Good afternoon.
[Witness spoke in Mohawk]
Here's what I said.
I'm presenting myself. My name is Mary Hannaburg. I'm from the Kanesatake community, and I work in mental health and addictions for the Kanesatake Health Center.
I'm employed at the Kanesatake Health Center. This is my 30th year. I started working as a community health representative for a year and a half, and then the position of mental health support worker opened up and I took it. I've been doing that, and also intervention, crisis intervention, and mental health and wellness presentations and support for women who are in crisis. Part of this work is dealing with women who are victims of domestic violence and are experiencing family violence, as well as men with mental health issues and addictions, and homelessness. This is what I've been involved in.
Here are our community demographics. They're made up of the total number of people who are registered with the Mohawks of Kanesatake, which is 3,268. This is in the province of Quebec. We are in a federal territory, but it is the Mohawks who reside there.
We have a band council system at the administration level that is a bit neutral, because there is an imbalance that has to be rectified. Hopefully, it will be done soon. We have an administration right now. With all due respect, I will not talk about that difficulty, because it's at the political level.
What I would like to say is that we are living in a vacuum right now. There are not a lot of projects going ahead.
We have a crisis on our hands, because we have a need for housing. We have a need for shelters. We have a need for transitional homes. Also, our community is mixed. There are status and non-status people because of the Indian Act and the discrimination in the Indian Act, which is still ongoing to the present day. It has not stopped.
There is a bill in the House of Commons that had its second reading and has gone to the INAN committee. It's stalled there because the committee prorogued for the summer, and now it's coming back to it. This is now an obstacle for us, because women and their children who cannot have their status do not have access to services.
On one of the sheets I am distributing to you, there's a communiqué from Indigenous Services Canada, which has also been translated into French, that says you need the 10-digit number. If you need to see a psychologist and you don't have your band number, you cannot be seen. You cannot get services for certain things. You can come in for medical services, because the provincial doctors will treat you, but you cannot have access to all of the other services. It's sad to say, but this is going on today.
The people affected in that category right now total 1,194. They and their families cannot access services. That is 63.54% of people who are blocked. This is gender inequality. We talk about determinants of health, and Health Canada has signed on to that, but basically it has not.
I want to say there are many things that.... There's the distance from culturally appropriate shelters. I've given you a map of all the locations in Quebec, and they are far away. A lot of the time, victims of violence and domestic violence do not want to leave their communities, because they already have to leave their homes, and then they have to leave their families and their children have to leave their friends.
We have violence. There are some stats. They are inaccurate, because not all cases are reported. We don't have a big trust level with the Sûreté du Québec and the provincial government because of the youth protection and the removal of children from their homes, so people do not do this reporting.
We have children with special needs. Sometimes, when they go to a shelter outside the community, they cannot accommodate them, whether it be because of their ADHD or autism, or just the fact that places are limited.
We need trained staff, policing and security. We have no police—