Hello. Bonjour. Boozhoo.
Honourable committee members and Chair, thank you for inviting NWAC to bring indigenous women's voices into your study on Bill S-205 here on unceded Algonquin territory.
The indigenous women, girls, two-spirit, trans and gender-diverse people NWAC represents remind us that it is one thing to be heard in these hallowed halls, but it's another to see change in their communities.
Indigenous women are much more vulnerable to domestic violence than other women in Canada. They face the highest, most disproportionate rates of domestic violence and are targeted in an ongoing MMIWG genocide.
In this committee's study of Bill S-205, I want to talk about power. Bill S-205 gives victims more power, but it does not account for indigenous women's systemic disempowerment. Here is what I mean.
Bill S-205 would not have helped the Inuk woman and domestic violence survivor in R. v. L.P. at the Quebec Court of Appeal in 2020. She was displaced from her community by colonial policies. She was unhealthy because she lived in poverty and without supports to get well. She was dependent on her abusive partner and was vulnerable to his repeated and increasingly aggressive physical and sexual assaults.
If Bill S-205 had been enacted at the time, she would not have gone to the police for help or would not have asked a court to lay an information to protect her.
Violence is one of the key means through which abusers control women's agency and power. This Inuk woman was not empowered to ask for help, because in her lived experience, and in that of most indigenous women, the police are not there to protect them, and the trust is broken.
Indigenous women recently told NWAC that on the one hand, police are always watching them and are ready to catch them violating a condition or to alert social workers to remove their children from their care. On the other hand, when they are being abused within their homes, the police don't seem to be watching closely enough to be able to step in. This distrust poses a significant barrier that will prevent indigenous women from accessing the victim supports intended by Bill S-205.
This bill must incorporate indigenous justice principles. Many indigenous legal orders hold specific laws against gender-based violence. They hold offenders responsible and they aim to repair relationships between the victim and the community.
Victims also have a role in determining the abuser's punishment while receiving healing services of their own. Indigenous communities need indigenous-led approaches to resolving gender-based violence, and they need resources and supports to do this work. Much of this need is reflected in the findings of the MMIWG calls for justice.
NWAC recommends that this committee amend Bill S-205 by adding conditions under subsection 515(4) that are recommended by indigenous governing bodies with the authority to govern the accused. Where this bill allows a provincial court judge to lay an information before any physical family violence occurs, it could go further and could mandate judges to consider the available indigenous support services.
The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples directs legislators, including this committee, to work with indigenous people to protect indigenous women from all forms of violence.
Before I conclude, I want to raise the point that it is very important for this committee to study Bill S-205 in a way that does not worsen indigenous women's mass incarceration. Canada's correctional investigator's recent update noted that indigenous women make up more than half the adult prison population. In some prisons this is as high as 75%.
We heard in the other place that indigenous women often face double charging when police attend a domestic violence call. That means the police charge both the aggressor and the victim. At bail hearings for those charges, courts are still using unnecessary and unreasonable bail conditions against indigenous people at disproportionate rates.
NWAC agrees with the amendments to Bill S-205 that remove some reliance on electronic monitoring bracelets but presses this committee to remove all references to them.
As a grassroots organization, NWAC walks with indigenous women who seek help. We can provide resources, tool kits and supports, but there are systemic forces at play that are much too powerful for our organization to remedy on its own.
Bill S-205 must go further to account for indigenous women's lived realities if it is going to help reduce violence for all victims, especially the marginalized and vulnerable within this group.
Thank you, and NWAC remains available for further questions.
Meegwetch.