Thank you very much, Ms. Neville.
As we discussed, one of the things that I noticed when I first started working exclusively with women and girls, and in particular with the indigenous women and girls, was the number who had entered guilty pleas and had not even gone through the process of having a trial. Part of the issue, we thought at first, was lack of legal representation. I think that is part of the issue for some. Certainly the cuts to legal aid and the elimination of the court challenges program have significantly impacted the ability to take on systemic issues, particularly issues of systemic racism.
Also, when we look across the board at the number of indigenous women who are categorized as incarcerated for violent offences, I can think of only one case in which it was not a response to violence.
That doesn't mean it's always excusable. Some were defensive moves, and I talked in my initial opening comments about one or two examples of defensive violence that have not been recognized as defence before the courts, largely because the women haven't had an opportunity to tell that story. However, there are also many cases in which it's reactive violence. I think, for instance, of a couple of women in jail whose sisters were raped. They went after the man who they knew had repeatedly raped with impunity in their community. When they went after the man, it was considered a vengeful act; it was something they were punished for. In fact, in one of the cases the woman wanted to plead guilty to murder, and did in that respect. This very much limits our ability to even try to open up that case again to put the context in place.
As I mentioned to you, one of the things we've been trying to do.... I teach a course at the University of Ottawa—in fact, I just started the current term last week—on defending battered women on trial. There are so many cases of indigenous women that we can't just bring a few examples, but we could only find one case in which a woman was convinced to actually fight the charges against her. She was acquitted, not surprisingly. Once there was an opportunity to tell the story, to put in the context, she was acquitted, in a case in which she had killed an abusive partner.
I could go on. There are so many examples of this situation.