Status of Women committee  Thank you. I want to thank the members of the standing committee for the opportunity to present the findings of a research study I completed a few years ago. The information I'm presenting is based on a province-wide study of aboriginal women's experience of violence in Alberta

Status of Women committee  This is a huge report with the findings that I have in it, and seven minutes just doesn't give it enough time, but one of my concerns is with provincial victims services programs. These programs are supposed to be front-line service providers for people who have been victims of

Status of Women committee  Absolutely. I checked, and this is still happening. Another issue with victims services is not so much out of the justice piece, but that the services are based on a middle-class, non-aboriginal model in which people in a community might have the resources to offer their volunte

Status of Women committee  Well, I disagree with it, because I think we need to have that additional information. At the end of the day, politicians and policy-makers look at those kinds of reports and findings. Without those, I don't believe they'll be able to target well taxpayers' money into proper prog

Status of Women committee  I do think that's a problem. I would strongly advocate the reinstatement of that long-form census. It's critical information.

Status of Women committee  I found that the outcomes of the processes of cases and investigations going to the crown were reliant on judges who too frequently gave the perpetrators of the crimes benefits of the doubt. Both the aboriginal women I interviewed and certainly a lot of people in the helping pr

Status of Women committee  No, I have to say not directly, but I also have to say that when I was conducting the research across Alberta, I did come across some communities that, from within, were really working towards becoming healthy and productive. I don't know if they had really strong women's organiz

Status of Women committee  They are working on it, yes.

Status of Women committee  I'm thinking of Fort Chipewyan in particular. It's a very isolated northern community. In my discussions with the chief at the time, he talked about how they decided several decades earlier that they wanted to change the violence in their communities. They approached the federal

Status of Women committee  I'd like to extend that as well. A lot of the women I interviewed talked about losing their children and how that actually prompted them into taking greater risks in their lives, sometimes engaging in drugs and prostitution. It really led to their spiralling downwards.

Status of Women committee  Absolutely, and they go through a lot of grief. So one can imagine how that would prompt them not to bother phoning the police or engaging the criminal justice system at all, no matter what the incident was.

Status of Women committee  I agree with both of the previous two speakers, but I would like to add that I am aware of at least one program for abusive men in Fort McMurray that was initiated by the women's shelter, and they've been funded for this for a few years. They're finding it quite successful. Often

Status of Women committee  I don't have my statistics handy.

Status of Women committee  The aboriginal population is one of the fastest growing in Canada, and that's also true in Alberta. I hesitate to say. I ignored my statistics for today. I think it's between 5% and 8%.

Status of Women committee  I think it would. I think any time you can involve the grassroots, the people who actually experience this stuff, it is always valuable, and it's more valuable than having one representative from each province give some kind of feedback.