Status of Women Committee on Jan. 20th, 2011

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Ms. Tucker, Ms. Neville, we've gone over time. Thank you.

We now have Madame Demers for the Bloc Québécois.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Good morning, ladies. Thank you for being here.

I am very surprised this morning to hear that so many people agree on the solutions needed to counter violence against aboriginal women, all the more so since certain organizations are local, recognized agencies. Indeed, we have not seen that anywhere else. It must be said that we have not heard from many agency representatives, be they local, provincial or from some other level of government; people did not come.

I am happy to welcome you here this morning, Ms. Nelson and Ms. Lacey. We are very pleased to know that you are working together. It is surprising, but it makes me very happy.

In other places, people want to get rid of others rather than help them. The other day, we learned that some physicians wanted to get all of the drug addicts out of Williams Lake. They want to eject them from the city rather than treat them. They are not going to be offered any treatment. If people arrive at the hospital after having taken any drug whatsoever, because they are injured or because they have broken an arm or a leg, they will not be treated; so there is no point even trying.

The situation is quite serious in several places. Women are being mistreated. Your coalition functions very well, but does it work as well within the community? Do you have the respect and support of the community? Does that support extend to the people your coalition seeks to help? You are looking for housing for the women you want to help. Are you finding affordable housing for these women, places where they will be able to raise their children without fear?

You seem to be telling me that it is difficult. Is there racism in the community? We were told last night that Yellowknife has the highest average household income in Canada. If that is the case, how is it that aboriginal women and men are poor? Homes cost at least $350,000. Who can afford a house at that price?

I would like you to answer those questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Who would like to try that first?

Sheila, would you like to go?

[Sheila Nelson]

Oh dear, that's a tough one. That's a tough question. Certainly the points that you've made are very well taken.

In my experience, working at the front line and managing a very good team of social workers, I find that when we go for services, the services are not as readily available as we would like them to be for the clientele we are tasked with servicing. Housing is definitely an issue. Yes, properties are expensive in Yellowknife. A lot of our families cannot afford to rent apartments. Unfortunately, we have one landlord in town who owns a lot of the buildings, so if you're evicted by that property owner, it's often difficult to find housing in another unit.

Personally, and I'm speaking from my own experience, I would like to see the departments work more closely together. I find that housing, income support, and social services through our Yellowknife Health and Social Services Authority need to work out a system where the services for the families we're here to assist are more readily available.

Right now, as a last resort, families are referred to child and family services because the family doesn't have any housing. We try very, very hard not to bring children into foster care because of the fact there isn't housing available. Very often, social services is the one that ends up paying rental arrears, so people will have a place to live. It doesn't make sense to me.

We need more people at the table to build and develop a solution that is going to maintain the families who require services. It puts a lot of stress on people. Unfortunately, the stress that parents are experiencing impacts children. As much as we don't want to apprehend children, there are occasions when we do.

We have a lot of positive things going for us, don't get me wrong, but there are still areas where we could improve. I think if we worked more cooperatively as departments, we would provide better service overall.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have one and a half minutes left.

[Lyda Fuller]

I'd just like to acknowledge that housing is a huge issue here. If I could make one plea to the federal government, it would be for a national housing strategy.

[Voices]

Hear, hear!

[Lyda Fuller]

It's a huge issue for us, and it's going to get worse, because the federal funding for social housing is backing out. It will become strictly a territorial responsibility. So, please, we would love a national housing strategy.

I'd just like to comment about community engagement. It's difficult in the north to spread your impact out, especially to the small isolated communities. The four women's organizations have recently undertaken a three-year project with funding from Status of Women Canada, and supplemental funding from Justice Canada and INAC, to work with women in the 11 small communities without RCMP. We just started that work at the beginning of the summer. I am fascinated by how that's going. But the women are feeling supported. They said to us that we couldn't go in just once; we would have to be there for them. That's what we're doing. So we'll have lots to report down the road on that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

I will now go to Mrs. Grewal, for the Conservatives.

[Nina Grewal, Conservative, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I would like to thank all the witnesses for appearing today and sharing their insights with our committee on this very, very important issue.

I think we all agree that violence against aboriginal women is a very, very serious problem. Unfortunately, it's a very complicated problem with no easy solutions at all. I'm wondering if you could highlight any success stories taking place here in B.C., Yellowknife, and Alberta. They could be successful lessons, which we could then use throughout Canada.

[Sandra Tucker]

I firmly believe that the models our organization has developed can be applicable in any community across this country, particularly within aboriginal communities, be that first nations, Métis, or Inuit, because they are models designed for the community to put their input into and to tailor them the way they are. We also look at really integrating the cultural traditions and the cultural way of life back into our programming.

We're actually successful on both sides. One of the biggest successes we've had has actually been with the on-the-land projects, to the point where other government and territorial regional health boards have said that this is so successful--their communities are saying that they want more--that they're actually funding this to occur. We've gone in and we've presented it when we've piloted it in the communities. Now the communities are saying, “You know what? We see this.”

Our communities are strong. The 53 northern and remote Inuit communities are strong. They are survivors. Although we have very, very few resources, they do amazing work. I think one of the things we need to take into perspective is that in the north, at a lot of our shelters, the woman can only stay for a maximum of six days. How do you arrange housing, income support, mental health, addictions, all of that, in six days? You don't. And that's given that a woman has access to these shelters. We have some communities that are....

All of our communities and fly-on and fly-out. I have yet to come across any abused woman who has $5,000 or $6,000 at her disposal to grab a plane ticket to get to the nearest shelter or to go to the south to get away from abuse, where often she is abused again because of the vulnerability.

I think one other point that really does need to be recognized is that because of the lack of support...and it comes down to money and the lack of money. Often Inuit women are told by health and social services--and this is not finger pointing here--that they don't have the resources to fly them out. We have documented 16 cases so far of where a woman has been murdered by her spouse within 48 hours of returning home after trying to get away from the community. This is unacceptable, absolutely unacceptable. We should not be subjugating any survivor of abuse, be it a woman or a child, to that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Nina, is that your question, or would you like to ask another one?

[Nina Grewal, Conservative, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

No, anyone can answer.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Ms. Lacey.

[Barbara Lacey]

You asked about a “good news” story. This isn't necessarily about a victim of family violence that I'm actually aware of; it's about a young woman who's a single parent with a couple of children. She's in her early twenties and she has her mother in the picture, so her mother's able to look after the children. This young woman was able to go to Aurora College, do her diploma in social work, and do a practicum with us in family counselling. Because of the internship program at YHSSA and Stanton health authority, she now has a social work position prior to her finishing her degree with Stanton.

If I think back to the beginning of the feminist program back in the early eighties, that's when women started standing up and speaking. I think our aboriginal women have to be visible, have to be present, have to be in the positions. So to me this is a good news story in that we have a young woman, an aboriginal single parent, who is getting some education and who, because of both the education policies here and the internship program, has a position. We'll start to see some of that representation, I hope.

To me, that's a good news story. But we need our aboriginal women to be seen.

[Nina Grewal, Conservative, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Madam Chair, do I have some more time left?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have two minutes.

[Nina Grewal, Conservative, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Okay.

It's suggested that one solution to reducing violence against aboriginal women is education campaigns. If women have a better understanding of their rights, and resources are made available to them, they will take better steps to protect themselves.

Do you believe that education campaigns would be an effective weapon in tackling violence against aboriginal women?

[Sandra Tucker]

I think education is always a good thing, but again, speaking on behalf of the 53 isolated and remote communities in the north, you can do all the education you want and you can do all the safety planning you want, but if there are no resources on site, nothing's going to change, right?

We can talk about younger women or we can talk about elders; if there's no safe shelter, if there's no mental health counselling, if there's limited police interaction..... I mean, NWT is fortunate in that they have the emergency protection orders that force the abuser to leave. In Nunavut that's not the case; the woman again is taken out.

So I think we really need to look, at a federal-provincial-territorial level, at ensuring that each and every community has resources. The best education campaigns are worthless without the resources to follow through on those plans.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

We have thirty seconds, if anyone would like it.

[Barbara Lacey]

I just want to refer to the anti-poverty conference that many of us were at this fall. Out of that anti-poverty conference, the issues that were identified by the aboriginal community were housing--if it's there you still can't get into it because you don't meet the criteria--the cost of food, wanting a subsidy for food, and the relationship with income support. I think those were the main issues that were identified. And for family violence issues, those connections all have to be worked on if our women are going to be able to get out of situations and into new situations.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

Now we go to Mr. Bevington for the New Democratic Party.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Thanks, Madam Chair.

I want to thank you all for participating in this today. I've had the chance to participate today because our critic in this area, Irene Mathyssen, was unable to attend, but I'm very pleased to be here as well, because of course as a lifelong resident of the Northwest Territories I have experienced these issues every day throughout that time. I'm seeing the effects of it.

I want to touch a bit on preventative work that has been done. I remember when I was mayor in Fort Smith in the late eighties and we had the first “Take Back the Night” march. I remember that the reaction of some men to that was really quite extraordinary, they felt so threatened by it. But as the course of those “Take Back the Night” marches went on, that disappeared.

What can we do throughout the north to continue the work to raise the awareness of men about their roles, their responsibilities, about their interaction with women in society? Is it something we should take up more in the schools? Is it something that should be a national campaign of awareness for men across the country, continuing to do that work?

What are your answers there about the preventative work that we need to do?

[Lorraine Phaneuf]

I can only speak to small steps that we've made through the coalition. Government and non-government work together to come up with strategies and work together. Sometimes folks are there and they talk about different issues, not necessarily ones the coalition is working on, but we do promote awareness. This year for “Take Back the Night” we had a huge representation of men who attended the walk. I often call it the most phenomenal day I've had here in Yellowknife. It was awesome. We had good press coverage. We had community agencies coming together to discuss the issues. The media was there. We had pictures of all kinds of cases on a big flip chart, all the cases in one year of abuse and violence on the streets in Yellowknife. People were engaged. I've been here for five years, and sometimes there were a few women's groups walking and that would be about it. But this year I don't know what we did or what we didn't do. I suspect it had something to do with the white ribbon campaign. Some young men from Yellowknife have been quite involved in that. I don't know if they brought it or what happened, but it was actually a very good event.

I think the work of the coalition is important. Although we may not have every task force that they have down south, we certainly have very passionate people at the table who are interested in the same goals and visions, and oftentimes projects such as the one the Y is doing have engaged the women's groups to help. So we get to also hear what's happening; we're not working in a silo. We hear what's happening in the small communities, and I think it's just a good way to move forward.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Ms. Nelson.