Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou for sharing his time with me, and also for reminding the House that we are not just talking about numbers or statistics. We are talking about something that has touched people's lives for decades now. We are talking about mothers, fathers, brothers, aunts, uncles and children. One of the things that the Native Women's Association of Canada has talked about is the intergenerational trauma that results due to losing a mother, an auntie or a daughter, and how that continues to play out in people's lives. It is very important for us in the House to put that human element, to put that face, on this issue.
I also want to acknowledge the member for St. Paul's for bringing forward the motion. It is timely in light of the report prepared by Human Rights Watch called, “Those Who Take Us Away”. I am going to touch on that report in a few moments.
Before I begin to speak about some of my points, I want to refer to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, article 44, which states, “All the rights and freedoms recognized herein are equally guaranteed to male and female indigenous individuals”. The article is not specifically referring to violence against aboriginal women, but it reminds us that in this country we have committed to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and one of those commitments is that indigenous women in this country will be treated equally, which means that they should have equal access to the justice system. Sometimes people have a misunderstanding of the disparity between how aboriginal women and children are treated versus how non-aboriginal women and children are treated, so we must look at that disparity and move toward equality.
In my early days I was the critic for Status of Women, back in 2004-05, and I have been the aboriginal critic for most of the time since 2006. I would like to be able to say that over the nine years I have been doing this job I have seen an improvement in how first nations, Inuit and Métis women and children are treated, but sadly that is not the case.
A couple of years ago I had the great privilege to meet with some parents from Saskatchewan, whose beautiful young daughter had gone missing. They were on the Hill because they wanted to talk to members of Parliament about the fact that they could not get the police to take seriously that their beautiful daughter had gone missing. She was a mother, a student and a hard worker, all of the things that make many of us very proud of our children. The response by police to the parents' plea was stereotypical, that she was running away from home, that there must have been some abuse and that there was a story involved. They did not pay the same kind of attention to this family's pain. Later they eventually discovered the body of the young woman, but what the parents had to go through in order to get the justice system to pay attention was painful to observe. They came here with a video of their beautiful daughter and asked people to look at who this beautiful young woman was.
There was a situation in my riding a couple of years ago. A 19-year-old first nation girl was murdered. Before the murderer was apprehended, everyone was fearful. All of the young girls in the community were afraid to go out without someone with them. Everyone could see the repercussions of that playing out throughout the community. I am proud to say that in Cowichan, where I live, the first nation and non-first nation communities came together. There were gatherings and marches to let the community know that they were going to stand with each other, but that does not happen in every community.
We only have to look at what happened with the Pickton farm and the subsequent Oppal inquiry. During the inquiry, it was highlighted over and over again that many of the Pickton victims were first nation or aboriginal women and that the justice system failed them time after time. Even in the Oppal inquiry the voices of families, friends and other organizations who supported the families and victims were shut out.
If we are going to move forward, if we are eventually going to have some sort of judicial inquiry, it is very important that those terms of reference are set so that victims and their families are included and are provided resources to be able to engage. If we do not hear from victims and their families, and about that intergenerational trauma, I do not see how we will ever get to the heart of this problem.
Back in 2004-05, the status of women committee was hearing testimony, not into violence against aboriginal women but some other issues around women's organizations. One woman came before the committee and said that there has been report after report on some of these issues. She said that in her office because they cannot afford to get the furniture repaired, she has a broken table and uses a stack of reports to prop up the table. That is how much use and how much attention those reports were given by the governments of the day who commissioned them.
In that context, I am just going to talk briefly about the number of reports that have come forward in Canada that highlight the fact that aboriginal women and children are murdered at a higher rate. The violence is well-documented and yet successive governments have continuously failed to act.
In 1996, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples identified a number of factors that are linked to violence in aboriginal communities, including systemic discrimination against aboriginal peoples, economic and social deprivation, alcohol and substance abuse, the intergenerational cycle of violence, the breakdown of healthy family life resulting from residential school upbringing, racism against aboriginal peoples, the impact of colonization on traditional values and culture, and overcrowded and substandard housing.
In 2004 and again in 2008, Amnesty International released reports on the issue of missing and murdered aboriginal women. Amnesty called on Canada to form a national action plan to address violence against women. The 2004 report did result in some funding going to the Native Women's Association of Canada to start building a database to document the murdered and missing women because, of course, if we do not have the numbers, and these are more than numbers, then it is very difficult to develop a policy or an action plan.
Now what we are seeing is that the Native Women's Association of Canada no longer has the funding to continue on with that work, and the Department of Justice is not going be collecting disaggregated data. Once again we will not have a good handle on exactly how many aboriginal women are murdered or missing every year.
In 2006, in response to the high number of aboriginal women who were murdered or who disappeared along B.C.'s Highway 16, dubbed the Highway of Tears, the aboriginal communities convened a symposium. Part of the task force asked for all levels of government to work together, and identified poverty as one of the leading contributors to the violence that was being experienced by aboriginal women and children.
In 2004, and not for the first time, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women recognized the critical situation of aboriginal women in Canada, and recommended that Canada develop a specific and integrated plan for addressing the particular concerns affecting aboriginal women, both on and off reserve, including poverty, poor health, inadequate housing, low school completion rates, low employment rates and low income.
It goes on and on. There are so many different reports and documents that have demonstrated that there is a serious problem in this country, and yet the government's continuing indifference to working with families and other organizations, such as the Native Women's Association of Canada, is very troubling.
We have the motion before the House, and I understand that all parties are going to support the motion. I would hope that not only is the motion supported but that some of the recommendations in the report, “Those Who Take Us Away”, would be implemented more quickly, for example, an independent civil oversight of the RCMP so that victims of violence are able to go to someone they can actually trust. They do not trust the RCMP. There are many good police officers out there, but there are too many cases where women and their children do not feel safe enough to take that information forward. They may come from small communities. They may feel they are too isolated. They may feel they are going to be targeted.
I encourage all members to support the motion, but I truly hope that we act before this committee comes to the end of its mandate.