Status of Women Committee on Feb. 3rd, 2011

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

Thank you. I appreciate your submission today. I'm not a usual participant on this committee, but I'm very glad I'm here today.

Before I was a member of Parliament I was an elementary school principal. The elementary school where I was principal had a significant first nations population. In fact, all of the first nations elementary school children in our community came to the school where I was the administrator.

In the first year that our school opened we had a very tragic event. A mother who was a sex trade worker was murdered and her body was thrown down a stairwell. I had her two little boys in the school--one was seven and one was nine--and we had to put a lot of effort into dealing with them.

In the $10 million that was announced last October, there are several programs that people can tap into. I'm wondering if your organization has tapped into them. I'm just going to briefly mention some of them.

There's one for school and community-based projects, to the tune of $1 million, through the Department of Justice. There's the victims fund that will be added to the Department of Justice victims fund. It will help the western provinces with the highest instances of this develop and adapt victims services for aboriginal people. There are community safety plans. The Department of Public Safety is providing $1.5 million over two years for aboriginal groups to develop and carry out community safety plans to help support these women, and probably keep them out of harm's way in the first place.

There are also awareness materials that different communities can use. They are very educational in nature. There is $850,000 for aboriginal educational groups working with aboriginal groups.

I know after reading this I'll go home to my community and my first nations band to make sure they're aware of these programs. But I'm wondering if your group has explored some of these programs and made application to them to try to provide education and support before these crimes even take place.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Irene Mathyssen]

Again, please be very quick.

[Katharine Irngaut]

We are working with the Department of Justice on the victims fund. I have a meeting with them at 1:30 today, so I'm very excited about continuing that process with them for our proposals.

I know that the victims fund is up for renewal in March as a funding program. Our funding with them could be contingent on them also getting funding. We're all in this domino effect right now for those programs.

I also want to say that it's not enough just to have services available; the right kinds of services have to be accommodated. I met a family member who was struggling to make ends meet. She went to victims services to try to find help to support her kids, but it wasn't quick enough. The paperwork didn't go through quickly enough, and her children were taken away. She was then offered a program that was basically a cooking class on how to feed her kids healthy meals. It was too little too late and not appropriate for her needs. But that's what was available and what they were able to offer.

We have to be very cognizant of providing services that are culturally appropriate and relevant in a timely manner. That's the angle we're trying to move toward when we talk about the concrete actions we're hoping to take.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Irene Mathyssen]

Thank you.

Monsieur Desnoyers.

[Luc Desnoyers, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair. I welcome the witnesses.

First, tell me a bit about the database that you continue to maintain, the database created by Sisters In Spirit? This database serves as a major anchor for the current situation on missing women across Canada, and especially missing aboriginal women.

Just last week, another woman disappeared in Vancouver. It seems that this is an ongoing problem and will stay that way because we are not putting money in the right place. From listening to you today, it seems to me that things are straightforward. The government should just listen to you and then say what should be done and how it should be done. A number of organizations like you have already said that.

Could you first tell me about the database and its importance for the future? The second question is more specific. You raised various issues, such as prevention and protection, and you talked about the $10 million from the Conservative government. We don't seem to know where that money went. But it doesn't look like the money was used to help aboriginal women. So could you also tell me about that?

[Katharine Irngaut]

As for the database, I agree that it's a very important piece of our work. When I first started, I was working directly on the database. That was my main priority.

The future of the database will be important for many different reasons. We would like to do other data runs on the information we have. We want to expand certain areas. We find that we have more suspects for each crime. It's not just one person acting against another. It's groups of people who might commit a crime against one person. So we need to expand the parameters of the 250 variables that we currently have.

We'd also like to run mapping for jurisdictions as well. Sometimes across jurisdictions we need to see where things are happening, where things come up, and to map out whether it's an overlap of jurisdiction or a complete lack of jurisdiction. We'd also like to start running a more extensive time series analysis on the data.

So when we talk about families' needs, it's not just eligibility for one year. Sometimes there's eligibility for victims services only if a crime has been committed. Being “missing” is not a crime, so a lot of family members are not able to access victims services. Some jurisdictions don't offer victims services unless a charge has been laid. Well, charges are often not laid in cases of aboriginal women and girls.

I'll leave the talk about the $10 million to my colleagues here.

[Jeannette Corbiere Lavell]

In regard to the $10 million and the criteria, it was our understanding that while we would not necessarily as an organization get actual funding from this allocation, we would be in a position of working with the various ministries, the departments of justice, public security, and status of women, to be able to work with our provincial and territorial member organizations across Canada for whom we are responsible. We work on their behalf.

Granted, although the ones in the prairies, from Manitoba to B.C., will be able to access that community relationship fund, we will not necessarily be in that position. However, I do understand that there are other funds that, as a national organization working with our provincial groups, we will be able to explore, and develop a working relationship within that criteria. That hasn't been ironed out yet, but we are open to working with them.

It is important that we work with our community members at the community level. We have that trust and we have that experience working in this area, dealing with preventing violence especially, and dealing with missing young women.

As you just said, there were just two more missing in British Columbia. It's ongoing.

The various policing jurisdictions in the provinces across Canada, at the Council of the Federation, have made this one of their priorities. We are working with them closely on that as well. As was pointed out, Manitoba is one of the leaders within that area.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Irene Mathyssen]

Pardon, mais c'est tout.

I would like to ask a couple of questions.

Madam Lavell, you've mentioned two or three times the reality of poverty, and the poverty that aboriginal women face. In this list of funding through Justice Canada, there are numbers and there are short descriptors, but what I'm concerned about is the fact that there's no mention of the practical things. I believe you called them “tools”. I'd like you to expand on that.

I'm thinking in terms of affordable housing, and more shelters for women who are suffering abuse; the education and training that can help women get out of that poverty cycle; child care, so that they can get training and they can find work; and addiction programs and prevention programs. All of these seem to experience nothing but funding constraints.

I wondered if you could comment on that.

[Jeannette Corbiere Lavell]

All I can say is that you are absolutely correct. Those kinds of funds, which would be able to assist and help our women at the community level, are not available, or they're very limited. When you, as a single parent or as a young woman, want to access these funds, even at the community level within your own community, because of restrictions and everything you're not eligible for them. So it creates many problems. And of course, as you know, within our actual communities on reserves across Canada, there is a terrible lack of housing and there are many health issues, which cause all these other relationships in terms of the lack of identity, the lack of our traditional roles, and that awareness. We have our elders within our various nations who are striving and working on this and are trying to do the best they can. That is ongoing.

However, as aboriginal women, we are not able to access any of those kinds of resources. But we are doing the best we can with the limited resources. Our grandmothers and our teachers.... As a former teacher, a retired teacher, I know the importance of getting a good education so that you are able to go out and provide for your family. That is crucial, and as NWAC, we provide training programs to assist our women to get more training. If they haven't finished high school, perhaps we can help them to do that or to get a specific kind of training.

According to statistics, our women have a higher number of successes within those areas. It's not that they don't want to. It's the lack of resources, as you said, to deal with special needs, such as child care. If you have two or three children at home, how can you be expected to pursue a college program? Those kinds of things are important. And we need to deal with them to stop all those other areas, such as violence, and I guess discrimination as well--this is where that comes in--and the racism that goes along with it.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Irene Mathyssen]

In our travels, the committee heard from a number of organizations and NGOs that are working on the ground trying to make a difference in the lives of women and children in the community. Over and over again we heard that the funding was piecemeal. They may be given a little bit of money over a very short period of time to deliver a program. That program would just be up and running and may have achieved a real level of success, but the funding isn't continued. Once the program ends, it is done, and they are left scrambling to find something else. And the something else may not necessarily fit with the needs of the community.

Now, you've mentioned that you're still waiting to hear about NWAC funding.

Also, I believe, Ms. Irngaut, that you are meeting today with the Department of Justice to determine how the fund will evolve or continue. It seems to me that all of this is up in the air. This is February, and these things come to fruition at the end of March. How do you cope? How do you manage? How will you keep your database up and running? Is that a concern?

Could you expand on that?

[Claudette Dumont-Smith]

That is always an issue with many departments. We do get funding at the tail end, at the near end, of the fiscal year, and we have to scramble and carry out the work as best we can. I'm sure that if there were something else in place whereby funding would be assured in April, May, or June, we could have a better-quality product at the end. You know, we're hurrying and scurrying to do work in three months that should have been carried out over a year. As far as I know, that's the way things have happened.

You asked another question.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Irene Mathyssen]

I'll come back to it in my next round. I'm out of time. I'm assuming that core funding would be a....

[Claudette Dumont-Smith]

Oh, you were talking about....

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Irene Mathyssen]

I'll come back.

We'll go to Ms. Grewal, please.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I would like to thank the witnesses for their time. All of us appreciate it. I'm really very thankful that you are sharing your insights with us.

Violence against women is a very serious issue. All of us know that it's a very serious problem. But we could just as easily be dealing with violence against immigrant communities as well. Unfortunately, it's a very complicated problem, with no easy solution at all.

My question is very simple. Could you offer some solutions, some questions, if you have any, so that the government can deal with this problem?

[Claudette Dumont-Smith]

What I find, and this is not new, is that the governments operate in silos. You have one government department addressing one part of the issue and another part of the government addressing another issue, and they don't all come together in unison to address an issue.

As long as that exists, I think we're going to have this silo approach. We won't have this comprehensive solution where you can look at all aspects--at housing, at education, at poverty.

Everything is piecemeal and everything is done on a project basis. It's not ongoing. I think therein lies the solution: the different departments have to come together when they're addressing an issue to a particular group and they have to address it in a holistic, comprehensive manner. I've always held to that belief, and I think until that happens, the status quo will remain, for not only violence but for all issues.

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

Do you have any thoughts on how the government can solve--

[Claudette Dumont-Smith]

Well, I think when you have a Department of Indian and Northern Affairs...maybe they can take the lead. They can have the Status of Women at the table, they can have Health Canada, Canada Mortgage and Housing, Education, and they can address it as a whole. I think oftentimes one department doesn't seem to know what the other department is doing.

As well, there's the whole interjurisdictional issue. Education is provincial, and first nations education falls under federal...so there are a lot of hurdles.

Everybody talks about these hurdles at meeting after meeting. As I said, I have 30 years' experience, and we're always sitting at the table talking about the hurdles. But the hurdles are not being addressed--in my mind, anyway.

We're looking at issues piecemeal. Everybody is trying to do the correct thing, but will we advance? Maybe we are advancing, but it's at a very, very slow pace.

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

Since I think 2007, through Status of Women Canada, about 150 projects, totalling about $28.7 million, have been given to eliminate violence against women. We are supporting prevention, providing shelters on reserves, and funding victims' services.

We also want to ensure the justice system meets the needs of aboriginal women and their families. Are there any legal reforms or legislative changes you can suggest?

[Claudette Dumont-Smith]

I'm not a lawyer, but I know there are things that are being addressed with Bill C-3. There was a lot of inter-family conflict, and I think that was addressed and it's moving forward.

I don't know if that's what you're referring to. Maybe Kat can add to this.

[Katharine Irngaut]

One example we have worked towards within the legal system is the idea of next of kin. A lot of the issues we deal with through Sisters in Spirit are the intergenerational impacts. When a woman or a girl is killed, what happens to her children? They are often taken care of by their grandparents, but the grandparents sometimes aren't considered next of kin; sometimes it is the suspect who is currently in the system and only they are able to access victim services.

The idea of who is eligible to take care of the children has to be more flexible and more reflective of the ways families are structured in aboriginal communities, especially if aboriginal women and families are among the highest wanting to access victim services.

So it's to change the view of the family, depending on the family.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Irene Mathyssen]

Thank you very much.

Now a three-minute round. I will ask folks to be concise and succinct.

Ms. Neville.

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

I don't know that I can be precise and succinct.

I want to go back to the issue of data. In the government's announcement, $4 million is going to the RCMP to collect data. What will happen to the data you have collected? Will it be incorporated into it? Will they be collecting it all over again? Who will house it?

I guess my question, which is an overriding question for me, is how are you keeping Sisters in Spirit alive?

I know that everywhere I go--and I've been out a fair bit in the country--whether it's police forces, women's organizations, women working on the ground, Sisters in Spirit is that vision and pinnacle to which they direct their concerns and efforts.

So it's the data and how you are keeping Sisters in Spirit alive--in a minute.

I will stop there.

[Katharine Irngaut]

For the database we are working—oh, sorry.

[Jeannette Corbiere Lavell]

I would just like to make a few comments.

I appreciate your question because it brings exactly the dilemma that we are in. Because of the five years of work that we did through our organization, Sisters in Spirit stands for an initiative that our women right across Canada recognize, and not only our women but other community organizations, and also the various policing forces. They recognize it for work that was needed, relevant, and well done, and work they would not have been able to do. I think that's one of the key things. The information that we were able to gather...the individual RCMP or police forces would not have been able to get that cooperation from the families or from our communities.

Having said that, I don't believe we have been approached yet by the RCMP—I could be corrected—on how to work on the information that we have. We're still open to that. Obviously we want to ensure that there are good and positive initiatives in place to stop this violence that is taking place, and also to recognize that this movement right now, Sisters in Spirit, is not going to go away. It's not going to disappear. It's national and it's even going international. Having said that, right now we have our women who are volunteering to work on this initiative because they believe in it so strongly, and we believe in it, too.