Status of Women Committee on April 30th, 2013

[Ron Swain]

In the different communities I've been involved with, they didn't have in place a regime for matrimonial breakup. So it ends up being in the jurisdiction of the police. They look at the circumstances for that particular family. For police services, the safety of children and women is always a priority. Unfortunately, that usually means taking people away from the matrimonial home.

I've also worked outside a reserve or first nations community, and there it's totally different. Usually they take the offender out and the offender is kept away. I'm not talking about for just a day; the offender is out until court deems otherwise.

[The Chair, NDP, Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe]

Thank you.

We turn now to Madame Bennett.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

When CAP testified before the Senate, it said it hoped there would be provisions where there would be emergency accommodations made for families to go to a safe place and be protected, particularly the children.

Are you concerned that the bill doesn't deal with the practical things? Regardless of the law, there is always a need for a safe place for people to go in a community; there is always a need for shelter.

[Ron Swain]

You bring up a real good point. Unfortunately, in reading the bill, we don't see it. The bill doesn't talk about creating a safety net or....

But aside from that, although we've said it's not a perfect piece of legislation, we still support the concept of putting it through, because it is an important major first step.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

The law can only do so much. If there's not access to the law, both geographically and financially, are you concerned that there's no plan to allocate resources to women actually being able to access the law?

[Ron Swain]

You bring up a good point there, because this piece of legislation would need support. It would need moneys allocated to, like you say, women's shelters, or for women to be able to access the court system. Even with this law, it's still going to come to some court in the provincial jurisdiction. For people to be properly represented, you need legal advice.

So if there's going to be misgivings about this legislation, it might be being silent on those.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

As you know, when the ministerial representative, Wendy Grant-John, actually wrote the report, her caution was that the viability and effectiveness of any legislative framework will also depend on the necessary financial resources being made available for the implementation of the non-legislative measures, such as programs to address, just as you've said, land registry, mediation, court-related programs, local dispute mechanisms, prevention of family violence programs, a spousal loan compensation fund, and an increase of funding to support first nations communities to manage their own land.

Without those kinds of supports that were actually put in the original plan...which I think a lot of us at the time were cautioned ought not to be cherry-picked. You can't just put it in the law without all of the other provisions, the non-legislative provisions.

There seems to be a lot of concern from women themselves that this law on its own is not going to fix the problem.

[Ron Swain]

There are resources in first nations communities—probably not enough, but there are resources now. So if you have this legislation go through, there's a process, and there are some resources that women can access.

It's not a perfect piece of legislation—

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

But within your organization, do you have any relationship with shelters in the urban centres?

[Ron Swain]

Do you mean at the congress or myself personally?

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

The congress.

[Ron Swain]

We don't have formal agreements with shelters, but we have our affiliate organizations. Our community people access shelters, volunteer on shelter boards, are part of those experiences—

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Have you been asked about the centre of excellence?

[Ron Swain]

No.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Do you think you should be?

[Ron Swain]

If you can tell me what the centre of excellence is, I'll—

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Good question; we don't seem to know very much about it, other than that it seems to be helping first nations develop rules of their own. But we also are worried that instead of a comprehensive plan that would develop a real strategy for dealing with violence against women, and the menu of choices that women should have....

What would happen to the Métis woman in the situation you described? Do you think she would feel safe there, in that community that was not her home community? Would she not need to have the ability to somehow be with family?

There have to be other solutions than a matrimonial real property law, right?

[Ron Swain]

If this legislation had been in place, she would have had more rights than she did. Here she was in a community for two and a half years, where she had friends and had developed relationships with people. She probably could have gone, in an emergency situation, over to somebody's place, but because of the way the system is right now, with the band council resolution, she was the one who was asked to leave the community.

If this legislation had been in place, it would have changed that whole scenario. With the limited resources, there would at least have been a process for her to not be forcibly ejected from that home. Because violence was involved, she was victimized more than once: she was physically harmed, and then she had to leave her home of two and a half years, with her children.

[The Chair, NDP, Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe]

You have a few more seconds, Madame Bennett.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

In these situations the question is that without access to legal aid, without supports and services, with a new law, how would she even deal with the band council or deal with decisions that are made?

Across the country we are hearing that women don't see that the law can do this. As my colleague said, when there is so little shelter space, so little programming for the prevention of family violence...I have trouble understanding how even when, at the Senate committee, you said there had to be provisions...and there aren't any in the bill.

[The Chair, NDP, Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe]

Thank you.

We will start the second round.

Madame Bateman, you have five minutes.

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Thank you, Madam Chair, and welcome.

Thank you so much, sir, for your testimony. It's very moving when we hear from somebody who has lived this reality and has tried to help. As a law enforcement officer you must have dealt with some frustration, because you weren't able to help with the 25-year legislative gap that exists.

In your response to one of my colleagues—in fact I think it was Ms. Ashton—you indicated that you yourself are a personal victim of this legislative gap, because of your mother's situation, in which she lost the rights to the property, if I heard correctly. I would like you to expand on that.

[Ron Swain]

I would like to explain that. It's more like the whole atmosphere around it. Discrimination against women is basically what it goes back to. It's at almost every level, going back generations.

My grandmother, who lived in a first nations community, married—on the paper or the registration it says French half-breed, but he was a Métis man. They got married, and because he was not a status Indian they were kicked off the reserve and she lost her status. So our whole family since then.... We didn't move far. The Swan Lake reserve is here and we moved three miles away. We all lived around that community, because we were all related and we visited with each other all the time.

That happened years ago. I think it was about 80 or 90 years ago. It's just now, a few months ago, that I got my status back. It was a few years ago that my father, under Bill C-31, got his status back.

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

You were speaking about the endemic discrimination against women.

[Ron Swain]

Yes. It's discrimination against women, because that happened. It didn't happen against Indian men. It was happening against Indian women. So this is a part of it.

Here we are in 2013 and we still don't have legislation in place to protect women in first nations communities.