Status of Women committee  Good afternoon. You can't imagine how thankful and honoured I am to be here, primarily because, as Bonnie was saying, I experienced childhood and youth violence and abuse. I was a runaway and was homeless. I hitchhiked up to the Northwest Territories, and because the regular she

Status of Women committee  Oh, sorry.

Status of Women committee  Can I? It won't take me long I don't believe. Let me just say that aside from barriers of racism, discrimination and stigmatization that were largely perpetrated by the sisterhood or by feminist women, it became really challenging to address, because everyone sort of treated tho

Status of Women committee  There are a lot of reasons why women are excluded. In my experience in the north it's primarily racism and discrimination. I had a first nations woman who went to the family violence shelter to get an emergency protection order. She wasn't even allowed through the door. They tal

Status of Women committee  You've sort of painted the impact of it, but let me just say this. Not only is there no housing, all of the housing—all of it—is controlled by the government. They have a sort of across-the-board policy. If you owe 10 cents to the housing corporation, you will never get housing i

Status of Women committee  It's like rent to own, where the women own the housing in the end. I just don't want to say how horrific it is that we have all these families living together, but the violence is through the roof in part because of that. If we don't address it, that will be a huge challenge. As

Status of Women committee  No.

Status of Women committee  As long as the government doesn't control it. We want women to control their own housing. Can that happen in the north? I talked to the minister of housing. They said that in the north nobody has the capacity. That really denigrates the skills of women in the north. We have men

Status of Women committee  I'm not sure yet because the housing first model is based on principles that work. First of all, it's immediate access to housing, not waiting. It's consumer choice and self-determination. It's recovery-oriented and deals with trauma responses. It's individualized support, and it

Status of Women committee  Could I address that for a sec?

Status of Women committee  Yellowknife was touted as the best place almost in Canada for that model. When the HPS first started, we were told that everybody, including indigenous governments, had to be at the table or we weren't getting any funding. We all came to the table because we all wanted funding. W

Status of Women committee  It was very interesting. I was on the street, so I was running around like a crazy person along with lots of other people. We started the centre because we couldn't function all that well. I could at least read, so when my colleagues on the street would run into child welfare or

Status of Women committee  I volunteered for the first four years because we couldn't get funding. Eventually, we embarrassed the GNWT into funding something, and it just worked. We had so many people coming to the shelter, and the family resource centre was attached. We had 50 people. Professional people

Human Resources committee  Thank you very much. I'd like to begin by thanking members of the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities for inviting me to contribute to this very important topic of urban, rural and northern indigenous h

Human Resources committee  Thank you.