Status of Women Committee on June 17th, 2022

[Michèle Audette]

That's right. Social acceptability will not be easy either. If we set up advisory committees without representation from women with a survivor's experience, we run the risk of missing the mark, despite our good intentions.

I support your comment. In fact, you should make this a recommendation.

[Dominique Vien, Conservative, Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC]

But it's so simple.

I have no further questions, Madam Chair.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you very much.

I'm now going to pass it over to Jenna.

Jenna, you have six minutes.

[Jenna Sudds, Liberal, Kanata—Carleton, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you very much to all of the incredible witnesses for your testimony here today. It's such an important discussion.

I think I'd like to start with Ms. Brady from the Impact Assessment Agency.

In your testimony, you had started to describe the GBA+ model a bit and mentioned mitigation measures. Could you share with us what you expect and what we all should be expecting of any resource extraction company as they begin a project as far as mitigation measures are concerned?

[Patricia Brady]

Thanks for the question.

I did speak to mitigation measures.

First, as I mentioned, GBA+ analysis now is a required part of the impact assessment of a project. Projects that come under the federal system will be required to do a GBA+ analysis. Proponents will be required to consider and study the issue, including mitigation measures, in advance.

We haven't had a project go through the new act yet, but we expect that conditions such as physical site and security measures, employee support programs, employment policies and conditions related to harassment or anti-harassment, education awareness programs and support for community social infrastructure could be among some of the mitigation measures put in place as binding conditions. Those conditions are binding and subject to monitoring and enforcement under the act.

[Jenna Sudds, Liberal, Kanata—Carleton, ON]

Thank you very much.

If I recall correctly, the act came into place in August 2019. You're saying it hasn't been utilized yet. No company has come through this legislation yet.

[Patricia Brady]

I'm sorry. No.

We have 19 projects under the system now, but none have come all the way through to the point where we have binding conditions in place. We are, however, now requiring that GBA+ be done on all of those projects and that those mitigation measures be considered. Ultimately, when we have decisions under the Impact Assessment Act, we expect that they will include conditions related to the security and safety of indigenous women.

[Jenna Sudds, Liberal, Kanata—Carleton, ON]

Excellent. Thanks for that clarification.

Perhaps it's early days to ask this question, but I will, in case it's not. Are you starting to see the impact of this new legislation coming to fruition as these companies are going through the process?

[Patricia Brady]

It's hard to say what the impact of conditions is, because we don't have any in place yet. The consciousness and sensibility around GBA+ and the application by proponents are improving across the board.

In terms of whether concrete measures are having an impact, we don't have that kind of information yet.

[Jenna Sudds, Liberal, Kanata—Carleton, ON]

Fair enough. Thank you very much.

I'll direct my next questions to Ms. Moran with Public Safety. We've had some discussion today around whether indigenous women are feeling safe in their communities and their interactions with our various police forces.

Can you share comments on progress that's been made on the co-development of the first nations police services legislation?

[Christine Moran]

In fact, I can. We have embarked upon the co-development in earnest. We have completed 12 rounds of virtual engagement sessions and an additional one, which we held directly with Quebec. The others were national in scope.

We examined the issues related to what is required to establish first nations policing as an essential service. We looked at roles and responsibilities. We looked at questions such as what the definition of an essential service is. Every session that we had came to discussions of funding and the structures there. There was a lot of candour in those sessions. We are working to analyze all of the input.

We continue to work with the AFN, as well as with other partners and technical experts, such as the First Nations Chiefs of Police Association, who have a lot to provide us with respect to advice on this issue. We will continue to advise on progress.

[Jenna Sudds, Liberal, Kanata—Carleton, ON]

Excellent. Thank you very much.

I believe I have just a few seconds left, so I'll pass it back to the chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Fantastic. Thank you so much.

I'll pass it over for the next six minutes to Andréanne Larouche.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I said I would come back to the question of funding for organizations. You said that we sometimes go through national organizations rather than granting funding directly to organizations in the field. You also mentioned some fine names of Quebec communities.

However, we can see that many organizations that deal with victims or that work in the field with women are funded by Quebec's ministère de la Santé et des Services sociaux. These organizations also do important prevention work. It is therefore also important to have funding through transfers. It is crucial to support the associations that help victims.

[Michèle Audette]

The best example I could give you is a fresh one. The Department of Public Safety says that it held a virtual consultation across Canada. In several communities in Quebec, there are first nations police services. To what extent have the women in these communities been encouraged to express themselves in a safe manner on the pros and cons or on the things that can be improved or changed in terms of public safety?

I'll end with a very powerful example. During the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women and Girls, these women dared to speak out. Afterwards, a parallel investigation was launched and someone was dismissed, because there had been misconduct. But this is only one case, and it took courage on the part of a mother and her son.

If we could hear the voices of these women, they might give good advice on how to improve initiatives that affect us directly.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Senator and Ms. Brazeau, I also invite you to respond and give us your point of view.

I saw your reaction to Ms. Vien's proposal. Once again, it comes back to the importance of having a form of consultation. Besides, this is a characteristic that we find a lot in the community world and that comes from the aboriginal communities, which consult each other and engage in dialogue. This may be a possible solution.

On the question of firearms, we suggested setting up a joint squad to work on the problems of violence. This idea could be expanded to include violence against women, which they may even experience in the context of resource exploitation.

Senator, I know that you have already reacted to this proposal for better consultation.

Ms. Brazeau, I don't know if you have anything to add.

There is another issue I would like to address. It is for department officials, but Ms. Brazeau and Ms. Audette can also speak if they want to.

Many of the resource projects are in remote and isolated communities. Isolated communities were also discussed in a previous study by the Standing Committee on the Status of Women on intimate partner violence. We also talked about it in the last Parliament, when we were doing a study on the difference in services for women in rural and urban areas. So it's already been addressed in several other studies.

I invite any of the department officials present to answer my question, which concerns access to help and support resources for women who are victims of violence and live in remote areas. The fact that these businesses are often located in areas far from major centres creates isolation, which is an aggravating factor.

Do these communities have special needs? How is the government responding to this very real problem?

[Christine Moran]

I believe that question is directed generally.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

That's right. I would like to know how each of the departments perceives its interventions in response to the fact that many of the situations we are talking about today occur in remote areas.

[Christine Moran]

What I can say from the perspective of Public Safety—and I would refer to our aboriginal community safety planning initiative—is that it is aimed at bringing together the community with provinces, territories, local governments and industry to look at issues affecting community safety.

You have asked about the remoteness factor and isolation, and certainly, many of the first nations communities that we're dealing with are in isolated areas, so I can say that we are directing our efforts there.

Another point I would make is that we are striving to take a trauma-informed approach and to ensure that in those perspectives, there are sensitivity and culturally responsive responses in our programming and our policies.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

I'd like to raise another question, which any department official is welcome to answer. We can talk more about it if I have another opportunity to speak.

When it comes to businesses in remote areas, we also see that it is important to improve the information gathering on cases in order to propose solutions. Unfortunately, it was noted that the gender-based analysis plus is often poorly applied and that it is difficult to obtain figures.

Could one of the department officials tell us how important it is to continue to look for this data in order to be able to propose solutions?

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you, Ms. Larouche.

I will now turn the next six minutes over to Leah Gazan.

Leah, you have the floor.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you so much, Chair.

I'd like to allow Senator Audette to continue responding about call to action 1.7 and the ombudsman.

[Michèle Audette]

Thank you very much, Ms. Gazan.

I do not consider the issues and topics that affect first peoples to be strictly aboriginal issues. These are cross-cutting issues that concern or affect us as they would in the case of a person from Quebec or the Northwest Territories.

We must have independent and safe spaces, bringing together a multitude of human, scientific and theoretical expertise and experience, which will ensure that the truth is always maintained. I repeat that calls for justice are legal imperatives. If there is an injustice, we will denounce it in the right place and we know that it will be treated correctly and respectfully and that it will influence policies, laws or the way things are done in Canada.

For its part, the initiative or project approach does not work, as we have seen with the passing decades.

If those spaces I mentioned, whether it's an ombudsman's office or a committee, have the ability and the right to report to Parliament, that will also help you, whether you're in the opposition or the government, to honour the changes that are long overdue. Until we have that, Ms. Gazan, I will make it my "battle caribou."

It's a French expression.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

I'm learning French. I'm trying my best.

My next question is for Madame Brazeau.

I know that you spoke a bit about your centre and what it does, but we have heard witnesses share about the barriers and trauma that indigenous women and 2SLGTBQQIA+ people face in reporting the violence they experience from “man camps”. However, even when survivors come forward and report the violence, they are faced with additional harm and violence from police. I know that I keep going back to policing, because the sad part of this is that even the systems that are supposed to protect us abuse us, so where are we to go?

We also know from the national inquiry that many indigenous women in Val-d'Or have suffered extreme abuse by the Sûreté du Québec. Certainly, because of the extreme violence being experienced by women who lived in surrounding communities, former premier Couillard put forward a complement to the inquiry. Also, that's certainly not just happened in Quebec. We saw that in the report that came out of Saskatchewan. It's across the country.

Do you have any recommendations to ensure that not only do we address the violence within the resource extraction sites and adjacent communities, but also that survivors coming forward are not further harmed by police?