Status of Women Committee on Feb. 8th, 2011

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

I will call the meeting to order.

Even though we have two witnesses who have not yet arrived, we will begin with what we have. We also have Chief Whiteduck, who is going to be here at noon, so we will begin with the three witnesses who are here.

This committee is meeting pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) to conduct a study of violence against aboriginal women. We are looking at the extent of violence against aboriginal women, the root causes of violence against aboriginal women, and the forms of violence against aboriginal women--in other words, is it societal violence, is it domestic violence? We're looking at the whole nature of violence against aboriginal women and the root causes.

Having said that, I will begin. I just want to let witnesses know that you each have seven minutes to present. Please look at me occasionally. I will give you a two-minute warning and then a one-minute warning, because we really need to be as tight as we can so that we can go to questions and answers. If you cannot finish what you have to say, be sure that when you get a question, you throw it in so that you can still get it on the record.

I will begin with the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies.

Welcome, Kim.

[Kim Pate, Executive Director, Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies]

Thank you very much.

Thank you to the committee for inviting us to present. I'll keep my comments brief in the interest of being able to answer some of the questions from the committee. In reviewing some of the proceedings, I realized some questions have come up, so I will try to address those in a very broad way.

I want to start by acknowledging the traditional territory in which we have the privilege of meeting.

In my responsibilities working first with young people, then with men, and then for the last 19 years with women and girls in particular in the justice system, the impact of colonialization and contact becomes very clear when we see the number of indigenous young people--men, but most particularly women--in the prison system.

I also want to acknowledge that there are members of our organization whose interests I represent, particularly our 26 members across the country. They work with marginalized, victimized, criminalized, and institutionalized women and girls. We're best known for the work we do with women in prison, but we actually work with a full range of women. Some of our organizations are the only social service--the only women's service, the only victims' service--in some of their communities. That's part of the context.

I also recognize that I have the responsibility of bringing forth some of the voices of the women who can't be here because they are locked up or institutionalized. Some are in prison. Some are in other forms of detention, such as psychiatric detention and the like. I take that responsibility seriously.

We are now in a situation in which women are the fastest growing prison population in this country. They are also the fastest growing prison population in many other countries. In this country, they are particularly indigenous women, poor women, other racialized women, and women with mental health issues. Those percentages cover a range, except that it's very clear that women who have self-identified as being indigenous women are now more than a third of the federal jail population. More than a third of the women serving federal sentences, and almost half of the women serving sentences of two years or more in this country, are racialized women.

We also see, according to the latest statistics coming out of the Office of the Correctional Investigator, that as many as 45% of those women have significant mental health issues. Not surprisingly, when you look at the indigenous women, you see a significant number of those women, particularly among the women who are dealing with the 91% rate at which they have experienced physical and/or sexual abuse prior to being incarcerated. Their victimization is very clear. Many of them have been left without resources in the community and so have ended up having to self-medicate, in many cases, sometimes with legal and sometimes with illegal or illicit medication or drugs. They often are women who have very few fiscal or financial resources. They often have very few social and personal supports and end up very marginalized very quickly. We've seen cuts to social programs, cuts to health care, and cuts to educational services in this country, so it's not a big surprise that these are also the women who are most clearly impacted by those cuts.

When you look at violence against women generally, and the backlash we've had in this country over the last two decades to much of the important work that's been done on violence against women, again you see the disproportional impact on indigenous women and the way in which that trajectory feeds them right into the streets, where there are very few resources.

The only system that cannot turn its back on them is the criminal justice system. They can be criminalized for anything from being on the street to being seen as a nuisance. When they're being prostituted, often they'll be picked up on charges of armed robbery and robbery when they're actually trying to negotiate payment for the sex acts they've provided. They are often reported by the individual who refuses to pay. We have a number of women in prison, particularly indigenous women, in that situation.

We've seen police not come when they've been called when these women are experiencing violence. They have essentially been deputized by the state, but we've had the withdrawal of state support and then the invasion of state support when it comes to following up after they have been left to defend themselves or defend others.

You would know well many of the stories. You've been across the country and have heard some of the stories of 9-1-1 calls not being answered until there is something else besides the situation of a woman being beaten. If you need stories, I can give you stories of the number of women who talk about having called the police.

The police don't come when they're called as a result of a woman being battered; they come when they're told that the woman has actually had to defend herself, that she might have stabbed someone who has attacked her or that sort of thing.

You know about the issues of the decisions to prosecute even in situations in which there may be defences. I can also give you examples of the numbers of times women plead to charges even when they know they have not committed the offence for which they've been charged. That's for all kinds of reasons. They're expected to by their families. They're expected to by others. They don't want to sit in custody, waiting. Contrary to some of the rhetoric we hear, they don't actually want to sit on remand and in custody for extended periods of time.

Even after those situations have occurred, we also have situations in which we've succeeded in encouraging women to appeal their sentences. A woman successfully appealed as recently as last month. After winning an appeal after she had defended herself against an attacker, her sentence was overturned, the conviction was overturned, and a new trial was set. When she was asked to potentially go for bail, she could not put up any property because she and all of her family lived on-reserve, and on the reserve, of course, the band council owns the property. Even though I offered to put up my house as a surety, she refused that.

Everybody agreed that she had a very strong case for self-defence. Clearly the crown did too, because when she won her appeal, the crown immediately offered her a deal to plead. She initially had been convicted of second-degree murder, and the crown offered her a deal of manslaughter and time served. That's what she ended up agreeing to, because she didn't want to sit in jail for another year or two awaiting a new trial, even though there was a strong case of self-defence. She wanted to get back to her child and get back to the community.

There are many other examples. Suffice it to say that I'll look forward to the questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much, Kim.

I want to welcome Ms. Tolley. Bridget, welcome.

The next person is Nahanni Fontaine, special adviser on aboriginal women's issues for the Government of Manitoba.

Go ahead, Ms. Fontaine, for seven minutes.

[Nahanni Fontaine, Special Advisor on Aboriginal Women's Issues, Aboriginal Issues Committee of Cabinet, Government of Manitoba]

Okay; I was told I had 10 minutes, so I'll cut parts of my speech or speak really fast.

First off I just want to say meegwetch to everyone for inviting me here to speak. I also acknowledge the traditional territory where we are situated today.

In attempting to better understand, appreciate, and address violence in all of its forms in respect to aboriginal women and girls, one must invariably and rightly begin with the advent of colonialism in Canada--that is to say, start at the root causes of said violence.

I will not spend much time outlining our collective history and those marginalizing policies--residential schools, the Indian Act, etc.--that were enacted with devastating consequences for aboriginal women and girls. Rather, I would simply state that it is imperative and requisite to acknowledge and incorporate, without fail, this shared history into our discourse, analysis, processes, and resultant directives.

Particularly as we operate from within this residential school post-apology era, with its expressed desire to move forward together in a journey of collective healing and reclamation, we now enjoy a safe space in which to discuss openly and respectfully the colonial legacy and its impact on aboriginal women and girls, with exacting reference to violence.

Aboriginal women and girls experience violence from within a myriad of manifestations, including racism, sexism, classism, sexual identity discrimination, social and economic marginalization, lack of adequate and safe housing, lack of access to education, lack of access to justice, and lack of access to social services such as lawyers, specialized shelters, and various social service programs, to name but a few.

Taken together, all these manifestations of violence create an overwhelming, inequitable space of marginalization and dislocation and a sense of hopelessness in the daily lives of aboriginal women and girls. Often we see intergenerational trauma and crisis in the experiences and narratives of aboriginal women and girls, with little opportunity to escape or move forward toward healing.

Although each of the above manifestations deserves its own separate volume of discussion, deliberation, and debate, I choose instead to focus my comments specifically on the tragic phenomenon of missing and murdered aboriginal women and girls, which is indisputably the ultimate and final manifestation on this spectrum of violence.

We know that even moderate figures designate approximately 600 aboriginal women and girls as either missing or murdered. We know, too, that each of these women and girls is representative and reflective of the diversity within our indigenous community. Some were teachers, some were students, some were workers, some were sexually exploited, and some had transient mental health disorders. Indeed, these women represent a microcosm of most, if not all, Canadian women and girls. They were mothers, daughters, grandmothers, aunties, and cousins. Indeed, there exist two prominent connecting features amongst missing and murdered aboriginal women and girls: they were aboriginal, and they were all loved and cherished by their families.

It is within this spirit that Manitoba affirms that the issue of missing and murdered aboriginal women and children is both a regional and a national tragedy demanding immediate attention, condemnation, and action by government, civil society, non-governmental agencies, grassroots associations, and their respective leaderships.

There are close to 80 missing or murdered aboriginal women and girls from Manitoba alone. We continue to commit to their families and loved ones--and what's more, to all Manitobans--to thoroughly, methodically, and strategically address this issue and ensure that justice is achieved for these loved ones.

Consequently, on August 26, 2009, the Government of Manitoba announced the creation of the Manitoba integrated task force for missing and murdered women, in partnership with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Winnipeg Police Service.

One week following, on September 3, 2009, Manitoba established the Manitoba action group on vulnerable and exploited women, seeking partnership between government and grassroots organizations to address this critical issue.

A special adviser on aboriginal women's issues was appointed to work specifically on this file in concert with government, community, and families. In addition, the special adviser is assigned to work directly with the RCMP and the WPS in a liaison capacity on behalf of the families of missing and murdered aboriginal women and girls, providing a much-needed trusting link between the two parties.

Current research from Chandler and Lalonde shows us that truly meaningful social outcomes for aboriginal communities are achieved when--

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have one minute.

[Nahanni Fontaine]

Oh, my Lord. Well, I have copies of my presentation, so I will disseminate those.

I'll make a final comment, then. It seems I wrote too much, but I'll finish it with this: to this end, Manitoba encourages the Government of Canada to engage all stakeholders in an equitable partnership with the aboriginal community to develop a national strategy on missing and murdered aboriginal women and girls, with restorative and preventative mandates. Manitoba offers the Government of Canada our expertise and partnership in the development and execution of a national strategy on missing and murdered aboriginal women and girls.

Meegwetch.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

Now I'll go to Ms. Wheelton for seven minutes, please.

Ms. Wheelton, for those of you who don't know, is a representative of Yukon Sisters in Spirit from the Yukon Aboriginal Women's Council.

[Courtney Wheelton, Representative, Project Coordinator, Yukon Sisters in Spirit, Yukon Aboriginal Women's Council]

To begin, thank you for letting me speak here as a witness, and I'd also like to acknowledge the traditional land that we are on.

Rates of violence against women are higher in the north than in any other jurisdiction in Canada. Aboriginal women are more likely to experience violence than any other women. If we combine these two factors, we know that aboriginal women in the north are more likely to experience violence than any other group in the country. Violence in northern communities has become an epidemic, and that's just the cases that are reported. There are a great number of violent incidents that are not reported in Yukon communities. Violence against aboriginal women continues to be one of the most pressing issues our community faces.

We have worked hard over the years to create programs and services to support these women and their families in a culturally relevant context. We have taken a proactive and preventative approach wherever possible. Many times, however, we are working with victims in the aftermath of a crisis.

We have fought hard for more resources for aboriginal women in Yukon communities. In the summer of 2010, we began a regional Sisters in Spirit project to do community-based research on missing and murdered Yukon aboriginal women. Within three short months of research, we became aware of at least 29 cases of missing and murdered aboriginal women in our communities. While this number probably doesn't sound high, in a jurisdiction the size of the Yukon—35,000 people—this number is important. Twenty-nine of our Yukon sisters are dead or missing. This is simply unacceptable. There is at least one from every major first nations family in the Yukon, which means that all of us here have been impacted by this tragedy.

We have begun working with the Native Women's Association of Canada to help us do our research and develop our project, but since their funding has been cut, our project is in jeopardy of not being as in-depth as we had hoped. The project is contingent on the analysis of information we collect so that we can work with families and communities in a healing process and help engage them in the prevention of violence. We are concerned that without the assistance and expertise of the Native Women's Association Sisters in Spirit staff, our original project will not be successful, which means that our efforts aimed at preventing violence against aboriginal women will not be as successful.

There are 29--29 and counting—missing and murdered aboriginal women in the Yukon alone. That's 29 women who are valued as mothers, sisters, daughters, aunties, cousins, grandmothers, wives, and girlfriends. They are 29 women who, through not only their deaths but through their lives, affected the lives of their families and communities. Can we put a price on their value? Can we put a price on those who will become missing or murdered in the years to come?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Oh, my goodness.

[Courtney Wheelton]

Yes, it's short.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you. That's very good.

Ms. Bridget Tolley is representing the youth.... I'm sorry. You're--

[Bridget Tolley, Member, Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg]

I'm a member of the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

Go ahead, Ms. Tolley, for seven minutes.

[Bridget Tolley]

First of all, I would like to say meegwetch to the standing committee for giving me this opportunity to speak. This is my mother. I dedicate this presentation to her.

My name is Bridget Tolley, and I am a proud Algonquin woman and grandmother from the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg reserve. Some of you may know me or know of me, as I have fought for justice in the death of my mother Gladys Tolley for the past nine and a half years. This fight for justice in many ways has become part of who I am, but it is the many experiences in my life that have led to me finding my voice and standing up for justice. I am on this journey for justice for my grandchildren, my great-grandchildren, my great-great-grandchildren, and for the next seven generations.

You may be familiar with some of the statistics about violence in aboriginal communities. The numbers reported by various governments and government departments reveal too many common experiences of violence, especially violence against aboriginal women and girls. However, I'm not here today to talk about numbers, because it seems as though people, communities, and community leaders have become numb when they hear numbers.

What does it mean to you when you hear a number related to family violence, physical and sexual abuse, incest, or addiction? As a survivor, I can tell you what it means to me.

Some of my earliest memories are of the fighting that went on in my home. My parents separated when I was only a couple of years old, but their fighting will always be a defining feature of their relationship and of what echoes in my mind when I think of them together. After the separation, my father would not let my mother take me or my siblings, so I grew up with my father and grandmother. It was not a safe and secure home, but a home where I learned to be afraid.

I was a small girl when the sexual abuse began. Looking back, I realize I really didn't know what was going on. It was my uncle who took away the innocence of my childhood, someone who is a part of the family, and someone I didn't dare tell these stories about. Like many children, I suffered the abuse in silence, until my uncle went to the spirit world. He was an old man when he died. I remember how good it felt when he was gone, but my life would never be the same.

The trauma of my childhood, however, didn't end there. A few years later, when I was 11 years old, my dad committed suicide by shooting himself in the heart one day when we were not home. I don't think I can explain to you what these experiences do to a child. I had no way to cope with the emotions, the fear, the feeling of complete chaos at the time when I needed to feel safe and have guidance to understand that this is not how life should be.

After my father died, my mom came back into our lives, but we continued to live with my grandmother until she passed away in 1980. I was about 20 years old at the time, and struggling to understand who I was while raising a family as a young mom.

The sad reality was that I couldn't cope. Partying was a way to escape, numb myself, and not have to confront all the memories, emotions, experiences, and pain. Running away from my thoughts and my mind was the only way I knew to keep going.

This came to a tragic halt the day my mother was killed, on October 5, 2001. Not only had I lost my mother once as a child; this time I would lose her forever. What was worse was that her life was stolen from her when she was struck and killed by a Sûreté du Québec cruiser as she was walking home one night.

The pain and anger of losing my mom is what turned my life around. I have lived much of my life caught up in the system. The system was then, and remains today, plagued by failures and by racism. It has also taught our people lateral violence against one another.

With strength from the Creator and perseverance, and after nearly 40 years, my outrage with this injustice is how I keep going. I have been through a lot in my life, but I've realized the strength that comes when you begin to speak out and share your story.

What I realize now is I'm not alone. When you look at the statistics, each number tells a story, and sometimes more than one. I am one person, but I carry with me a lifetime of pain.

What I ask of you is this: when you walk out of this room today, I hope that you begin to picture a face, a person, each time you hear a number related to violence, abuse, and survival. I also challenge you to take my story and every other story seriously by committing to aboriginal women, men, children, families, and communities that you will make a change.

As elected officials, you have the power to say ending violence in aboriginal communities must be a priority of your party and your leadership. Please don't let another generation suffer as I have. Invest in programs for community healing, places for survivors and families to come together to find their strength and their voice, and resources to ensure communities have health and mental health services to serve the ongoing needs of individuals throughout their life cycle. Finally, please give us a place to honour all those who are no longer here with us today to tell their stories.

While I am extremely grateful for the existence of this committee, I can't help but be skeptical. I also have many concerns and questions about these proceedings, as do many other family members of the missing and murdered aboriginal women.

These are just a few of my questions. Why weren't family members notified when this committee came to Kitigan Zibi in June? Why were the minutes of these meetings not posted online, as they were for other locations? Why did the committee choose to go to Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, but not to Regina and Saskatoon, where the numbers of missing and murdered aboriginal women are higher? Why haven't families been notified of this committee process? Why haven't we been invited to provide our input into how the process unfolds? Why have we not been consulted about what we need in terms of funding? Why were these decisions made by people who are not living our reality?

Many of us remain wary, even if Sisters in Spirit does have its funding renewed, that there will be all kinds of compromises that will have to be made by the Native Women's Association of Canada in order to get this money. What happens if these compromises are not in the best interests of these families? What is our recourse? I hope that some of these questions will be answered.

As I have done for the past five years, I will continue to stand alongside the Native Women's Association of Canada to provide vigils across Canada to honour my mother and the lives of the missing and murdered aboriginal women and girls. In the past five years, Sisters in Spirit has become a genuine national movement, with vigils in more than 84 cities and communities, including international ones.

The momentum is very strong. It gives me great motivation and strength to see the community standing up for itself and finding its voice, so I will continue to fight on behalf of the family members who often feel ignored and silenced. I will never end my fight for justice and an end to violence.

Thank you. Meegwetch.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much, Ms. Tolley.

You asked some very important questions about the process of the committee. We did try to consult as much as we could with as many groups as we could to find out the best thing to do, but when we travel as a committee, we are bound by the allocated budget that is given to us. We have to make decisions about where we go, and we try to go into every region. While it would have been great to go to Regina because of the large number of missing and murdered women, we also had to go to very isolated communities where no one had gone before. Then we were in East Vancouver, which, as you well know, has a large number.

We felt that we could understand those issues in cities, but we wanted to go to isolated areas and we wanted to go to reserves. We wanted to talk to the average, ordinary aboriginal person and not only to organizations, because sometimes we felt that we could hear, as in your case, Ms. Tolley, very personal stories that might not come out in their realities when you speak to a larger organization.

I'm very sorry that we weren't able to come to every region and probably do as much as we could to meet with everyone, but I want to thank you specifically for bringing up those issues and for presenting to us such a very personal and moving story.

Thank you.

[Bridget Tolley]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

We're going to go to the question-and-answer section. The first round is a seven-minute round, and I'm going to be quite strict with that round. What I'd like to suggest to you is that the seven minutes include both question and answer. It isn't seven minutes for questions and any amount of time for answers. I'm going to again be giving an indication as to where you stand on the times to give you an opportunity to get in everything you want, but perhaps in shorter sentences.

Thank you very much.

Ms. Neville, for the Liberals, has seven minutes.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to all of you for being here today.

Ms. Tolley--Bridget--I want to echo our chair's thanks to you for sharing a profoundly personal story. We appreciate it, because it certainly gives us a greater understanding and insight into what many have experienced. Thank you.

I have so many questions and so little time. I'm going to start with Kim.

You and I have talked before, and one of the overriding issues—well, there are so many, but one of the issues that I'm concerned about—is that so many of the women who are incarcerated are in jail because they are responding to action by the perpetrator of violence against them. What we encountered in our travels was extraordinary stories of systemic racism.

I wonder whether you could elaborate, as we did in a private conversation, on some of the experiences you've had with women who are in jail and who are there because they are victims.

[Kim Pate]

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.

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

What would be your recommendation to this committee in terms of our discussions and ultimately our recommendations?

[Kim Pate]

As has already been discussed by the other women on this panel, who have done incredible work in their own right in their own communities both individually and within organizations, we could go back to some of the very basic recommendations of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples that have not even been touched. When we talk about social justice and equality, particularly for indigenous women, we have women living in what the United Nations has recognized as conditions lower than those in most developing countries, in particular women and children on reserves in this country. Those are some of the places where we can work to try to address the issue.

Once they're in prison, it's part of my job, and the responsibility of the organization I have the privilege and responsibility of working with and for, to try to get those women out, but it's almost “too little, too late” by then, because there are virtually no programs. Most of the women, because of the way their offences are categorized, never get access to those programs. Most of them are characterized as higher security. Right now, all of the women who are classified as the highest security are indigenous women. All of them have mental health issues, all of them are locked in isolation, and all of them have virtually no access to programs and services right now.

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

Do I have more time?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have just about a minute and a half.

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

Thank you.

Does anybody else want to comment on this issue?

[Nahanni Fontaine]

I concur with everything Kim is saying.

The other piece that needs to be looked at is systemic racism for aboriginal women and girls operating from within a system. When we look at the women who are incarcerated, we see that the vast majority are also there on breaches, because of the system that we have. I visit the Portage Correctional Centre in Manitoba. About 85% of the women are there on breaches because they don't have a phone--so they can't call in--or they can't go to an appointment that they have to go to, or the conditions that are placed on them or so unrealistic that it just further criminalizes. You can't get out of that system; once you get in, it's virtually impossible to get out. As well, it impacts upon their children: they don't have access to their children while they're in there.

It's quite a travesty that the vast majority of women who are incarcerated right now are there on breaches. We have to engage government and justice and all of those people in understanding this reality. I would say that a lot of people don't understand the reality that aboriginal women and girls operate within.

I'll leave it there.