Thank you, Shelagh.
That's it, Libby.
We don't have room for another round. We only have about six more minutes. I would have liked to give everybody 30 seconds to say what it is you'd like to see, but Libby has brought up something really important that I think I would like us to explore a little bit.
Accountability is something that I think is at the heart of it all. What do we mean by accountability? Is it that the Auditor General says you have $50 million for a thing and you spend the $50 million in the right place? I think that's part of accountability, but it's not accountability. Accountability, as Libby said earlier on, is when you say you're going to achieve this goal. You look at what you are doing when you set up the structures and the strategies, and you say, three years later, “Are we anywhere close? Did we get there? Are we going in the wrong direction entirely? Are we going backwards?” That's a piece of accountability: to achieve objectives and goals that were set out.
However, I also think that the thing I would like to explore just a little bit is the RCMP.
I'm not picking on you guys, but you're the only police people or police institution around the table here, so....
Obviously there is an accountability to what your department suggests you should do, but when you come to a meeting like this and you hear that there are real, concrete problems and challenges on the ground to achieving your goals of (a) protecting society, including aboriginal women in that society, and (b) protecting women from violent situations, and you believe that the strategies that you've been given from on high aren't working and that there is a reality where the rubber hits the road, don't you believe that you have to do something about it from your ground up? Don't you believe you need to now go back and say, “Guys, it sounds good on paper, but it isn't working; what we're doing is revictimizing women and we're not actually achieving the goal of protecting and creating safe places”?
Do you guys do that? I know it's difficult, but do you do it?
So that's the question I want to throw at you, Libby's question about accountability, which Shelagh is touching on. At the end of the day, when the United Nations as a multilateral body says to a country, “Da-dah, da-dah”, they're speaking to a nation-state. Canada, whether we like it or not, is the nation-state that has to be accountable to that international body for getting it done.
We know that in Canada, as a federation, we have constitutional jurisdictional things. The federal government cannot go to a province and say, “I demand that you do that”. But it does mean...and I believe, Shelagh, from where I sit, and having been in cabinet a length of time, that the federal government has the responsibility to find a way, whatever that way is, to achieve what it is as a nation-state they have to answer to. And it's up to them to find the structure and take a leadership role in doing it.
[Applause]
You know, this is what I would like to hear us talk about as a committee, that we cut through this nonsense, because of all the people who have fallen through the cracks, aboriginal people are the ones who continue to have people play football with this. I really feel, and I hope...and this is something that we're hearing from you. You've articulated it extremely well.
I just wanted to pick up Libby's question on accountability, therefore, in terms of the reality of actually achieving goals.
So what is it you--either Russ or Bruce--can tell me about what you heard today and how you're going to go back and make a difference? I know you're only two....
I'm not going to put you on the spot--
