I have Darlene Rigo and I have Laura Holland. Who's going to speak for the group? Darlene.

Then I have the B.C. CEDAW group, which has two people, Shelagh Day and Sharon McIvor. Who is going to speak for the group? Shelagh, for five minutes.

From the Pivot Legal Society I have Darcie Bennett. There's only one person here.

From the Royal Canadian Mounted Police I have Sergeant Bruce Hulan and Superintendent Russ Nash. Who is going to speak for the group? Both.

From Walk4Justice I have Gladys Radek and Bernie Williams. Who's going to speak for the group? Bernie.

Then, of course, we have the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs. I have one person, so I don't have to ask her who is speaking.

Now that we have that sorted out, we'll begin with the Aboriginal Women's Action Network.

Darlene, you have five minutes.

[Darlene Rigo, Collective Member, Aboriginal Women's Action Network]

First, I'd like to acknowledge that we're on unceded Coast Salish territory.

Second, I'd like to thank the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women for inviting the Aboriginal Women's Action Network to present to you today.

My name is Darlene Rigo, and I am of Ojibway descent. I don't have a traditional name and designated ancestral land that I can lay claim to or an aboriginal lineage that I can trace before my grandmother. I blame racism, violence, and the Indian Act for my family's dissociation from a proud aboriginal identity and lack of belonging to a larger community.

Before I go any further, I must inform you that the Aboriginal Women's Action Network or AWAN, of which I'm a member, is a collective, and there is no best representative among us. I'm speaking to you today because of my willingness and availability to do so.

AWAN is a grassroots volunteer group that was founded in 1995 in response to the silencing of aboriginal women with respect to the issues that affect our lives. Our group began with impassioned talks in women's home. Some of our most pressing concerns include violence, poverty, child apprehension, Bill C-31, and prostitution. We are here not because we are being paid to be, and certainly not because it makes us popular, but because we are committed to trying to save aboriginal women's lives by raising awareness about the realities of them as we struggle to save our own.

As I speak, many of our sisters are homeless, cold, hungry, drugged, violated, abducted, bought and sold, perhaps even murdered just down the road from here. Just east of this hotel is what we call the urban reserve, a neighbourhood infamous for poverty, addiction, prostitution, and violence. In here, in the shelter of this expensive, airy space, we are participating in another study of what may well be an abstract category of otherness, aboriginal women. You have probably heard the statistics and baseless numbers, however distorted by blurred issues of identification and poor reporting.

I'll spare you some repetition. Let's hope that those with the power and influence to make a difference do not just continue to study us to death but confront the often harsh reality of our lives and promote action for real change.

I can also get caught up in research and statistics, but I trust that in this crowd you know the staggering figures, and I want instead to situate my knowledge and my lived experience and that of my mother.

I'll break the code of silence and say it: my grandmother was a prostituted aboriginal woman. Most of what I know about her life came from frightening stories she told me as a child about her mother's early death, from whispered tales from relatives after she died, and tales my mother divulged on her own deathbed just a few years ago. Then my mother insisted that I had to tell our stories.

As I've come to learn, my grandmother, like my mother, regarded being Indian as a source of shame that was never openly talked about. I can only imagine how this must have felt in their times in the 1920s and 1930s. I remember being teased in kindergarten and chased around by little wannabe cowboys with pretend guns. My mother confessed that as a child she couldn't wait to start curling her straight black hair and later dyed her dark roots.

My grandmother's and mother's life stories combined with my own experience have taught me first-hand about the intergenerational nature of violence against aboriginal women. It starts young, with violence against aboriginal girls, and goes far back in history.

My grandmother became pregnant at 12 with my mother, who was taken from her at birth. It remains unclear which of two adult white brothers may have been responsible, but their mother took the newborn home, stole her, according to my grandmother.

Through cruel abuse my mother was taught to hate her own origins, herself, and her own mother, who, she was told, gave her away. Feeling unloved and believing there was something wrong with her, she was dressed up in pretty frocks and kept separate from her younger siblings, but they didn't fare much better. My grandmother had 10 other children who lived in extreme poverty without adequate food, heat, or hot water. She had an alcoholic husband who rarely came home. Leaving her kids, she prostituted herself in an attempt to feed them.

This was a disgraceful, guarded secret, only hinted at in my childhood but later spoken of with judgment, even by my father, who beat my mother and wanted to kill her and abandoned me to this woman's care. Although my mother managed to get away from my father, she married another violent man and he became one of my abusers.

The legacy of trauma, violence, and addiction runs throughout my entire extended family, as it does for many aboriginal women. It's pervasive in Canadian society, and the roots can be traced back to colonialism. But we believe that aboriginal women have dignity and need to be respected.

I'll jump to my suggestions because I don't want you to miss those. I didn't think it would take that long.

We want to put an end to the vicious cycle of the retraumatization of violence against aboriginal women, and we think in order to do so we need to say no to legalized prostitution.

We think that johns, traffickers, and pimps, and not the women involved, should be criminalized. Doing that would give the women quite a bit of protection.

To bring an end to the cycle, we think we need more detox beds, because with the violence, there's addiction that goes along with it.

We need recovery centres designed to give women cultural tools to recover and to educate them concerning the origins of violence in their lives, with consciousness-raising so they can fight to end prostitution.

We want comprehensive and compassionate medical services, a guaranteed livable income, job training, and adequate housing for women and their families.

Aboriginal women are smart, strong, and proud, and as survivors, we know what we want and what we don't want.

We don't want increased hunting grounds that would result from a total decriminalization of prostitution where men have the right to violate and harm us. We don't want one more of our sisters stolen, hurt, and murdered.

We want freedom and real choices. We want to be safe, not safer. We want harm elimination, not harm reduction. We demand the dignity and respect we deserve.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much, Darlene.

Now I'm going to go to Dr. Michelle Corfield, for the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs.

[Dr. Michelle Corfield, As an Individual]

Good afternoon, everyone.

My name is Michelle Corfield, and I am from the Uchucklesaht First Nation, which is part of the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council.

In my former life I was a politician who represented 14 first nations. In that life I witnessed the murder of two young teenage girls and sat through those trials.

This stuff is deep-rooted in our communities, in our reserves, and where we live. We can view this as structural poverty: economic marginalization from the patriarchal system that has been imposed upon us.

That's our reality, and we believe that if we're to talk about root causes, the root cause is the patriarchal system, such as the Indian Act that was imposed upon us. It just stems from there.

You asked for solutions. I'm going to read the solutions first. If I have time, I'll tell a story, but five minutes is really not enough time, and instead of crying I'm just going to go into it.

We need an independent inquiry into missing and murdered children.

We need a national action plan that must put support for families at the very centre.

We must not respond with only more protection; more broadly, we must address root causes. This means broad engagement of communities, rebuilding communities, and emphasizing the critical role of women in dispute resolution and as community healers.

The women are the core of our communities. They are the centre. They have been excluded from all levels of participation: locally, regionally, provincially, and nationally. We need to increase the representation of women as our chiefs and on councils. They need to have the same opportunities as were given everybody else.

So far, we are seeing responses that only react and only put resources in the hands of authority. We must do better. We must support family and work together to build stronger solutions. We must start from the infants and work our way up. We need to raise healthy children so we can have strong, educated women and we can be providers to our families, and so we're not stuck in the cycle of poverty again.

We need financial support to create and sustain change at the local level. We need education, training, and healing. We need to create whole people. We need to look after our women and our children mentally, spiritually, physically, and emotionally.

If we were to do some of those things, we would relieve the violence against women. And as I say, in the names of Beatrice Jack and Kayla John, we have to do something better so that we are not seeing 12-year-old girls violently murdered in their communities.

We have to. We can no longer allow this to become acceptable behaviour. We need to make change, and change now.

So from a political perspective, thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you, Michelle. That was well done at one and a half minutes under time. Very good.

Now I would like to go to the B.C. CEDAW Group.

Shelagh.

[Shelagh Day, Representative, B.C. CEDAW Group]

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?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you, Shelagh.

We now go to Pivot Legal Society and Darcie Bennett.

[Dr. Darcie Bennett, Campaigns Director, Pivot Legal Society]

I'm from Pivot Legal Society. We're a not-for-profit legal advocacy organization based out of Vancouver's downtown east side.

As we've heard, this is a very complex issue. In your introduction you mentioned that there hasn't seemed to have been any action on this issue. I'm just going to keep my presentation very, very basic and just talk about three really basic human rights issues that I think the federal government does have the capacity to address. Those are just the basic issues: access to justice, access to housing, and respect for the integrity of aboriginal families in relation to the child welfare process.

Working in the downtown east side, Pivot Legal Society, through our community work and through our affidavit programs, have identified six key focus areas that define the parameter of our work. These include: policing, housing, sex work, access to justice for women, child welfare, and drug policy, and each of these issues has a profound impact on aboriginal women's vulnerability to and experiences of violence.

In the submission today I'm going to touch on three of those issues that I'm most intimately acquainted with, and those are: access to the justice system, housing, and child welfare. I would like to offer some concrete recommendations for change that definitely wouldn't address all of these issues. They're very complex, but I think could have an immediate impact on the safety and well-being of the aboriginal women we work with.

One of my roles at Pivot is coordinating the Jane Doe Legal Network. It's a program that provides legal support and education to women who've experienced violence. Working in the downtown east side, our services are really tailored primarily to women who are living in poverty, many of whom are aboriginal women.

We take an approach to violence and to women that we see, recognizing that violence occurs in so many different settings, not just in intimate relationships, but also within extended families, among strangers, and at the hands of people who hold positions of authority, whether they're landlords, police, or employers.

We also have a broad understanding and recognize that experiences of violence compound over a lifetime, that they're community-wide, and that there are intergenerational impacts. In this context, it's really imperative that when aboriginal women do reach out to a lawyer or reach out to the legal system, they have meaningful, appropriate access to the justice system.

In British Columbia we've seen the opposite of that. Over the last eight years we've seen a constant erosion to access to justice in this province. Those cuts have been felt most profoundly by women living in poverty, disproportionately aboriginal women. The federal government needs to hold British Columbia accountable for denying women—aboriginal women, women living in poverty—access to the justice system. They need to reinvest in legal aid in the areas of poverty law, family law, and representation for victims. Programs like the Family Law Clinic here in Vancouver, which we lost last year, that were tailored to providing support to women dealing with compounding issues of family law, child welfare involvement, poverty, disability, and violence have to be enhanced. They have to be reinstated.

Housing is one of the core issues we work on at Pivot. While violence happens to women from all socio-economic and cultural backgrounds, for women living in poverty, lack of access to safe, affordable housing options is a major issue in terms of preventing violence, escaping violence, and creating a life of safety for themselves and their children.

Without a safe place to call home, aboriginal women living in Vancouver's SROs and living on the streets are at extreme risk of violence. And for mothers living in poverty, finding adequate housing is a major barrier to safety. We know that poverty rates for aboriginal children are almost twice as high as for non-aboriginal children, and this doesn't even take into account the 20,000 aboriginal children who are living on reserve who aren't even counted.

Off reserve, the core housing needs among aboriginal families is 76% higher than among non-aboriginal households. The federal government has been out of the business of providing housing and investing in social housing for nearly 20 years now. The federal government needs to commit to developing a funded national housing program and to working with aboriginal communities and working with all levels of government to address this urgent need. People need a safe place to call home before they can start to address the whole range of issues they're addressing in their lives, particularly family units.

And then, finally, there is child welfare. I don't think, in my experience, aboriginal women's experiences of violence can be understood outside of their experiences with the child welfare system, both as parents and as children themselves.

In 2008 I was part of a report we released called Broken Promises. More than half of the mothers who took part in the study were aboriginal, and 65% of them had been in care themselves. The interaction between violence in their lives and the child protection system was a core theme. Women survivors of violence are poorly supported and at times re-victimized by the child protection system. There's also a strong relationship between women's experiences of violence and other grounds on which children are removed, including addiction and mental illness.

Children can't be removed from non-abusing mothers as a result of male violence in their families, and people working in the child protection system with aboriginal families must come from a place of understanding the dynamics of violence against women and a historical understanding of colonial violence. This is essential in order to ensure that we have a child protection system that's not re-victimizing women and their children, and is instead empowering them to keep themselves and their children safe.

At the core of our work is the belief that people who have been marginalized are experts on their own lives and that aboriginal women know what they need to keep themselves and their families safe. However, the federal government and all levels of government have a duty to provide women with the resources they need to implement and develop those solutions.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

From the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Staff Sergeant Hulan.

[S/Sgt Bruce Hulan, Team Commander, Project EPANA, Royal Canadian Mounted Police]

Good afternoon, Madam Chair and members of the committee. I would like to thank you for inviting the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to respond to your questions today.

I am Staff Sergeant Bruce Hulan, the team commander of Project E-PANA, the investigation of murdered and missing women along northern British Columbia's Highway 16, commonly referred to in the media as the “Highway of Tears”.

I'm accompanied by Superintendent Russ Nash, officer in charge, E Division, major crime section.

As I mentioned, Project E-PANA is the investigation of murdered and missing women who are presumed to have met with foul play in northern British Columbia. The project began in the fall of 2005, and it is a long-term project designed to review, analyze, and investigate the identified files.

The mandate of the project is twofold: first, through the analysis of each of the files identified as satisfying the criteria established for the project, to determine if there is sufficient evidence to support the theory that a serial killer is responsible for a number of homicides that have occurred along Highway 16; and second, to develop and implement investigational strategies that will advance each of the files.

To meet the objectives of the mandate, Project E-PANA was developed with a three-phase approach: identification of similar-fact cases; collection and analysis of individual files; and follow-up investigation. Phases one and two are completed, and phase three, the continued investigation of individual files, has been under way since February 2009.

In an effort to meet the mandate of the project and determine whether a serial killer is responsible for a number of the offences, the search criteria were established to identify files that would be reviewed by the project team. The criteria are as follows: the victim was female; the victim was engaged in behaviour that placed them at risk, such as hitchhiking, drug use, or prostitution, which exposed them to the control of a stranger or suspect; the victim went missing from or was found along one of the major highways in northern British Columbia--Highway 16, Highway 97, or Highway 5.

Several RCMP databases were accessed to identify the files for review: the violent crime linkage analysis system (ViCLAS), the Canadian Police Information Centre (CPIC), and the police information retrieval system (PIRS), to name a few.

As a result of the database searches, 13 homicide cases and five missing person cases were identified for review by the project. The 18 investigations span a timeframe from 1969 to 2006 and cover a geographic area from Prince Rupert in the northwest of British Columbia; Kamloops and Merritt to the south; and Hinton, Alberta, to the east. In seven of the homicide cases, the victim is aboriginal. Six of the homicide cases identified the victim as Caucasian. Of the five missing person cases, three of the victims are aboriginal and two are Caucasian.

Very early in the creation of this project it was evident that some victims' family members were feeling disconnected from the police investigation. A commitment was made to the family members to conduct regular meetings with them in order to provide updates on the status of the investigation. Superintendent Nash and I continue to have regular meetings with the families, as a group, at which we provide them with project updates and endeavour to answer any questions they may have. There have been seven family meetings since March 2006, and at one meeting we invited the families to our project headquarters in Vancouver and let them tour the facility and meet the team.

The staffing of Project E-PANA is made up of regular members of the RCMP, investigators, forensic specialists, public service employees, and temporary civilian employees. The project maintains a staffing level of approximately 75 people, which can fluctuate based on the demands of the time and because of internal movement. The majority of the staff are located in metro Vancouver, but there are also dedicated resources based in Prince George.

We have sufficient resources to meet the demands of each and every case. We are also confident in our ability to draw in additional resources should they be required to meet investigational needs.

A significant focus of Project E-PANA has been the sharing of information with detachment personnel in the province as well as information exchange with similar-mandated projects, Project Evenhanded and Project KARE in Alberta. We have even worked with Washington State police, given their proximity to British Columbia.

Many of the detachments in B.C.'s jurisdiction where these offences have occurred are limited duration posts and see a regular rotation of personnel. Many of the personnel with direct knowledge of these offences are now working elsewhere.

To develop and enhance the knowledge level of current detachment personnel, the project has created an internal website that documents case histories, among other things, and explains how to report any new information to the project. Members of the project also conduct information sessions at detachments and district commander meetings.

I have provided you with a very brief explanation of some of the initiatives being carried out through our investigation. We'll be happy to answer any questions you may have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

Now finally, but certainly not really finally, Bernie Williams from Walk4Justice.

[Bernie Williams, Co-founder, Walk4Justice]

I'd like to say that my name is Skundaal. That is my birth name, and my English name is Bernie Williams. I'm a residential school survivor. My number is 6690064101. I'm from the Haida nation. I'm also Nuchatlaht and Stellat'en.

I'd like to say hello to the House of Commons MPs who are here and to two of my colleagues here.

I was just looking through the paper here. The sergeant mentioned that there are 18. We've got 45. But I'm not going to dialogue; that's not why we're here.

I'm one of the co-founders of Walk4Justice. We are also front-line workers. I would like to acknowledge the elders who are here--the grassroots women who've been on the front lines. I'd like to take you on a short journey back to about 1986, along with Harriet Nahanee, Phillipa Ryan, Reta Blind, and Carol Martin. Many women have played a big part in the work that's been done in the downtown east side, but also nationally.

I'm one of the co-founders of Walk4Justice. We started the walk in 2006 from Prince Rupert to Prince George for the murdered and missing women's symposium. There were 33 recommendations implemented, and only two out of 33 were done. As a result, today we're fighting on those front lines in the alleys and on the streets.

Back in 1986 the data was started. To date we have a little over 4,000 women's names nationally. On the downtown east side they reported 69 women, and we believe that number has tripled. Since Pickton was arrested there have been more women.

One of the things we've noticed is that many organizations are coming to the downtown east side here. Many of these organizations have been building their empires down here off the backs of our people, especially our women. It's a good thing to be Indian down here. It's a good thing to be an addict, but it's also a good thing to be a residential school survivor. We've watched these empires build and build on their backs.

What we've been fighting for all these years is not only a public inquiry. We asked for a public inquiry almost 20 years ago. We wanted a national one. When we started to bring families forward to report their loved ones, we were in the families that were dismissed in that.

We've been working jointly with the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, the First Nations Summit, and the regional AFN. We had resolutions that were signed nationally in 2007 and 2008 as we walked to Ottawa. All of the resolutions that were signed nationally for a public inquiry are by treaties 1 to 11, the Congress of Aboriginal People, the Native Women's Association of Canada, and the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs. If it wasn't for the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs and the movement of these grassroots women, we would not be at these tables.

Along with the AWAN and all the other women's groups, I asked, “Why did it have to take 69 women for us to come to these tables?” This is not something that's isolated. It's not new. There has been an onslaught down here. The police department has been having community forums, but I don't agree with that. Why have them after all these years? The blood is already on the ground.

Why did it take a young aboriginal woman by the name of Ashley to be thrown out of this window, when other men and women had been thrown out of these windows, for the police department to come forward?

Why are our women being incarcerated for the sex trade when these johns are walking?

Why are these organizations allowing...? You know, our women had to be raped inside these shelters and that.

Our aboriginal community--nothing has changed in 650 years plus.

You're asking, how do we make changes in the system? One thing we've been asking for, as grassroots women, is to have our own health, healing, and wellness centres nationally. We know how to take care of our own people. We know what the problems are. We want our elders in there. We want our spiritual people in there. We have that voice. We are a very strong nation.

Hedy, I've been watching you for so many years. I admire your words. One thing you've said--it's very profound and very simple--is “We want to work together.”

You know, I get taunted. I am a woman, I am a gay woman, and I am an Indian woman. I have three strikes against me right there. For years I told people I came from the Philippines because I was so ashamed. People respected immigrants much more than they did me.

My mother was murdered on the downtown east side. We all have our stories here. We all share them. How many more tables do we have to sit at, and how many more round tables?

I have two sisters who were murdered down here. I have a younger brother who was hung three summers ago. Nothing was ever done.

There have been so many. I have a relative on the Highway of Tears who went missing back in the late sixties or early seventies. Her name is Irene White.

But it took a white woman to blow the Highway of Tears open. She comes from a middle-class family. We met with her family en route when we walked through upper Edmonton, in Red Deer.

Why did it take all these other women? Why did it take 69 women?

And why is Wally Oppal running the commission and the public inquiry?

We have a lot of questions, because I certainly don't think they're fair. I know the work that needs to be done. I'm tired of these men exploiting our women. I agree with AWAN--they've done phenomenal work--that these women are targeted every day.

We've asked for our own buildings. The Downtown Eastside Women's Centre elders council has been asking for that for so many years. We can't even get a building for them.

We are the experts. We are the front-line workers right in there. We don't get paid for this. I want to make that very clear. People think we have hoards of money and that. The Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs are the ones who get all the Walk4Justice money, all donations and that.

I want to ask one thing: I'd like to challenge all of you to take a walk with us through the downtown east side before you leave. This is in a prime area right now, because at midnight tonight.... It's welfare night. You will watch and you will see. This is a crucial time for us as women down there. We don't know how many of our women are going to die in the next four days. We don't know.

As a residential school survivor, I would not take that money, because that is blood money, to me. What they should have done with the residential school money was put it inside a trust to build health, healing, and wellness centres and safe places for our children.

We have one of the largest networks for human trafficking here.

There are many Willie Picktons out there. Why are they being let back out in these very streets?

I worked for one of the churches up here--I'll make this very brief, Hedy--that offered housing. I was employed in these churches. Five women had been raped inside a shelter that was supposed to be safe for the people to come into. It's funded by the city and by the provincial government, and when these women are coming to us....

I have a meeting with Pivot Legal tomorrow morning. Enough is enough. These are crimes against humanity. We are targeted every day on those front lines by drug dealers, who are immigrants, and the police allow them to sit and sell drugs and kill our people down here, right across from Carnegie Centre.

That's where it needs to start. Go after the VPD--check them out--and the RCMP. They need to be held accountable. Everybody talks about transparency and about accountability. Start from the bottom up. Our leadership needs to be questioned too. That's why a lot of us women are down here.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Now we're going to move into the question period. They are seven-minute questions. We'll start with Ms. Neville for the Liberals.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Let me thank all of the panellists. I don't think we've had a panel quite this size before.

I'm sitting here trying to determine where to start. Your presentations all had a common overtone, but they each had a very different emphasis.

I'm going to start with you, Darcie, if you don't mind. Could you just expand a little bit more on the whole issue of violence against women and the apprehension of children? We've heard about it in other communities. We've heard that women are fearful of coming forward, because their children will be taken. But there are many other manifestations as well. I'd be interested in hearing from you.

[Dr. Darcie Bennett]

One of the key themes that came out of the last project we did with women who were involved with the child welfare system as parents was on male violence in their lives. It manifests itself in a lot of ways, but one of the biggest is actually fear of calling police if there's violence in the home, because they've seen children apprehended. What we've really seen is that the onus is on women to keep their children safe from violence, with very little in the way of support. We have worked in cases in which the court has mandated visits with the father, and there's been a violent incident during the hand-off. The women actually didn't want those visits to happen, and there was an apprehension of the children because they hadn't been deemed able to keep them safe.

We have had cases in which women have been told to leave the family home. But of course they have no place to go, or they're sent to a transition house that keeps them for 30 days. Again, the onus is on them to keep their children safe and to keep their children away from the abuser.

We've also seen a number of cases where, because our child welfare legislation here in B.C. is forward-looking, women have often been pathologized. Women who've had a history of being exploited by men or who've had male violence in their lives are actually deemed unable to protect their children, because the social workers are worried about their choices in men or the choices they're making around their children.

So the real concerns are largely that women are being asked to make decisions such as to leave the men in their lives. They're not being supported through the family law system. They are not given access to the housing they would need or the income supports they would need or the child care they would need. The onus for male violence is being placed on women, and women are being pathologized.

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

I want to follow up, and I don't know what my time is like.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have four minutes.

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

You touched on it. We've heard it elsewhere here today. We've heard, certainly, in many of the hearings, and I say it with respect to the police officers who are here today, a lot about how the systems do not support women, whether it's the social worker, whether it's the justice system, whether it's the police officer, or whether it's government bodies and institutions. I would welcome, from whoever wants to speak to it, your recommendations. Tell us your experience. How do we ensure that systems are not adding to the double discrimination or to the burdens women are having? I don't know who wants to speak.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Does the RCMP want to answer that since it was about police?

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

I'd rather hear from Michelle.

[Dr. Michelle Corfield]

As I said, I was the vice-president of probably one of the largest tribal councils in British Columbia. Under that we had USMA, which is a child welfare agency as well. So the role I played was monstrous, in the sense that I had to look after a lot of things.

Systemically, as we see on reserves in British Columbia, there are 203 of them. Within those reserves, many of them are isolated and semi-isolated or remote, and access to resources, such as the RCMP, hospitals, nurses, and social workers is absolutely not there.

There is not a full-time RCMP officer on every reserve.

Access is limited, and I believe that systemically, even in urban centres—and I do live in an urban centre—the likelihood of someone calling for help is minimal, because you don't want to put your kids at further risk.

So structurally this system doesn't allow for social workers to be in each community; they're not there. There is not health care in every community, and there's certainly not a hospital in every community.