Human Resources committee  As I've tried to explain in my presentation, there are broader determinants to employment success. You can't just rely on education or skills development alone to have the impact for aboriginal women. It is housing—she doesn't have any property protection on-reserve, so she is fr

Human Resources committee  Well, certainly increasing the funding is a priority. As our colleagues have said here, NWAC does have an AHRDA agreement, but it's a mere $2 million. With that small amount of money, we contribute a large percentage to the 50% of women who have gained access. So as I say, when w

Human Resources committee  We're certainly hopeful that the investment in the ASEP program that was mentioned earlier will have some benefit, although there's no choice. They decide which jobs you go into, so that limits the choice. Most of those jobs are in areas that women don't traditionally choose, bec

Human Resources committee  Our recommendation centres around ensuring that young people hear a positive message about their culture and their history, and that the average Canadian has a better understanding of our collective history. We see things like the land dispute in Caledonia. On the surface thing

Human Resources committee  So the perspectives out there are interesting, that people were just waiting happily to see the artifacts from a home that's no different from the one next door. We live in the same homes, but we just have a different world view. So we feel it's critical to learn and understand f

Human Resources committee  Certainly in the Kelowna accord there was lots of talk about investment, both on- and off-reserve, and so the benefits would have been broader than much of the focus that is primarily on-reserve. For us, because we know that a large number of aboriginal women are forced to leave

Human Resources committee  Yes, our primary focus is in urban centres.

Human Resources committee  We have requested many times disaggregated data that show the rates specifically for aboriginal women, and we have not been successful in gaining that information.

Human Resources committee  Certainly one of the difficulties is not having the information to be able to target appropriate resources. We've asked for gender-based analysis on the aboriginal human resources development agreements and have yet to receive that. They explain that there are a number of barrier

Human Resources committee  That's correct: first nations, Métis, non-status women, and we partner with Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada to address Inuit women's needs.

Human Resources committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Let me extend my thanks to all the members of this committee for the invitation to appear as a witness today to speak about employability issues in Canada, specifically concerning aboriginal women. These issues are of great importance to me and the Native

Status of Women committee  I just want to put forward that at this time of the year it would be nice to be hopeful that things are going to come the way you're planning. I think you're hearing, as well, that your communications strategy on what your plans are is not effective, because at the forefront of

Status of Women committee  I think it's important as well. Although Sisters In Spirit has not been affected by the cuts as of yet, there's no guarantee that it won't be impacted in the future. I also want to ask you to recall that when Sisters in Spirit was initially tabled, it was a $10 million initiativ

Status of Women committee  With the Native Women's Association of Canada, our concern is that the removal of the word “equality” makes the assumption that all women have equal rights in this country. I said earlier in my speech that it's important to note that aboriginal women today do not have the same ri

Status of Women committee  Our organization is a collective of 13 provincial-territorial member associations. For sure, our collective voice is going to be impacted, because we don't formulate our national perspective based on what's going on at the national office; it's from our grassroots women who feed