Status of Women committee  Thank you very much for having the opportunity to speak here.

Status of Women committee  I would like to explain that. It's more like the whole atmosphere around it. Discrimination against women is basically what it goes back to. It's at almost every level, going back generations. My grandmother, who lived in a first nations community, married—on the paper or the r

Status of Women committee  Yes. It's discrimination against women, because that happened. It didn't happen against Indian men. It was happening against Indian women. So this is a part of it. Here we are in 2013 and we still don't have legislation in place to protect women in first nations communities.

Status of Women committee  I just finished being a police officer a few months ago.

Status of Women committee  Every time we went to a first nations community, there was always a reluctance on the part of the police because there was this grey area.

Status of Women committee  There's a void of legislation, or a void of authority, when it comes to domestic violence in first nations communities. It's very problematic for the police, because we're sitting there thinking.... You grab the person who is doing the offence, they're arrested, and they're put i

Status of Women committee  There are resources in first nations communities—probably not enough, but there are resources now. So if you have this legislation go through, there's a process, and there are some resources that women can access. It's not a perfect piece of legislation—

Status of Women committee  Do you mean at the congress or myself personally?

Status of Women committee  We don't have formal agreements with shelters, but we have our affiliate organizations. Our community people access shelters, volunteer on shelter boards, are part of those experiences—

Status of Women committee  No.

Status of Women committee  If you can tell me what the centre of excellence is, I'll—

Status of Women committee  If this legislation had been in place, she would have had more rights than she did. Here she was in a community for two and a half years, where she had friends and had developed relationships with people. She probably could have gone, in an emergency situation, over to somebody's

Status of Women committee  I was just going to say it should have been done a generation ago. Like any other piece of legislation, it's not perfect. But I think it's important to push this through and get this legislation approved, because at least it's a beginning in speaking to the issues of protection a

Status of Women committee  In the different communities I've been involved with, they didn't have in place a regime for matrimonial breakup. So it ends up being in the jurisdiction of the police. They look at the circumstances for that particular family. For police services, the safety of children and wome

Status of Women committee  You bring up a real good point. Unfortunately, in reading the bill, we don't see it. The bill doesn't talk about creating a safety net or.... But aside from that, although we've said it's not a perfect piece of legislation, we still support the concept of putting it through, be