Status of Women Committee on April 2nd, 2019

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

You have about five seconds.

Irene, we're going to turn it over to you. You have four minutes.

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

Thank you very much.

I have a question for each of you. I'll be succinct.

I want to say congratulations to each and every one of you. Tomorrow, I hope, is not the last time you will take a seat in the House of Commons. I have great faith in you, and I look forward to your taking your places as leaders.

I'll start with Hannah. You talked about this Canadian mining operation. We have laws in Canada about the conduct of mining companies. Are these laws being ignored?

[Hannah Martin]

Yes, these laws are being ignored. The example I gave you was Goldcorp. It has a mine in San Miguel called the Marlin mine. There was a recent case, which is actually very dependent on the ombudsperson that we need to implement immediately. There are actually a number of Mayan women who travelled to Toronto last year to be heard about their case. There were several women who were raped at the site of the mine by security personnel who were part of Goldcorp.

They were also forcibly removed from their lands. Many times, when these companies go in, they actually trick women into signing off their lands. Lots of these women don't speak Spanish. They speak their indigenous language only, which, as we know, is an extremely precious gift that we have as indigenous peoples. However, some of these companies are going in and actually tricking them because they don't speak Spanish, stealing their land and removing them from their territories.

The result is these massive open pit mines, which produce chemical tailings that kill everything as far as your eye can see. I've seen these tailings ponds. There was a recent break in Brazil. I'm sure everyone here is aware of that. I do not think we are following regulations and our laws abroad as a country, and we really need to be more responsible. These are people's lives, you know.

The same thing is happening in Canada. As a Mi’kmaq woman, I won't be able to practise my treaty rights and my inherent rights under the peace and friendship treaties if a mine is implemented in my backyard. It's literally a few kilometres down the road. Not only does it affect my spirituality, but it also affects my physical and mental health. This is a responsibility that I carry as a Mi’kmaq woman for myself and my future children, and your children and your families.

This is an issue that I think a lot of people are starting to realize is more than an indigenous issue. That is why I come here associated with not only my Mi’kmaq community but my community of Tatamagouche. I'm a member of Sustainable Northern Nova Scotia, which has been actively trying to stop the mine since it was announced last fall.

I think this is an issue that is really happening not only abroad but in our own communities, and we have to take action.

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

Thank you very much.

Zola, you talked about women and their access to services. You touched on the fact that housing and transportation are very difficult to come by. We have a housing crisis. In your opinion, or as you have seen it, do we need a national housing strategy so that we don't have this crisis and this terrible burden on all people, but women in particular?

[Nokuzola Ncube]

I am sure that women are personally affected, but right at this moment I don't have the statistics to comment effectively on that.

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

Okay. Do we need a national housing strategy?

[Nokuzola Ncube]

I will look at the statistics and get back to you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you very much to Jaelyn, Hannah, Zola and Dharana. It's been excellent.

We are going to suspend and have the second panel. The first panel will be dismissed. We are suspending for about one second.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

For our second panel, we have Immaculée Kalimurhima, Megan Linton, Valérie Daniel and Phoenix Nakagawa.

We are going to start with Immaculée.

You have two minutes. Go ahead.

[Immaculée Kalimurhima, As an Individual]

Hello. My name is Immaculée, and the LaSalle-Émard-Verdun district of Quebec is where I call home today.

Today I want to talk to you about one of the residents of my riding, a refugee girl who fled the Congo with her family. They moved from country to country, looking for safety. They went to Uganda, where they sought refuge for 10 years. Her parents finally got jobs there, so they sent her to school. She went to school for the first time when she was 14 years old. She couldn't read, write or even spell her name.

After 10 years in Uganda, they came to Canada in 2014, and she enrolled in an adult school. Two years later, she graduated, winning awards and being named valedictorian.

Today, the girl struggles to finish her college education because of the responsibilities to her family. Unlike Uganda, Canada chose not to recognize her parents' education and experience, so they, too, went back to school.

Like many refugee girls, the daughter works long hours in low-paying jobs to support herself and her entire family, while hiding from those who want to exploit her desperation and poverty. Her parents work too, but they don't make enough money to feed everyone. All eight members of the family suffer from post-traumatic stress, and the untreated impacts on their mental health can be debilitating. There is neither time nor money at home for proper treatment.

Four years ago, that girl slept under trees, sick with malaria and fleeing civil war. Today, she speaks to you in the Parliament of Canada. I am that girl, and I am extremely grateful to be in Canada, but more needs to be done to help refugees, especially refugee women.

Recognizing the education of refugees and immigrants is crucial. We need workers, engineers, lawyers and doctors like my mom and dad.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you very much. Thank you so much for sharing your story. That was wonderful.

We're going to move on to Megan for two minutes.

[Megan Linton, As an Individual]

I would like to begin by situating us in an area of Canadian history that is all too often ignored. Throughout Canada's early colonial history, segregation and eugenics were dominant ideologies. The very women whom many of us consider the Famous Five, who are galvanized in copper and set on Parliament Hill, were also famous for their eugenics and white supremacist attitudes. It was not until 1975 that eugenics legislation was repealed. It was not until 1996 that women in institutions were given the right to vote.

However, the institutions that have warehoused oppressed groups for centuries have yet to crumble, despite mass calls for deinstitutionalization. The institutions that saw—and see—the abuse, rape, forced medicalization and forced labour of disabled people remain. No longer are my people housed in institutions. Instead, they are in nursing homes, not-for-profit group homes, psychiatric institutions and prisons. We are tucked into the corners of society, out of sight, but we must always be in mind.

We must remain vigilant of the ways that history repeats itself. We must remain vigilant that pharmacare not be used to forcibly medicate persons in institutions. We must remain vigilant that a mental health strategy not seek to segregate people into institutions, away from community. A mental health strategy must not pathologize or criminalize marginalized identities.

As our population ages, we must remain vigilant that nursing homes are not spaces for warehousing people. We must reinvest in the importance and knowledge of elders.

I challenge you to leave here today remembering that it is not feminist to revoke someone's consent because they are mentally ill. Remember that consent extends beyond the bedroom, all the way into our hospitals and institutions. Remember that warehousing people is not feminist. Remember that prisons are not feminist.

I challenge you to leave here today recognizing your privilege and your responsibility to patients who live without a patients' bill of rights, without access to democratic institutions and fundamentally segregated from this very place where I am sitting.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you very much.

We're moving on to Valérie for two minutes.

[Valérie Daniel, As an Individual]

“Go home with your friends,” “Watch your drink,” and “Plan your transportation.” These were the recommendations of an awareness campaign that was still under way at the end of last year. The campaign was hardly unique.

I've noticed that the imperative form of the verbs is used to address women. Why are women being addressed in a way that dictates choices to them? Why should we live in fear of being assaulted when we return home in the evening or at night? It would not occur to our male friend, who leaves shortly after us, that the man walking across the street may decide to harass, rob, assault or even abduct him. We must ask the following question. How does an individual end up taking this type of action?

Personally, I agree with the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who said that a human being born with an open heart is ready to share. However, today's inequalities mean that the same opportunities and possibilities aren't available to everyone. As a result, I believe that a proper education, parental support, information or awareness campaigns, and the values conveyed by society through advertising and our economic system must be adjusted or improved in order to bring about long-term change.

When people are children, teenagers or young adults, they develop their personality, identity, opinions and ambitions. This is where action must be taken. Once they have joined the labour market and are responsible for a home and children, a number of people lose the determination needed to bring about change.

I also think that we need to change the education and customs of our society. Even if we adopt new rules or legislation, or change the Constitution overnight, the habits, behaviours and ideologies will remain the same. As a result, we must keep seeking new knowledge and applying critical thinking skills. Through learning, education and communication, we can bring out change in our country.

I come from Baie-Saint-Paul, a small town of 7,000 people in the Charlevoix region. Before I started university in Montreal, I had never experienced sexism and gender inequality. I thought that we lived in an egalitarian society.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you, Valérie. Excellent. Great job.

Phoenix, the floor is yours for two minutes.

[Phoenix Nakagawa, As an Individual]

Hello. My name is Phoenix Nakagawa. I am a third-year agriculture student at the University of Manitoba, majoring in agroecology and entomology. I am here representing the riding of Winnipeg Centre, and I'll be talking to you today about women in sport.

I'm a global indigenous transwoman of colour and a competitive rower. I live between colliding worlds, one that validates my identity and one that does not. I would love to talk to you all today about the struggles of women, especially queer and coloured women, in sport. Sadly, I cannot do that. The reason is simple: I have not been validated as a woman in the sporting community.

Ever since I've come out, I've had an uphill battle with sport and its continued erasure of transpeople like me. I competed twice at the Canada Summer Games, once at the Western Canada Summer Games, and twice at nationals, where the experiences caused me discomfort. The 2017 Canada Summer Games was especially difficult for me, because I had just come out as a transwoman to most of my crew and support team. I was accepted within my crew, but I had to race as a man. I knew of this reality, but I decided to continue to pursue the games, hoping that other accommodations would be made. They were not. I was in the men's dorm room and the men's food hall. I was not permitted to enter the women's area. My name tag had a large “M” on it, representing male, which caused me constant dysphoria.

The major issue today in the sporting world is that nobody wants to address us as women, as people of colour, as queer or trans identities, or, for that matter, as disabled athletes. Most sporting organizations are afraid to tackle many of the issues faced by our communities. However, I would like to advocate for one thing that would engage at least the queer community to enter sport—that is, a gender-inclusive category.

This gender-inclusive category would help diverse queer identities, such as non-binary and gender-fluid people and other transpeople, to safely participate in sport. This category would involve disabled athletes, athletes of colour, and other intersections of disability, colour and queer as well. Of course, this idea is not perfect, but we must start somewhere or else we will never have full public access to publicly funded sport.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

I'm sorry, Phoenix, but I will have to cut you off there. It's excellent information that you're giving us, but we have to move on to the line of questioning.

Terry, you have the floor for four minutes.

[Terry Duguid, Liberal, Winnipeg South, MB]

This is a surprise. I thought someone else was going first. I'll just get my act together here.

First of all, thank you all for your excellent presentations. I hope you're having an amazing experience as Daughters of the Vote, and thank you all for your commitment to making the world a better place.

Sorry, I wasn't expecting to be going first, so I'll just get my thoughts together here.

Megan, I had a very dear uncle, and he is one of the reasons I'm sitting here today. He was a conservation officer in Manitoba, and he invited me to all sorts of places in Manitoba—a beautiful province, I'm sure you'll agree—to experience the amazing environments we have in Manitoba. He developed brain cancer, unfortunately. I got to visit him in the geriatric ward at St. Boniface Hospital. I don't know if you've been up there, but you used the term “warehousing” for our seniors and people who are at the end of their lives.

I wonder if you have any solutions for us in terms of community care, home care, more personal care homes. I'm sure you've done some thinking on that, and maybe you can elaborate on it in your two minutes.

[Megan Linton]

Yes. I think one of the major problems you touched on is geriatric institutions. One of the broader problems we have seen is when young people under the age of 20 are warehoused in seniors institutions and geriatric institutions. There was a case in Manitoba; I don't know if you've been following it. Beyond the fact of seniors institutions being largely devoid of nurses, doctors and personal support workers, the workers who are there are vastly underpaid. There's only one nurse required per centre, which is violent for both the patients and the workers.

There has been a lot of wonderful research, especially in regard to the butterfly model. However, I think what we're seeing right now is a real lag in community living and our understanding of community living. Community living is not living in a for-profit group home, segregated from society. Community living is living in a society that both recognizes and supports people with disabilities and neuro-divergent identities and also allows them in society.

How do we expand our ways of thinking beyond sane or not, ill or not, geriatric or young, and instead have more community living workers? That means provinces funding health care and mental health care in a capacity beyond just hospitals. What we're seeing right now is that mental health care and health care are exclusively being funnelled toward access to services in institutions, but that doesn't represent many people's experience.

What would it look like if everyone had access to a community support worker? What would it look like if you had beyond 15 hours of help from a personal support worker? Currently in Manitoba, you're eligible for 15 hours. That's not enough hours in a day for you to get dressed, go to work, get changed, eat dinner and sleep, so those people are then forced into institutions.

To answer your question, I think that more access to supports and more funding beyond just institutional health funding are needed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Excellent.

You have 15 seconds left.

[Terry Duguid, Liberal, Winnipeg South, MB]

Thank you.

Maybe I'll ask Phoenix a question later. I was very impressed with your powerful presentation. I come from a sports family, the sport of curling, and I hope some day we have gender-inclusive curling.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

You and I have to talk about family curling.

Phoenix, I've already had a note sent over saying, “I need a meeting with Phoenix.”

Rachael, you have the floor now, for four minutes.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you.

Immaculée, am I correct in understanding that you are originally from Congo but then came through Uganda to Canada as a refugee?

[Immaculée Kalimurhima]

Yes.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Very good. Welcome.

You've called Canada home since 2014, and clearly your family has done incredibly well in establishing a new life here. I understand that there have been challenges along the way, and I think you've outlined those really beautifully. Thank you for taking the time to share your story with us.