Status of Women Committee on Feb. 8th, 2011

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much, Ms. Fontaine.

Now I will go to Madame Demers from the Bloc Québécois. You have seven minutes.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you for being with us, ladies. I feel very humble before you. I am very touched by your testimony, Ms. Tolley. Thank you for welcoming us on your territory and for trusting us sufficiently to share your viewpoint with us even though, as you said, you don't necessarily believe that we are going to be able to take action—which is what we need to do. You are probably right. We don't act enough. It is true, we've been conducting studies and producing reports for many years now and we don't act enough. I hope that this time the report will be sufficiently exhaustive so that we can undertake true reforms. I do hope so.

You've given us a few possibilities for solutions. I know that one of the problems that disturbs me the most is that 30% of the women in prisons are aboriginal. Most often, a large proportion of these women were also victims of fetal alcohol syndrome. And yet, programs are being cut back.

In your opinion, how come there are cutbacks in programs that could lead to a reduction in the incidence of fetal alcohol syndrome and therefore reduce the presence of aboriginal women in the incarcerated population? Could one of you respond on this subject? Ms. Pate?

[Kim Pate]

I'm sorry, but I will speak English.

One of the challenges with fetal alcohol is that it's a raced and gendered way to blame women for issues the state doesn't want to deal with. When I met with pediatricians a few years back, when we first started working on this issue, a number of them asked why we weren't looking at the inadequacy of nutrition, the lack of running water, or the lack of adequate health care as the issues that set up young people and children to be at a deficit. Instead we picked the one we can find and blame the mother for, and therefore divest the state of responsibility. I think that's part of the story of why the programs have been cut.

The other thing is we had some very courageous women--I think of Trish Monture, who sadly passed three months ago, and B.C. children's advocate Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, a judge--who took some very brave decisions. On the issue of fetal alcohol, she had some young people brought before her and was told they had fetal alcohol syndrome, so there were virtually no options aside from sending them to jail. Her response was that if they had fetal alcohol syndrome and therefore couldn't respond to programs, then it was the responsibility of the minister of social services and perhaps health care to find some programs and develop some services to meet the needs of those young people. Sadly, it was overturned on appeal, but I think she had the right impulse in saying not to throw them in jail, where they were going to get no support and likely develop additional issues and additional problems.

One of the aboriginal women I was talking about is in exactly that situation now. She's locked in isolation, just tried to kill herself for the umpteenth time, and has just been transferred across the country again. Her story is much the same as Ashley Smith's, and I only raise that point because people know her story; it's been more public.

The reality is that we should be focused on getting those individuals into the community and into support in the community, where they will end up eventually, hopefully, if they don't end up dead in prison. That's what we should be focusing on, not on trying to apply band-aids and putting more programs into the prisons. I think we need to be developing those services in the community in a preventative way and also in a supportive way.

We should not be continuing to pretend that saying it's the mother's fault because she drinks, or anaesthetizes herself with something else, will solve the problem. As we know from generations past, most of our mothers had no idea of the impact of medication or anything, and yet they weren't vilified for having a drink or that sort of thing. I think it's become a way for the state to divest itself of responsibility.

It doesn't mean that I don't think it's a very real issue; I think these issues are very real, but I think there are other equally important issues that we allow ourselves to ignore because they require state responsibility and state resourcing.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Ms. Fontaine, you said that you thought that it was a safe space to discuss violence against women.

During all the meetings we had, in all the provinces we visited, there was a problem that reminded me of the issues related to the residential schools. Because in all the places where we went, children are still being removed from women. They are sent to places that are not familiar to them. So they're still having their culture and identity taken away. In 20 years, we are going to end up with the same problem.

I find it's not all that safe. We end up with the same problem and I'm wondering what we can do to encourage governments to stop this way of doing things.

[Nahanni Fontaine]

Thank you, Madam.

I am sorry but I must speak English.

I want to quickly note that fetal alcohol syndrome is a disability. It's a rightful disability that we need not criminalize. I just want to say that.

You know that the reality with child welfare, as everybody knows, is that the vast majority of the children being apprehended are our children. The criterion now for apprehending children seems to be poverty, right? So we have women operating within really abject poverty being told, “You're not a good mother, so we will apprehend your children.” Going back to what Kim was saying, that's after the fact. Again, we're blaming the mother and blaming the parents, because they live within a context of poverty that is a historical context as well.

We need to invest and to engage with government in communities. We need to invest in families. When you look at some of the social assistance dollars that people live on.... I know that on one reserve in Manitoba, a family gets $174 per month for social assistance. You can almost see that their children are going to be apprehended in some capacity at some point, because they don't have the means to provide for them, yet this family is also dealing with all of these intergenerational traumas that we heard today and that we all operate within.

We have to invest those dollars not only in social assistance but also in education. We know there are communities in Canada that don't even have schools for kids to go to, so what will happen? We know that invariably a lot of children will get into trouble, their families will get into trouble, and they'll get apprehended. It's just a vicious cycle.

A lot of communities across the country say that the current social service and child welfare system is just a continuation of the residential school. We have to be courageous and invest those dollars in education and health and nutrition and all of those pieces.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

And we mustn't forget social housing.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Madame Demers, we've gone a minute and a half over our time.

I want to remind everyone to please try to make your answers as short and as concise as you can. I want to congratulate you, Ms. Fontaine, on your passion. You crammed a lot of answers into that question, but I do need to remind you folks to keep within the time, please.

We'll go to Madame Boucher now, from the Conservatives.

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

Good morning ladies. Welcome to the Standing Committee on the Status of Women. This issue seems to me to be more and more important. We often hear about violence against aboriginal women, but for various reasons, we don't know much about this subject.

Today, you're sharing with us a part of your reality and thus you're shedding light on a large number of problems that you are experiencing. Violence against women is not something well known to the public. There's not much talk about it. For my part, I think it's very important to understand this reality because I'm not aboriginal and I'm white. We also experience problems of violence, but one gets the impression that the issue is dismissed and not talked about. To my mind, that's unacceptable. I'm addressing all of you because I haven't heard much about it at all. Are you familiar with the Family Violence Initiative? This is what is said about it:

The Family Violence Initiative (FVI) is a long-term commitment of the Government of Canada to address violence within relationships of kinship, intimacy, dependency or trust. The Public Health Agency of Canada leads and coordinates the FVI on behalf of 15 partner departments, agencies and crown corporations. With the long-term goal of reducing the occurrence of family violence in Canada, the Government of Canada provides the Initiative with permanent annual funding.

I was wondering if you were familiar with this initiative and if one of you had ever used it.

No? You weren't aware of its existence? That may be one avenue. There has been a lot of talk about it. Perhaps this would allow you to contact the Public Health Agency of Canada. This a long-term commitment.

[Nahanni Fontaine]

With respect to this long-term family violence program, in what capacity did the government consult with and engage aboriginal communities and organizations in developing this?

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

All right. It is important, but I wanted to tell you that that program existed and that it was for everyone. I think that you, aboriginal women, should make use of it. We could meet again and discuss it.

I'd also like you to tell us about your prevention programs. When you work with aboriginal women, do you use these programs? Do you work in cooperation with several organizations, including the Native Women's Association of Canada? Last week, someone whose name escapes me told us that education also had to involve men. Do you have programs that could demystify violence against your sisters, programs that are designed for men?

[Kim Pate]

I just want to go back. I know that the issue of family violence, domestic violence, has been on the government's agenda, and on various governments' agendas, for many years. The challenge is that it has been de-gendered in a way that has caused some problems.

There were some productive consultations in the mid-nineties that occurred between what were broadly called “women's groups”. It included organizations here today and other organizations the committee has consulted with, and it provided a way to make recommendations for real initiatives. I commend to you the document “99 Federal Steps Towards an End to Violence Against Women”, which is one of the products of those consultations.

It included women at the grassroots level who worked on anti-violence, as well as indigenous women and other racialized women. It included a whole range, and it made recommendations, but it didn't continue, largely because it became a bit uncomfortable. It challenged all of the representatives about the manner in which the subject was being addressed.

To address violence against women, you have to address the structural inequalities that women experience: social inequality, financial inequality, racial inequality. You have to address all of those areas. We have yet to see a concerted effort to address these issues and to demand that we have substantive equality for women at every level.

Eliminating the Court Challenges program was probably the best worst example we could have of a mechanism that allowed women—particularly poor women, racialized women, women with disabilities—to argue for the duty to accommodate that needs to be in place.

I think there are real challenges, but there are also real opportunities.

Prevention is about developing social equality and financial equality so that women don't end up in a position of trying to manage. We have created an infinitely criminalizable group of people by allowing the provinces to cut social assistance the way they have.

We have cut mental health services. In the Kirby commission, Senator Kirby talked about mental health issues. Women have always been overrepresented there. We've cut that. In the prisons, women used to be able to move ahead through post-secondary education. All that was cut in 1992.

We've had a succession of cuts that have created more of these problems. That's why women are the fastest-growing prison population. It's not because you walk outside and you're concerned that your safety is at risk from women. It's not accidental that these are linked. That's some of the prevention. Women who come from the community come back to the community, and unless we have their services and supports in place, we're going to continue to see this.

In fact, I was just called by Correctional Services. They advised me that they are about to have to break the law and start transferring women all over the country illegally, because they have no beds. It's quite something to be advised of that by the government.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you, Ms. Pate.

Now I move on to Ms. Mathyssen, for the New Democratic Party.

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

Thank you.

I'm most grateful that you're here, and I want to thank you for all of the information you are providing. It helps us to start to fill in all the cracks, all the gaps, in our understanding.

I want to talk to everyone, but I want to start with Ms. Pate. You said something that troubled me. You said there is a backlash regarding violence against women. I wonder if you could elaborate on that.

Also, I want to talk a little bit about the Sapers report from 2008. Essentially, he made a number of recommendations, but what is most appalling about this report is that the management protocol was used and is still used against aboriginal women. It is by and large aboriginal women who are in this horrific situation, and aboriginal offenders are less likely to be granted parole.

It's not a very specific question, but I wonder if you could touch on some of those things, because I think institutional violence against women is also something we should look at.

[Kim Pate]

When I said “the backlash”, I meant that it's very clear that we are seeing increased charging. As women call the police for protection, they're increasingly likely to also be charged if they have used any kind of defensive force, so we have a large number of women in prison now who have been charged with assault in situations in which it should have been recognized that they were actually trying to defend themselves and/or their children.

I would commend to you the research of Elizabeth Comack and the work that's been done. It was argued that women are becoming equally violent, that emancipation and equality mean that women are equally violent.

When she actually looked at the statistics, just in Winnipeg alone she and her researchers found that although the charging rates were about equal, in virtually none of the cases of women who had been charged with assault did the people who were the victims require medical attention. In almost all of the cases involving the men who had been charged with assault, at least medical attention--and often hospitalization--was required. You just have to peel back that one layer of the police file and see very clearly the differential in terms of charging practices, prosecutorial practices, and, I would say, sentencing practices.

When I see a woman and a man charged.... There was another case out of Winnipeg last year or the year before. A woman was charged who had first been the victim of the man she was co-charged with. She had been lured into a situation in which she was sexually exploited. Then she had been used to lure other young women in with her. She was charged for procuring. She was charged for sexual assault. She received the same sentence as the man who had first been her victimizer--the perpetrator.

Now, I'm not suggesting that there's no accountability or agency on her part--not at all--but is there the same agency and accountability when that's the manner in which she became involved in that act? I would suggest not.

That's part of the countercharging aspect.

In terms of the management protocol, Correctional Services has said that they will end the protocol. By next month, we're supposed to have a new plan. We've urged them to actually look at some of the options, such as the Brockville treatment centre, to get the women completely out of federal corrections and out of the prisons, because the environment is such that the manner in which those four indigenous women--right now labelled under the supermax designation--are treated is worse than in the supermax special handling unit that exists in Quebec for men.

These women are escorted everywhere. They're in isolation. They're developing mental health problems. Those who had mental health problems when they came in are getting worse. The ability for those women to ever integrate back into the institution, the prison, let alone the community, is being hampered. Prison is becoming the greatest risk factor for those women and for public safety. We've argued that we should look at somewhere to get them out from under the prison setting so that they're not continually being punished for behaviour that in a mental health setting would be seen as symptomatic of the mental health label they carry and that would not necessarily be seen as something that should be punished.

I think there are many examples of things to be done. Also, Louise Arbour made many recommendations about limits to the use of segregation and the way to have correctional accountability. I would commend her comments to you.

I won't go on further.

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

Thank you.

I assume the recommendation that the Minister of Public Safety immediately direct the CSC to appoint a deputy commissioner for aboriginal corrections has not been followed through on.

[Kim Pate]

It has not been followed through on, no.

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

Thank you.

Ms. Tolley, I want to thank you for your testimony. You said a number of things, but at the end, your questions were very compelling. In those questions, you asked why there was no consultation regarding funding resources. I don't know the answer to that.

I wonder if you could elaborate on that question, because it seems to be an integral key in what we're hearing: resources, the lack of resources, and the unwillingness to provide adequate resources.

[Bridget Tolley]

Do you mean about the need for funding?

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

Yes. I'd like to hear about the situation you described, a childhood and a young adulthood of real despair in terms of the lack of support systems. Madame Demers has touched on it, on the lack of affordable and decent housing and having no place to go. I wondered about funding resources and the kind of consultation you would like to see.

[Bridget Tolley]

Well, this is what we've been talking about. I have been with the missing and murdered aboriginal women since the beginning, and I've seen a lot of families. What everybody is really in need of is a voice. I feel that now that the Sisters in Spirit has lost its funding, our voice is gone. We need to bring that voice back. I understand that the funding was only for five years, but we need to continue the Sisters in Spirit. A lot more services need to be done, especially at the community level. I was talking about my case. There are lots of people on the reserve, as everybody is saying, who need to have these services.

I'm very lucky that I was able to get out. It could have been worse. I could have been dead too. I think about that every day. It's just the younger people. I don't want to see what happened to me happen to them. I pray to God that this never happens to my grandchildren. This is what they need to be taught in schools. They need to be understood. I understand that a long time ago we weren't able to talk about this, but now we can talk about it. Sexuality is out in the open. There's no more hiding. We're in the 2000s now. It's time for our children to understand what we never had a choice about and what we had to keep inside all these years. It's going to help our children.

We need to provide mental and physical health and social services, and we need doctors and nurses, not just social services. We need doctors and nurses to help these people get back their health, because there are a lot of them. Most of my friends are all caught up like this in the system. I'm 50 years old. I can't wait any longer for you guys to do anything. I have to go out and tell people and make sure that we are heard. We as families need to know that somebody cares. We need a lot. We need a place to grieve. We need a place, as I said, to honour our missing and murdered aboriginal women, and this is what I would like you guys to look at.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much, Miss Tolley.

Now we're going to go to a second round, and that round is a five-minute round. If I give this hand signal, it means that you're over time and you're going to have to wrap up. I really don't want to cut people off. Sometimes when someone is telling a moving story, it's difficult to do so, but we do have to get everyone in and give them an opportunity to have this interaction.

We're going to start with a five-minute round. We will begin with Ms. Simson, for the Liberals.

[Michelle Simson, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair, and I'd like to extend my thanks to all of you for appearing before this committee.

Just by way of observation to your point and your questions, Miss Tolley, the fact that this country even has a Standing Committee on the Status of Women--that we still require such a committee--says a lot. When you add the racism to it, you have a recipe for disaster. I just wanted to get that off my chest.

Any one of you can answer. This might be a question for Miss Fontaine, because you're involved with the provincial government in Manitoba. It appears to me that provincially and federally we can always use more money for resources. We'd always like more money for programs, but we're not even close to utilizing it properly. We are operating in this country in silos: this is provincial; that is federal. We're trying to take an issue and twist it like a pretzel to fit into programs being developed provincially and federally that really have no bearing and will not help any part of reality. Would that be a fair statement?

Also, without consultation with the stakeholders--in this case the aboriginal community--programs are developed that may or may not have any type of successful outcome.

I leave it to you. Just jump in.

[Nahanni Fontaine]

It's a tough question for me to answer. I've only been with the government since November, when I was appointed special adviser on aboriginal women's issues. Prior to that I worked in our community for the last 15 years.

When you're working on the outside, the basic perception is that everybody is working in isolation from one another and there's no concerted effort. Had I been presenting in that form, I would have said, “Yes, there's absolutely no connection between the federal government, the provincial government, our communities, etc.”

However, being now in the midst of the provincial government, I will say that there are all kinds of things going on, both federally and provincially. There are FTPs on violence against aboriginal women. I know that in Manitoba we have an interdepartmental group that works on violence against aboriginal women and on missing and murdered aboriginal women and girls, so there is a connection, but is it as much as we need to do? Again, we need those resources, but I think it's shifting away from working in those silos.

[Michelle Simson, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

I think Ms. Pate has an observation.

[Kim Pate]

I would recommend that the committee review the Parliamentary Budget Officer's review of Bill C-25, as it then was. We've already had the stats that a third of the women serving federal jail sentences are indigenous. In one of the appendices for that document, the Parliamentary Budget Officer showed what it was costing to keep one of the women on the management protocol. I would encourage you to look at those figures, because Correctional Services has estimated that it costs, on average, a minimum of $185,000 a year to keep a woman in federal custody. When you consider what has brought those women into custody and what that money could be doing in the community to benefit not just those women or their children but the entire community, you can see that $185,000 a year could go a long way.

But let's go much higher than that. We're talking about more than 100 indigenous women held at higher security levels. It's costing up to and more than $500,000 a year to keep them in isolation. They require three to five staff and they're fully shackled everywhere they move. Those are incredible resources that could be used in much more productive ways in the community.

If you think it's just the scheming or dreaming of people who are doing the work and maybe are not able to see the whole picture, I encourage you to look at what the heads of corrections said in the mid-nineties, not what Kim Pate from Elizabeth Fry says or what the University of Ottawa says. The heads of corrections said that if the provincial, territorial, and federal governments came to an agreement, you could probably release up to 75% of the people then serving prison sentences and not increase any risk to public safety.

That's an incredible number. That tells you how many were in for poverty-related and other inequality issues. Have them in the community, paying back and being held accountable. We're not talking about people running off willy-nilly and not being held accountable for their behaviour. They could be in the community in ways that others have already talked about--restorative ways--while paying back, living in the community and contributing to it, and working. There are many examples.

With regard to indigenous women and women in general, I was in Cape Breton two weeks ago testifying on how unequal it is that you still have to take women to central locations, even in a provincial or territorial context. You have to take them out of their homes and disrupt their families and disrupt their employment, even on very minor and short sentences. I think there are lots of examples of other things we could be doing. There are ways we could be spending that money better. We don't have to say, “Get new money”; we have lots of money being spent already.