Status of Women Committee on Feb. 3rd, 2011

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Irene Mathyssen]

I would like to begin by welcoming our witnesses, Jeannette Corbiere Lavell, Claudette Dumont-Smith, and Katharine Irngaut.

Thank you so much for being here. We've waited a very long time to have the pleasure of your company here at the committee. We're all very grateful that we've been able to manage this and that you're able to accommodate us.

Before I begin, we have two quick pieces of business.

First, there is a letter on each member's spot indicating that the Honourable Rob Nicholson, the Honourable Vic Toews, and the Honourable Rona Ambrose will indeed be able to come to our committee. The clerk is still in discussion with their various offices, but they have promised to be here very soon with their officials. I can only conclude that persistence pays and that we will have a chance to talk with the ministers and staff in the very near future.

Second, we have unfortunately lost two valued members of our committee, but we have new members. But we've lost Ms. McLeod, so we'll need to elect a new vice-chair from the Conservative caucus. We can do that later today or we can do it on Tuesday. I'll let you think about that. We'll come back to it.

I've had a brief word with our witnesses. As I indicated at the beginning of the meeting, it has been a long time and we've looked forward with great anticipation to their coming to the committee. I've noted that only an hour has been set aside, but because officials from the ministry are not able to attend, I would suggest, with the permission of the committee, that we extend the hearing a little bit, for as long as it takes to answer all of the questions and to be able to converse fully with our witnesses.

Is that agreeable? Does the committee agree that we could extend a bit in order to make sure all questions are answered?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Irene Mathyssen]

I see some approval. Thank you very much.

We'll begin with whoever wishes to. This is a 10-minute round for opening statements.

Please go ahead.

[Jeannette Corbiere Lavell, President, Native Women's Association of Canada]

Meegwetch.

[Witness speaks in Ojibway]

According to our traditions, I would also like to acknowledge the Algonquin Nation, on whose territory we are meeting today. I am from the Anishinabek Nation. I bring greetings from my people, who reside in northern Ontario and everywhere, and from all the members of the Native Women's Association of Canada. We are an organization of status and non-status Indians and Métis and Inuit members within our provincial and territorial organizations.

The Native Women's Association of Canada, or NWAC, works to enhance, promote, and foster the social, economic, cultural, and political well-being of aboriginal women. NWAC believes that aboriginal women's human rights include the right to live free from violence.

Between 2005 and 2010, NWAC worked to research and document current and historical cases of missing and murdered aboriginal women and girls. NWAC worked closely with families who had lost loved ones to share our concern and support for their journey, document their stories, and identify gaps in justice and support systems. NWAC worked with service providers, academics, and all levels of government to improve the provision of services to women and their families, as well as influence policy decisions around violence and factors that affect vulnerability to violence, such as poverty, homelessness, education, economic opportunity, and access to justice.

In 2010, the publication of What Their Stories Tell Us by NWAC made public information about the nearly 600 known cases of missing and murdered aboriginal women that have occurred in every province and territory of Canada. While NWAC does not provide direct service to individuals, because of the knowledge gained through our work with families, service providers, and non-governmental organizations, we can add value as a pilot for others working through the system. Our research and policy work led to an expertise in jurisdictional issues and awareness of the programs and services that exist in communities. Where these services and programs do not exist or are not accessible to our women, we support families and communities to identify these gaps and work with us toward resolutions.

NWAC also developed tools and resources for families, those who work with families, and all Canadians, to raise awareness, support appropriate responses, and take action against the continued violence against aboriginal women and girls in Canada.

Unfortunately, NWAC has not yet been successful in securing funding to continue or maintain the work so successfully begun through the Sisters in Spirit initiative. However, we would like to continue in our working relationship with the current levels of government to ensure that we are able to continue this valuable work.

For the past 20 months we have worked diligently with senior department officials of the ministry responsible for the Status of Women and project staff to secure ongoing funding for the next phase of Sisters in Spirit. We continue to do so and look forward to some good results from this meeting.

Going back a little further, on March 3, 2010, NWAC felt energized and optimistic about the future work of Sisters in Spirit when we listened to the Speech from the Throne. The Governor General said:

Our Government will take additional action to address the disturbing number of unsolved cases of murdered and missing Aboriginal women. The Sisters in Spirit initiative has drawn particular attention to this pressing criminal justice priority.

On March 4, 2010, this hope was reaffirmed with a statement in the federal budget that said:

The Government is committed to ensuring that all women in Canada, including Aboriginal women, are safe and secure regardless of the community in which they live. Aboriginal women remain particularly vulnerable to violence and can face challenges in accessing the justice system, which should be protecting them.

Budget 2010 invests $10 million over two years to address the disturbingly high number of missing and murdered Aboriginal women. Concrete actions will be taken to ensure that law enforcement and the justice system meet the needs of Aboriginal women and their families.

NWAC understood that the funds announced in the federal budget were not specific to our work and our organization, but we were optimistic that this indicated potential for a new partnership with the Department of Justice to share our expertise and continue our work.

NWAC is committed to working with the federal government, although we are aware that systemic change can be a slow process. While there is an ongoing and immediate need to provide resources to families and communities, our work has to help deliver the facts to decision-makers at all levels of government, policing organizations, and educators, working with police and service providers to make sure these needs are met.

NWAC understands there is a high demand for government funding and a wide variety of activities that require support, especially during times of economic uncertainty and fiscal restraint. Nevertheless, we feel that investing in prevention would be more cost effective over the long term, rather than only funding activities that respond to violence that has already occurred.

As an example, we can look to the costs of the justice system for the trial and sentencing of predatory offenders such as Robert William Pickton. NWAC notes that the cost of the Pickton case was approximately $102 million, roughly 10 times greater than the $10 million the government announced in the last budget to address the number of missing and murdered aboriginal women.

Although NWAC was recognized for the work of Sisters in Spirit, our tremendous accomplishments raising awareness of the issue and the unique evidence prepared for decision-makers, we have found ourselves in an increasingly difficult position.

A contribution agreement was signed with Status of Women Canada in the amount of $500,000, for Evidence to Action, phase one, to begin March 31, 2010. This agreement covered six months, ending September 30, 2010. Since September NWAC has worked with Status of Women to secure funding for the next phase of Evidence to Action. As of now, we haven't heard. Our latest proposal has gone to a review committee and we are awaiting the final decision.

The reality is that as of today we still do not have the contribution agreement, and consequently we have had to lay off staff within our Sisters in Spirit program. Despite what we believed were assurances that this project would continue, NWAC does not know if evidence to action will be funded in the new year.

However, I have been advised that this is not the case and there is word coming that it will be done. This statement was prepared prior to that.

While we are committed to finding new partnerships and applying for other sources of funding, we are limited by our new capacity. Concerns about the status of funding have become a focus of attention for our supporters and partners, and that has diverted effort from our goals of reducing violence affecting aboriginal women and girls as well as improving the response of service providers and government to the victims and families of victims.

The definition of eligible activities within the women's community fund has shifted, and this disallows the continuation of our work that has already begun. Over the past 10 months, for example, NWAC has been unable to enter new cases into the database or to maintain and update the current cases; however, this work is done on a volunteer basis by unpaid individuals.

We have had 20 new cases of homicide and 10 cases of missing women that have occurred and not yet been documented. NWAC has been made aware of a further number of historic cases in British Columbia that should be investigated and potentially included in our database.

NWAC is also concerned that the inability to obtain funding to maintain this database we have will remove our focus on the incidence of cases. It will also make it more difficult for NWAC to assess whether actions taken to reduce violence have actually resulted in fewer cases of missing or murdered aboriginal women and girls.

I know we're getting towards the end of the time, Madam Chair.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Irene Mathyssen]

Yes. Perhaps you could wrap up.

[Jeannette Corbiere Lavell]

Let me conclude by stating that the Native Women's Association of Canada wants to continue to address, with various departments within government, including Status of Women, the Department of Justice, and Public Safety, the alarmingly high rates of violence against aboriginal women and girls. We look forward to ongoing working relationships with these various ministries. The foundation of knowledge developed by NWAC and Sisters in Spirit has been recognized nationally and internationally. We are looking forward to working with these various departments to ensure that we address this issue of violence against our women in Canada. We hope that with the federal government, by this new recognition that I've just been made aware of, we will be able to continue in the next little while to work together to deal with this violence and to work with our families.

In closing, all I want to say is that I am looking forward to a good working relationship with the government and with the various departments that deal with justice, with issues of safety, with security, and with the human rights of all people in Canada.

I forgot to introduce my colleagues here. I'd like to introduce Claudette Dumont-Smith, executive director of the Native Women's Association of Canada, and Katharine Irngaut, our current director of Sisters in Spirit. She's a little bit lonely in her department, but she's still there working.

Meegwetch. Thank you for listening.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Irene Mathyssen]

Meegwetch, Madam Corbiere Lavell. We appreciate your words of wisdom.

Now we'll begin a seven-minute round with Ms. Simson, please.

[Michelle Simson, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I welcome all the witnesses. We're actually honoured to have you here.

In listening to your opening remarks...this committee did some work across Canada. We travelled across Canada, and I was fortunate enough to be able to participate for a couple of days. I'm getting a bit of a disturbing trend in terms of the commentary with respect to the funding. It isn't even so much the amount of the funding; it's that specific programs are being funded, and organizations are constantly having to spend an inordinate number of hours and days and weeks applying for funding, tweaking programs, and sitting around biting their nails to see if they get it.

Now, I heard this time and time again, so I'd like to find out from you, is that the case?

[Jeannette Corbiere Lavell]

Could I ask my executive director to answer this? They deal with the actual project and budget submissions.

[Claudette Dumont-Smith, Executive Director, Native Women's Association of Canada]

I would have to agree that, yes, we do. NWAC is more project-based. We get project-based funding to operate. Yes, every year we do have to, as you mentioned, tweak our proposals to meet the certain criteria put out by various government departments. Status of Women is one government department where we have to do that as well.

[Michelle Simson, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

How much input do you get into what has to be tweaked? What the government may ask for in terms of criteria may or may not be in the best interests of the community. So is there any kind of dialogue before they look for a change in criteria?

I do understand the “never, never, never” plan of funding, and that things change, but how much dialogue is there?

[Claudette Dumont-Smith]

I've been involved in the aboriginal health field for many years. I've worked with government departments other than Health Canada, the Status of Women being one. To my knowledge, and I have 30 years under my belt, I don't recall any government department coming to ask an aboriginal organization how they should set up their criteria.

I imagine they base it on research they have collected or knowledge they have on a global perspective. Then the organizations such as NWAC, or other organizations where I've worked, will send out a request for proposals, or what have you, and you have to meet specific criteria.

[Michelle Simson, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Again, if you're not consulted it may not be the most effective thing, and I'm not trying to put you on the spot. You may have some input into how the money could be used and maybe produce a better outcome. Really, we should be adjudicating programs on outcome and not necessarily on how much we're investing in them.

[Claudette Dumont-Smith]

I'm not on that side--I'm on the other side--so I wouldn't know. I couldn't answer 100% on how those criteria that filter down to the aboriginal organizations are developed at the national level, but I think Ms. Lavell has something to say about that.

[Jeannette Corbiere Lavell]

I would like to take a step back and share with you that we aboriginal women across Canada recognize the importance of the advocacy work we have been doing with our families and compiling all this information. We were able to do this because we had that close connection and there wasn't the suspicion or fear that the information they were sharing would be misused. We were able to collect all that data and set up the database we now have in place.

When our funding came to an end in March of last year, we thought we would be able to continue this important work. Obviously we weren't able to reach all those women victims at the community level, and we felt this was ongoing important work. However, when we were working with Status of Women Canada, we understood these new criteria you're talking about were in place. The new criteria focus on public education, community awareness, and community responsiveness, which did not fit into the ongoing work we had been doing under the Sisters in Spirit program. We accepted that and said those new areas were equally important.

However, we had hoped to be able to continue that work with the families and the justice departments to gather that information. Obviously we feel it would have enhanced their work in finding unsolved murders and working for missing and murdered aboriginal women. We honestly believed we would be crucial in bringing that about. So there was that discrepancy.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Irene Mathyssen]

You have about 45 seconds.

[Michelle Simson, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Notwithstanding the program changes, how adversely is it going to affect the funding? There is the domino effect.

I'm referring to an article I read just this week and a quote by Claudette Dumont-Smith with respect to the impact programs can have on women and the inordinate percentage of aboriginal women who are incarcerated in federal penitentiaries. Obviously incarcerating them has an impact in terms of tax dollars. I'm curious with this shift, and rolling money here and there, if you see it as detrimental, or how this is going to impact--

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Irene Mathyssen]

You're out of time, but I hope you will be able to answer that later.

Madame Demers, for seven minutes.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Ms. Corbiere Lavell, Ms. Dumont-Smith and Ms. Irngaut, thank you very much for being here this morning. Like my colleague, I was also on the committee's tour. I had the chance to go on most of the tour. We realized that, especially in western Canada, racism and prejudice are very prevalent in major centres, which came as quite a shock to me. We asked ourselves a lot of questions as to why this racism was so systemic. For example, why is there so much racism against aboriginals and why are they abandoned in major centres, why is there so much racism even in centres where they make up the majority, such as Prince Albert and Williams Lake?

We have heard a lot of people say that there is so much violence against women because men no longer have an identity, or recognition as aboriginal men. They have no work. There is a lot of poverty and a lot of people in close quarters in dwellings that are too small and that house too many people. If we want to heal the battered women, we must take care of the whole family. We must heal the men, the women who are victims and also the children.

How can we get to the big picture of the problem? I feel that the aboriginal population is not the only one affected by this issue. The white population also has to be educated. White people have to understand that aboriginals have a right to exist. They have a right to live, to be happy, to have jobs, just like everyone living on the territory because they were there before all of us. How can we get this message across?

[Jeannette Corbiere Lavell]

Meegwetch.

I appreciate your question, because it is very broad, and we have to address it from your part as the government and from our part as members of our community.

I will start with our responsibility.

I know that right now, because of the impact of the residential schools and the abuse of drugs and alcohol, it has made this drastic change within our traditional way of living with each other and the traditional roles we had. Prior to all this, I know--and I've been advised by our elders in our community, and I've seen it myself with my grandmothers and their role within the family--that women and men had mutual respect for each other, because we all had roles, and roles for survival. Children were brought into the world as gifts from the Creator, and everyone within that community worked to ensure that these young people were brought up in a good way, according to our traditions, with that respect, with that balance and that harmony, and that ongoing caring for each other.

That was there; however, as I said, that has broken down. Consequently, we are now dealing with that loss of dignity, that loss of identity, in a lot of cases, where we're seeing a lot of this violence, and as you all know, many studies have shown that.

One of the biggest factors right now is poverty and the lack of housing, which exaggerates and brings this about within our communities. Also, when you bring that to the urban centres, the same situation exists. However, in the urban centres, in order for families, and especially for our single women, who may have children and want to provide for those children...the lack of funds necessitates that if they have no other choice, they go out onto the street, bringing about this very evident fact that they're there...they bump up against the law, so they may get put in jail. The other people who live in these communities then see them, because they're obviously so evident, and this creates more of that racism and that lack of understanding, and there's no communication available there.

However, as organizations, and especially as women's provincial and territorial member organizations across Canada, we are seeking to address this, to raise that communication with members at the community level, and this will be at the provincial level with service providers, as well as with the education system. We are working in all those areas to bring about that communication, because obviously we do not like to see this happen.

In this day and age, Canada is a good place to live. We have many people coming to Canada, wanting to be part of Canada, and we want to ensure it's a good, healthy, and safe place for all of us who live here.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

But we have seen that, in a number of provinces, social services and police forces—but social services in particular—are following the same patterns as residential schools. They are taking the children away from their families and bringing them outside for very long periods of time. The parents no longer have access to their children and the children no longer have access to their families or their extended families.

I am afraid the same thing is going to happen. If the children are not with their families, they will no longer be taught their traditions and values. In 20 years, we will again have thousands more children who will not have learned the traditions and values of their culture. They will be just as lost and will have a hard time too.

[Katharine Irngaut]

One of the key tools for promoting racism is the dehumanizing of people. I think the importance of the Sisters in Spirit research that's been done is to present both a quantitative and a qualitative...to bring the stories of the women and girls to life so that you can see, “Hey, they like cocoa puffs, and I also like cocoa puffs”, to bring that down to a basic level where you start to relate to these women and these girls who have gone missing or have been murdered.

As we've seen in a lot of the child welfare system, poverty seems to be a crime. And it's not a lack of love; it's a lack of resources. If you bring it down through that poverty line, you can see that this type of discrimination has been present through policies since laws were written in Canada.

We're working with victim services; we're working with the police; we're working to change views and perceptions of our aboriginal people; we're working with the community to start working in conjunction with victim services instead of against. This work is ongoing, but it's definitely perceptions, and a PR campaign has to happen.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Irene Mathyssen]

Thank you.

Madam Boucher, for seven minutes, please.

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Good morning, ladies, and welcome. I am really happy that you came here. Thank you for the wonderful work that you do with aboriginal women. It is really appreciated. Unfortunately, I was not able to go on the tour because I had some personal problems, but I listened carefully to the members of the committee who were able to travel and see first hand your reality and were inspired by what you told them.

As white women, we often don't live your reality and we fail to understand it. We are perhaps less informed and we perhaps have a distorted idea of who you really are. Earlier, you talked at length about funding and I would like you to explain something to me.

When you entered the data and did all that work, who did you share it with? Are you partners with the RCMP, Peacekeepers or aboriginal police forces? Do you share the information with the departments you want funding from? Is this database available to us, to the departments, such as Status of Women Canada or the Department of Justice? Are these partners you share this information with?

[Katharine Irngaut]

The five years that we've spent working on Sisters in Spirit has not only been a journey to collect data but also to legitimize our research. Going hand in hand with Stats Canada to confirm our methodology and our research procedures has helped to justify our own feelings that we knew we had to begin with that this work is important, that it's filling a gap in the system, that this type of information hasn't been collected in this way or hasn't been used well. We're now at the cusp where people are actually starting to come to us and want to work with us. So we are starting memorandums of understanding for information sharing with the OPP, with the Manitoba Action Group on Exploited and Vulnerable Women, and with the national RCMP database as well.

In terms of the issues we have around the privacy about the databases, because we had consent forms from families, we'll have to go back to the families and make sure they're okay with sharing that type of information. What we do instead is every year we come out with our research report, telling of the newest trends that we have seen and the confirmation of what we can do with that data without releasing private information.