Status of Women Committee on April 16th, 2024

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Sonia Sidhu]

Thank you, Ms. North.

Now we move to Emmanuella for four minutes.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

First, thank you all for your moving testimony. It was great to hear all of you. I'm really sad that we're even in the situation that we have to invite you here to talk about this because of what the reality is out there.

We've touched on a lot of issues, and I want to bring this somewhere a bit different. I don't want to talk about the red dress alert today, even though everyone else has got great testimony out. I know we're going to end up doing the right thing. Especially in this committee, everybody is unanimous in supporting it.

I want to talk about mental health being a major factor at play here.

Dr. Olsen Harper, you also mentioned the fact that it starts in the home, and a lot of these homes have violence because of the intergenerational trauma.

Reconciliation is extremely important. One of the things reconciliation can do is help heal these people. I think healing is really the answer, and it's at the core of the answer of what needs to be done.

I would like to hear from you on what you think is needed for indigenous communities to heal.

[Dr. Anita Olsen Harper]

The first thing I would say is that culture is healing. I hear that so often when I speak to the indigenous male inmates. The teachings they receive from a program called Work 2 Give.... They grew up with little pieces of culture here and there, but they couldn't really live it out, really, because of poverty. They were not accepted, as most of us aren't, by the dominant society.

As such, if I were to answer that very simply, I would say it's going back to our culture, because we had those holistic teachings that addressed our mental development, our spiritual development, and our physical and emotional development.

We need to go back to those ways. Of course, the landscape is not at all the same as it has been. It's changing constantly, so it needs constant work, but our traditional cultures are our healing paths.

Meegwetch.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

I want to get one last answer to a question before you head off, if you don't mind.

I just want to know if you think a federally funded program that really centres on indigenous leaders being at the heart and centre of the creation of the program, and that supports mental health in indigenous communities would be helpful.

[Dr. Anita Olsen Harper]

Yes.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Sonia Sidhu]

Thank you.

We now have just two minutes left. We'll give one minute to the Bloc and one minute to the NDP.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I don't know which witness to turn to.

In one minute, I'd like to talk about something we haven't talked about as much today, which is the technical problems surrounding an alert similar to an Amber alert.

Many remote communities could have connectivity problems, and we know that the alert will depend a lot on technology.

Have you given any thought to this aspect and to possible solutions?

[Sheila North]

I think the federal government needs to now implement the proper infrastructure to support the access of the Internet to all remote communities. This is all about the social determinants of health. We don't live in a third world country anymore. We should be affording nations with everything they need to have proper participation in our country.

[Lori Campbell]

That also includes things like phones, like cellphones.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Sonia Sidhu]

Thank you.

Now it's over to Leah.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you so much.

My last question is for you, Lori.

We heard about policing. I wanted you to talk a little bit more about what the oversight of policing looks like, considering the testimony we've heard today.

[Lori Campbell]

Absolutely.

It's not oversight. It would be listening and taking direction from community and grassroots members, who are dictating and expressing what needs to happen. It's on the red dress alert, but it's also on the justice system as far as the other side goes, because there are those who are hunting down and murdering us. We need to follow through on that aspect of it as well.

I think there are two major roles for the justice service or the policing services to be involved in, but they should not be the decision-makers.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Sonia Sidhu]

Thank you.

This concludes our first panel.

Thank you to all the witnesses here for their great work and for their testimony. You always can submit your testimony to the clerk.

Now we need to suspend for a few minutes for our next panel.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Sonia Sidhu]

We'll resume the meeting.

I would like to welcome the witnesses. From the Tears to Hope Society, we have Lorna Brown, executive director, and Denise Halfyard, assistant director.

You can share your five-minute presentation.

[Lorna Brown, Executive Director, Tears to Hope Society]

First, I want to acknowledge the Algonquin people, on whose unceded and unsurrendered traditional territory we are doing this important business.

Hadih. I am Wet’suwet’en, and also the founder and executive director of the Tears to Hope Society in Terrace, B.C.

We are, first and foremost, here as family members. My niece Tamara Chipman went missing in September 2005 along the Highway of Tears, which runs from Prince Rupert to Prince George. The Highway of Tears' name originated when my cousin Florence Naziel started the very first Highway of Tears walk, after my niece went missing, working with her niece Karen Plasway. They wanted to come up with a name for her walk, and they sat down and talked about so many women who were missing from our community of Witset. They started drawing tears. There were just so many that they couldn't fit them all on the napkin, so they suggested it was like a “highway of tears”. That's just a little bit of background on where the name came from.

There was a walk from Smithers to Prince George in 2006, which led to the 2006 symposium in Prince George. That was led by Matilda Wilson, whose daughter Ramona Wilson was found murdered near the Smithers airport. She was 16 at the time, and this year marks 30 years of her family waiting for answers. That will be coming up in June.

My sister Gladys Radek and Bernie Williams also continued the hard work that these family members started. They organized seven walks across Canada, starting in B.C., to call for a national public inquiry into the missing and murdered indigenous women and girls across the country. Our families testified at the inquiry. Tamara is still missing to this day, and we still have no answers, like so many other family members. The number one thing we hear from family members is that they feel like their cases aren't being investigated or taken seriously.

I'd like to add that missing men matter, too. My cousin Phyllis Fleury has also been searching tirelessly for her son, who was 16 at the time and went missing from Prince George. This is an issue that affects our men as well.

[Denise Halfyard, Assistant Director, Tears to Hope Society]

Hadih. My name is Denise Halfyard. I am Lorna's oldest child, and I just want to say what a blessing it is to be able to do this important work alongside my mother.

I'm the assistant director for the Tears to Hope Society, and we fully support the red dress alert. The Tears to Hope Society has a support system with family members along the Highway of Tears. There is a lot of support for this alert, especially if it were to be implemented like the Amber alert.

Since the 231 recommendations were made, we continue to have our women targeted, as they are still going missing or being found murdered.

There were some issues identified for this program. What is the criteria for a missing person? The definition is going to vary. Many families who go to the police are told to wait 24 hours; however, we know that this is not a true regulation, as the first 72 hours are the most important.

What is the threshold of time that allows us to alert the public?

Recently a woman in the north was reported missing. She was active on social media but had not been in direct contact with her loved ones who wanted proof that she was okay. How do we differentiate between someone who's not interested in being in contact with loved ones for various reasons and someone who is truly missing?

Cell service continues to be an issue that gets raised. There are many areas that still don't have that service. North of Terrace, there is zero service unless you have personal Wi-Fi, so, if an alert were to go out while I'm on any part of those highways, I would have no idea who to look for because I wouldn't get the alert until it was too late.

The Tears to Hope Society is working towards the prevention of missing and murdered women and girls through education and taking care of your physical and mental health. When we are educated and are actively involved, we are more empowered. We believe we are stronger when we support one another because “She is Somebody”.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Sonia Sidhu]

Thank you for your testimony.

We'll now start the first round with Michelle.

You have six minutes.

[Sheila North]

Thank you, Chair.

Meegwetch. You travelled here, and thank you very much for being here for our study on the red dress alert.

Thank you for the work that you do, first of all. These are the boots-on-the-ground organizations that truly make impact and change. I'm truly grateful for that.

Denise, two things really jumped out at me. I think what we really want to see come out of this study is how to effectively implement it. We've all agreed this is necessary and important, and now it's about the logistics.

Let's talk about the threshold of time. Do you have a recommendation that you'd like to see in the report?

[Denise Halfyard]

That's a difficult one, because it is important to get the word out right away, but we need to take into consideration these women who, for safety reasons, don't want to be found.

I don't think there's a problem with being alerted right away, whether they want to disappear or not. I think we need to err on the side of caution, because it's better safe than sorry.

[Sheila North]

You took the next words out of my mouth. Risk versus reward is often what you see. I see this often in vulnerable people in general.

I have a mom in my riding, and her daughter lived on the street and dealt with severe mental illness. She went missing, and nobody put it in the media. Nobody seemed to pay attention. We were able to get her home through social media, but there's a stigma or shame. If I'm putting that on social media, people are going to say, “I don't want people to know it's my family”, but I think you have to look at the bigger picture. I appreciate your putting that on the record.

The other thing you said that is really important when we look at this are the dead zones on highways when you're travelling and cell service in remote areas. A lot of these women and men—thank you, Lorna, for pointing that out—are in these really rural parts of Canada.

I'm wondering if you think a good idea would be signage saying that this is a dead cellphone area. I guess people would already know it's a dead cellphone area, but how do we close that gap? I think about when I travelled the highway from Banff to Jasper. It's one of the most dangerous highways. It was snowy, and there's not one ounce of cell service.

What do you think we can do when we're trying to close that gap of notifying people? Are there any suggestions, or has there been any talk about that?

[Lorna Brown]

We have a lot of industry in the north. About 70 kilometres from us is the largest LNG project in Canada.

There were a lot of announcements about all this new investment into cellphone services. It's improved somewhat, but my daughter lives just five kilometres out of Terrace, on the Kitsumkalum first nation, and she doesn't get cell service there—it's very scratchy. There definitely needs to be more of an investment, even into the communities. We hear about all this investment, but our services are still very scratchy, so I think these companies that are making these promises need to follow through. I won't mention the company, but there are all these promises. I know that they use the word “MMIWG” to receive funding, and yet five kilometres out of our community there's no proper cellphone service.

[Sheila North]

I think you've hit an interesting point that needs to be put into this report. We've been promised working cellphone service since I worked in telecommunications, which was a long time ago. I know I look really young, but I'm not—I'm just kidding.

I'm just bringing some levity to this very serious topic. I think that is something that has to be put into this study, that the working cellular network is critical to this.

When we look at how this is implemented, I just don't want it to get lost in the logistics. I've seen this so many times. Everybody agrees on a great idea and then everybody walks away from the table. It's like a group project—yes, that's great—and then you don't have that one person who is the implementer, who gets it going and makes it operate.

You mentioned the Amber alert. Do you think that the Amber alert is the project to follow? Do you think, since it's already been created, there's no need to reinvent the wheel? Basically, recreate the same principles as Amber alert—

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Sonia Sidhu]

Thank you.

The time is up. You can always send us a written answer.

Marc, you have six minutes.

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'll continue along those lines, but before that, I just want to make sure of your testimony because I think it's really important. In the committee, when we talk about cell coverage—and let's name them—Telus, Rogers and Bell have failed Canadians. Let's be clear: They, the wireless industry, say that they cover 98% to 99% of the Canadian population, which is a lie. Your testimony here, from B.C., is like what I have in northern Ontario. There is not proper cell coverage, so it would be a strong recommendation for the committee to get these companies, which are giving millions to shareholders, to make sure there is proper cell coverage. Thank you for doing that.

The other component here is that you mentioned the Amber alert—and we'll talk about the silver alert. How do we make this grassroots? We have, in northern Ontario—like in B.C.—the Anishinabek police force on reserve. In Ontario we have the Ontario Provincial Police, and then you have the municipal police. How do we have a system, and what recommendations do you have for us to have it grassroots-led by indigenous women especially, to ensure that these three levels of police do the proper red dress alert to make sure the system works either locally or provincially, and then nationally?

[Denise Halfyard]

I think it needs to start out regionally. We know our women. We know our locations, our areas, so we would definitely have a better idea of the scope of where we're searching more than somebody, say, in Vancouver. They wouldn't know, really, where to look if they were there.

As far as police involvement is concerned...I don't know if you want to speak to that.