Status of Women committee  I believe that female leadership must be reinforced in the communities. In some communities, it's going a little better, but much remains to be done with regard to the place of women, whether it be in the composition of municipal councils, the distribution of mayoral offices or k

Status of Women committee  I'd like to clarify one point. When I refer to problem-solving courts, I'm not talking about aboriginal courts. I'm really talking about an approach that may or may not be applied within the aboriginal communities. It's a completely different approach, one that is focused on conf

Status of Women committee  Yes, absolutely. I think that the problem-solving courts—

Status of Women committee  Yes, absolutely.

Status of Women committee  There are some. I believe the west is ahead of here—we're very far behind. What I find particularly interesting in the specialized courts is that they're called the problem-solving courts. That's been developed to a great extent in the United States. They talk about community cou

Status of Women committee  That's somewhat what I was emphasizing earlier. In a community that experiences this dynamic of violence to a high degree, the categories of executioner and victim completely overlap. These women who find themselves incarcerated are above all victims of all kinds of things, of h

Status of Women committee  I'd like to start answering that question by telling an eloquent little story. At one point, I conducted a field study for my doctoral thesis in Puvirnituq, an Inuit community in Hudson Bay. My thesis concerned the administration of criminal justice and included a historical comp

Status of Women committee  I'm neither a legal expert nor a specialist on the Indian Act, but the rules on descendance and belonging, which are still discriminatory, should definitely be amended as soon as possible. I prefer to let the aboriginal women's associations present their viewpoints to you. Howeve

Status of Women committee  It's not complicated, if I can take the liberty of answering you. I do a lot of work in the mediation field. I think there are really some bridges that should be built between aboriginal and non-aboriginal people. I'm fascinated by the ignorance of history. The first thought tha

Status of Women committee  I'd like to make what will be a somewhat paradoxical comment. I believe that the weight of colonization absolutely should not be denied. It must not be forgotten. We are all responsible. There's really something that has to be denounced. I think it has to be officially recognized

Status of Women committee  It will take a long time to describe, but colonization has definitely resulted, among other things, in the placing under trusteeship of societies that were functioning very well and that were creating their own economies, even though they were subsistence economies. There was a s

Status of Women committee  Thank you for your very relevant and interesting question. It's true that this is very complicated. When I emphasize that there is no ideal solution, that's really what I have observed. Let's consider the example of safe houses. I'm not saying that safe houses are useless, but t

Status of Women committee  First of all, I would like to thank you for this invitation. I'm going to start with a brief presentation and tell you about my expertise, in particular. I've been interested in aboriginal issues and criminal justice since 1985. I am a full professor at the School of Criminology