Status of Women Committee on Feb. 8th, 2011

[Michelle Simson, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

That's my point, yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much, Kim.

Now I'll go to Mr. Boughen for the Conservatives.

[Ray Boughen, Conservative, Palliser, SK]

Thank you, Chair.

Let me add my voice to those of my colleagues in welcoming you women here. In sharing with us your experiences, we appreciate your time and energy. Without your input, we don't know about it. It's very good of you to appear.

I have a host of questions, and you'll have to bear with me, if you will. I'm new to the committee and I don't have a lot of background. If my question seems somewhat off base, just blink and go with it. I would appreciate that.

I have an observation, first of all.

Kim, maybe you can allude to this in terms of a response.

I'm hearing things that tell me there are enough structures in place to handle different avenues, to deal with people in an upfront manner, to be of assistance to them, and to handle what their needs are, but we're not following those procedures.

I would allude to the fact that right now there's talk about the administration of a number of band councils that are utilizing dollars for themselves instead of for the residents of the band. That's yet to be talked about, but the idea is, as you have said, Kim, that there's enough money. Are our structures not being followed?

I'll ask about a public defender. If an aboriginal woman is in court, why does she not have access to a public defender? If a person is charged and can't afford a lawyer, in our country lawyers are public defenders.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Excuse me. I'm stopping for a second.

I want to introduce Chief Whiteduck, who came in a little bit late. Chief, if you would like to join in on the question-and-answer period, feel free to do so. Also, at the end of this meeting I will give you a few minutes to say something that perhaps you might want to throw into the mill.

Thank you.

[Kim Pate]

Your point is well taken. If I sounded as though I was saying that all of these resources are there right now, then I need to correct myself, because most of the resources that I'm talking about have been systematically eliminated. Social services, education, and health care have been eviscerated in this country, as the provinces and territories have been allowed--with the elimination of the Canada assistance plan in the mid-eighties--to basically spend federal tax dollars in very different ways and not prioritize those who are most marginalized. I think we have to start there.

Even if you have access to public legal aid, the reality is that if you don't have a risk of going to prison and it's not represented as that in the first instance, you may start to develop a record and then become at risk of being imprisoned in the ways that Ms. Fontaine talked about, and, once you've breached, ending up in prison. That's how most people end up in prison first. Ashley Smith is an example. She didn't go to jail first because she committed an offence. She went to jail because she breached after she was on probation for committing an offence.

There are alternatives being used, but unless we shore up those very services that have been cut and unless we provide alternatives to sentencing for judges.... I do judicial education all the time. In fact, I'm in the midst of planning another one. One of the big issues, particularly for women with mental health issues, indigenous women, and poor women, is what to do if there aren't resources in the community.

I would argue that this is where the committee has a huge chance to influence the government to actually put resources back in place for those very vital services, so that we're not putting more people at risk of being marginalized and victimized; when that happens to people, the only system that can't say “Sorry, our beds are full” or Sorry, you don't fit our mandate”--sorry, sorry, sorry--is the prison system.

It doesn't take much to get charged, as probably everybody in this room knows. If you're on the street and you're a nuisance, you can be charged with mischief. If you're on the street and start asking for money, if it's perceived as problematic, you'll be charged with being threatening or all kinds of things that we see happening all the time.

I think it really is about looking at how we're spending the money and reallocating it, and not necessarily saying that it's the fault of those who are trying to shore up a sinking system. Right now we're rearranging the deck chairs on the proverbial Titanic, because we're trying to shift these women around as though we don't know what the real issue is. The real issue is this: why are they coming into the system? When we know that crime rates are going down and prison rates in other places are going down, why is it that rates for women are going though the roof? It's not related to a risk to public safety.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Chief, would you like to answer the first part of the question?

[Chief Gilbert W. Whiteduck, Chief, Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg]

Thank you for the opportunity to say a few words.

There was a reference to band councils potentially using resources that might go to women or programs for elsewhere. I take great exception to that. At our community level, we do the best with the limited funding we get. What I'm always hoping to hear in these kinds of debates is that it's not a blame game. We can't play around by blaming. We have to take action. We have to do things that are concrete and that are going to give results.

For too long, it has been that one party blames the other one, but it's the women and the communities that are caught in all of this debate. We need to see some concrete action. That's what the communities are asking. That's what the women are asking. It has to be built from the community. It's a community effort that has to pull it together. It will vary from one community to another, of course, depending on the capacity, but that's where it lies.

The answer lies with first nations people. It comes with the support of government, of course, but it lies with first nations people.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

Now I will go to Monsieur Desnoyers of the Bloc Québécois.

Again, if you don't have your translation devices on, can you please put them on? Actually, if you are on the English channel you will hear the English as well, so you don't need to keep taking them off every time.

When you're all ready, we'll start.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Welcome to all of you.

Ms. Tolley, as you mentioned, we visited your reserve. We heard important testimony about a young aboriginal woman who disappeared a year and a half earlier. Whether there's one or 29, as Ms. Wheelton said, or 80 like in Manitoba, it's just as important. I always say that among white people, when there's a death, it makes the headlines and everything is done to find the guilty party. Unfortunately, it seems that the government doesn't want to do anything when it comes to aboriginal communities.

In the document produced by the Sisters in Spirit initiative, we see 582 cases listed. Today there are more than 600 and that includes two people who were killed two weeks ago in Vancouver. Here again, nothing is being done. That's absolutely unacceptable. A few weeks ago, a person came to meet us here. The recommendation was more or less what the chief just said, namely that we have to listen to the community rather than allow the government to impose rules that do not apply to that community or do not reflect it completely. Such a way of doing things does not lead to attaining the desired objectives.

The Sisters in Spirit initiative conducted surveys in the community. These people managed to list each case. I was told that in Vancouver, a few weeks ago, they had come up with 18 and that dozens of police officers had worked on these cases but they had put an end to the investigation because they were not achieving their goals. They could have worked with the people from Sisters in Spirit, who probably had relevant information on each of these files.

That said, a few weeks ago we received someone who told us that this had to be done in the community, that history, culture and education were important, as Ms. Pate mentioned. Even within the prisons, something like that needs to be done. So we are talking here about prevention, protection, health and ongoing funding to solve this problem once and for all.

The police should not become the only tool to solve this problem. In fact, it isn't. It cannot solve the problem of poverty in these communities. According to this person—and I'd like to hear your views on this—everything has to be grouped together in cooperation with the main stakeholders. There could be one large envelope. It could be used to solve various problems. It would be done in and by the community. If 16 departments each have an envelope, they all end up reducing it regardless of what they do. To them, this is not important because it's a matter of dollars. The best way to manage and solve these problems would be to hand this over to the community.

What to you think of the idea of a recommendation that would involve everyone and in which a specific amount of money would be set out, as well as the way it would be used, and the way things would be done, not by the government, but by the community?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

Would someone like to answer this question?

Chief Whiteduck, do you think you might have something to offer here?

[Chief Gilbert W. Whiteduck]

I'd just like to make a few comments. To our mind, there is no doubt that prevention is basic, first of all. After that, the intervention must exist and it must be supported. That is very important.

Would a large budgetary envelope meet the needs? It's always up to the community to make sure that the money goes where it should when it receives funding. I've always believed that given the projects and approaches of this type, whether it's the federal government or the community, it should report to Canadians annually to say whether or not it has succeeded and what the status of the project is. The community has a responsibility not only toward the community itself, but toward everyone and the federal government as well. We all bear a responsibility.

When you put elements in place, you have to ensure that there are things... It is not a matter of waiting five years and reviewing the file after those five years to determine whether it worked or not. That has to be done every year somewhat like a report card that everyone is given. We mustn't forget what lies behind all this. We must take action immediately. I do understand that some things are being done, but we need much more direct action. That's the real criterion. We are in a critical situation and have been for a long time and we can no longer wait.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

Now we will go to Ms. Mathyssen of the NDP. You have five minutes.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

We keep hearing over and over again that there's no money to do anything. The money is a significant problem, and yet we have lots of money for more and more jail cells.

Ms. Pate, we're going to be putting together recommendations for our final report. You talked about the services that have been cut and what needs to be restored. You made mention of the Court Challenges program, and of course legal aid has been cut.

What services need to be restored? If we're making recommendations, what do we say to this federal government along the lines of what needs to be in place if we're ever going to resolve any of these issues?

[Kim Pate]

I think fundamentally we have to talk about reinserting national standards. Those of us who are long enough in the tooth to have been around at the time the Canada assistance plan was eliminated didn't think that plan was the best. We wanted to see stronger and more enduring national standards at the time than we had.

I think the recommendation that has been made about going back to community is important. I have yet to go to a community, whether it's a very small, remote community or a very large city, where people don't have all kinds of ideas about what they could do with the resources that are currently being spent to prosecute, detain, and ultimately to try to reintegrate individuals into their community. There is probably a much smaller number--not just of women, but of men and young people too--who need to be incarcerated, and there are far more creative things that we could be doing.

There are ways that you could make recommendations to put real pressure on to change what's happening. I think also making some recommendations about the effects of the increased number of bills that are impacting how long people will be in prison would address a huge issue. It's going to disproportionately impact indigenous peoples, especially indigenous women. It's going to disproportionately impact the poorest and those with mental health issues. We need national standards that really challenge the mechanism whereby we're making imprisonment the norm. The fact that we talk about crime prevention as a way to meet social issues and the fact that we're making imprisonment the norm has become one of our biggest social problems.

We feed children in breakfast programs and call it crime prevention. Do we really want to send messages to all those children across the country that we're feeding them so that they don't become young criminals? That's essentially what we do when we argue in those kinds of ways.

We need to be pulling back and making recommendations that are fundamentally about what Louise Arbour talked about not long ago when she was still at the United Nations. She said that we need to have basic human rights. Every person in this country should be entitled to be fed, clothed, housed, and educated, and to have their health needs met. When countries had that fundamental standard--whether in the Scandinavian countries, or Australia when they had better social programs, or our own country when we had better social programs--crime rates and rates of incarceration were much lower for that reason.

If the other mechanism worked, then we'd all be flocking to move to the United States, because it would be the safest place and everybody would be taken care of. We know that quite the opposite is true.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Yes, and we certainly saw that in Ontario—the criminalization of poverty.

Ms. Fontaine, would you comment?

[Nahanni Fontaine]

I just wanted to note a specific recommendation for programs that need funding.

We have the National Crime Prevention Centre’s youth gang prevention fund. As we speak, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, there are five programs that are going to be closing their doors March 31.

Somebody spoke earlier about engaging men in the preventative mechanism on violence against aboriginal women. These programs are key to that, and those doors are going to be closing. We have one program, Circle of Courage, that is for aboriginal gang members. It brings them back into ceremony, teaches them their culture, and teaches them their rightful place as indigenous men, what it means in their internal and intimate relationships, and how it transforms into their family lives. They're closing their doors March 31.

There's a tangible recommendation right there.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have 30 seconds, Irene.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Well, Ms. Wheelton, you haven't had a chance to speak. Perhaps you won't get a chance to answer this question at this point, but perhaps you will have an opportunity later.

You talked about the loss of funding for NWAC's Sisters in Spirit and said that it impacted your community negatively. It sounded as though you had some things in hand, things you wanted to do, and you simply needed that financial support.

What plans did you have in regard to prevention and to support for families?

[Courtney Wheelton]

The Yukon Sisters in Spirit project isn't directly funded through NWAC--we're funded by other means--but we had been working with them prior to everything in regard to sharing research, and we're trying to almost copy their project and make it at a grassroots level.

Currently they only have six Yukon women in their database, and we have discovered 29. We're just trying to relate to what they have found so that we don't duplicate the work, and to bring back to our community what they have found in working with families and family gatherings in order to restore our people.

Because of the lack of funding, they're not able to continue their research. We have been working in the Yukon, but it's hard to bring it back to NWAC. It's been difficult for our project on some levels. It hasn't completely stopped it, and it won't, but there are some negative effects seen in the Yukon.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Yes, and certainly research has been seriously undermined.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much, Ms. Mathyssen.

Now I would like to give the chief the opportunity to give us a presentation for three minutes, because he could not get here until noon. Once he's finished, I will ask each of the other four who presented to give a one-minute wrap-up. In one minute, if you have three things to recommend that this committee should recommend, tell us what they are so that we can get that said clearly. Then we will have to go in camera for the meeting we have to have a little later.

Thank you.

Chief, begin, please.

[Chief Gilbert W. Whiteduck]

Thank you very much for the opportunity.

Today I want to reiterate what our community faced on a couple of occasions: the disappearance of the two young ladies, Maisy Odjick and Shannon Alexander, and the impact that has had on our community.

No community can be ready for this. No community can have the tools. We had just been elected in 2008, and in the fall all of this started to unfold. We don't have expertise in this. We didn't know where to turn. The police were unsure. We raised a lot of questions. We were frustrated. The family—and I understand this—were frustrated, maybe by our lack of efforts, and were wondering where we were going.

There have to be opportunities for tools to be developed to help communities address this.

The other situation is Ms. Tolley's situation and the fact that her mom was killed by an SQ patrol car going through the community. There are a lot of questions that the family has asked in trying to get clarification and looking for justice at the end--looking for answers, looking to understand and hopefully learn from it.

That door has continually been shut. Why is that? Why is it that Bridget, as a woman, as the head of her family, had to seek this kind of response and find that the doors are closed to her?

The frustration, I believe, that we meet with in the community is that although you may be talking about it at a very high level and there are programs, the reality is that a lot of these things don't flow down to the community, and they need to. We need to better understand and to be better able to share. Programs come and go; funding gets used by some organization, and then it may trickle down, or it may not.

I believe that the Sisters in Spirit movement and everything it represented was beginning to find its place, and then all of a sudden the door was closed. There was an opportunity. It's capacity development, it's opportunity-building. My concern would be, and the way it appears now is, that the legs are being cut from this movement, which I believe could have generated support and understanding and, really, the main thing: that very important momentum.

I want to close with this: I was watching TV last night, and they were talking about Ronald Reagan and his legacy. He was making a speech someplace in very simple words that I put to you. He said, “We have it in our power to bring about change.”

We do indeed have it in our power, but do we want to exercise it? I hope so. I hope this standing committee will indeed stand and support aboriginal women and first nations women, and bring about those changes that need to happen now.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

I'll ask Kim to start. You have one minute, please.

[Kim Pate]

Given the reality of why I was invited to come, the fact that women are the fastest-growing prison population, and the links that has to women's inequality generally, it strikes me that a report card of the kind that was done some years ago, which resulted in the status of women committee coming into existence, would be very useful at this time.

It would be linked to the justice policies, the economic policies, and all the other ways in which structural and substantive inequality are contributing to the problems within the justice system in terms of women being victimized, as in the cases of the missing and murdered indigenous women, and also the cases of women being increasingly criminalized, imprisoned, and institutionalized. That would be an extremely useful addition at this time, and extremely timely.