Thank you.
Members of the committee, I would like to draw your attention, in my four minutes, to two major things this legislation has totally overlooked.
The first is the history of the Indian Act. I agree with my friend that legislation like the Indian Act demeans and devalues the treaty relationship. The Indian Act has never acknowledged the treaties. There are nations now that have law-making power and can exercise that law-making power because of treaties and because of unceded land. Those nations do not need clause 7 of this legislation. It is a mistake for Canada to think that it is bestowing legislative jurisdiction on these nations.
The other part of the Indian Act that this legislation ignores is the way the Indian Act created vulnerability in aboriginal women. It took away their families. It took away their home places, and if they married and went to another community, they were stuck there. They were said to be of that community, and they had no family and no connections to help them out if things got tough and if violence was perpetrated. The Indian Act did that. It enhanced the vulnerability of indigenous women.
The other thing the Indian Act did was ensure that indigenous people subject to the Indian Act would remain in poverty perpetually. One of the reasons that the housing provisions of this act are so important is that there is not enough housing on Indian reserves. Never mind violence, there isn't enough housing. People who are separating fight over housing because there isn't enough for the families who aren't separated, never mind creating more and more units. We know that, and yet this government does nothing.
The second thing this legislation has ignored is the experience of non-indigenous women or women living off reserve with family violence. This legislation puts in place a whole lot of legal terms that try to be just like the legal terms that a woman living in Barrie or Thunder Bay or Saskatoon or Bamfield, B.C., would be able to use in a family violence situation. But what this legislation does not acknowledge is that women, because of the absence of legal aid in this country, do not have lawyers to help them access the legislation, and when and if they do get these protective awards, the police don't enforce them, and there's nothing the women can do about that. That is because there is an imperfect consciousness on the part of police that these orders have to be enforced and a drastically imperfect legal system when it comes to giving women access to justice. I totally agree with Madame Audette when she says that the situation of women living on reserve is, if anything, much worse in terms of access to justice and access to police protection than that of people living off reserve.
So please remember those two things when you consider this legislation.