Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee.
My name is Hilda Anderson-Pyrz. I'm the president of National Family and Survivors Circle Inc., an indigenous-led and distinctions-based organization representing families of missing and murdered indigenous women, girls, two-spirit and gender-diverse people and survivors of gender- and race-based violence.
I honour all indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA+ people who are missing or whose lives have been taken far too soon and those who have experienced violence.
I speak to the lived realities of indigenous women and gender-diverse people across this country, realities shaped by systemic racism, colonial violence and chronic failures across policing, corrections and the courts.
These failures are heightened in rural, remote and northern communities, but they are present everywhere. The national inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women and girls made this clear. The violence indigenous women face is not accidental or isolated. It is structural. This is the foundation of calls for justice 1.1, 1.7 and 1.10, which outline the core obligations of governments to create safety. These foundational calls guide all the reforms I will speak to today.
Section 810 orders are intended to protect, but for many survivors they are protection only on paper. Survivors describe being dismissed by police, minimized in court or spoken to with racist and victim-blaming assumptions. These experiences violate the principles laid out in call for justice 5.4, which requires trauma-informed, culturally safe and bias-free policing and justice responses.
Even when a peace bond is issued, its effectiveness depends entirely on enforcement. The Office of the Correctional Investigator has documented chronic communication failures, inadequate release and planning, and a lack of survivor notification. These gaps are why call for justice 9.1 requires timely, reliable and survivor-centred information sharing. Without functioning systems behind them, peace bonds become symbolic, rather than protective.
The Shawn Lamb case was a clear warning. The recent statutory release of Shawn Lamb, who pleaded guilty to killing two indigenous women in Winnipeg, demonstrates what happens when systems rely on conditions on paper but lack meaningful enforcement and oversight. Despite being assessed as a high risk for intimate partner violence and sexual reoffending, Lamb was released into the community. Survivors and families expressed fear and rage, and rightfully so.
The case underscores critical gaps in enforcement of conditions, communication between justice bodies, survivor notification and community preparedness. These are precisely the issues highlighted in call for justice 16.27, which demands real accountability across policing, corrections and the courts, and call for justice 1.10, which calls for transparent coordinated systems that protect survivors and do not endanger them.
Survivors have told us time and time again what real safety requires. Each of these needs connects directly to the specific calls for justice. They tell us that safety begins with indigenous-led, distinctions-based, wraparound supports, which is exactly what call for justice 5.1 directs governments to provide. They tell us that they need culturally safe, trauma-informed policing and justice responses, so that racism, stereotyping and dismissive attitudes do not put them at further risk. This aligns directly with call for justice 5.4.
Survivors also need reliable, timely, survivor-centred information sharing, especially around releases, breaches and changes in conditions. That is a core requirement for call for justice 9.1. They need real accountability across policing, corrections and the courts, so that no system and no institution can continue failing them without consequence. This comes directly from call for justice 16.27. They remind us that safety must also include healing and rehabilitation for those who cause harm, something clearly laid out in calls for justice 7.1 and 7.3.
All these needs rest on the foundational human rights principles described in calls for justice 1.1, 1.7 and 1.10.
I propose five priorities.
The first is to recognize coercive control and patterns of harm. Expand section 810 to cover coercive control, stalking, technology-enabled abuse and escalation that has not yet produced physical assault.
The second is to improve enforcement and policing capacity by creating specialized intimate partner violence units serving indigenous communities, setting minimum staffing benchmarks for remote detachments, and mandating training on coercive control and colonial violence.
The third is to fix information sharing and survivor notification by establishing real-time integrated information sharing among police, courts, corrections, parole, indigenous governments and service providers, with automatic survivor notifications for releases, breaches and conditions changes.
The fourth is to reduce the burden on survivors by allowing trusted third party applications for orders, funding indigenous court navigators and survivor advocates, and providing legal aid and ensuring transportation and accessibility supports in remote regions.
The fifth is to have indigenous-led data and oversight by collecting distinctions-based data on orders, breaches and outcomes led by indigenous organizations under OCAP principles, and using the data to set national standards and require accountability.
In closing, this is not simply about amending one section of the Criminal Code. It is about transforming the systems that continue to fail indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA+ people. Peace bonds alone do not create safety. Indigenous-led, rights-based, community-grounded systems create safety.
