Good afternoon, Madam Chair and committee members.
My name is Coralee McGuire-Cyrette and I am the executive director of the Ontario Native Women's Association. ONWA is the largest and oldest indigenous women's organization in Canada and has the largest indigenous-led anti-human trafficking program. In the last 10 months, we have helped support 426 women and girls in safely exiting human trafficking. I want to acknowledge the bravery, wisdom and leadership of all survivors, as they are the experts. Their advice informs all aspects of our trafficking work.
Today, my testimony will focus on the ways we can prevent and address the trafficking of indigenous women and girls, and the ways we can improve law enforcement's ability to identify and hold offenders accountable.
In 2018, ONWA released a report called “Journey to Safe Spaces”. It is based on intensive engagement with over 3,300 community members and service providers, as well as 250 self-identified survivors of human trafficking. Now and historically, indigenous women have the poorest outcomes in the 16 most acceptable social determinants of health in the country. To prevent the trafficking of indigenous women and girls, we must first address the risk factors that create the conditions that make them more vulnerable and targeted by human traffickers, such as income security, lack of social and cultural supports, and lack of equitable access to health care, to name a few.
We all know colonization has significantly influenced the current landscape of indigenous women and girls being trafficked in Canada. They are vulnerable to violence because they are both under- and over-policed. Often, they are not believed and further victimized by the systems mandated to protect them. They experience multiple barriers, inequality, systemic discrimination, racism and lateral violence, and they are excluded from nation-to-nation policy engagements.
If we want sustainable change, we need to deconstruct the current systems and reconstruct indigenous women's leadership, voices, honour and empowerment. Governments at all levels must implement a distinctions-based plus approach in alignment with article 18 of UNDRIP. They must also support indigenous organizations through core funding, so these can provide safe spaces that are survivor-centred, culturally grounded, and designed and led by indigenous women. Indigenous women's lives are not projects. We cannot address systemic change through project-based funding. It is difficult to work towards reconciliation when indigenous women are not safe in our country. To date, there has been an abundance of education, training and public awareness campaigns, but not an abundance of core funding to support prevention-based services.
Not all provinces in Canada have prioritized human trafficking. Many still do not have strategies to address or eliminate the trafficking of indigenous women and girls. It is critical to understand that indigenous women's voices have been left out and silenced in conversation. This has impacted their safety, well-being and livelihoods, and this is why ONWA advocates for a distinctions-based plus approach. We cannot afford to continue leaving indigenous women out of the conversation while we are six times more likely than non-indigenous women to be murdered.
The issue of police accountability is a conversation that needs to be addressed at many levels. All police forces must acknowledge the systemic racism embedded in their systems and work towards change. They need to build trust with indigenous women's organizations, so indigenous survivors of human trafficking feel safe enough to report the exploitation to them. Clear policing standards and training would assist police in identifying victims of human trafficking. After identification, police investigations need to be trauma informed and done without discrimination or bias. All police forces across Canada should review and ensure they have implemented all recommendations in the 2018 “Broken Trust” report, in order to make sure their organizational behaviour aligns with addressing and eliminating systemic racism and does not perpetuate it.
Today, we still have governments quick to dismiss the notion that human trafficking exists in our community, because it's difficult to hear what indigenous women and girls negotiate every day just to survive.
In closing, I would like to encourage the committee to review our “Reconciliation with Indigenous Women” report and our “Journey to Safe Spaces” strategy in full. They both provide a comprehensive road map to keeping indigenous women and girls safe from human trafficking and supporting them in rebuilding their lives.
Meegwetch.