Status of Women Committee on April 26th, 2022

[Diane Redsky]

Yes.

[Leslie Varley]

Yes.

[Ninu Kang]

Yes.

[Dr. Debbra Greig]

Yes.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Okay.

Just moving forward, Madam Kang, based on your organization's more than bystander initiative for resource industry workplaces, could you please expand on how programs engage industry workers, working with industry workers to stand against violence.

[Ninu Kang]

When we think about engaging men through “Be More than a Bystander ”, we're really targeting leaders. What we're really doing is asking them and challenging them on having policies in place that are going to hold their employees to account and having procedures in place to be able to properly investigate when complaints come forward. Furthermore, we've taken it beyond looking at it just from a gender lens and looking at it as violence against women. We do see the intersections with the discrimination and the racism that also happen for indigenous workers as well as other marginalized workers.

“Be More than a Bystander” is a simple program that is to stand up...but when we speak to leaders, what we really look at is if there a will in that leadership to create a change. If there isn't a will, if we don't see that leadership is ready, or they're just bringing us in because there have been some incidents that have happened and they want to do this as a PR exercise, we do not go in and work with those corporations.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thanks very much.

I'm looking at the time. I'm going to reduce your time down to four minutes.

Michelle, you have four minutes.

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

Thank you so much, Madam Chair.

I'm curious to know if all four witnesses have read the book If I Go Missing and would recommend it. I can see it as maybe an age-appropriate educational piece when I look at Diane.

You work with youth development, as do Debbra and Leslie.

Leslie, are you familiar with this book If I Go Missing?

[Leslie Varley]

I am familiar with it; I haven't read it.

[Ninu Kang]

I have not read it.

[Diane Redsky]

I'm not familiar with the book, but I'm certainly familiar with the phrase. Many indigenous women reflect on that, including myself.

[Dr. Debbra Greig]

I also have not read the book, but I'm familiar with it.

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

I would love everyone on this committee and witnesses today to do that.

In terms of solutions for this, I'd love to get to the crux of this. One of the things that came up was transportation and having standards for these companies.

Diane, would you be open to incentivizing these companies to reinvest into the community, say into transportation?

[Diane Redsky]

I think it should be part of their corporate social responsibility to make those investments, given that they profit off whatever industry they're doing. I would have liked to see them do it on their own, but in lieu of that, we need to figure out how to help them get there. I don't think incentivizing is a hundred per cent the way to go because it would be motivated for the wrong reasons. I'd like to think that they could be motivated for the right reasons, because they really, genuinely care about the safety and protection of indigenous women and girls.

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

Okay.

To go back to my point about “for indigenous, by indigenous”, Debbra, with regard to bringing in indigenous women in particular, offering them a seat at the table when resource development is happening in a community, and perhaps having jobs or something available for them, do you think that would work?

[Dr. Debbra Greig]

Yes. It would be a step in the right direction.

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

Did you want to expand on what building relationships would look like, if you were in charge, between the resource development and the indigenous communities, and women in particular?

[Dr. Debbra Greig]

I think for all the indigenous communities, if they have women's groups, those women's groups should be informed that this is going to take place, and they should then be able to speak to who should be sitting at that table. I think in the rural communities especially there are indigenous organizations. Many of them are for women. All of those women's groups should be deciding amongst themselves who should sit at the table.

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

Thank you very much.

Overall, is there a recommendation you would like that?

Diane, I know that you said there were not specific stats, and that it was just basically the corporations that were coming through. Do you think it would be valuable to invest, from the government, in the stats on men who are transient who abuse indigenous women?

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

We have negative five seconds to answer this, so if we could get yeses and nos, that would be great.

[Diane Redsky]

No.

[Ninu Kang]

I don't think there's value in putting money into that. We know; we already have that data.

[Leslie Varley]

No.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you very much.

I'm now going to turn it over to Sonia Sidhu.

You have the floor for four minutes.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for the work you are doing in the community.

You have spoken about the lack of services in remote communities, including virtual services, as many people who need services do not have access to a computer. What recommendation do you have on how the government can facilitate connecting residents in the community? Which programs are you recommending, and what kinds of services?

That's for Ms. Greig, and then perhaps Ms. Redsky can answer.