Mr. Speaker, I am very disappointed in that I have about an hour's worth of information here and there are only about five minutes left in the debate. I will quickly get through as much as I can.
However, obviously this debate is happening because of the insufficient speed of action of the government in funding aboriginal women's shelters and also because of its actions in cutting them back. The original proposal was for 10 shelters and was cut back to 5. It is important for government to deal with the most vulnerable. Who could be more vulnerable as far as violence against women is concerned than the aboriginal women of this country? The percentage of violence is so much higher for them than it is for other Canadians.
That is why, like previous speakers, I support the Sisters in Spirit mission about missing and murdered aboriginal women. I encourage the government to take faster action in that area.
Also, on the holistic manner of helping aboriginal women, I certainly encourage the government to provide more and continuing support to parenting for aboriginal moms, which often is done so excellently through the Friendship Centres of Canada. Their funding should be increased. The healthy moms and healthy babies program is an incredible success. The prenatal nutrition program is very successful.
As well, I have been lobbying for years for the head start program for young aboriginal children. It can have such an effect on their lives and, in particular, can help women who are single parents.
The Liard Aboriginal Women's Society in Yukon does excellent work and should have its support continued by the government. It does great work on the first nations developing a constitution and on input from the women's groups and also runs wonderful healing camps. Of course, support for FAS-FAE is incredibly important, as it is for housing and those other types of organizations.
We have three shelters in Yukon. There is one in Whitehorse. Watson Lake has Help and Hope. There is one in Dawson City. The one in Whitehorse is always oversubscribed and certainly needs new help.
The member for Churchill mentioned Jordan's principle, which she fought so hard for. I want to put on record a letter I received in relation to that, which states:
As you are aware, the Canadian Parliament unanimously adopted “Jordan's Principle” on December 12, 2007. Jordan was a First Nation child who lived the entire 5 years of his life in a Manitoba hospital because government officials could not agree on which level and department of government was responsible for his well-being.
I recognize that many Yukon First Nations are self-governed and therefore “Jordan's Principle” may not apply to these groups. I encourage you, however, to do everything in your power to ensure that “Jordan's Principle” becomes a reality for Canada's First Nations people.
I can tell Marie Stevens of Whitehorse, Yukon that we in the opposition are certainly fighting for that to occur.
There have been national conferences to further aboriginal women's equality. The first one was in Newfoundland and Labrador. There was a sub-conference in Whitehorse after that to follow up. I want to go through a number of items recommended for the government to undertake to help aboriginal women. There are four categories: education, leadership, wellness and other messages.
There are about 16 recommendations in each section, so I am obviously not going to get through them all, but this is a huge list. I have already asked the government to follow up both on the recommendations from the national conferences and on those from the follow-up regional conferences. There is going to be another one next year, and I believe it will be in Yellowknife. We who were at the Yukon conference will certainly be watching the government to see what action there has been on all these items.
The Yukon conference was held last November, with over 200 participants from Whitehorse and Watson Lake. We will be following up on those dozens upon dozens of recommendations for action to help the most vulnerable, the aboriginal people in our society, to progress with the solutions that they have designed.
There are a lot of programs in non-aboriginal shelters for which aboriginal shelters do not get the same support from the Department of Indian Affairs. Some of these include: child support services; a transition home program; a 24 hour toll free crisis line; community awareness; a satellite program; and last, support groups.
Therefore, this is about not only the number of shelters but the services provided in those shelters, where there is certainly a very high need. They should be near the top of the list of things that the government is doing for aboriginal people.
One thing that concerns us locally is that quite often we hear an announcement related to aboriginal shelters, such as this one, which says that support will be on reserve. This has happened over many years. As we know, more than half of the aboriginal people in Canada do not live on reserve now. How are they supposed to be funded? Often this falls through the cracks in these types of announcements.
I am speaking for a lot of the people in the north, a lot of the first nations that have self-government agreements and are now doing their own governance. Hopefully Tsawwassen will be doing so soon. We will be debating that in a few minutes.
All of those people sometimes lose out because the announcements are just for first nations on reserve. I encourage every party and its analysts, in government or in opposition, to make sure when announcements come out for on reserve first nations people that provisions are made for those who are not on reserve so that they get the same types of needs met in some sort of mechanism. They still live in their own communities. They are self-governing.
It can be a different funding mechanism, of course, and a different delivery mechanism, but obviously people have the same needs to some extent whether or not they live on reserve. We cannot keep having this huge group, over half of the aboriginal people in Canada, fall between the cracks on some of these initiatives.
I want to talk about some of the recommendations that came out of the local aboriginal conferences.
The first one is to ensure that curriculum development in schools includes cultural components such as land claims, the history of Yukon first nations and traditional roles of first nations women and men.
On leadership, recommendations are as follows: include the voices of female aboriginal elders as advisers in meetings of all first nation women; increase the representation of aboriginal women in decision-making positions in governments, corporations and non-profit organizations; and increase representation of aboriginal women at decision-making tables dealing with water, land and traditional knowledge.
In wellness, it is recommended to build traditional healing centres focused on addictions and violence, with programming that incorporates traditional knowledge, medicine, support and healing for the whole family, and that also incorporates spiritual healing, including for families, with the use of elders' knowledge.
Other recommendations were: to reclaim cultural traditions and identity through teaching and celebrating; to address and eliminate racism; to encourage and support aboriginal women to take on decision-making and political roles; to use the wisdom of elders as teachers; and to respect youth.
I hope the government will follow up on this report called “Strong Women, Strong Communities” from the Yukon Aboriginal Women's Summit and the national summit so that we can make great progress in this area.