Status of Women Committee on May 3rd, 2022

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you so much.

We'll now move to Sylvie from the Bloc.

Sylvie, you have six minutes.

[Sylvie Bérubé, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

To begin, I would like to thank the three witnesses here for their very important testimony.

I would also like to thank the interpreters for their excellent work.

My question is for Ms. Gabriel.

You talked about human rights and indigenous customs. You identified issues relating to language, culture, identity and respect for indigenous communities. As part of this study, we are also looking for solutions to these problems. We are looking for concrete solutions, and we think the federal government should shoulder its share of the responsibility. What we see, however, is the opposite, especially in light of the report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, MMIWG, which indicates that the federal government has not taken sufficient follow‑up action.

Would you not say that the federal government needs to undertake a process of true reconciliation, specifically by repealing the Indian Act and sitting down at the same table with indigenous peoples so that all nations are on an equal footing?

[Ellen Gabriel]

Thank you for the question.

I'm more comfortable responding in English.

I think one of the problems we are having is that political leaders, judges, lawyers, social workers and educators are not really reading the reports of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. All of the work has been done for people to be on the same page and to understand each other's perspectives.

Yes, we want to get rid of the Indian Act. It is probably the only racist piece of legislation that still exists in the world today. That doesn't mean we have the answers on how to replace it. If we're going to deal nation to nation, then the government needs to get rid of and stop legitimizing the band council system in which council members are the only people it recognizes as the legal authorities. The Rotinonhsesháka, or Haudenosaunee, the People of the Longhouse of the Iroquois Confederacy, is a governing system that has survived colonization. Traditional governments need to be included in any discussions that affect our homelands and our rights. It's not up to Canada to decide who is a legitimate authority.

Amongst us, as indigenous people, we need to discuss what it means when we get rid of the Indian Act, but it definitely has to be a human rights-based approach. We have to use the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and all of the international human rights norms that go with it. Getting rid of the Indian Act does not mean that we are surrendering our land title by any means. We still have to provide some respect and defend the rights of future generations, who will be dealing with the legacy of this climate crisis that we're facing.

That said, getting rid of the Indian Act does not mean you are getting rid of our rights. It's not even protected under Canada's Constitution Act of 1982, in spite of the fact it says it respects the existing rights. Rights that existed before 1982 are a quagmire of legal implications that I think demand more than just reflection. I think there should be a study on what that means in getting rid of the Indian Act. I come from a community where the band council provided a 33-year lease to a toxic waste dump, which we are dealing with and for which no member of Parliament, except for Elizabeth May, is willing to advocate on our behalf—a toxic waste dump that will take at least 10,000 years to clean up, all from the debris and raw sewage from the Island of Montreal.

Those are the kinds of precarious situations we face because of the Indian Act. It's not easy to just get rid of this legislation. It has to be a human rights-based approach. It has to complement and be based on indigenous peoples' human rights law and our constitutions.

Thank you.

[Sylvie Bérubé, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Can you also tell us what practical measures should be taken to protect indigenous women and girls in communities near resource development projects from such violence in the future?

I would like all three witnesses to answer this question if possible please.

[Ellen Gabriel]

You must have free, prior and informed consent. I'm going to keep coming back to that. If that's ignored, we're going to continue to be put in these threatening situations in which indigenous women are vulnerable to these man camps. I'm sure Hilda would like to answer that question as well.

You have to begin on a good note. You have to begin the process in good faith and openness and respect of human rights, especially indigenous peoples' right to self-determination.

[Hilda Anderson-Pyrz]

I'm not sure how much time is left.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Hilda, I'll give you 20 seconds. Then we'll go to Martina for 20 seconds and our time will be over.

[Hilda Anderson-Pyrz]

I think the first and key thing that needs to happen is to invite indigenous women, girls and 2S people to the table and ensure there's equity and equality when they're sitting at those tables. They must be central to any type of resource development that is occurring within their territory. They have the answers. They know what they need and what they want and what it takes to keep them safe, so it's important to involve them.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Awesome.

Martina, if you want to answer, you have about 20 seconds.

[Martina Saunders]

I'll add that there is a need for victim services within these industry camps, man camps, hydro camps, because if women or two-spirit people are being violated....

I'll give an example. If they're working in catering and housekeeping, and then one of them—I'll use housekeeper as an example—was violated, then she or he would have to report to the manager and the manager's going to be.... In our case, it was a Sodexo manager. They would have to go and approach a top chef, and it's not even in his job or his responsibility to deal with sexual violence, and it just gets lost. Plus, there's no trust there, so we need victim services in these camps where victims can go and they know and they trust that they're going to be heard and validated and not be afraid of their bosses or Manitoba Hydro.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you so much.

I'm now going to turn it over to Leah Gazan.

Leah, you have six minutes.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thanks so much, Chair.

Thanks to all the witnesses for being here today for this very important study that I'm really honoured our committee was so open to study.

I wanted to start with Ellen Gabriel.

You wrote a column for the Ricochet, discussing the violence against indigenous land offenders and you wrote this: “Reconciliation cannot happen as long as the colonial project,”—you were referring to the use of indigenous homelands for profit and the violence against land and water defenders—“and the violence it inflicts, exists. Only through understanding human rights and the Indigenous laws that protect the environment and all our relations can we move forward.”

In the spirit of this, how can human rights and indigenous laws be upheld to move forward together and ensure that indigenous women, girls, 2SLGBTQQIA individuals and land defenders remain safe from violence, particularly women on the front lines?

[Ellen Gabriel]

If I understand your question correctly, in order to have safety, we have to have policing authorities also be able to do their jobs in a way that they understand human rights, but the colonial project is, in fact, overriding, oppressing and suppressing traditional knowledge and traditional rights. Our human rights are being sacrificed for the sake of economic development. We are ostracized. We face racism by the non-indigenous communities that we live next to.

The only way to do this is through education and dialogue, not pamphlets, not reports that.... It has to go beyond the reports and the rhetoric. We need safety within the communities that will provide knowledge about what colonialism has done, so that this colonial project that we keep referring to is profoundly understood as mentioned in the royal commission, as mentioned in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and in the MMIWG.

To be safe, I really don't know. I've been doing this for 32 years and I do not feel safe in the community that I grew up in because the town of Oka rides roughshod over us. The Minister of Indian Affairs refuses to include the Longhouse in any negotiations. They refuse to put a moratorium on development so that we can at least sit down at the table in an atmosphere of peace. If we are not sitting down at the table in an atmosphere of peace, we are under pressure. It is coercive.

We have to undo this and look at a human rights-based perspective of the dignity and worth of a human being and provide those safety measures so that we can speak in safety, so that we can speak with honesty, but starting from the same page, where we are aware of the impacts of multi-generational trauma. It wasn't just our languages and cultures that were attacked. It was our homelands. It was the lands upon which our whole language and identity are based.

I know that for me, in my community, we cannot call the police. There is nobody to come help us when there is violence in the community and INAC is very much aware. Minister Miller said that they are very aware that the community I come from is imploding. We have organized crime of every kind that you can imagine in this community. Nobody is willing to help us.

This committee should act on this and decide what would you do if you were in my position where you are not safe in the community that you grew up in and in which thousands of generations have been before.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you so much. I think pointing out that you are an elder in our community who does not feel safe is telling and something that I'm glad you shared with the committee.

Martina, you were talking about bullying and harassment. I know there was a former security staff from a Manitoba Hydro work site at the Keeyask camp near Gillam who came forward in 2018 to report the incidents of racism, sexual assault, smuggling of alcohol and drugs on the job site and violence he witnessed at the camp. When he alerted managers to these incidents, he was brushed aside and the violence was allowed to continue unaddressed.

This seems to closely align with experiences that you shared, Martina, experiences of bullying after raising issues of racism and discrimination during your time as the VP on the board of directors for the Keeyask hydro partnership.

Could you please speak about the harm—as much as you feel comfortable—that's perpetrated by the patriarchal, colonial and violent mindset of senior staff in a lot of these resource development initiatives and how you feel it should be addressed? I know you talked about sexual assault centres. Do you have any other recommendations, especially with what Ellen Gabriel said about having nowhere to go, not being safe and having nobody to go to?

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

You have about 20 seconds, but I'll give you about 30 seconds.

Go ahead, Martina.

[Martina Saunders]

I'm thinking about my experience and my first nation's experience in negotiating the JKDA with Manitoba Hydro. There were no women at all; it was mostly men. It was already an imbalance between hydro workers and the first nation partners, but when you look at the gender-based analysis of that, who were the seats for? The indigenous seats were mostly made up of indigenous men, so we didn't have two-spirit people there and we didn't necessarily always have women's voices there.

It was the same with the board of directors of KHLP, where I was a VP. We need to have our voices at the planning of these projects. If they have to happen.... We don't want these projects to happen, but if they're going to happen, then they need to be done in a way that they're not harming our people, that we're being heard and that there are not just indigenous men's voices at the table.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Martina, I'm going to have to cut you off. We've gone about a minute over there, so I'm sorry about that. I just want to get back on track, so thank you so much.

We'll start our next round of questions. I'm going to pass the floor over to Shelby for five minutes.

[Shelby Kramp-Neuman, Conservative, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining and sharing your testimony. I have questions or comments for each one of you.

I'll start by saying to Martina that I want to thank you for sharing your story with regard to your family loss due to violence and addiction. That's never a nice one to stomach, so I do appreciate your willingness to be open about that.

Ellen Gabriel, if I may, thank you as well for being so open and forthright. I'll start specifically with some of your remarks and a couple of questions. You mentioned the importance of education and dialogue and the need for.... Pamphlets can often just be empty rhetoric and do not accomplishing anything. You also suggested that, for decades, indigenous women have been active participants in the protection and promotion of human rights and that of their families and nations, and that you've been at the helm of positive changes for equality and equity in regard to indigenous peoples' human rights.

My question has two parts. What kind of framework, when you speak of the human rights approach, do you see as ideal? I recognize that you need more demands and not just reflection. That's the first part.

Second, you mentioned that legislation should be based more on human rights and not solely words. Instead of focusing on quotas and time frames, we should be focusing more on family units, languages and lands. I personally think it should be more a combination of the two. I don't think we can have one without the other, so could you speak to that as well?

Thank you.

[Ellen Gabriel]

I like where you're going with this. It's impossible to do this in five minutes.

I've been looking at some of the legislation regarding the implementation of the UN declaration. There are parts that indigenous people were not happy with.

It still goes back to this imposition of the sovereignty of Canada and Canada's refusal to repudiate the doctrine of discovery, which means that we are indigenous people without the “s”. Our right to self-determination is extremely important. I'm very sincere when I say we should be assimilating you because the education about the love for the land, how important the environment is and how we discuss things in a way that is respectful are some of the essentials of a framework where we can progress and move forward.

A framework is very simple under the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which acknowledges the harms that have been done because of colonization, racism and genocide, to bring people of all genders to sit at the table and to contribute as people who are knowledgeable.

Legislation, even with the languages component.... We're talking about two-year frameworks. We are losing our first-language speakers who think in the language. We don't have that luxury of time to be able to say we'll look in two years' time to see where the Indigenous Languages Act is.

It's always based on Canada's needs, not upon the needs of indigenous peoples or on examining the harms that have been done because of colonization and because of the genocidal project. It's a really complicated question.

[Shelby Kramp-Neuman, Conservative, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Thank you so much.

It was a several-part question, so we need an hour. In the spirit of time I will move forward to ask Hilda a question with regard to the national inquiry calls for action.

I'm just wondering if you could enlighten us as to which ways you think we could progress towards implementing the actual calls to action. How could it be improved?

[Hilda Anderson-Pyrz]

Thank you so much.

One key thing that has to occur immediately is that an accountability mechanism has to be put into place—specifically call for justice 1.7, which is the ombudsperson. Right now, there's no real accountability mechanism in place that will measure what calls for justice have been actioned. There has to be a framework for reporting as well in conjunction with the ombudsperson.

I can see across the country right now that there has been little or no action by all the provinces and territories, and the federal and indigenous governments as well, when it comes to the implementation of the 231 calls for justice.

In saying that, we have seen an increase in violence against indigenous women and girls in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Governments have shown how nimble they can be in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. We need them to be equally nimble with respect to protecting the lives of indigenous women and girls and the 2S community, because women, girls and 2S people are dying at alarming rates.

The key thing is an accountability mechanism. That's what we really need. It's holding governments accountable to see where they're at and what calls for justice have been implemented.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you very much.

We're now going to move it over for five minutes to Anita Vandenbeld.

You have five minutes.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Thank you very much.

I'd like to thank all of the witnesses.

My first question is for Ms. Saunders.

I'd just like to pick up a little bit on what you were saying about your experience. We often talk about the need to have indigenous women at the table in order to give voice, but your experience shows that just being at the table does not guarantee meaningful voice and meaningful participation. Often women end up—in your case and others—bullied and then vacating that space.

How do we make sure that indigenous women can be empowered so that they feel protected, so that there is actual agency and they can actually have meaningful participation when and if they do choose to participate and be at the table?

How do we do that, particularly as legislators? How do we ensure that this is happening when sometimes this is happening through private actors?

[Martina Saunders]

When I think about my experience on the KHLP board of directors, there was no place for me to go to report the bullying and racism. First off, there was a power imbalance at that table, and it shouldn't be that way.

There needs to be an independent process aside from industry where we can go and feel safe and be heard and make sure that whatever's happening, there's some action taken to help us to be at these tables and continue to do the work because our voices are very important.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Thank you very much.

I think that certainly would be something that we may wish to recommend as a committee.

I want to move over now to Ms. Anderson-Pyrz about some of the things she said in her testimony.

Ms. Anderson-Pyrz, you talked about a humans rights-based approach and then about what happens when those rights are violated. If I heard correctly, I think there were three things in particular. There's the acknowledgement of the harm, then the assistance to the survivors and then you also mentioned preventing it from being repeated.

I would like to home in on that particular piece. Again, thinking about what we can do as legislators to create the overarching structure for this, how do we prevent these things from happening in the first place?