Status of Women Committee on Feb. 4th, 2022

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

I asked this to the previous panel. As you know, indigenous women and girls are 12 times more likely to be missing or murdered than the rest of the population. This was reported in the national inquiry that was released in 2019. It's now 2022. There's still no national action plan. What date will that national action plan be released?

[Chantal Marin-Comeau]

I'm very happy to clarify. The national action plan on MMIWG was launched on June 3, 2021. It is an indigenous-led national action plan. There are chapters that are included in this national action plan. Chapters include families and survivors. Indigenous families and survivors created their own action plan. The urban group created an action plan. The 2SL group created an action plan. There were chapters by Inuit, first nations, Métis, the data and research community—

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

With all due respect, the former commissioner disagreed with the progress of the national action plan and in fact the federal government response. To quote her, the federal government seems to be either “unwilling” or “unable” to provide the necessary leadership to move ahead with a national action plan, especially without any concrete timelines. This opinion was actually shared by the former president of the Native Women's Association of Canada, who gave the federal government a failing grade. They were so frustrated they came out with a list of recommendations in response to the failure of the federal government to act, including appointing an independent mechanism to report to Parliament annually on the implementation of recommendations.

Has an independent mechanism been set up?

[Chantal Marin-Comeau]

The national action plan was launched with indigenous partners and organizations, very broadly including provinces, territories and the federal government. The government is not waiting for these plans to be carried out. In this indigenous-led process, many of those chapters of indigenous partners are now developing their own implementation plan.

The federal government is also developing its implementation plan, but we're not waiting for the implementation plan before taking some concrete action.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Building on that, I've heard a lot about plans and meetings. How many calls for justice have been implemented to date out of the 231?

[Chantal Marin-Comeau]

The 231 calls for justice are very broad-reaching. Calls for justice, as you know, are addressed to the federal government, provinces and territories. They're addressed to civil society and they're multi-faceted.

For the underlying themes—and I'll come back to a question that was asked previously—what's important is the themes and the underlying root causes. That's what the government is acting on, the underlying root causes.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you. I have a limited amount of time, and this is a very important topic. It's been identified as a genocide.

What is the total amount of funding that has been provided in this last fiscal year in response to the calls for justice?

[Chantal Marin-Comeau]

In budget 2021, we invested $2.2 billion specifically to address the root causes of gender- and race-based violence against indigenous women, girls and 2S+.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

That's $2.2 billion over how many years?

[Chantal Marin-Comeau]

It varies. It can be between five and six years.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Okay, so how much would that be annually?

[Chantal Marin-Comeau]

It depends on the initiatives.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

If you break that down annually—and we know that it's a crisis—how much is being provided annually to address the genocide of violence against indigenous women and girls?

[Chantal Marin-Comeau]

I don't have the answers on the breakdown at my fingertips. Obviously there are 43 budget investments, but we can follow up with a written answer to your question. All of these are really to address the tragedy of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls and 2S+.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

I'd appreciate that. Thank you so much.

Mr. Kenney, you said that infrastructure is one of the areas that were identified with respect to violence against indigenous women and girls. I know that in Winnipeg, after nine years of advocating at the place that the former minister of Crown-indigenous relations identified as ground zero for murdered and missing indigenous women and girls, we finally got an allotment of funding, which was not adequate, for a 24-7 safe space, in response to one of the calls for justice from the national inquiry.

How much money has been invested in infrastructure since the need to address it was identified as being critical?

[Ian Kenney]

To clarify the question, are you talking about investments for the initiative nationally or are you speaking specifically—

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

I mean nationally and also specifically to Manitoba.

[Ian Kenney]

It's probably best if I get back to the committee with the specific dollar values for those, both nationally and with the Manitoba focus.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Fantastic. Thank you so much. If we could get those, that would be wonderful.

Laila is up next, but she's having some connectivity issues, so if it's okay with everybody, I will go to Jenna.

Jenna, I'll give you your five minutes, and then we'll come back to Laila.

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

Excellent. Thanks so much to the witnesses who have joined us today and for all of their great work. I'll start with Madame Marin-Comeau.

Given the diversity of indigenous communities across our country, what funding is available specifically for northern communities, and how has that been deployed for the shelter network and then for other community partners for individuals who are trying to escape intimate partner violence?

[Chantal Marin-Comeau]

I don't have the entire spectrum of the northern investments; however, I know that there are some housing infrastructure investments through budget 2021. There are also, as you heard, shelters. There's also a northern focus for community-based prevention programs.

Perhaps what I can do is take that question and give a more thorough response for the northern aspect of investments.

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

Excellent, thank you very much. I'd appreciate that information.

Mr. Kenney, recently Senator Dasko commissioned an Environics poll examining the issues that concern women in Canada. The results indicated that 77% of Canadians believe that improving the conditions of indigenous women is a very important problem for women in Canada today. I'm sure that comes as no surprise.

You've alluded a bit already to some of the investments in shelters. I was hoping you could share more details with respect to what supports and resources are available for indigenous women who are fleeing gender-based or intimate partner violence, both with respect to some of the investments you've kind of touched on already in the shelter system and any other resources available.

[Ian Kenney]

We've talked about the shelter system that we are trying to expand and improve. I think what you may be interested in is some of the projects that are funded through the prevention component of the program. As I mentioned, those are very much community driven. If it would be helpful, maybe we could get back to the committee with a bit of a sense of what types of services and activities might get funded through our program.

As a general overview of things, there are a number of activities that are funded through the program, such as counselling. I think I mentioned a few: addictions training, child support programs, traditional teachings and those kinds of things. It's a very wide range of activities, and they're very much driven by community need.

If it's helpful, then we can maybe put a finer point on that and respond back to the committee, if that's suitable.

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

Those details would be great.

Another important part to perhaps highlight and drill down into today is the resources that are available or in place for indigenous women in the LGBTQ2S community, or for indigenous women who may be disabled. Can you speak to programs or services in place specifically for them?

[Ian Kenney]

Again, those communities are part of the prevention programming that we have available. We try to notionally keep an eye open for proposals, so that we make sure those types of initiatives aimed at those groups are covered, but there isn't a dedicated set of funding or a basket of services that we target specifically for those groups.

Again, maybe just a bit more of a sense of the types of activities we have funded through the proposals we have funded so far might give you a better sense of what kinds of things are supported through the program.