Status of Women Committee on Feb. 15th, 2011

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

I call the meeting to order.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the committee is undertaking a study on violence against aboriginal women. We are looking at the root causes of that violence. We're looking at the extent of the violence. We're looking at the forms of violence and the nature of the violence, and we are looking for solutions from the people we are talking to, especially in aboriginal communities, to see what we can do, because this has been going on for a long time, and despite efforts from every level of government, very little seems to have changed.

It is my pleasure to present to you the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations, which will present for 10 minutes; then they must leave. Many of you have the chief's name there, but instead of the chief we will be having Patricia Schuster, who is the executive director of the Saskatchewan First Nations' Women’s Commission.

Patricia, welcome. Would you like to begin your presentation? You have 10 minutes.

[Patricia Schuster, Executive Director, Saskatchewan First Nations' Women's Commission, Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations]

Thank you very much.

I would like to extend my apologies on behalf of our chair, Chief Day Walker-Pelletier, who is unable to attend in person this morning to present her own statement. Our legislative assembly for our chiefs is meeting for the next few days, and this morning is an important part of this process.

I will be reading her statement verbatim, and therefore may refer to “I”, meaning Chief Day Walker-Pelletier and not myself. It is her statement and should be reflected as such in the notes.

I will begin. The statement reads as follows:

I would first like to thank the chair, the Honourable Hedy Fry, for the opportunity to contribute to the Standing Committee on the Status of Women. I am Chief Day Walker-Pelletier of the Okanese First Nation, Treaty 4 territory in Saskatchewan. I have been chief of my first nation for 30 consecutive years. I also sit as chair of the Saskatchewan First Nations' Women's Commission within the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations structure.

It gives me great pride that I am able to assist in the successes of my community and champion the causes and rights of first nations women and children.

In Saskatchewan, we currently have 10 first nations women chiefs and more than 140 other women in leadership capacities. It is our mandate at the women's commission and as first nation leaders to ensure that our communities flourish and that our membership is given every opportunity possible to succeed. It is a difficult path, considering that in our past various legislation and policies have been used to keep first nations people from succeeding. Residential schools have had such a negative impact on our people that two or three generations later the effects are still clearly evident. Violence against first nations women and children is rampant in our communities, born from the cycle of abuse created from residential schools.

Within the last three years, the Saskatchewan First Nations' Women's Commission has gathered research from women within our communities in Saskatchewan regarding violence. We went out to several communities and talked to more than 300 women, and our findings were astounding: 10 out of 10 women had experienced violence within their lives, either as children or as adults. Further to that, when we asked whether the women had ever had a crime committed against them, very few women answered yes, yet many had answered that they had been assaulted by their partners or someone in their lives. What this showed us was that women do not even comprehend what violence is and how it is not right for them to be experiencing it. Our response was to go back out into the communities and identify ways that women can keep safe. We identified that violence against any person is not right, and then we went back to the very basics and discussed what violence really is.

Today I'm here to ask you to respect our abilities as first nations leaders. I know what my community needs. I understand the complexities that exist on my reserve pertaining to violence.

When a woman experiences violence, it affects her ability to be a supportive mother, maintain a job, contribute to the household income, and take part in our many community activities. Our communities are based on family threads, and when a women is in a volatile relationship, she will often cut off these threads, which contributes to her and her children being confined to living with violence.

According to the World Health Organization, violence against women is an issue of public policy and is a human rights concern. As a community leader, I believe that this is true and I am trying to ensure that the human rights of all my members are met. This includes our collective rights as a nation. Our communities are family oriented and work together as a community, as we have always done in the past. This is a main staple of our nationhood.

I'm willing to work towards developing a course of action to prevent violence against women. We must identify the women in our communities who are experiencing abuse. We must create talking circles, support groups, and educational awareness seminars to assist in this effort. More access to safe houses should be available on our first nations or within our tribal council areas. They must be developed based on our holistic beliefs and be based on our traditions where women have always held power in our communities. Women must feel safe, be treated with respect, and have access to professional support, yet there is very little funding available for development of action-oriented solutions.

I know you are looking for information that you can identify recommendations on, to influence future legislation. Today I have already identified recommendations to you, including access to funding to create our own solutions. First nations people are unique to anyone else in Canada. We have a treaty-based relationship with the government signed by our respective forefathers, and we would like to ensure this process is respected.

November 25 has been designed as International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women by the United Nations General Assembly. Within the next nine months, let us work together to begin the process of change for our women experiencing violence. I ask you today to recommend a commitment to give funding to first nations to develop safe shelters for our women and children who need help at a local level.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much, Ms. Schuster. That was very short, but you have to leave now. Is that right?

[Patricia Schuster]

Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

I want to thank you very much for presenting. We would have liked to ask you questions, but since you must leave, we will thank you again.

We're very interested to know that you have done some work yourself in your own communities and that you have some very interesting findings that are consistent with findings we've heard elsewhere.

Thank you again, Ms. Schuster.

[Patricia Schuster]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

The next witnesses are going to be on the issue of child welfare. As we did our travels across the country, we found one consistent pattern, and it is that there is a huge problem with child welfare and with the taking of children away from their parents and putting them into care in a non-aboriginal setting. This in itself has become almost an epidemic.

We wanted to discuss this because we didn't feel that we had enough information, so we've held these meetings to discuss the issue of child welfare and to dig deeper into what is going on. As a result, we have with us Cindy Blackstock, executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada.

Welcome, Cindy.

[Dr. Cindy Blackstock, Executive Director, First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

We will hear from you for 10 minutes and then we will have questions and answers. It's just you, so you're on the hot seat.

[Dr. Cindy Blackstock]

Thank you, honourable members.

I'm so glad that the issue of children has joined the issue of women and motherhood. It is fundamental that children be seen within the context of their families, within the context of what it is to be a woman, and within the context of the perpetuity of a society.

There are more first nations children in child welfare care today than at the height of residential schools, by a factor of three. We believe that this is fundamentally preventable in the vast majority of cases.

The factors that drive first nations children into child welfare care are poverty, poor housing, substance misuse linked back to residential schools, and inequitable services for child and family service agencies and other services funded by the federal government on reserve.

Fundamental and central to what I'm about to say is a question of the Canadian conscience. Is it Canadian in any shape, way, or form for a government to say “no” to a child or to say a child deserves less than other children simply because of that child's race? If you think that's okay, you will see nothing but barriers to solving what I'm about to say is a solvable problem. If you don't think there's any room within Canadian society for denying children the same benefits other Canadian children enjoy simply because of their race, something that they cannot change and should not be asked to change, then you will see nothing but opportunity in solving what is a solvable problem for this generation of children.

Some people may not be aware that when it comes to child welfare, provincial and territorial laws apply on and off reserve, as a requirement by the Department of Indian Affairs. The funding is provided by the Department of Indian Affairs through a host of funding arrangements if the funding is not tied to the provincial statutes or to the needs of the children. The Auditor General has reviewed all of the various funding arrangements provided by the Department of Indian Affairs, including the much touted enhanced model, and has found them all to be inequitable and flawed. That was as of 2008.

I just came from the aboriginal affairs committee, and there were first nations child welfare agencies there that have received the enhanced funding. They are now three years into that; they are experiencing deficits running their agencies and are unable to meet the needs of their children in a comparable way.

I'm going to quickly go through some of these funding models so that you're briefed on them. I'm going to talk a little bit about Jordan's principle, and I will spend most of my time on the solutions.

There are three funding formulas currently used by the Department of Indian Affairs. One is called directive 20-1. What you need to know about that formula is that there's almost no money in that model to keep children safely in their family homes. In fact, the Department of Indian Affairs' own fact sheet on child and family services says that the funding is so badly structured and is such an inequitable amount that it drives first nations children into foster care because they aren't provided the same services as other Canadians

There's something called the enhanced model, which is really just the Indian Affairs take on the directive. It's just an adaptation of the directive. The department has said that now that we have rolled this out, this is the solution. As I just shared with you, Sheila Fraser found it to be inequitable and flawed three years ago, yet that's all the department is prepared to offer first nations children. You either take dire and inequitable under the directive, or you take flawed and inequitable under this new approach.

The third model is just about as old as I am. I am 46 years old. The third model is 45 years old. Can you imagine being funded for a child welfare practice on the basis of a model that's 45 years old? Well, that's what happens to first nations child and family service agencies in Ontario. These agencies are struggling every day to meet the unique needs of their children within their culture and context. That model too was reviewed by the Auditor General of Canada was found to be flawed and inequitable.

Now, if the best our country can do for first nations children is dire and inequitable or flawed and inequitable, I think you would all agree with me that it is insufficient for the Canadian conscience.

There's another problem, which is that our first nations children get caught in disputes between the federal government and the provincial governments about who should pay.

Jordan River Anderson was born in Norway House Cree Nation in 1999. He was medically required to stay in a hospital for two years, but after two years, he should have been medically discharged to a family home. Everything was ready for his at-home care.

If he had been non-aboriginal, he would have gone home, but Canada and the province decided to argue over each individual item related to his care, and this baby stayed in hospital unnecessarily for over two and a half years.

Doctors, social workers, and family members pleaded with the provincial and federal governments to allow this child to go home as any other child would have, but their voices were not heard; Jordan died in a hospital, never having spent a day in the family home.

The family pleaded for this not to happen to any other children, but we knew it was. We conducted a study in only 12 of the 108 first nations agencies and found that because of these disputes, 400 other children were being denied government services available to all other children.

Jordan's principle is a very simple concept. It says that when a government service is available to all other children--so these aren't services that aren't available; basically, if you were a non-aboriginal child, you'd receive them--and one of these disputes crops up, either the federal or the provincial government--whoever gets contacted by the child first--pays for the service, and they can argue about reimbursement as a secondary concern.

That was adopted by many of you, as parliamentarians, in December 2007. Some of you may remember Ernest Anderson in the gallery that day, and the standing ovation that you all gave him in recognition of his family's contribution.

I'm sad to say that the bureaucrats have reinterpreted the direction of the parliamentarians. They've narrowed Jordan's principle to now only apply to children with complex medical needs and multiple service providers, suggesting that denying children services in education and other areas is somehow okay. I would encourage you as parliamentarians to direct the bureaucrats to re-embrace the true tradition of the House.

We have Canada before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal at the moment. I say to people that a day back in February of 2007 was probably one of the saddest days of my life as a Canadian citizen, because I found myself having to file a human rights complaint against the Government of Canada because they had failed to address the inequalities in child welfare, despite there being two evidence-based solutions and despite there being billions of dollars of surplus budget or billions to be spent on stimulus projects.

The kids somehow were still at the bottom of the deck, so along with the Assembly of First Nations, we filed a human rights complaint against the Government of Canada alleging that they're racially discriminating against first nations children by underfunding child welfare and driving these kids away from their families and into non-aboriginal homes in many cases.

That case is now four years on. Why has it taken so long without a judgment? Because the Canadian government is not fighting it on the merits. They don't see fit, in this case, to put all the facts before the Canadian public and before the courts in order to have that issue resolved. They want to fight it on a legal loophole. What they're saying is they, as a federal government, only fund child welfare. Others deliver it, so it's the people who deliver it who should be held accountable for the discrimination, if there's any occurring.

That truly is splitting hairs. Can you imagine? The federal government provides very few direct services to Canadians. If that was your measure, it's the doctors who deliver the health care. If they decide to give 20% less health care to people wearing blue sweaters today, well, it's not the federal government discriminating, but the physician. That would be unacceptable and un-Canadian, and yet that is the position of the Canadian government at the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.

The Federal Court has refused to derail the tribunal, despite two appeals by the federal government to stop the tribunal on this “funding is not a service” issue. As well, they brought a similar motion--not to the Federal Court of Appeal, as one would expect, but back down to the tribunal to try to get it derailed on the same technicality just this last June, and we are waiting.

The other thing that the Canadian government doesn't want is for this to become part of the public consciousness. We have a campaign called “I am a witness”—you can see my button here—and we've posted all the court documents related to this case up on a website. We invite Canadians, not to support our position--because they don't know all the facts--but to listen carefully to the Government of Canada and carefully to ourselves, to read the Auditor General's report, and to make up their own minds about whether they think their country is doing the right thing for first nations children three years after the apology.

There are over 7,000 Canadians and organizations representing about 10 million Canadians following this case at the moment. It the most watched legal case in Canadian history.

Among those who came was a 14-year-old non-aboriginal girl by the name of Summer Bisson, and I bring her quote to your attention on page 8 of my brief. She came to watch Canada's last attempt to try to derail the tribunal by using the legal loophole that funding is not a service. This is what she says: Canada's lawyer has to come up with a good reason as to why the Tribunal should be dismissed and really there is no reason except for the fact that the government is scared, and does not want justice to be done. It's no wonder the government doesn't want this to be public. It is quite embarrassing and sad to think that our government is trying to get out of its responsibility to provide the same quality of services to First Nations children in the child welfare system as they do to non-Native children. I am a student and I am aware and I am going to make sure other youth are aware. Cindy is speaking for others who cannot speak and that is amazing. So I am going to speak for others who cannot be here today and make sure they're aware.

This is not a partisan issue. Equality is not a partisan concept. I think all of you swore oaths to stand on guard for the values that define this country the most. A testament of the nation and of your leadership is that when you know something is wrong, you can surface above your party lines and do the right thing for children. Can you say there comes a time in the history of all great nations when we have to turn the page on Canada's relationship toward first nations children from one of oppression and discrimination to one of hope and inspiration?

There are multiple solutions, which I've identified in my series of recommendations on the report, but be clear about this: Canada knows it's discriminating. It knows the harm to children. You heard from many of the mothers of those children in your briefs.

There are solutions that were jointly developed by the government, and quite frankly, if we can afford billions for fighter jets, we can afford to invest in our greatest natural resource. The World Health Organization says for each dollar you as parliamentarians spend on children, you save $7 down the line. Imagine what you could do with the $6 of savings if you were to do the right thing by first nations children today. There'd be more jobs in your regions, more accessibility to health care for an aging generation, more services for seniors, more services for women; fail to do that, and you will be using those dollars to build mental health facilities, substance misuse treatment facilities, and prisons.

It's not a question of whether you want to spend the money; it's a question of how much you want to spend and where you want to spend it. At the end of the day, it's a question of whether or not you think it's the right thing for a federal government to do to say “no” or “not quite as much” to children on the basis of race.

Thank you very much, parliamentarians.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much, Ms. Blackstock. That was very compelling testimony.

Now I'm going to start the questions and answers. It is a seven-minute round, and that seven minutes includes the question and the answer.

I'll begin with Ms. Neville for the Liberals.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Blackstock, for being here. You and I were both just at the aboriginal affairs committee listening to the discrepancies in the delivery of child protection and child services across the country.

We have just travelled the country. I haven't been everywhere with the committee, but I certainly did all of western Canada on the issue of violence against aboriginal women, as you're undoubtedly aware. The issues you raise here are critical to families. What we also heard in our travels is the conundrum, the dilemma, that women have in reporting violence, abuse, or dysfunction in their homes because of the very real fear of having their children taken away.

All of what you said this morning feeds into that. I wonder if you could speak to your experience with the mothers who have to come forward or who don't come forward because of their fears of what will happen to their children.

[Dr. Cindy Blackstock]

Thank you for the question.

There are two areas of inequality that aboriginal women experiencing domestic violence experience. One area is the shortfall in actual, direct government spending for services that we just talked about, as in the case of child welfare. The other big gap is in federally funded voluntary sector services, those volunteer services that federal government dollars go to for delivery of services.

In my study in 2003 I found that the average amount each Canadian receives in publicly funded voluntary sector support is about $2,400 off-reserve. The amount going to first nations for children and family services was 35¢. Think about it for a moment. How many voluntary sector services funded by the federal government did you see on your tours across the country?

That means there's a whole vacuum of services. Imagine here in Ottawa today if I cut every shelter, every food bank, every domestic violence program, and then on top of that, I underfunded child welfare services. How well do you think the citizens of this city would be doing if they're parenting in a few years? Not that well.

The other problem is in the statutes on child welfare. Over the last 15 years in particular, there's been an increasing recognition of the very real harms that domestic violence does to children. Those are legitimate concerns, and I am not underestimating that aspect. However, there is also increasing evidence, particularly out of states like New York, that when you put domestic violence into child welfare statutes as a reason for child welfare to intervene in families, they were actually not getting the reports of the most severe abuse because of women being afraid of their kids being taken away. In fact, they back-stepped on that.

One of the realities is that child welfare is not that good at responding to domestic abuse. We don't have the resources to do that. We could, within first nations agencies, retailor some of those services and reprofile them, but not on the basis of the inequitable funding we currently have.

I would encourage parliamentarians to pay attention to those two factors. Where is the federally funded money for the voluntary sector for services for violence against women going, and to what extent is that benefiting aboriginal women on reserves? The second question is this: be aware of that inclusion of domestic violence in child welfare. Are you confident, as members, that child welfare has the proper responses and supports to women and to men experiencing domestic violence in order to keep children safe? I'm not that confident about that.

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

Do I have more time?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Yes, you have about two and a half minutes.

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

Ms. Blackstock, could you elaborate a little bit more on the 35¢ versus the $2,400? I don't think we've heard very much on that and I think it would be helpful.

[Dr. Cindy Blackstock]

The Canadian Council on Social Development did a study. What they found is that about $115 billion in funds are deployed by the federal, provincial, and territorial governments each year in voluntary sector services for Canadians; if you divide that by population, you get roughly that figure of $2,400.

As you know, I grew up in remote communities and I spent a lot of time on reserves. I also did social work on and off reserve. What I found is that in these areas where there should be food banks because there's the greatest food insecurity, there are no food banks, and those groups are not servicing on-reserve. I didn't see any emergency shelters. I didn't see any of these things that people in the cities and off-reserve take for granted.

So I did a study as part of my master's thesis when I was at McGill. I polled 70 national organizations that had child, youth, and family in their mandate. I also polled first nations child and family service agencies. I asked a simple question: have you provided services to a child on a reserve in the past year? Among the 70 voluntary sector organizations, none of them had. Of more concern, about 73% could see no relationship between their mandate and what was happening on-reserve. Among the first nations, there were about six individual children who had received any benefit from those publicly funded voluntary sector services in the year prior.

Since then I've been calling on governments to say they must mandate these groups to make sure that a proportionate amount of that voluntary sector funding is going to those of greatest need, who are often children and women and men on-reserve.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

I'll go to Monsieur Desnoyers for the Bloc Québécois.

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

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Blackstock. Your report is very interesting. It's also very interesting where it addresses the entire aspect of discrimination against aboriginal persons which has been around for many years.

A number of witnesses have come and told us that and described it to us from various standpoints, both for women and children and for aboriginal persons in general. We've talked about the Indian Act, which is obsolete and should be substantially amended.

When we say things have to be changed, I believe that has to be done by going way back in history and bringing it all back to the actual situation of aboriginal people today.

A number of people have come and told us that everything has to be done in the culture of the aboriginal peoples. I'm going to refer to your recommendation 5, which I would like to analyze with you. I'd like to hear you say a little more about that recommendation, which states:

“INAC must develop in partnership with first nations in the Northwest Territories and Yukon Territories strategic measures to support the full and proper operation of first nations child and family service agencies in the territories including, but not limited to [...].”

I'd like to hear what you have to say on those strategic measures. We've had a number of groups talk to us about education, health, funding and grouping funding together. Instead of having 16 departments, they proposed they we have fewer and that the money arrive faster so that cuts can ultimately be avoided as well. From department to department, mutual cuts are being made so that there are ultimately fewer services for the aboriginal community.

In the second part, you say:

“... but not limited to, supporting culturally-based and community-based child welfare and the provision of adequate and flexible financial resources.”

What does that mean?

[Dr. Cindy Blackstock]

Well, it's interesting. You can do two things as a government. One is that you can decide that you have all the solutions and only fund people according to a fixed amount. That has not served children very well in a diverse context across the country. The other is that you can do something different--that is, you can look at the particular needs of the children within the context of their family to find out what their concept of a healthy child is and then determine how you achieve that within the context of that community and that culture. Then you fund not by program, but by principle.

We are working with the British Columbia government on something called the Touchstones of Hope project. It's a project that involves working with first nations communities for their own visions of what healthy children and families are. We actually get all the community members into a hall, including the children themselves, as well as elders, youth, and parents, and we vision out what a healthy child is and what a healthy family is, because remember: one of the things that was taken from us during colonization was our ability to dream for our own children. Governments dreamt for us, and we've all seen the consequences of that, but here we are calling on communities to vision again what a healthy child is and what a healthy family is in their community, to identify the indicators of that and to look at the now, and then to look at what resources are needed to go forward.

The Province of British Columbia, I have to say, is a regular bureaucracy, much like your governments are, but they were convinced that having 80% of the children in care who are first nations in that region was no longer acceptable. It was a reason to break the rules as we had done. Now they're looking at funding those plans not according to what the Government of British Columbia thinks is a good idea for everybody; they're looking at funding those particular community plans on the basis of principle, which allows consistency across government funding but also allows for innovation at a community level that makes sense.

The Touchstone principles are these: a respect for self-determination, culture, and language; holistic response, which means working with the child not only at his or her age level, but across ages and within a context of their family, community, and nation; structural interventions, which means dealing with the factors that are beyond the ability of parents to control on their own; and non-discrimination, which we've been talking a lot about today.

That is going very well, actually. They are two years into this project. So far, the British Columbia government has noticed that we haven't quite got the number of children going into care tailing off, so we still have more work to do there, but what's happening is that the children are going home much sooner.

Why is that? Well, before, you would have four child protection workers squirreled away in an office trying to manage the situation. Now you have 100 or 200 people who came out to the session and who can now see a role for themselves as community members and as citizens to be actively engaged in the well-being of those children, and they are definitely stepping up to the plate.

We are not seeing, in any way, first nations communities sweeping under the carpet some of the real concerns in communities. In fact, we are seeing an unbelievably vital determination to conquer those, to embrace our own accountability, and to move forward. However, the underfunding by government is a definite barrier, and it needs to be addressed.

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

With regard to funding, a number of witnesses have told us that, instead of establishing prisons, we should—as you have just emphasized—go back to the community and use the money that was allocated to those prisons for aboriginal women and the community in general. We could probably serve the community better that way. What do you think of that?

[Dr. Cindy Blackstock]

Absolutely. We're having an independent evaluation done of this Touchstones of Hope project. I and many of my colleagues believe that being first nations is not enough. We have a fundamental responsibility to get it right and do it really well for our kids, even to a higher standard than non-indigenous communities.

What we're finding in these early days is that the visions of community we're seeing are much more aligned with the best evidence in child welfare than with the way child welfare is currently funded by the department or the way provincial child welfare statutes are done. We need to get back to a fundamental Canadian value that is shared, I think, among the political parties, which is that people at a grassroots level really know their families best. If we look to them as the experts and guides in the process, we're going to make the smartest investments as a country, and we're going to see bigger and more immediate payoffs at the level of the child--and that, member, is my measure. It's not how many announcements the government makes, how many handshakes I see, how many dollars are in the budget. It's what's happening with that child in that family. Are we making a difference as a country? That's the measure.

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

I'd like to address one final point.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Go ahead.