Status of Women Committee on April 26th, 2022

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

I call this meeting to order.

I would like to begin by thanking Vice-Chair Sonia Sidhu. She is always there in a pinch.

Sonia, thank you so much for your leadership and for helping me through these last couple of days.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted on Tuesday, February 1, the committee will commence its study of resource development and violence against indigenous women and girls.

Today’s meeting is taking place in a hybrid format pursuant to the House of Commons order of November 25, 2021. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application. Per the directive of the Board of Internal Economy on March 10, 2022, all those attending the meeting in person must wear a mask, except for members who are at their place during the proceedings.

I would like to make a few comments for the benefits of the witnesses and members.

Please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. For those participating by video conference, click on the microphone icon to activate your mike, and please mute yourself when you are not speaking. For interpretation for those on Zoom, you have the choice at the bottom of your screen of floor, English or French. For those in the room, you can use the earpiece and select the desired channel. As a reminder, all comments should be addressed through the chair.

Witnesses, we do have a couple of items that we have to take care of for committee business. If you don't mind, we'll just go through them now.

We need to adopt our budget for the study. You received from the clerk the preliminary budget in the amount of $14,345 for the study of resource development and violence against indigenous women and girls. Those are the things like the microphone sets and any additional expenses.

Is there a will of the committee to adopt the preliminary budget?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Moving on to this very important study and the briefs in indigenous languages. The clerk and the analysts have looked into the possibility of receiving briefs written in indigenous languages for its study of resource development and violence against indigenous women and girls.

If it is the will of the committee, I would like to propose that the committee accept briefs written in these following languages: Inuktitut, Algonquin, Denesulin (Chipewyan), Cree Michif and Blackfoot.

It was advised that we would be able to take four indigenous languages; that is basically based on what's available through interpretative and translation services.

Is it the will of the committee that we have agreement that we'll accept documents based on that?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

I now want to welcome our witnesses. Today we're going to be changing up our format a bit. We're doing it live, so we will be working through it together.

I would like to welcome Diane Redsky, executive director, Ma Mawi Wi Chi Itata Centre Incorporated; Debbra Greig, clinical social worker, mental health services provider, Yukon Aboriginal Women’s Council; Ninu Kang, executive director, Ending Violence Association of British Columbia; and Leslie Varley, executive director, British Columbia Association of Aboriginal Friendship Centres. They are part of the Ending Violence Association of British Columbia and the British Columbia Association of Aboriginal Friendship Centres.

I would like to thank all of the witnesses today. Each of you will be provided five minutes, and I have my little card here, which will show you when you have one minute remaining. With our new format, we will be able to be a little more flexible, for up to maybe 15 to 20 seconds, but we want to make sure that we have many opportunities for questions.

Diane, you have five minutes. The floor is yours.

[Diane Redsky, Executive Director, Ma Mawi Wi Chi Itata Centre Inc.]

Thank you.

[Witness spoke in Ojibwa as follows:]

Boozhoo, Shiweginin ndizhinikaas, Adik ndodem.

[Ojibwa text translated as follows:]

Greetings. My name is Shiweginin. My clan is Caribou.

[English]

My spirit name is Love Eagle. My English name is Diane Redsky. I acknowledge the traditional territory and Shoal Lake first nation for the water that is provided from my community to the city of Winnipeg. I also acknowledge the ancestors of Treaty 3 and acknowledge your ancestors, who I believe walk with you each and every day.

Today we're here to focus on the MMIW calls for justice 13.4 and 13.5 of the national inquiry, with recommendations to address the relationship between resource development and violence against indigenous women and girls.

I would first like to acknowledge the MMIW 2S+ families and survivors here today and the families who continue to seek justice. It is your voice, and the voice of generations of families and survivors, who never gave up on being heard, respected and treated equitably, and on being secure and safe. Your strong and powerful voice made the national inquiry in Canada happen. Thank you. Meegwetch from all of us.

I would also like to thank the MMIW 2S+ national inquiry and acknowledge and honour the voices of our families, survivors and stakeholders and the 231 calls for justice. I presented at the national inquiry on sexual exploitation and sex trafficking of indigenous women and girls in Canada. I chair the urban working group for the MMIW national action plan. What is also relevant to today is my work as the project director for the 2011-15 national task force on sex trafficking of women and girls in Canada, and of course my role as the executive director for the Ma Mawi Wi Chi Itata Centre.

This is a very important issue. Thank you for looking into this relationship between resource development and violence against women and girls in Canada. First, there are a couple of reports that I feel are really important for you to look at, the MMIW 2S+ national action plans. There are a number of those national action plans. These reports get into the implementation of the recommendations. They really need to have a voice and a place in this process. The urban report, of course, specifically talks about co-development, which I'll get into in a minute.

The Manitoba Clean Environment Commission report was a study that was done of the social impacts of hydro development in northern Manitoba. I would strongly encourage this committee to reach out to MKO, which is the northern political organization led by Grand Chief Settee. That is a very important part of this process as well.

My experience working in the sector for over 20 years, and specifically regarding resource development...also known as “man camps”, are breeding grounds for predators to have full access to victimize indigenous women and girls, not to mention the unique vulnerabilities of our relatives who are two-spirit LGBTQQIA. There is also a clear connection between sexually exploited women and these man camps, which are notorious for normalizing prostitution and buying and selling sex at all social, physical and financial costs. This is sexual exploitation and violence against women and girls.

My experience is that any time there are men with money who are transient, you're going to have sexual exploitation of women and girls and some form of violence against indigenous women and girls. There is a very scary sense of entitlement that men from these man camps have, which is further perpetuated by society's harmful stereotypes that indigenous women will do anything for money and that you can do anything to an indigenous woman and no one will do anything about it. Men get away with victimizing indigenous women all the time.

I have a very quick example. I won't mention the city or the organization, because I don't have their permission. What is important is that their experience is very common. This organization is located in a city with significant resource development. Their local organization, which is dedicated to empowering girls, regularly—I emphasize “regularly”—has men coming into their organization asking if there are young girls for sale. Resource development is harmful to our women and girls, and is 100% preventable.

I'm going to conclude with six recommendations.

First, when looking at the MMIWG calls for justice 13.4 and 13.5, you also have to look at the four pathways and the principles for change outlined in the national inquiry. Failing to do this results in missing that whole big picture and that transformational change necessary to solve this genocide and the violence against indigenous women in this country. I would also add the UNDRIP and TRC.

Second, I understand there's a vital balancing act among industry, government and communities, and I strongly believe there needs to be mandating of corporate social responsibility in industry, in order to understand and plan for the impact its actions will have on the land and local communities.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

You have about 20 more seconds.

[Diane Redsky]

The third one, of course, is the MKO—the work done by the northern first nations in Manitoba.

The fourth one is the urban sub-working group's report.

The fifth one is the Grand Council Treaty No. 3, which has a great earth law. These are traditional laws made for and by indigenous people within their territory. Those need to be valued and respected.

Their short-term job should not leave a legacy of victimization.

Meegwetch.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you so much, Diane.

I'm now going to move the floor over to Debbra Greig from the Yukon Aboriginal Women's Council.

Debbra, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Dr. Debbra Greig, Clinical Social Worker, Mental Health Services Provider, Yukon Aboriginal Women's Council]

Thank you very much for inviting us to participate.

I'm here on behalf of Terri Szabo. I am a clinical social worker and a mental health service provider. I've been working with first nations people in rural communities for more than 43 years.

I am trying to put all this together. I had short notice. I'll do the best I can here.

The Yukon Aboriginal Women's Council needs the committee to know that colonization has played a great role in the disempowerment of first nations people all across Canada. Resource development has fed into the continuing process of colonization. We have seen that industry has pillaged the land and that the people have not authentically been involved in an empowering way. They tend to have low-paying jobs and they tend to not stay in the industry, because they do not have the continued opportunities for development to take on more powerful positions.

Industry needs to be educated regarding the plight of the first nations people and the result of colonization all across Canada, particularly in the north, which has so greatly disempowered the people of the first nations communities.

We need to have the committee consider who plays a role in the educational transformation of the resource developers. They need to be enlightened about the damage that has been done. They need to see that first nations people have been disempowered. There needs to be resources put in place so that first nations people can take on equivalent opportunities for development in education and in the planning of resources.

Gender-based violence has been an outcome of resource development all over the north and, I'm sure, all over Canada. Industry needs to be educated about the extent of the oppression of the people. Things need to be put in place to mitigate the damage that has been done. The government needs to consider who plays a role in the educational transformation of resource development.

There needs to be security for the women who work in and near the resource development sites. This would include such things as on-site indigenous security, as well as available 1-800 numbers so that female workers can call with the confidence that they're not going to lose their job for reporting situations that they see as violence towards them. This includes derogatory comments, racial comments or sexual misogyny going on in the camps. This needs to be addressed, and it needs to be addressed right from the get-go, so that the security of the women can be put in place.

The Yukon Aboriginal Women's Council also asks you to consider who provides the funding for the engagement of the economic development for first nations people and resource development. The IBA agreements must be implemented so that they work for the benefit of the empowerment of first nations people.

When you think about the way personalities develop and you think about the way societies develop, everything starts from the self. If you look at colonization as a form of aggression, you can see that they were the bullies and that first nations people all across the land were the victims. That relationship has always stayed the same. The government and resource developers have bullied first nations people everywhere, and first nations people have become more and more passive, and more and more disempowered as time goes on.

They're in a state of apathy. That needs to be shifted, and that can only be shifted if there are enough resources and enough opportunities for positive change and positive empowerment of the people all across the land, so that they can be equal partners in all of this and not just the recipients of what is done to them. Instead of just having the pick and shovel jobs, they need to have the jobs all up the line, so that they can be in control of what is happening in their communities and of the resources in all of the areas where resource development wants to take things, as colonization has always done. Colonization has always taken.

We want a more level playing field, and we want supports put in place so that the opportunities are more equal for all first nations people, they can rise to the challenges and become more empowered.

I'm sure you're all familiar with Abraham Maslow and his theory of self-actualization. I'm not sure if you're aware that he was studying the Blackfoot people in Alberta when he came to that conclusion. The Blackfoot people in Alberta, at that time, were a very empowered people.

We want to see the people empowered again, so all the steps of self-actualization have to be put in place. This will allow for the people to be on a more level playing field with everybody else in resource development.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you so much.

I'm now going to move it over for the next five minutes. This is shared time between Ninu Kang and Leslie Varley, who are both from British Columbia.

Ninu, I'm going to let you two decide how to work this out and I'll pass the floor to you for the next five minutes.

[Ninu Kang, Executive Director, Ending Violence Association of British Columbia]

I'm going to yield to Leslie to start and then I will pick up the last minute of our five minutes.

[Leslie Varley, Executive Director, British Columbia Association of Aboriginal Friendship Centres]

Hi, everybody. I'm Leslie Varley, the executive director at BC Association of Aboriginal Friendship Centres.

I belong to the Giskaast clan of Nisga'a nation and reside at Musqueam territory in Vancouver. I'm calling in today from beautiful Lekwungen territory in Victoria.

I'm just going to jump right in to some recommendations. There is so much that needs to happen and that needs to happen collectively and collaboratively.

First of all, we indigenous women know that our women and girls are known and accepted as collateral damage by both government and by the resource sector in the sense that this stuff happens and we pay. However, we still don't hold the sector nor the government accountable for their workers. My recommendations are mostly around funding indigenous organizations to provide services to our own people, but I have a few more.

The first is that we need to require resource industries to work with local nations and urban indigenous women to develop credible and practical safety plans for indigenous women and girls. Those plans also need to include the accountability of the resource sectors themselves and accountability for their workers.

In a recent situation in northern B.C., a resource industry company presented a so-called safety reconciliation plan to the town council. They proposed a safety plan for indigenous women and girls. This plan was for all men to wear a little awareness campaign item on their clothing. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. These awareness campaigns are never evaluated for effectiveness. Their leaders are not vetted thoroughly from a women's safety perspective. Industry and government seem to love these visual but ineffective responses where they are essentially seen to be doing something.

These actions are meaningless to indigenous women. Any racist can wear that little pledge button. It really isn't helping. These man-made solutions help the entrepreneur make a profit off the violence that we indigenous women experience. In this instance, indigenous women were never consulted by that resource company in developing safety plans for indigenous women. This is a very common experience for us. That one was fresh. That was this week.

I also think it's really important for us to support realistic and practical funding for indigenous people and meet them where they live. In B.C., 85% of us live off reserve and we still have no long-term funding for violence against women and the wraparound services needed to support us. We still have to go through our mainstream colleagues to get funding. We at BC Association of Aboriginal Friendship Centres—the 25 centres—are only project-based to develop capacity. I remind us that it's 2022 and we are still project based in anti-violence funding.

There's a shortage of indigenous wraparound services. Indigenous organizations are grossly underfunded compared to mainstream organizations. There are too few culturally appropriate services for indigenous people and therefore we have fewer ways to interface with professionals who can help us and who can provide us with support or connect us to support services. All these areas need to be supported comprehensively, so that we can properly service our own communities.

Another area is the police. We need to work with the police to make them investigate. They have it within their discretion to decide whether they will investigate or not, so police are in fact gatekeeping many of these issues. We need to hold them accountable for collecting data. The police input the data that goes to Stats Canada, yet Stats Canada clearly indicates to us that there is severe dearth of data.

Finally, I'm just going to talk about housing. The housing situation for women fleeing violence is horrific. A home where a woman can raise her children is a luxury most of us cannot afford in this province. We need to fund indigenous urban groups and first nations to develop more second-stage housing.

There's often nowhere to go and men exploiting women know that there is no security without the safety of housing. Housing is what we need to keep women and their children grounded and safe, so they have less need to go into the survival sex trade, put up with violent relationships and endure violence against their bodies, and so they can better protect their daughters and sons from sexual exploitation.

Thank you.

I'll pass it over to you, Ninu.

[Ninu Kang]

Thank you, Leslie.

Hello. I'm Ninu Kang, the executive director of the Ending Violence Association of BC. I'm calling from the unceded ancestral territories of the Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh nations. I'm honoured today to present with Leslie Varley.

Here at EVA BC, we recognize...When I was invited to join this panel, it was important that, in the local context, Leslie and I, who are working as executive directors in our local areas...I called on her, and asked her to lead this discussion.

At the Ending Violence Association of BC, we recognize that, as an organization, we are part of the structures of colonial systems, and, as Leslie has mentioned, many times we speak about indigenous women, and really look at any issue related to indigenous women—

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

You have about 10 more seconds.

[Ninu Kang]

—it's not only about indigenous women. It's about their families and communities, so today I'm here as an ally. I'm going to yield back, and be happy to answer any questions in partnership with Leslie.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you so much, and thank you to our panellists.

For the first round, each party will have six minutes. For the second round, five minutes will go to the CPC and Liberals, and two and a half minutes to the Bloc and NDP. We'll then go to the third round, where each party once again will be given six minutes. For the fourth round, it goes back to the CPC and the Liberals, for five minutes, and then two and a half minutes to the Bloc and NDP, and then back to the CPC and Liberals for five minutes.

We've worked out those times so everybody can get their share. Everybody should have similar amounts at the very beginning when we're asking many of the questions. I'm going to be watching the clock on this one.

We'll turn the first six minutes over to Ms. Ferreri.

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

Thank you so much, Chair, and thank you so much to the witnesses for joining us today. We're very honoured to have you here.

I'm going to ask a quick yes-or-no question before I go into questioning, just so we're on the same page. If everyone can give me a yes or no, would you consider building pipelines a resource development?

[Leslie Varley]

Yes.

[Ninu Kang]

Yes.

[Diane Redsky]

Yes.

[Dr. Debbra Greig]

Yes.

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

I have four yeses. Great. Thank you so much. I appreciate that.

Diane, do you have any stats on the reduction in family violence with economic development in the community? If you don't, we can table them for the committee.

[Diane Redsky]

I do not have stats.

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

Does Debbra, Leslie, or Ninu have any of those stats?