Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Human Rights
Issue 9 - Evidence - Thursday, September 21, Morning meeting
VANCOUVER, Thursday, September 21, 2006
The Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights met this day at 9 a.m. to examine and report upon Canada's international obligations in regards to the rights and freedoms of children.
Senator A. Raynell Andreychuk (Chairman) in the chair.
[English]
The Chairman: Honourable senators and ladies and gentlemen, the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights is in Vancouver continuing its study to examine and report on Canada's international obligations in regards to the rights and freedoms of children. The Convention on the Rights of the Child was signed and ratified in 1989 and governments at all levels have yet to fully implement the convention. We have undertaken a study to determine the extent of implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
We are also looking at Canada's involvement in other treaties that have an impact on children and, of course, we are looking at all issues that children face. We are not doing an extensive study that might be called the state of children because that report would be exhaustive. We are targeting the Convention of the Rights of the Child, but we are looking at other issues as they affect children in today's society.
Jane Morley was to be here as a Child and Youth Officer of British Columbia, but she is ill. Mr. Milowsky has stepped into her shoes and will make a presentation. We will also hear from Lynda Fletcher-Gordon from the Lower Mainland Purpose Society for Youth and Families.
Fred Milowsky, Deputy Child and Youth Officer of British Columbia: I have an opening statement that Ms. Morley prepared. She is not ill, but she is unable to be here today; she is quite healthy.
Thank you for the opportunity to share my thoughts with you on a key issue for me during my tenure as Child and Youth Officer for British Columbia. The issue is how to promote the rights of children and youth in British Columbia and, specifically, how to make the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child relevant to B.C. policy.
I believe that underlying the convention is a vision that should be the vision of those deciding on public policy relating to children and youth in British Columbia. It is a vision that asserts the fundamental dignity of children, affirms their entitlement to fundamental human rights, and recognizes children's needs for special care and assistance in realizing those rights. To me, the convention's vision properly puts children at the centre, in the context of their family, their community, and their culture.
My mandate is a provincial mandate and includes independently observing provincially funded services for children and youth and advising the provincial government on how to improve those services. I will therefore focus my comments on how the convention can become a living document in British Columbia. I want to address two issues identified in your interim report, Who's in Charge Here? The two issues are accountability and public awareness.
For the convention to be a meaningful document for public policy in British Columbia two interrelated things have to happen: The provincial government needs to see the convention as an important planning and accountability tool, and the public, including children and youth, need to become more aware of children's rights and the convention.
I have distributed three papers to you for background to this submission, which together form a series. The first in the series is about the use of the convention in British Columbia as a framework for public policy and cross-ministry planning. The second paper concerns using government collected data to measure the B.C. Government's effectiveness in achieving the objectives identified in the planning framework. The third paper connects the four fundamental human rights embodied in the convention with resilience research and resilience-based practice models like the Circle of Courage.
The current practice of having government and NGOs reporting on Canada's compliance with the UN convention to the UN committee does not work perfectly. It tends to be a reactive process in which the provincial government functionary is given the task of compiling a list of all the various ongoing provincial government programs and then relating them to different clauses of the convention, essentially to bolster the proposition that B.C. is in compliance. The NGOs then separately present evidence to show that the province is not complying. This tends to create an adversarial rather than a collaborative relationship between the government and NGOs. It certainly does not lead to the provincial government viewing the convention as a planning tool for promoting children's rights.
It would be more helpful in advancing the issues of children's rights if the government and NGOs could create a shared vision and priorities for children and youth. This is not to say that the government and NGOs should jointly report, but a meaningful dialogue between government and NGOs should be developed to create a shared understanding of rights. They should share commonly held goals for children and youth and measure whether we are achieving those goals. The shared understanding of rights and the use of the convention as a proactive planning tool by the provincial government is not likely to happen without increased public awareness of children's rights and the convention. Awareness that rights exist is necessary to their realization.
The lack of public awareness of the convention identified in the interim report is certainly consistent with our observation in British Columbia. For this reason, my office in partnership with the Society for Children and Youth of B.C. and the B.C. Institute for Safe Schools has embarked on a multi-phased initiative involving progressive strategies aimed at increasing public awareness and the commitment to children's rights in B.C.
Our approach will be rights based, in contrast to a needs-based approach, and will incorporate a socioeconomic model, and will focus on the rights of all children of diverse backgrounds and attributes.
In our research of approaches to rights awareness across Canada, we found very little to assist us in developing a B.C. strategy. Hopefully our work in this area can inspire and support others to move forward on this front.
Finally, I want to say that I very much support the recommendation in the committee's interim report that a statutory position of an independent federal children's commissioner be created. Given the fact that Canada is a federal state and that much of the legislating powers relating to children and youth rest with the province, the federal children's commissioner role should be seen as complementary to the provincial advocates' role.
The children's commissioner role would be particularly useful if it were to include the following primary functions. The position should raise public awareness around the rights of children generally, and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child specifically. It should educate children and youth about child rights issues, coordinating efforts with and between the provinces on child and youth matters with an interprovincial aspect. It should encourage collaborative efforts between the various levels of government, NGOs and other sectors, in areas of concurrent jurisdiction, and particularly with respect to First Nations and immigrant and refugee children, youth and families.
As the Child and Youth Officer for British Columbia, I am a member of the Canadian Council of Provincial Child and Youth Advocates. Through my work in that organization, I have seen how the lack of a federal counterpart creates a hole that needs filling.
Lynda Fletcher-Gordon, Executive Director, Lower Mainland Purpose Society for Youth and Families: I am going to speak from an entirely different perspective. I am going to talk about what it is like to deliver services to children and their families. I will begin by telling you a little bit about the agency. The Lower Mainland Purpose Society is a multi- service agency that has been around for about 25 years. We have approximately 100 employees delivering services. Over the years, the agency has grown by recognizing or identifying client needs and then coming up with a program that meets those needs, so that is how we have evolved into a multi-service agency.
We provide a school for young people and we call it a non-traditional learning centre because it is not an alternate school. The kids who generally have had problems in other educational institutions are expected to achieve and we do not water down the curriculum. They can get their Dogwood diploma, which allows them to go to a university.
We have a variety of family and youth programs. We do the youth justice component for the New Westminster area. We have a treatment residence for young women who are having difficulties with alcohol or drugs. We have a drop-in centre for at-risk youth, which was originally targeted for sexually exploited youth. It was a place where young women as young as 11 years of age could come in off the streets and be safe. We have transitional housing for youth and a medical health clinic for youth, and an HIV program. You can see that there is a variety, and it is a challenge to administer, but what we are trying to do is provide a continuum of services for youth and families.
For our agency, money is a huge problem and the lack of money in the social service system for children generally. In the case of our agency, we are non-union, and recently the provincial government signed a number of collective agreements in the non-profit sector or the public sector, and unionized agencies have received increases and signing bonuses, and those agencies who are not union have been ignored and that does not feel good for a variety of reasons. From a practical aspect, it really affects the staff. We are sinking lower in terms of our ability to keep wage parity with other organizations and, therefore, we lose good people. At the same time, the families we are serving are becoming more at-risk and more in crisis. We need a higher level of skill from our employees. Without adequate funding, it is difficult to keep a master's-level therapist on staff.
The federal government supports early intervention and prevention programs. What we see is that in the child care area there are a lack of licensed spaces to meet the needs of those kids who are coming from high-risk families or who already have serious emotional disorders. These kids are going through the system and by the time they get to the early grades, the schools are suspending them. If we are really going to meet the needs of young people, we have to have therapeutic day care centers that can identify the problems and work with the kids who are coming from families where there has been a history of alcohol and drug use or violence or abuse. We see that as an important in addition to increasing the number of day care spaces generally.
In terms of immigrants, we are experiencing an increase in immigrants from a number of countries. Immigrants bring with them a series of challenges: often, they cannot speak the language; they do not know their way around; they are wary of the system, and they have a different values system. It is difficult to provide the kinds of services they need without more dollars.
I will give you an example of one family that could not get their children in school because the local school district insisted that they pay international fees. They were unable to do that and so their children remained out of school for eight months until the worker was able to lobby a different school district to take them and then the family moved to that different district.
The Chairman: Were these parents' refugees or immigrants?
Ms. Fletcher-Gordon: They were immigrants. That is just one case, but there are probably more. These types of things should not be happening. A silly bureaucracy gets in the way of these people getting on with their lives and being productive.
My last point concerns housing for youth. I am sure that in every city you have visited, you have heard of the increase in homelessness, it is no different in Vancouver, and it is no different in New Westminster where I work. Every week it grows as a problem, and it is mostly adults, but there are also youth. Youth are generally more able to couch- surf or an adult will offer them a bed and may or may not exploit them, but we work hard to provide transitional housing for youth. We do not receive funding to do this. We rent a house and we screen the kids who come into the house. They pay $325, which is their housing allowance, and we pay the landlord. We keep an eye on them, make sure that they do not burn down the house or whatever, but we cannot provide the depth of service these kids need. These kids are coming off the street; they are transitioning. They have managed to get themselves on a youth agreement, but they need support. We are walking this fine line where we are trying to do a good thing by providing them with housing. It is safe and affordable but at the same time, as an agency, we are taking terrible risks in a sense because if anything went wrong from lack of supervision, we would not be in a good place. We are caught between helping these kids and taking a hard-line approach because of the risk to the agency.
The Chairman: Could you clarify one point? You referred to "therapeutic day care," and that is an interesting term that I have not heard before. I had heard of specialized day care, but not therapeutic day care. All across Canada, we have heard that people want to provide services within the home to work with the child and the family when it has become dysfunctional for whatever reason. These people are looking for funding. You are saying that there is a need for a specialized type of day care. Can you explain who these children might be that would require this service? What kind of homes do they come from? Why is it mandatory that they stay in a day care setting?
Ms. Fletcher-Gordon: Children who need therapeutic day care come from homes where there has been incredible trauma. They come from homes where there is alcohol and drug abuse, violence, domestic violence and sexual or physical abuse that may not have been reported. With the application of a simple est, we can identify these children. We all know who these children are and by two or three years of age, the damage has been done. You cannot expect the parents at their place in development, even if they want to move ahead, to be able to provide their children with what they need. They do not know how to parent.
We need a place where the children receive a special curriculum allowing them to develop socially and emotionally in ways that they have be unable to in the home. We need to allow the parents to learn the skills to become good parents.
It does not happen overnight. Some people think that you can fix things overnight or in a week or three months. A brief therapy of six sessions does not solve the problems. People need time to change and learn and grow and be different. Just in terms of that prevention model, that is where it has to start, and we need to be really real about the damage that is been done to these children, and FASD children.
Senator Poy: Ms. Fletcher-Gordon, I would like to follow up with Senator Andreychuk's question. How effective is the treatment when the children stay in the therapeutic day care during the day, but then they go back to a dysfunctional home in the evening?
Ms. Fletcher-Gordon: Well, what you have to do is insist that the parents are in a program too. It will not work otherwise, so the parents have to be doing some individual therapy or group therapy. The parents must learn parenting skills and watch others model. They come into the day care for a period of time and watch staff model the appropriate behaviour, that kind of thing. No, it would not be effective if parents were ignoring the problem or did not see it as a problem or did not want to change. This is a program for people who have said they want to change their family life. They have recognized that they have a problem and are ready to accept help to learn how to turn their lives around.
Senator Poy: So, that is really for parents who recognize there is a problem. What about the parents who refuse to recognize there is a problem, you cannot help the children?
Ms. Fletcher-Gordon: Well, when the problems become so serious, they generally come to the attention of people. I guess Mr. Milowsky could speak to this too from your days with the ministry. In any of our local schools the teachers know who the children are that are going to have problems. It is not a secret. When you talk about the rights of a child and we talk about how it takes a community to raise a child, this is what it takes. Everyone involved in that child's life has to help, and has to help that family. We are not close to that yet, but that would be the ideal situation.
Mr. Milowsky: I can speak from two perspectives, one, I was a regional executive director in the Ministry for Children and Family Development before I had my current position as Deputy Child and Youth Officer.
The ministry and government funds specialized child care in the province, but typically, specialized child care is for children with visible disabilities, either physical disabilities or developmentally delayed disabilities. Many of the children we are talking about will come also from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds. These children live in poverty and in poor housing conditions.
The funding for special needs children needs a higher ratio of staffing because many of these children will have other invisible disabilities, like ADHD or FASD. The level of staffing needed to provide adequate specialized care for these children is not sufficient. Sometimes specialized funding will come with aides or other one-to-one types of support, which is not available for these children.
Research shows that independent of whether you assist the families, intervention between birth and five years of age is important for the readiness and the developmental growth of the child. There may be an issue whether the family is dysfunctional and needs assistance and probably in that case, the protection system is involved with the family and trying to work with them towards that end. In many cases, it is more the conditions in which the child lives and it is not necessarily a protection issue, but the children will need extra supports to get equitable outcomes. You have to put more into those children in order to give them equal opportunities.
Ms. Fletcher-Gordon: There is a lot of research, and especially research by Clyde Hertzman out of the University of British Columbia. Mr. Hertzman's premise is that zero to six are the most important years, that children who do not have the maximum stimulation or the most opportune stimulation during zero to six, although they may achieve, will never achieve their full potential. They are the magic years. I think that is currently accepted and we see that zero to six as the opportunity to make a difference in terms of development.
Mr. Milowsky: The other issue for these children is that often they will go unnoticed until they get into the school system. It is important that we provide additional help to these children during this time in their lives.
Senator Poy: Mr. Milowsky, you mentioned promoting public awareness of the rights of children. How long has the youth officer been in place?
Mr. Milowsky: I came to the position in 2004, but it has been in place since 2002.
Senator Poy: What has it done to promote public awareness about children's rights?
Mr. Milowsky: We have an advocacy section that provides individual advocacy for children and youth. On an individual case basis, we are often working with the different systems and especially the protection system around children and rights. Children and care have rights under the current Child and Family Services Act, section 70, so we are often working with that system to insure that those children's rights are promoted. We have developed some workshops and we have been delivering them across the province. One workshop is on meaningful participation of children and families and decision-making. It is a workshop geared for service providers and ministry staff on how to include children, youth, and families in decision-making.
We have developed another workshop called "Rights 2 Success" and we are piloting that workshop right now. That workshop is geared to be delivered to children and youth and also adults in a separate context. It is focused more on the at-risk children and youth.
We have just completed a project called "Conversations with Youth," which is a province-wide project. We traveled around the province and engaged in dialogues with youth around their issues, while taking the opportunity to promote the idea that they have rights under the UN convention.
Two youth coordinators on our staff are youth themselves, and that was actually quite a feat to work with the bureaucracy and the public service commission to try to get acknowledgment to hire youth in a specialized position; they have been great. One of the youth with us is from Columbia and the other is an Aboriginal youth. They have been doing some of these workshops.
In partnership with the ministry, we have completed an evaluation of family group conferencing, which is a form of family-based decision-making, and looking at that as the best practice. We are very focused on the public awareness as much as we can be because the advocacy portion is quite small in our organization, and so we have to try to work more on a systemic basis.
Senator Poy: You work mainly with youth at risk. You do not produce educational programs that go into the schools.
Mr. Milowsky: No, we do not. We have produced a booklet, which is more of a guideline to people who would provide advocacy for families, children, and youth, and that has been fairly widely distributed, so it may have hit the schools as well.
We are a staff of about 20 and so we have not done that type of general focus. It is probably more focused on the at- risk children and youth.
Senator Poy: We meet with young people, and yesterday some young people from Edmonton were not aware of their rights. This is the same case right across Canada. I think all children should be aware of their rights.
Mr. Milowsky: That has been our experience too. In our project Conversations with Youth, we hit youth-serving organizations, and that was generally the same. We are entering into a project with the Society for Children and Youth of B.C. and we will be looking at various strategies to promote not just at-risk children, but all children to make them aware of their rights. One of the issues that we will be looking at is creating a baseline to see where we are right now. We will be looking at the baseline of knowledge around child rights, so I think that is the first step.
Senator Nancy Ruth: I want to pick up on Senator Poy's point about everybody knowing their rights. You said that if there were a national commissioner that one of the jobs would be to let people know and work with the provinces. Are you a member of the national association?
Mr. Milowsky: Jane Morley, yes, is a member.
Senator Nancy Ruth: The agency is represented.
Mr. Milowsky: Yes.
Senator Nancy Ruth: What are they doing to do the same things and how would a national commissioner make a difference?
Mr. Milowsky: I cannot answer the question because I have not attended the meetings.
Senator Nancy Ruth: They are effectively a lobby group.
Mr. Milowsky: They are effectively a lobby group. I think it is mostly going back to within the home province, so I think most of what Jane Morley has done has been to lobby within B.C. for different strategies that would promote a rights-based approach to providing services to children and families. I think having a commissioner would bring a profile to this and also bring a coordination that probably has not existed. As I understand them, the mandates of the various offices across the country are very different and they approach the work from different perspectives. In Alberta, their advocacy is geared for children in care and not necessarily for the general population. Our advocacy is geared for designated services for at-risk children. Again, it is not for all. It is not necessarily for everyone, but it is geared for at-risk children on designated services, so there is a different approach across Canada to child rights.
Senator Lovelace Nicholas: Do the at-risk people, the parents and the children come to these programs voluntarily?
Mr. Milowsky: We would do it is we would be depending on the community to organize it, so we would not organize it ourselves. In some cases, it is not necessarily voluntary because we have gone into custody centres and delivered rights programs. That is sort of a new idea for custody centres, to talk to children and youth around their rights. They are there because they have to be there, so we have gone into those types of places as well, yes.
Senator Lovelace Nicholas: Do the youth who go to the group homes go voluntarily because they do not have a place to live; they do not have families?
Ms. Fletcher-Gordon: Yes. If they are coming into one of our transitional houses, it is voluntary. We do have families and children in our programs where it is not voluntary. There are child protection issues and the ministry has said that the parents have to attend the program if they want to get their children back.
The Purpose Society is a frontline agency and we work with extremely high-risk people. Some of our clients are clients that other agencies do not have the capacity for or are not willing to work with. We also work with a lot of street people who come to our HIV program. You have to understand the context of my remarks; it is very high-risk folks.
Senator Lovelace Nicholas: What about transportation for some of these youth that do not have the resources to come to these centers, what happens to them?
Ms. Fletcher-Gordon: Transportation and food are the two biggest issues. Our agency has a food bank, and we use the Vancouver Food Bank. We come down here and pick up tons of food, which we distribute. We apply to places like the Vancouver Foundation or CKNW Children's Fund for money for bus tickets. Groups like that have for some time recognized that it is a legitimate expense for people, and so we can get several thousand dollars a year that way, but it is difficult because people do not have the money to take a bus.
Senator Lovelace Nicholas: What is the percentage of natives that come to these programs?
Ms. Fletcher-Gordon: We have a number of native youth and families in all of our programs. I cannot tell you the exact percentage in each agency, but you probably know that British Columbia is in the process of establishing the First Nations Social Service system and so a number of First Nations folks have moved over into that system. The system is in transition.
Senator Lovelace Nicholas: Must the native youth the come to your programs live in the city?
Ms. Fletcher-Gordon: They live in New Westminster or close by. Our program is in New Westminster and children or young people come from as far as North Vancouver, Vancouver and Maple Ridge because they feel quite safe with us. We have a reputation for being a very safe school for gay and lesbian and questioning youth. At last count, 11 per cent of our population was gay or lesbian, and so it is a very safe place for young people.
Mr. Milowsky: In the B.C. system, over 50 per cent of the permanent children are Aboriginal children. We have found that we need to tailor the workshops to Aboriginal children.
Transportation, as you say, is always an issue, but as you get to areas that are more rural, it becomes an even more pronounced issue than in the city.
In many circumstances, there are Aboriginal agencies that provide some of the services and we are working with those agencies. In Vancouver, there is Urban Native Youth that works very specifically with high-risk youth. In Vancouver, we have the Vancouver Aboriginal Family and Child Services Society that works very specifically with Aboriginal youth. I think we have seen that you need a different approach and some different content for Aboriginal children, youth, and families.
The Chairman: I have read Ms. Morley's paper and I am intrigued that all across Canada we have heard that if we are to develop children into responsible adults we must build up their self-esteem. If children gain self-esteem, they can conquer many other things. In the paper, it points out that the vision of the youth officers' office is asserting the fundamental dignity of children, rather than zeroing in on children's rights. I like the sentence that says,
It is a vision that asserts the fundamental dignity of children, affirms their entitlement to fundamental human rights, and recognizes children's need for special care and assistance in realizing those rights.
Why was the focus on the dignity as opposed to the rights or the needs?
Mr. Milowsky: If you focus on dignity, then it is a natural flow to rights, because it becomes an entitlement. I think one of the battles that we face in terms of rights recognition is that it is an entitlement, and so by focusing on the dignity of children and youth and of their uniqueness in terms of individuals and their entitlement, then there is more of an understanding and of acceptance that they are entitled to rights. I do not think anyone would question that we should focus on the dignity of adults and approach adults in that manner.
If you approach adults from a disrespectful point of view, you are criticized and so I think it is the same approach with children and youth. I think by focusing on the rights and their entitlements, we are also looking at the strengths base and that is why we are not approaching it just from a needs base because when we are approaching it from a needs base, we are approaching it from a deficit model of what they need. Now, it does not say you should neglect their needs, but it says that you have to look to their strengths and promote their strengths because it is going to be their strengths and their resiliency, which gets them to overcome some of the issues in their lives.
Does that answer your question?
The Chairman: Yes, thank you very much. That is very helpful.
Ms. Fletcher-Gordon, you pointed out that you had some immigrant families. Do you see a different influx of immigrant families into your programs, and do you deal with refugee children and do you see those families having different problems?
Ms. Fletcher-Gordon: We have been seeing a lot of people from different parts of Africa. In our HIV program, there are a number of women who are HIV positive. When they cannot speak English, it is hard to provide good service to them. It requires a one-on-one worker for at least two or three weeks at a time, taking them around, bridging them to other services, helping them to set up a bank account, find housing, really basic, basic needs. From that perspective, it is a huge drain of worker time. Once settled, you can see them less often and they can come to a support group or whatever. One of the young clients walked into the agency one day with her baby. She had a bottle filled with peach cider, and the child was drinking it. The staff said, "That is alcohol" and she did not know. She saw the picture of the peach and she gave it to the child, not knowing it was alcohol. I mean that is pretty awful.
The Chairman: Do you get money for settlement purposes.
Ms. Fletcher-Gordon: We have a small program, 21 hours a week, to do a peer-mentoring program with youth. We pair newcomer youth with youth who have lived here and who are stable. We do this in an attempt to show the newcomer how to move through his or her days.
The Chairman: You have pointed out your program is quite complex. How many staff do you have and what is your client base?
Ms. Fletcher-Gordon: We have between 90 and 100 staff and we have five sites. The client base is a bit different in each of our programs. For example, in our school program, the learners are under 19 years and generally no younger than 15 years because we do not like to mix the younger ones with the older ones.
The Ministry of Children and Families gate many of our family programs, which means that referrals must come through the ministry. Five years ago, anyone in the community could call up and ask for help and we could respond. Now, we must go through the ministry. What happens is that people do not want to be involved with the ministry for whatever reason and so their situation will get much worse before they will go to the ministry and then they will get a referral to our agency. Gating programs has made quite a difference in terms of access for children and families. The result is that when they get to the agency, there is a higher level of tension and crisis, which requires a higher skilled employee to deal with them. It is also very stressful for staff because there are more crises than ever.
I want to respond to your question about dignity and rights. I have a different opinion. I think the notion of rights is important. I think you can have personal dignity, but that does not open the doors or that does not guarantee access. I think kids have a right to food, shelter, education and programs that are going to help them meet their potential. I like that word "rights" because it has an expectation about it. Dignity, I think, is a whole other matter.
Mr. Milowsky: I was not trying to say that there should not be promotion of programs to make children and youth aware of their rights; we absolutely need those programs. However, one of the things that we face when we do rights- based workshops with adults is the whole issue of responsibilities.
Ms. Fletcher-Gordon: You cannot talk about rights without talking about responsibilities. When the kids come into our school, we make them aware of their rights and explain that they will be treated well. We make them aware of their responsibilities and tell them that they have to treat people the way they will be treated. In my mind, you cannot separate the two, at least when you are working with children.
The Chairman: I think the saving grace in your paper Mr. Milowsky, is that the fundamental dignity of children affirms their entitlement to fundamental rights, and that is the connect that I pointed out.
Senator Poy: Ms. Fletcher-Gordon, can you tell us a bit more about the school? You referred to children and youth between the ages of 15 and 19 years. Is it a high school?
Ms. Fletcher-Gordon: Yes.
Senator Poy: Who gets to go to that school, and you mentioned that you prepare them for university; can you go into a bit more detail?
Ms. Fletcher-Gordon: The school program started out as a day program for adjudicated youth.
Senator Poy: What does that mean?
Ms. Fletcher-Gordon: It means youth that had been in the criminal justice system. Over the years, it has evolved into an accredited high school. Under the Ministry of Education, it is what we call in British Columbia, an independent school. As I said, there are about 165 kids enrolled at any one time, so it is a nice, small group. We call it a non- traditional learning centre because it covers the exact same curriculum as the public schools and, therefore the students can get a Dogwood diploma. However, we deliver that program very differently. We talk about things like responsibilities, and we talk about things like family and community participation. We try to expose the students to cultural and sporting events as well as the academics. Children can come into the school by word of mouth because it is an independent school, not a public school.
Senator Poy: Are you saying that any youth can attend?
Ms. Fletcher-Gordon: Yes, and as a result, we have a real mix of kids. We have some kids from very well off families who are there because they see the world a bit differently and they want a smaller school. We have kids who are parents; we have kids who are in recovery; we have gay and lesbian youth. All of the youth feel safe in the school. It is very, very youth friendly and it is very learner centered, but at the same time, there is a lot of structure and the youth understand that there are certain expectations put on them. Each young person is interviewed, and everything is explained. We ask them if they want to attend this school and make the appropriate commitments. They commit to attending, they commit to being a productive member of the school committee and to keeping themselves and everybody safe.
Now, that is all the nice words that go on the paper. In reality, the kids may struggle with drug and alcohol addiction, they may come from violent homes. They need support each day. When they arrive in the morning, if there is a problem, a counselor asks about the problem and deals with it right away. The youth has an opportunity to discuss the problem before classes begin. Kids can repeat the work until they are successful. The students understand that the school and the teachers and counselors will help them to succeed. In most cases, the children become successful.
Senator Poy: Do some of these youth live at home?
Ms. Fletcher-Gordon: Some of them live independently on youth agreements, some are in safe houses, some are in traditional housing, some are with single parents, and some with regular parent families.
Senator Poy: How long has this school been in existence?
Ms. Fletcher-Gordon: It started as an adjudicated youth day program in 1983.
Senator Poy: Mr. Milowsky, in your brief, you mentioned that the Child and Youth Officer focuses on the rights of all children of diverse backgrounds. Can you explain how do you deal with the many diverse groups that live in Vancouver? What approach do you use to help the youth in that city?
Mr. Milowsky: Well, that is a very difficult question to answer. I was at a consultation with AMMSA, which is an organization of immigrant-serving agencies across B.C. and asked them a similar question. How can we effectively provide advocacy for immigrant and refugee children, youth, and families because the issues are very different from across the general population. We must have outreach programs; we have to work in the community, not in an office. We have to work with the immigrant-serving agencies, take space up in the immigrant-servicing agencies and work with them to provide service. We work with the ethnic media. Many of the groups do not have a proficiency in reading English and so they talked about using the radio and TV as well as the written ethnic media. They talked about trying to provide services outside of regular office hours. We discussed many practical issues. Many of the immigrant families and youth that they are working with will be working at two or three jobs just to get by. For obvious reasons they will not take time off work to attend workshops, so we have to work hard to keep these people informed. We have to take different approaches that we take typically in mainstream services. Their view is that mainstream services, for the most part, do not meet the needs of new immigrants and refugees. Many of the immigrant-serving agencies deal exclusively with settlement issues and do not touch on the areas of counseling and trauma, which many of these families need. It is challenging. The only way to be successful is to set up a dialogue with these groups. The answer is not found in the office developing a strategy.
Senator Poy: How many employees are there in your office? How many employees are multilingual? How many employees are hired from the immigrant communities? That type of hiring is the best way to reach into the communities.
Mr. Milowsky: We have about 20 employees.
Senator Poy: How many languages do they speak out of those 20?
Mr. Milowsky: We have one employee that speaks Spanish and English; and one, Chinese and English. Wilma Clark, who could not be here today, is from the Caribbean. She speaks English, and I do not know if she speaks any other languages, so I cannot say that we have a diverse complement. I could not say that, no.
Senator Poy: Do you hire them from the immigrant community?
Mr. Milowsky: The public service works on a merit system and hires from the general pool. The system is very competitive and one of the criticisms is that it is not necessarily equitable in terms of reaching out. Not everyone is aware of a posting and not everyone is comfortable with the typical public service process of a panel of four people performing the interview. The whole issue of employment equity and how people are hired is very difficult within the context of the B.C. public service system.
Senator Poy: From my experience, non-English speaking groups feel that your offices or anything that the office does, really would never understand their problems. When they have a problem, they will only tell someone who is from the same background.
Ms. Fletcher-Gordon: There are 14 languages spoken in our ethnically diverse agency. Even with so many languages, we come across immigrants who need to speak to someone in a language that we do not have represented in our staff.
The Chairman: We have come to the end of our time. I want to thank both of our presenters for some very interesting perspectives from this region of Canada, and some very good recommendations that we will be taking into account in our work.
Birgitta von Krosigk, Lawyer, as an individual: I would like to thank the committee for the opportunity to attend as a witness here today. I hope that I might be able to share some of my observations as a legal practitioner who has worked in the field of children with disabilities. In courts, administrative tribunals, as well as the now defunct British Columbia Children's Commission, I have tried to work as an advocate for these children.
I would also like to thank you for the committee's valuable and insightful interim report and say that I agree with everything I read. It is very important work and I look forward to the next segment. I think it is very important to draw attention to these issues. It also can act as a resource for people like me and to parents looking for a place to go for history, background and recommendations. I agree with the findings and recommendations of the committee and hope we will have some further discussions about what can be done.
As a legal practitioner, rather than an academic, I tend to look for practical and realistic solutions. I am always aware of the difficulties of bringing a case because of the number of years and the resources that are required to do so.
I have been involved in many cases focusing on the disability of autism. As I note on the third page of my summary, I tend to plead the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. I try in that small way to increase awareness of the convention and add to the body of case law that holds that international treaties are relevant to the interpretation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The case that you may be aware of that has involved children with autism is Auton v. the Attorney General of British Columbia, a case that went to the Supreme Court of Canada. The B.C. Supreme Court and Court of Appeal held in favour of the families finding a breach of section 15(1) of the Charter that was not justified under section 1 of the Charter. That, however, was overturned by the Supreme Court of Canada, which found that the claimants did not even meet the threshold of establishing discrimination. I have set out a little bit of the background of the case to illustrate that the families who are involved in bringing that case had actually started to try to approach government as early as 1995. For three years, they tried to find various ways to discuss the issue of obtaining funding for treatment for their children. Only after three years did they begin litigation. Nobody chooses litigation as an option. I think that parents go that route only because they find all other doors closed to them. I think that applies outside the autism field as well.
The litigation started in 1998 and it was at the end of 2004 when we received a decision from the Supreme Court of Canada. That is a long time in the life of a young child. During that particular case, even though the government was informed as to the medical and psychological opinions that supported the need for treatment, the children did not receive funding until after the British Columbia Court of Appeal decision. It was an incredible burden for the families, both to put up with the litigation for that long, but also to try to fund treatment through their own means.
I was happy that the British Columbia Court of Appeal paid particular attention to the convention. I have set out, at page four, the findings of Madam Justice Saunders. After a reference to the particular sections of the convention focusing on children with disabilities, she went on to say,
The convention has moral force relevant on an assessment of the application of s. 1 of the Charter to a breach of s. 15(1)...
This committee has commented that the convention is not enforceable in and of itself, but it is encouraging to see when the courts use it in other measures.
In terms of the travels and burdens of litigation, it was quite an experience to reach Ottawa and have all governments intervening against the families. The federal government took the lead in supporting the British Columbia government in seeking to overturn the decision of a breach finding. It is a very overwhelming burden for families to try to counteract when one attorney after another stands up and says that this is an impermissible way for the courts to interfere with the legislative prerogative.
There were other interveners in that case as well. It was also rescheduled many times. I had placed some hope in having Mr. Justice Iacobucci and Madam Justice Arbour on our panel. However, the case was delayed from the original date in January and they were no longer on the court at that time. It was also, I believe, scheduled to be heard together with the Chaoulli case from Quebec because it was deemed to be of political importance in terms of the funding of health care. Sometimes an issue can become swallowed up in the bigger climate of what other things may be going on in the country.
There have been other autism cases in Canada. There was the Ontario case of Wynberg v. Deskin, where at the trial level, Madam Justice Kiteley found in favour of the families. That was overturned by the Court of Appeal of Ontario fairly recently and there are ongoing litigations with that case. There was initial optimism on the part of families, and not only families with children with autism. Many other families with children with disabilities followed these cases very closely.
Right now, I am quite pessimistic about the possibilities of breaking new ground in the litigation area. I am finding that section 15, the discrimination section or the equality section is becoming increasingly difficult for claimants. Two particular areas where that has manifested itself is in the debate that is going on about comparison groups. I know in the Wynberg v. Deskin case, the Ontario Court of Appeal found that the families had not established and put forward before the court sufficient evidence to allow a comparison with other disabled groups within the school system. Again, we come back again to the burden on families to have the financial resources and wherewithal to present that evidence that really is in the purview of the government in question. When you seek that information, such as the success or lack thereof of other children in the school system, you are typically met with the answer that the information is confidential.
How useful is a Charter when it becomes almost impossible to bring a case? It takes five, six, seven, eight years. When you finally get to court, the governments make it clear that they are quite prepared to keep the appeal going. Very often, when you get to the end of the road, you hear that unfortunately, you have chosen the wrong comparison group. It used to be much less of a hurdle at the beginning of the development of the Charter.
I think there is an increasing trend of the courts to show deference to government and a hesitation to be seen as stepping on to the legislative arena. In light of these things, I believe that this committee's work is particularly important because, while litigation is one tool, it is certainly not the only tool upon which we can rely.
I have set out, at page eight, one suggestion that I felt flowed from some of the recommendations that the committee made in its interim report. There is an excellent precedent in the Court Challenges Program. It is, however, limited only to federal laws and policies. I would like to see if there is some way of extending a similar program because most of the laws and policies that directly affect children with disabilities are in the provincial arena.
Jim Kelly, Legislative Chair, Parent Finders of Canada: British home children, Duplessis' children, Mount Cashel, butter box babies, Canada's discriminatory treatment of its most vulnerable is historic and systemic. It would be nice to think that in the twenty-first century Canada's mistreatment of this minority has been overcome. I sit here before you today to report that it has not.
Good morning, my name is Jim Kelly, Legislative Chair for Parent Finders of Canada. Parent Finders was founded in Vancouver in 1974 to provide a support group for adult adoptees, birth relatives, and adopting parents for the primary aim of promoting a feeling of openness and understanding about adoption. We lobby for access to adoption records and access for birth records for donor offspring. Parent Finders has worked with the B.C. Adoption Advisory and Consultation Committee in an ad hoc group of adoptees, birth parents, adoptive parents, foster parents, and the gay and lesbian community, which focused on the best interests of the child in order to facilitate a change to the B.C. Adoption Act. That Adoption Act with its discriminatory vetoes, for better or worse, has now been cloned in Newfoundland in 2003 and Alberta in 2004.
In my capacity as the chair, I have acted as an intervener for our members before the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Commissioner, and as an intervener before the B.C. Human Rights Commission in the Gill and Maher; Popoff and Murray v. Vital Statistics Agency. In that case, two lesbian women wanted to have their names put on the child's original birth registration.
In addition, Parent Finders gave evidence before federal Bill C-47 in April of 1997, before the Health Subcommittee on Human Reproduction and Genetic Technology Act, on the issue of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the donor offspring's right to biological identity.
Our organization also requested to appear before that committee for Bill C-13, but we were not invited. It is interesting to note that at the committee stage of Bill C-13, the donor offspring's right to identity was recommended by that committee.
Some people believe the existing laws will provide protections that are currently not part of laws but part of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. I am sad to say that they do not apply to our organization or the members of our organization.
Adoption activists in B.C., Alberta, and Ontario have also attempted to assert their right to identity as mandated by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, through provincial human rights legislation, only to have their cases denied before they can even be heard. The reasons given to these activists were reciting past practices of discrimination for the reasons for denying these hearings.
Today, the systemic discriminatory legislation, which affects the invisible minority, the five per cent of the population, comprised of adopted children and donor offspring can be found in both federal and provincial legislation, and it is in the Adoption Act, the Citizenship Act, the Employment Insurance Act, the Tax Act, and the Human Reproduction Act. As well, the federal government is now deporting adoptees when they commit crimes. Canadian citizens who go oversees and legally adopt children are finding, in some cases, that their children are being barred from entry to Canada on medical grounds.
Where is the continuing discrimination of this invisible minority reported in either of Canada's reports to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child? It is not. For this invisible minority, the first two reports have been a total whitewash with respect to their issues.
The proposed changes to the Canadian Citizenship Act in respect to adoption occurred not because the federal government considered itself bound by the Convention on the Rights of the Child, but because an adoption activist, Shirley (Starrs) McKenna, filed a human rights complaint in regards to this matter.
Why did the issue of adoption and rights to identity appear in the most recent Committee on the Rights of the Child concluding observations? Again, it was not because the federal or provincial governments considered themselves bound by the convention. It was because adoption activists such as Mike Slater, Karen Lynn, Ron Murdock and Sandra Falkiner Pace, felt compelled to approach the Committee on the Rights of the Child directly in order to plead our case about rights to identity for adopted children and donor offspring. What was surprising is the Canadian delegation's second report deliberately avoided answering the Committee on the Rights of the Child's questions about why Canada has closed adoption records. I think it would be a mild understatement to report that adopted persons and donor offspring have little faith in the current reporting process of the Convention of the Rights of the Child in Canada, which consistently ignores this invisible minority and their issues.
I would like to remind this committee of the Convention on the Rights of the Child who repeatedly reminded Canada's delegation when they were reporting — it is on the second report — that all rights in the convention must be implemented as other countries are now looking to Canada to be a leader in the implementation of this convention.
Senator Nancy Ruth: I am interested in your request for a fund similar to the court challenges fund. As you know, the government is committed to cutting a couple of billion dollars and programs like that may disappear, never mind expand. We do not know yet.
I am not a lawyer, however, it is my understanding that most Charter cases since 1985 have related to government agencies such as the Auton case.
Do you see a place in Canada for the development of a new law that deals with equality rights, including those of children? Do you see a law that would deal with civil actions only? It seems that the Charter confines Canadians from actually getting their rights.
Ms. von Krosigk: I am always in favour of new laws that open up new routes for people seeking to enforce their equality rights. In terms of expanding so that you could go beyond a government body, there is some opportunity to do that within the human rights legislation. I have had cases in that scenario as well. You are looking at employers often, and that obviously has a big implication for disabilities, as well as there have been some cases involving private schools and so on. There are always difficulties in the timing. I would welcome any setting that would open things up so that there could be some accountability. I would welcome any setting that could complete its task in less than five years.
I regretted the abolition of the Children's Commission here in British Columbia. Even though the commission could only make recommendations to government, the commission presented a forum for families and for children to have the ministry, in that case, answer questions to somebody outside of government. It promoted disclosure of information and documentation, which is not always that frequent.
In my experience, most of the things that people encounter for children with disabilities in some ways involve one form of government or another. The private sector, I think, comes more into play in accommodation and employment.
I do not know if that really addresses your question.
Senator Nancy Ruth: I was interested in your hopes in Judges Iacobucci and Arbour. The Province of Ontario made some court level announcements this morning, which will not please many equality seekers in this country. I do not know whether this is the beginning of what is yet to come, but Frances Kiteley in Ontario is an exceptional judge. This shows how important the judicial process is to this subject.
Do you have any comments you want to make to us about the judicial process because it sounds like you think you were screwed because your judges were not there?
Ms. von Krosigk: I probably would not choose that particular wording.
Senator Nancy Ruth: That is all right.
Ms. von Krosigk: I had the privilege of appearing before the Supreme Court of Canada in a different case that had nothing whatsoever to do with disability rights. In that particular case, the panel of justices were engaged and interested and knew the material and asked numerous questions that proved challenging to answer. However, when we appeared on the Auton case, we faced a wall of blank faces and we pretty much knew that we were not going to get very far. There was also a very disappointing lack of real discussion of the background and the volumes of expert evidence. Whether Madam Justice Arbour or Mr. Justice Iacobucci would have made any difference to the outcome, of course, I cannot tell, but I base those comments on previous decisions in which they had been involved.
I am troubled by the trend that we are seeing, making it much, much more difficult to even begin thinking about bringing a challenge. If that is happening, why do we have a Charter? I do believe that courts are not the only custodians of the Charter. I believe our government is as well. I am borrowing from Mary Ebert who made that submission that really the government at all levels should be the first place they look; not only the Charter but the convention. I am not sure that is always happening.
Senator Nancy Ruth: Just following up on that, there are those that will say that the Auton and EI case from Newfoundland are not necessarily about the Rights of the Child or the workers. They will argue that they are more about whether the court has the right to force government to fund from the public purse. The courts do not impose taxes and cannot ask to spend taxes. As you have stated two or three times, you disagree with this, and I guess you do if you were a lawyer in Auton, but we are politicians.
We are in a time where we may be looking at another six years of Conservative government in this country. Have you any suggestions to us as we walk around those buildings, what we could do about this because, in fact, some of us might be in agreement with you?
Ms. von Krosigk: One suggestion would be to take advantage of the longer perspective of the Senate as opposed to the House of Commons where we have elections. We might also consider the time frame in the provinces. The time frame for politicians tends to be quite short. When you refer to expenditures from the public purse, and I use Auton as an example, evidence showed that there would be over a million dollars of savings for each child over the lifetime of that child if there was early intervention. Lifetime savings do not hold the same level of campaigning importance as if you are faced with something that is going to happen within your mandate. Here, in British Columbia, and I do not know how it applies across the country, ministers have part of their salaries docked unless they meet certain budgetary goals. It is very personal objective, as well as a government objective to meet budget goals. I think what is lacking is that longer perspective. We had evidence in the Auton case that sometimes it would cost as much as $350,000 per year to house and provide staffing for an adult with autism, so that is how you end up with the cost savings. If this committee could emphasize that longer-term perspective, it would be helpful.
Senator Poy: Mr. Kelly, you mentioned the rights of identity for adopted children and donor offspring. Can you expand on that, please?
Mr. Kelly: Senator, 95 per cent of the population can obtain their original birth registration from the Vital Statistics Agency. All a person has to do is fill out the form and pay the fee to get a copy of his or her original birth registration. That document lists your biological parents. That process is not available for adopted people and definitely not available after the federal bill for donor offspring. Only British Columbia, Alberta, Newfoundland, and the Northwest Territories allow some form of access but still have discriminatory vetoes. The only province that is going to allow it is Ontario with its recent Bill 183, which has been passed, but is not yet in force.
Senator Poy: Does this act concern adoptions within Canada?
Mr. Kelly: Yes.
Senator Poy: I though that donor offspring was confidential in many cases. I thought that donors wanted to remain anonymous.
Mr. Kelly: I am sure some do not, but that is not relevant because article 2 guarantees all children without discrimination of any kind the same rights. So why would everybody in this country, including adopted children, have an original birth registration that lists their biological parents, and donor offspring not? That is discrimination in public service based on family status. I do not care what the fertility industry thinks is appropriate. The Convention on the Rights of the Child mandates equality.
Senator Poy: What you are saying is whether the donors agree or not, if they do not want their identity known, they should not donate.
Mr. Kelly: They should not be donors. There are some jurisdictions where they have changed from not identifying donors to identifying donors, and initially there was a drop off in donors, but what they found in the long run was the volume of donors came up and the types of donors changed from college students to married men with families of their own. Married men understood the need for this information and were prepared to act in a more ethical manner than is currently being conducted by the reproductive industry in this country.
The biggest fraud in Canadian history is being perpetrated upon donor offspring. In June of this year, the first donor test-tube baby turned 21 years of age, so for an entire generation, the birth registrations of donor offspring have been fraudulently completed. The Vital Statistics Agency has known about this all along. With a wink and a nudge, they continued do it without revising their laws. They put down the non-biological father on these documents, and it is wrong.
An original birth registration is the child's birth registration. It has a unique identifier number and the child's name on it. It is supposed to be a record of the child's birth event. Every child has a biological mother and a biological father. The donor offspring should have the same right to that information as every other individual in this country.
Senator Poy: Can you explain why there was a fraud about the registration?
Mr. Kelly: The vital statistics agencies did not recognize and did not do anything to stop the putting down of the non-biological father on these documents, on the original birth registrations. They are putting the non-biological father on the registration.
Senator Nancy Ruth: Can you give us an example? Who is the non-biological father, is this the mother's lover? Just give me an example of how that happens.
Mr. Kelly: An example is a man and a woman that avail themselves of the fertility treatments, because husband of the woman cannot conceive a child. Very often, the sperm is imported from the United States and when the woman gives birth to the child the father, not the biological father, is listed on the registration form.
The Chairman: I am old enough to remember when adoption was the only other alternative to natural birth. The Vital Statistics Act took into account the interests of children and the parents spoke for the child. When we started having children that were not children within a defined traditional marriage, we started allowing the mother to register herself without putting the father's name on the document and we thought it was in the best interests of the child. Now, that was not universal, but certainly some of the thinking was that way. It was only later that we found out that knowing the identity of the father was important to medical issues et cetera. However, we always looked at the social issues for the child and integration, vis-à-vis medical information and so on. We have not done a very good job of balancing all those issues because sometimes they compete. We still have difficulties in the adoption field. We have to ask the question, who should be on the record? Whom can we force to put on the record? It was only more recently with DNA that we have come to understand more about the need to know about the father. At the time, we thought the need to shelter information was in the best interests of the children.
As legislators, we are only beginning to understand the volumes of ways that we are going to be producing children in this world and the consequences thereof.
Do you agree that it is an evolving field and we have not paid enough attention from the children's perspective on these issues of new fertility, processes, and procedures? How do we go about getting that information and getting people to start thinking about all of the consequences because I do not think we have?
Mr. Kelly: I certainly agree with you. They have not. You have touched upon multiple issues and I will try to address them as best I can.
You mentioned whether the birth father ought to be on the original birth registration. I would like to draw this committee's attention to a recent court decision on Darrell Wayne Trociuk in the Supreme Court of Canada. His name was left off the registration because the Vital Statistics Act here in British Columbia said the birth mother was the one that would fill out the birth registration. Mr. Trociuk was denied the right to have his name on that registration. He fought this all the way up to the Supreme Court of Canada and won that decision. The issue of whether birth fathers ought not to be on these original birth documents, I think is now settled, at least I hope the issue is settled.
You mentioned the confusion that is going on out there right now, and I could not agree with you more. People that are adopted have two sets of parents, a legal set and a biological set. Donor offspring can have up to five parents, a biological mother, a biological father, a legal mother, a legal father, and a surrogate mother. Whose name goes on the birth registration form? It is our opinion that the donor offspring should be treated like everybody else and the biological parents should be on the original birth registration because the birth registration is supposed to be a record of the child's birth event. They can amend these documents afterwards to account for these other situations, but certainly the federal government passed the legislation in regards to human reproduction. The provincial vital statistic agencies have not kept the pace with what is going on. They have known this has been going on for 20 years and have done little or nothing to address these issues and they are way out of step.
Adopted people and donor offspring make up approximately 5 per cent of the population. It is that group of people, that invisible minority that is skipped when legislation is drafted because it is drafted for the majority. Ninety-five per cent of the population falls within the norm of a biological mother and biological father who are the legal mother and father. That is the way the legislation is always drafted and this invisible minority is missed every time legislation is drafted.
Part of the recommendations that I have submitted to you would be for this to be included as part of the future plans to recognize this invisible minority. That would force the provincial and federal governments to deal with these issues, both in their reports and in their various pieces of legislation. Until groups or committees recognize this small minority these problems will not be addressed.
I hope I have answered your questions.
The Chairman: Thank you, yes. I wanted to know whether that was your perspective. Certainly, when the Assisted Human Reproduction Act came through, we had many discussions and many speeches in the Senate and in the House of Commons, but they dealt less with the consequences to children. It was on moral and ethical issues vis-à-vis the adults involved.
Mr. Kelly: Our organization lobbied vigorously in both the prior acts and with Bill C-13 in order to get the UN Convention of the Rights of Child recognized, especially the best interests of the child and the right to identity. If you look at that bill, the only place where the best interests of the child are mentioned is in the preamble, which is absolutely unenforceable as compared to, say, the B.C. Adoption Act where the best interests of the child is mandated in article 2 and article 3. In addition, they failed miserably to include the right to identity, even though the committee at the committee stage recommended that the right to identity be included. Both of these issues are a part of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. It is within the federal mandate. This committee has said it wants to act as if the federal government is bound by this convention. If that is the case, then I think this committee has a duty and an obligation to see that this bill is amended to see that the best interests of the child is put into the body of the bill along with the right to identity.
Senator Poy: You mentioned that many of the donors are from the U.S. Will our laws have any conflict with the U.S. laws? What will happen if the U.S. does not require the donors to give the name and the medical background? Are we going to force them to do it? I do not quite know how it works in a case like that when it is not within the same borders.
Mr. Kelly: I think we have autonomy within our own border, senator. I certainly think we can compel the fertility industry to act in an ethical manner. I think if we are a signatory to this convention, then we ought to compel the industry to abide by it.
There is another interesting part of this, and as I mentioned before, I believe that the birth certificates that are being created for these children are fraudulent because the biological father is not listed. In my opinion, the children who are created through the reproductive technologies where the sperm has been imported have a right to dual citizenship that has been stripped from them.
Senator Poy: That is very interesting.
Mr. Kelly: It is a breach of the UN International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights to strip these children's right to dual citizenship. The fertility industry thinks it can carry on in any manner it sees fit.
Senator Poy: You also mentioned that adoptees can be deported from Canada if they commit a crime, but deported to where?
Mr. Kelly: Deported back to their country of origin. These are international adoptions. Canadian citizens have gone oversees, brought these children back into Canada, these children have grown up, they are now adults, but the people who are responsible for insuring that the proper papers were filed in regards to their citizenship failed these children miserably. When these adopted children commit a crime as adults they are deported out of this country back to their country of origin. Their legal family is in Canada. They have no family in their country of origin. Most of them no longer speak the language of their mother country. Our government is inflicting upon these children this appalling situation. In my opinion, they need to go back through and find all children that were deported in this way. They need a free passport, a free plane ticket back, and an apology.
Senator Poy: What you are saying when babies are adopted by Canadian parents, well, of course, they will be Canadians with Canadian passports.
Mr. Kelly: They would not have a passport.
Senator Poy: They do not?
Mr. Kelly: They do not have the right to a passport because the children are not Canadian citizens. They do not have any rights because the people who are responsible for bringing them into the country failed to process the appropriate paperwork. These children are not recognized as citizens, they cannot travel out of the country and they cannot vote. They cannot do anything that citizens are entitled to do because they are not recognized as citizens.
Senator Poy: Does that apply to all international adoptions?
Mr. Kelly: It applies to international adoptions where the citizenship paperwork was not completed. It is not the fault of the children. You may have seen a number of these children in the papers recently.
Senator Poy: Is it the fault of the parents?
Mr. Kelly: In part, and then the other part is the problem with the Citizenship Act, which does not treat adopted children the same as non-adopted children.
The Chairman: When you do an international adoption, you can add the child to your passport. Do you mean that the parents must apply for full citizenship on behalf of the child?
Mr. Kelly: That was the crux of the Canadian human rights decision in the McKenna case. In order to get the citizenship, these children are sidetracked to go through the immigration process, and that must be completed before they can get their citizenship, whereas children born to Canadian citizens outside this country are citizens as a matter of right.
The Chairman: Thank you. That is the clarification we needed on the record.
Senator Nancy Ruth: Day after day, we have this problem with conflicting human rights and how to sort them out. They all may be reasonable in a free and democratic society, but someone has to rule on this. Can you give us some help? If we put all of this stuff into this report, there are going to be a whole bunch of people from a lot of other places who are going to come against it and say, hey, how about their rights, and I do not have any vision of a sorting out mechanism. I know the argument one to six is more important than to certain people my age, but go on, give it a crack, what is the problem?
Mr. Kelly: I am not sure what you mean by sorting out the problem, senator. Ninety-five per cent of the people have a right to their biological identity; 5 per cent do not. The only part that needs to be sorted out is the five per cent who do not have that right. That 5 per cent needs the same rights as the 95 per cent; that is the position of our organization. That is the only sorting out that needs to be done in however fashion that needs to be done.
Senator Nancy Ruth: Let us go to the autism case. In Auton, the child has the right to the health services required. On the other hand, the Court claims the State had the right to define where they spend money. That is what I mean by competing rights. Given the framework of the times, it is a real problem.
It might be interesting in our report to come up with some kind of ideas about how the sorting is going to take place. Just to come down to say, "this is the way it has got to be" is not going to wash in society.
Ms. von Krosigk: One of the things that I really welcomed about this standing committee and looking at the UN convention is the fact that the perspective comes from the rights of the child. I do not think there is any need to sort to try to say, we should consider all kinds of other things. There needs to be one strong place that really takes that perspective.
In terms of competing rights, that is where people in the disability area very frequently find themselves. They have to ask themselves, am I more deserving or less deserving than this disability group or that group? That, I think, does a great disservice to Canadians because all of us may, at some point, experience a disability. We are all supposed to be full citizens of Canada. It should not be that we have this pie of money, which is the public money, public taxpayer's money, and we set aside a small portion here that is supposed to go to disabled people and then the disabled people get to fight over the crumbs. We should look at it in a more wholesome picture and say what is good for society. I say it is good for society to provide the support and health care where it is needed to all of us.
In terms of autism, Madam Justice Saunders made a comment, and I actually have it as part of the submissions, where she says:
However, accepting that the legislative scheme does not prohibit such treatment but rather establishes an administrative framework, which did not provide for the treatment, the impugned measure of denying funding or treatment for autism or ASD is not a government objective.
She said that in the context of the health legislation, provincial, as well as federal. Mr. Kelly commented about the preamble as opposed to the body of that legislation, but certainly in the preamble as well as in the body, the government objective in passing health legislation is that it is supposed to be comprehensive and universal.
In this case, the court looked at it from that greater view and continued:
Rather it is a manifestation of the administration of the current scheme and the ranking in priority given to treatment for these autistic children or, perhaps, the overlooking of their dominant health care need entirely.
I find it troublesome, the notion that those of us who are able-bodied and have resources have some kind of entitlement to government resources, while the people who are most vulnerable have to justify their place at the table. I do appreciate the fact that perhaps the current climate is going more towards cutting of budgets, but, again, I urge the longer-term perspective in how it is good for all of society if we support people who may not have the same starting point as the rest of us. I have had experience as well with fetal alcohol syndrome. Early intervention, again, has been shown to be cost-effective instead of later on spending the money in the criminal justice system. A lot of youth with various degrees of mental disabilities or mental illness end up in the criminal justice system, which is very ill equipped to deal with their difficulties.
We have to take a universal look at society and not just choose to cover one disability. We balk at the cost of $40,000 per year for treatment of an autistic child but do not question when a person needs brain surgery or cancer treatment. People do not have to justify their need for surgery; there is not an age limit for surgery whereas there is an age limit for the treatment of an autistic child. We may have a doctor who says this particular individual at his or her particular age and in his or her particular state of health cannot support this operation, so we do not recommend proceeding with it.
In the case of autism, we have universal rules that say once the child turns six years of age we will turn off the tap or we severely reduce the funding for your treatment and it does not matter if you started treatment yesterday or two years ago or whether it is helping you or not. And that, I think, is fundamentally discrimination and an error.
I do hope that we will have the courage to take leadership in the way that Canada has in so many of these areas, even when it "hits us in the pocketbook" because that is supposed to be what rich countries can do.
Senator Nancy Ruth: I will give another example. I have heard what you said. Let us take the issue of spanking. Parents have the right to spank kids two years to 12 years of age, and there is a huge push in Canada to have this removed from the Criminal Code. I have not heard a children's aid society anywhere across Canada not push this. On the other hand, there are some women's groups who say that this is a grab on the part of the CAS to take children away from their mothers. That is what I mean by competing problems. It will be nice for children's aid societies not to do that, unless they absolutely had to, and would not use that change in the law to do it, but they are competing rights and fears.
Ms. von Krosigk: One thing that is very important in terms of looking at if there are different interests that come into play is to make sure that it is a well informed decision and that there is indeed a conflict. I will admit some bias on that particular point. I am a Canadian citizen, but I am also a Swedish citizen. Sweden has had a law against the corporal punishment of children for many years. I am certainly not aware of a great wave of children being taken into care or that affecting women's issues in particular. In fact, there is an overwhelming support of that law and it became part of a culture almost. I was quite disappointed in the Supreme Court of Canada's decision on that particular point, but I must admit, I am not familiar with all of the background, but I think that is important to not jump to conclusions. It is important to have a dialogue.
One of the things that I have found quite disappointing in the case of autism, is that after years of litigation, we are in a situation where it has become very, very difficult to have dialogue. I do believe that if there was an attempt to discuss with stakeholders, if there was more of a willingness to actually take it out of the courtroom arena, sit down, and talk without posturing and find out the real issues that would be helpful. It is quite difficult in a situation where new policies come out and they are presented to families as opposed to having been developed with families, so that is an interesting field as well.
The Chairman: We have run out of time as usual in this committee. The areas are so broad. I invite both of our witnesses, however, to give us some feedback at a later date, if you so choose, on the issue that the rights embodied in the Convention on the Rights of the Child are subject to a lot of qualifiers. In other words, they are not rights that are unfettered. They are fettered by the references back to other conventions and they reference back to the universal declaration, but most notably to the process, practices, and procedures, if I can use a non-legal term, of the United Nations where the nation's interpretations rule. You know, we say the "State shall insure," but who defines "the State," and particularly, in a democratic society. So when you say that you have a right to something in the convention, we have two hurdles. We have the hurdle of getting the law to be not just moral suasion, but legal persuasion in our society. Secondly, if we get that step, how do we then on Senator Nancy Ruth's comment, that is where the competing rights issue comes up because it will then be for the governments to determine how they have delivered these rights in many cases. We have yet to define for our national governments and our provincial governments, as well as by implication to our courts of how they define the interpretation of these rights in Canada because they will be subject to financial consideration and competing rights interpretations. We have to get to that point on this convention and many other human rights, so I do not know if you have given that some thought. We are still trying to say the convention should count. So you are challenging us, I think we want to challenge you a bit to think a little further, that we can put some concrete steps rather than saying the convention counts. We would like some concrete steps about how it can count. The first one is obvious; we should put it into our national laws, but a whole host of international interpretation follows. We take up your challenge. You both have specific issues that should be incorporated in our report, so you can look to us to develop how we believe that can be brought forward on your behalf.
Thank you for your submissions and covering areas that we have not quite covered in our hearings to this point.. So thank you very much. Anything else you want to bring to our attention, we would appreciate it.
The Chairman: Senators, our next witnesses are Angela Cameron, and Asia Czapska.
Angela Cameron, Research Associate, FREDA Centre for Research on Violence against Women and Children: Thank you and good morning, senators. I am flanked by my two colleagues and associates, Nasra and Hawa Mire. We are each going to do a brief presentation. Nasra and Hawa are going to speak particularly from their own experience as female children growing up in Canada.
I would like to touch on briefly in my opening statement is the research that FREDA has been involved in, which speaks to the mandate of the Senate committee. FREDA has been involved with four other research centres across Canada in a four-phase research project funded by the Status of Women to look at the experiences of girls and violence in Canada. The report, which has been made available to the committee in both French and English, summarizes the results of phase two of this four phase project. That report specifically addresses the disjuncture between the experiences of the girls who participated in the research and Canada's obligations under international human rights law, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The aim of that report is also to provide specific recommendations on how Canadians can better implement these international instruments and in doing so, address the violence experienced by the girls in our research. The recommendations are contained in that report. We are currently working on phrase three of this research. I think it is important to note that there were close to 600 girls and boys who participated in the research across Canada, so it is a substantial sample, and we did both qualitative and quantitative work. If you look at that report, you will find that the voices of girls and boys, particularly of girls, are captured, they are verbatim. You will also find poetry and prose.
I will speak briefly to the most discernable themes from the research. In important ways, the themes intersect with some of the most prevalent forms of violence that the girls spoke to experiencing. I would also like to note that in most of, if not all cases, the Convention on the Rights of the Child is anticipated to provide protection against some of the specific experiences of violence that the girls speak to in the results of the research.
The first theme is racism and racialized violence; the second is persistent violence in the school environment; the third are the effects of media on body image and the self-esteem of girls; the fourth is sexual harassment, and that is certainly a prevalent theme throughout and crosses over into violence in the school; sexual exploitation is another theme.
The RESOLVE Centre from the Prairies did a particular piece of research on young girls who are sexually exploited and forced to work as prostitutes. That report is contained in the papers we have submitted this morning.
The sixth theme is access to service, the seventh is poverty, and the eighth is sexism.
I think it is important to note that FREDA and the other four research centres took an intersectional approach, so we did not look at those experiences of violence separately.
Senator Nancy Ruth: Please define "intersectionality."
Ms. Cameron: Intersectionality is the way that social locations like being poor, being Aboriginal, being a girl interacts in the ways that girls experience violence. An excellent example that comes out of research here in British Columbia is a group of Aboriginal girls talking about walking around in their neighbourhood and constantly being mistaken for prostitutes, and that did not happen to the Aboriginal boys in their neighbourhood. It happened to them because they were poor, because they were Aboriginal, and because they were girls. Those three intersecting forms of oppression in their lives resulted in being chased around the neighbourhood by boys or men in cars. They were stopped by men in cars who tried to solicit sex from them. They were not working as prostitutes and had no interest in doing so. That is a prime example of how that theory of intersectionality manifests itself in the lives of the research participants.
The 600 girls and boys who participated in the research came from a huge diversity of background, including very poor children to economically privileged children. The participants were children who are sexually exploited and girls experiencing problems with body image. The one thing that came out of all of the different forms of violence was that gender specific programming was important in each instance. This was true for groups from New Brunswick and Ontario as well. The girls experienced sexism and racism as girls, and being a girl was as important to their experiences of violence as their race or their sexual orientation or their economic status. Across the board, it became apparent that not only were their experiences informed by gender, but the things that they wanted us to do to help address these rights had a gender flavour to it. They wanted to be able to have girl's only groups to talk about sexual harassment, to get sex education, to talk about parenting when they are young. And that belies a trend, certainly in B.C., to be doing gender neutral programming and services.
I am going to end there and hand it over to Hawa and Nasra, who are two young women who are here to speak from their experiences. Just as a bit of an introduction, Nasra and Hawa are research advisers and researchers within FREDA. They participated in the Go-Girls, which is a gender specific participatory action research group for girls with the aim of empowering them, with the aim of getting them to help us with our research and to help us understand what it is to be a young woman in Canada. We tried to come up with some recommendations on how to address the violence in their lives and the lives of their peers. They are here to speak to what the Convention on the Rights of Children means to them, how Canadians can better implement these rights, and what participating in a gender specific program means to them. They will tell you of the value of such programs.
Nasra Mire, Representative of Go-Girls, FREDA Centre for Research on Violence Against Women and Children: I am part of Go-Girls, which is part of FREDA. I find that society does not recognize the youth, even though we are the majority of the world's population. We are seen as naive, young, and less capable of our potentials, which disagrees with the Convention on the Rights of the Child. We can enforce our rights by establishing groups for youth, facilitated by youth. This will encourage youth to have strong leadership and communication skills that give them the mindset to tackle any obstacles.
By being a part of Go-Girls, I found that I was able to understand society, and how to state my opinion. I have learned to understand how, as a girl, I am able to express my opinions.
Hawa Mire, Representative of Go-Girls, FREDA Centre for Research on Violence Against Women: As Angela mentioned earlier, I am with Go-Girls, which is an extension of FREDA. Go-Girls is a group of girls from the ages of 14 years to 16 years, and it is basically a safe space for these girls to come in and talk about the different issues that are affecting them in personal experiences. They can come in and talk about things that happen to them on an everyday basis. This group of girls from the first phase started off together and we have grown together. We have a couple of other projects in mind right now. It is a really cool project because I do not think you realize what you can do until you have gotten to the point where you have to do something, so that was an interesting thing for me to learn.
I am here today to talk about the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and I will move on. I have never really heard about the Convention of the Rights of the Child. For me, that was something that was a little creepy because it affected me up until August of this year. I thought that children were under the Canadian Charter of Human Rights. I did not know there was another section altogether that dealt with us. As I started getting into reading, I noticed a couple of things. First of all, I should say that I noticed these things taking my own personal experiences into account. The adoption of the convention and its very existence seems to me, a bunch of words written on a piece of paper, a lot of them have not been implemented in my life, and I have not seen any evidence of those rights actually affecting me. It is like knowing those rights are there, but also understanding that the system is not necessarily set up to protect me using those rights most of the time. It is also interesting when you consider the idea that those people that have those rights have no idea that they even exist.
Let me tell you a little bit about my own life experiences. Racism is a huge part of my life and a part of everything I have achieved or been denied. My skin colour is something I can never escape from, something I never want to escape from, and it is something that promotes others to place barriers in front of me. I am really lucky that I am stubborn and I am determined to break down as many of those barriers as possible. When I tell you that the rights listed on the convention are nothing more than papers to me, I am not just saying that. I feel that my life experience embodies that statement. It is very important to me that I see these rights attainable for young women and girls today.
Obviously, the easiest solution to getting young women to understand these rights and know of their rights is school-based education. However, the problem that lies behind such an easy solution is that the youth getting the information in the schools are not necessarily the youth that need that information. I think the solution lies in creating educational programs and services geared specifically for disadvantaged young women in neutral community areas. These are the children that need to understand the rights they possess because these are the children that our system tends to ignore and pass aside.
When I talk about implementing certain services, I always bring it back to Go-Girls, and the fact that having that safe space at the age of 16 has allowed me to be a lot more vocal and a lot more opinionated about the things that I want to see done in my community. Besides, it is a place where I can meet girls my own age, and I can sit, rant, and vent about everything that I realize is not working the way I want it to work.
I guess today the reason I am here is the question, what can you guys do for me, right? So my answer is more, more, and more. More funding for girl-friendly safe spaces; more youth services geared for disadvantaged youth; and the promotion of youth involvement in youth-geared events and services. By "youth," I mean young women. We need them, they are not there, and it is necessary. Get young women involved. The convention states that children have the right to their own opinions, but we are never encouraged to speak. If we do voice our opinions, chances are that our opinions will be discussed by policymakers who are unwilling to listen. More services by youth for youth; start youth- oriented focus groups. Ask youth, aged 12 years to 18 years, what they want to see done in their communities. It is not enough that I am sitting here at age 19 telling you what I want to see. I want them to tell you what they want to see because it is their lives and it is impacting them every single day of their lives. Dedicate yourself to truly listening to what they have to say, do not listen to the surface materials. Ask questions that are geared to get them to talk to you. Youth are no longer meant never to be heard. They are screaming to be listened to. Their ideas may be innovative and fresh, but chances are some of the time, they will work. That is the key for today. That is the key for today.
If you walk away with anything at all today, please walk away realizing that youth know what they want to see and know what they need to make a difference. It is a matter of implementation from others that trust that we know what we are doing. These are children's rights, youth rights, and young women's rights. And by not making them aware of those rights and not providing them with the services they need, you are removing the tools they need to fight for the rights that were already promised to them.
Asia Czapska, Housing Strategy Coordinator, Justice for Girls: I represent Justice For Girls, and I did write out almost exactly what I was going to say, but I will veer a little bit.
The Chairman: We have your statement and we would really like to get to questions, so hit the points that you would like to put on the record specifically. This will form part of our evidence.
Ms. Czapska: Since we started as an organization, about seven years ago, we have been wanting to stop girl homelessness. We have been wanting to make sure that girls that are on the street and living on their own have a safe place to go and have safe places to stay in the short term and in the long term, that there is some kind of housing for girls that are on the street. Right now, there is almost nothing, and that is what we are dealing with.
Short term, there are youth shelters. They are mixed gendered that house both young men and young women together, which we think is unsafe, which we know is unsafe. The government of B.C. recently found out in one of their own studies that youth shelters can be unsafe for young women. You can have 14-year-old girls stay in the same shelter as an 18-year-old boy. Male staff work in the shelters, which we also think is unsafe. That is also the same situation in the youth prisons here in B.C., that young men and young women in some youth prisons, like Prince George and Victoria, are actually housed on the same living units. There might be one young woman in Victoria with 12 boys on the same living unit. We have been talking to the government about this and they have been telling us that it is because they do not have enough units to separate them, and also because they think it would isolate the young woman to put her on her own. They do recognize that girls are experiencing sexual harassment and sexual assault in custody, in B.C. in custody centres.
We know that young women often leave home because of sexual abuse and we know that authorities do not always believe girls when they report sexual abuse and that children's ministries tell girls to go home. We know that the perpetrators are rarely criminally charged. We strongly believe that if the government actually removed men who sexually abuse girls in the home that would be one of the solutions to girl homelessness. You would see a lot less girls leaving home if they were removing men when they commit violence.
First Nations girls often leave non-First Nations foster homes because of alienation and racism, and they are likely to become homeless. Very few housing services are there for Aboriginal girls and even fewer meet their needs. There is really almost nothing. Lesbian girls, who leave home or are kicked out, may also become homeless. So once they are on their own, girls are given, disgracefully, an inadequate set of choices. The children's ministry can tell them to go home. They can tell them to get adult welfare. Here in B.C., once they are 16 years of age, the children's ministry will tell them to go to welfare and then they live on $525 a month.
Often young women actually end up living with older men, and that is across the board when we interviewed girls. Many young women that leave home live with older men in their 20s and older. I do not know what to say. Once they are in really vulnerable situations, sometimes girls turn to drugs and to try and cope with the extreme violence and poverty that they are experiencing. Then at that point, sometimes the youth prisons step in and sometimes they are incarcerated to await treatments, to get into drug treatment or they are put into child welfare facilities.
Like in Alberta with the Protection of Children Involved In Prostitution Act, where young people can be put into homes involuntarily and can be locked in for their own protection. Often young women are locked in. I think when PCHIP started; it was, like, 98 per cent young women, and many young Aboriginal women that were locked in.
Recently, we went to the committee on economic, social, and cultural rights. We spoke to them about girl homelessness and they actually made recommendations themselves that Canada give special attention to the difficulties faced by homeless girls and take all necessary measures to provide them with adequate housing and social and health services. One of the big things that we asked for is that youth and children's ministries across the country have to gender their policies and programs. That was one of the overreaching things: If children's ministries had to consider gender when planning their programs and services and especially housing, then maybe there would be safe houses that are girl specific. We need group homes and foster homes that are specifically for young women that have experienced violence; homes that are safe for them.
We believe that would be the way to bring girls closer to the realization of equality, to gender youth policy and programs across the country.
The Chairman: Ms. Czapska, you were saying that in the juvenile justice system, girls are housed with boys.
Ms. Czapska: Yes, in the youth prisons here in B.C., they are. There are two youth prisons — well, there are three, but there are two that have mixed gender living units, Prince George and Victoria, where they can house girls and boys on the same living unit.
The Chairman: Is this pre-sentencing or after sentencing?
Ms. Czapska: No, this is both because they are the youth custody centres.
The Chairman: So, it is a youth custody centre.
Ms. Czapska: Yes, it is the youth custody centres in B.C. I am pretty sure that that is the same situation in other provinces, from what we know. Yes, in those two, that is regular; and then in Burnaby, there have been situations where girls have been put on the boys living unit. There is one young woman a few months ago or maybe a year ago that we were advocating for. She was put on the boy's living unit and we said that was a big problem. After advocacy and after we went to the media on different things, they moved her to her own living unit. They actually put another girl that was, like, 14 years old on the same unit. They finally stopped; and then they stopped at the Burnaby Youth Custody Centre. That is something that is like regular practice at the two other youth custody centres. There is a very low count of women, which is a good thing, in youth custody in Victoria and Prince George, so often they do not have a unit to put the girl in her own unit.
The Chairman: Ms. Cameron, in your opening statements, the issue of immigration and refugees was not identified; do you have any comments to make on that? Is that an added hardship and in which way?
Ms. Cameron: The piece of research we did was particularly on racialized girls and most came from families who were in refugee at the parental generation level. Most of the girls who participated in the research were not immigrants or refugees themselves, but came from immigrant and refugee families. There were particular issues around racialized violence in the lives of those girls specifically related to being labelled as fresh off the boat; being picked on because of speaking English with an accent; the foods that they brought for meals to school; the clothing that they wore, which belonged to their particular ethnic cultural group. Speaking specifically, girls spoke specifically about racism as violence, but also racialized violence, so feeling more vulnerable to actually being physically abused and pushed around and bullied in schools because they did not have trust in the school counselors, the teachers, the principals because they did not feel that those actors within the school system were free of racism either.
The Chairman: Having worked overseas, do you deal with any young people who come traumatized already from a war-torn area? I know what services they should have, but what particular problems did you identify with them?
Ms. Cameron: In British Columbia, we did have two groups, very small focused groups of refugee girls, primarily from Africa. They were situated in very rural areas in British Columbia because of our immigration and refugee policies to move new Canadians to rural areas, particularly because their parents had specialized professions. In a lot of cases, their fathers, if they were in opposite sex parents, were doctors, so they were living in places like the Okanagan and Prince George, for instance, because one or both of their parents' professional services were needed there. So I would say that the problems that would normally be faced by refugees in an urban centre, as far as accessing services because of language barriers and racism, were exacerbated in the case of these girls because they were living in rural places, which were so homogeneously Anglo-Saxon.
A section at the end of the report provides some upsetting quotations from two girls facing racism in their schools. These girls did not want to go to school and felt they could not access the language services because of a deep sense that the school counsellor was racist and would not be able to provide them with the services they needed.
Senator Nancy Ruth: Angela, you said that most of the programs were gender neutral rather than gender specific. I wonder if you could tell us what those phrases mean. I acknowledge what you said about prisons. Can you give us a sort of framework for those words? We need to know when we write our next report, if we should emphasise gender neutral or gender specific.
Ms. Cameron: I think that is an excellent question. FREDA, along with lots of other community organizations is constantly involved in applying and reapplying to federal and provincial funders to keep our core programs in place. In order to get that money, we have to talk in gender-neutral language, so we have to be inclusive of both boys and girls. We want to get at the root of some of these gender issues around violence that girls like Hawa and Nasra are teaching us about. What often happens is that we write our grant applications in gender-neutral language. The materials we receive from the municipality and the provincial government are specific about including both boys and girls in the programs. After we receive the funding, we turn around and do a program like Go-Girls where we include only girls, so there is a bit of subterfuge involved. What we would like to be able to do is to put on that application form that we want to deal with girls specifically and why we want to do that. What we are finding is that when we are open and honest about the need to deal with girls only, on their own, and in their own space, we are not getting the funding that we need. "Gender neutral" generally refers to programs that do not talk about gender, so the implication is that it includes both boys and girls. "Gender specific" would be ostensibly programs just for boys and just for girls, but in this case, we are interested particularly in programs for girls.
Senator Nancy Ruth: I want you to say that it is more critical than you have stated. Sexual violence happens to all children, but I assume that statistically, sexual violence happens disproportionately to girls and so does exploitation.
Ms. Cameron: Sexual violence happens disproportionately to girls in Canada, absolutely, as it does to women.
Senator Nancy Ruth: Is that not a reason why all applications, all statements, all documents, all government policies, should be done in terms of gender specific understanding or analysis?
Ms. Cameron: Absolutely. I think that was very well put. If you want to talk about statistics, and the report that we provided is full of them, the RESOLVE Research Group did a research project on sexually exploited youth. The project focused primarily on Aboriginal girls and young women who were forced to work in the sex trade, working as prostitutes. Disproportionately, they were women, and young women and girls, and they experienced violence in that sexual exploitation as Aboriginal women, not necessarily as Aboriginal people. When they spoke about their experiences and what they needed help dealing with, we heard from many mothers who wanted to be able to parent their children. They wanted to have a safe place to sleep where men could not take advantage of them.
The violence that girls experience all across the country has to do with being girls and, the way that we can address that violence and help girls deal with it and come to solutions is to deal with girls, keeping in mind that they are girls, and provide them with services that deal with their specific needs. They need to talk about sex education, sexual harassment, and sexual exploitation.
Sexual harassment is happening to girls in schools. It is happening by boys to girls in schools. The Ontario report indicates that and the New Brunswick report indicates that too. The reporters spoke to hundreds of boys and girls. The boys were very forthcoming about their participation in sexually harassing girls and how this behaviour is normal in all of the schools. So the groups in Ontario and New Brunswick dealt with boys and girls around sexual harassment, but even the boys in the group said, no, you know, you girls really have to hang out and figure out some of this stuff yourself. Part of the process in New Brunswick and Ontario was an educational process that included work and focus groups that discussed sexual harassment and how it includes sexism and racism. The boys said, "You know, we need to know more of this." "We thought of it as flirting." "We thought of it as, you know, teasing the girls." When pointed out to the boys the boys felt the girls needed to get together to talk about it and think about it. So I think it is important and vital.
Senator Nancy Ruth: How would a children's commissioner deal with this fact?
Ms. Cameron: The commissioner could provide funding and impetus and space for girls-only programs. The commissioner could fund programs like Go-Girls and the Girlz Group, which is group of inner city Aboriginal girls, who are also working with FREDA. The commissioner could make sure that school counsellors understand sexual harassment as a gendered problem and provide safe spaces in schools. The commissioner could help with leadership programs for girls.
Hawa and Nasra, you probably have more to add.
Ms. Hawa Mire: Give more young women a leadership role in providing those services. That is one of the best ways to deal with it because often, youth are not very comfortable speaking to the people who provide the services. If you have somebody trained who is a little bit younger, that might get the point across a little bit better.
Senator Nancy Ruth: There are other commissioners in the federal structure, such as a privacy commissioner, and there have been all kinds of comments over the years that some of these commissioners are not as effective as the population hoped they would be. Some people say that by putting up these parallel structures of commissioners, you are, in fact, taking authority away from Parliament or you are letting Parliament not do the job it should be doing. Do you have any comments on that and would you have any other suggestions if there was not a commissioner?
Ms. Cameron: Sorry, which commissioner are you referring to in particular?
Senator Nancy Ruth: A commissioner of children.
The Chairman: There are certain capacities at the provincial level across Canada. They are either called children's advocates or children's commissioners. We recommended in our interim report that there be a federal children's commissioner. We are seeking opinions as to whether that capacity at a federal level would be helpful or not and if it was, what should that person do or that office do?
Senator Nancy Ruth: Or if there is a better idea.
Ms. Cameron: I do not necessarily have an opinion on the government structure for a commissioner. In British Columbia when federal money comes down to the province for girls' programs we would like to see that money go into girls' programs. Very often, that money goes into the general coffers. We would like the federal government to be specific about where the money should go and not let the provincial government disburse the money without thinking about gender issues.
I would say for a lot of social and economic rights, that we would like to see the same thing, to see federal government money earmarked for things like income assistance for girls, for housing for girls, for youth groups for girls, for school programs for girls, and to have the money come with some strings and accountability attached.
The Chairman: You obviously have thought about this area. When the cutbacks came in the 1990s, and I am using that as a sort of a marker, there was a cutback from the federal government into what had been a traditional way of providing money to the provinces. The provinces pushed back saying that they needed this money, but they asserted also their provincial rights. Are you saying that monies flowing from the federal government should be earmarked?
Ms. Cameron: I sincerely doubt that provincial governments and territorial governments would support my position. If you look at health care, for instance, we had a mechanism by which monies came from the federal government and was earmarked for distribution that way, and we lost that mechanism. Yes, I would like to see, especially around social and economic rights issues, that kind of earmarking happening from the federal to the provincial governments to insure that girls in Newfoundland, British Columbia, and Saskatchewan all have access to the same important vital services.
Senator Lovelace Nicholas: Thank you very much. That was very well received. You have mentioned racism, so I want to know your opinion on sensitivity training of authority figures dealing with young women of all races.
Ms. Cameron: Maybe what I will do is answer that using some of the girls' voices in the research, and they did speak to who they wanted to be their service providers. In the case, for instance, of the Girlz Group, which is a group of inner city Aboriginal girls, they said they were not accessing community services and they were not accessing services in their schools because they could not relate to the people who were providing those services. They could not relate to the socioeconomic status, life experience, culture, ethnicity, and race of the people who were delivering the services. I think obviously there are non-Aboriginal people who are interested in delivering those services and happy to do it and to receive sensitivity training, but I think it is also important to have a mixture, so that there are staff, support staff, service providers, that are Aboriginal people and who share the life experiences of the girls. I think it is clear from each of those four projects, so gay and lesbian girls in New Brunswick, Aboriginal girls in the Prairie provinces, and the Girlz Group, that they want to access service providers that share their race, ethnicity, and language. There has to be a good mix of service providers, so that girls who want to speak to somebody who shares their life experiences are available.
Senator Lovelace Nicholas: You mentioned the sexually exploited children, and the sexually offended. Do you feel that there should be stiffer laws against sex offenders?
Ms. Cameron: That is a hard one to answer. I probably prefer to turn that question on its head and look at it from the perspective from the girls and the services that they need. I think you would get a spectrum of answers from those girls about whether they would like to see their abusers and the Johns that sexually exploit them incarcerated. Some of the girls, I am sure, would like to see them treated; some of them would like to see them incarcerated. I would say that my focus would be what we would need to help those girls escape the violence, through adequate housing, food, and child care services.
Ms. Czapska: I had a thought on sensitivity training, and I think that is one idea, but, ultimately, people have to be accountable for the things that they do. The police have to be accountable to someone, right? They do not treat young racialized women, poor young women, very well. Here in B.C. the police investigated the police when there were allegations against them. We should have police investigations that are outside of the police services. We need mechanisms for how to deal with racism and violence against people that are homeless. It is more about accountability and people actually being responsible to somebody if they do something wrong, right. I think that would maybe make people change more than sensitivity training. Yes. I think that people get away with oppressive things if they are not held accountable.
For years, we watched cases of sexual exploitation go through the courts in B.C. and we went to other places in B.C. outside the Lower Mainland, and the sentences were so low you would not even believe it was happening. I remember watching a case where a man got three months of house arrest. He was a grocery store owner in a small town. He was working across the street from an elementary school and he could go to work. He was severely abusing a number of girls in that community. The sentences on sexual exploitation are low.
Senator Poy: I want to thank all four of you for coming forward and telling us what you have told us this morning because it really gives us a much clearer picture of what is happening here. I have been listening and I think it is a reflection of our society. Yes, women have moved forward, but not that much. It is something that in equality, I feel it every day, you know, as a visible minority and as a woman. One of the women that — actually, when I was writing a Ph.D. thesis — told me that she is under double jeopardy, being a woman and being a visible minority, so I can see what is going on.
Ms. Cameron, when you said when you apply for funding, you make it gender neutral because if it is specifically for women, you probably will not get it. There is really a very big, long struggle for our society to realize that women need special facilities. You four women have made that very apparent. There has to be gender- specific programs for women because women suffer more abuse than boys do. I would like you to comment on what we can do to improve our society today.
Ms. Hawa Mire: I think I said, more, more, more. Obviously coming at it from this level, I am expecting miraculous changes that will not happen for a number of years.
Senator Poy: We all like miracles by the way.
Ms. Hawa Mire: What we need to do is get to the level where FREDA can put in a proposal asking for girl specific spaces and they can actually give us some money so we can create those girl specific spaces. I can do it by going around to schools and running workshops for young girls. I can ask them what they want, but that will not matter if nobody listens to me. We need to be heard. The bureaucracy levels are not accessible to youth and are not accessible to young women. I can walk into a room and I can say everything that I can say, but I am dismissed easily. We need accessibility, language accessibility and facility accessibility.
Ms. Nasra Mire: I feel that being a woman is a big barrier. Again, I think that putting the money into the groups and being able to establish open spaces for young girls, and letting the girls know about them is very important. I think the girls do not know what it is available for them. The spaces that are available have age and race barriers for our girls. There are not enough visual minority groups out there, so I think making them accessible to the girls that can relate to other visible minorities definitely makes a difference.
Ms. Hawa Mire: The facilitator for our Go-Girls group is from a visible minority. That is one of the reasons why I can y relate to what she is saying. She is from a visible minority and she can relate to my experiences. I don not think I would have continued in the group if she had not been able to identify with my problems of racism and gender racism. It has to be somebody who can sit there and understands that I am at that level.
Senator Poy: Do you think that if we have a lot more women elected to office, in Parliament, in every level, then we will be able to move it forward? I always believe that we need a big critical mass. We need a more than 50 per cent woman in our governments and it is going to be difficult, until that happens. I would like your comments.
Ms. Nasra Mire: I feel like it is a good idea because it is important that we have someone out there that we can look up to. Many young people want to become a senator, we want to be the president of a company, and encourage women to be out there and making a difference. I feel like it brings women down to a lower level and we feel like we are not capable of doing what is capable of men and so definitely I think that is an awesome idea.
Ms. Hawa Mire: I think you have to look at intersectionality as well, because there can be 100 per cent women in Parliament, but if none of them looks like me, I am not going to be able to relate to any of them and it is not going to do anything for me. The men might as well be there.
Also, I have said this so many times, you have to start taking young women seriously too. There was a conference I went to in Ottawa last year and it was for the "ad hoc-ers." I asked in front of the panel and in front of 200 people sitting there, what can I do to make sure young women get involved in politics and get to that level. The woman sitting up there completely brushed me off. She is, like, "You are here, that is good enough." They cut me off, they went to a break for the cameras, and she did not answer my question. That was frustrating because I asked a question and nobody was willing to give me a solid answer. They could not even give me 20 minutes. If we ask about policy, something that is completely related to us the people do not want to discuss it with us. That is a valid question, how do I get to where you are, and she was not willing to answer that. How do you address that? How do you get people to start talking back to you? I guess we need more informal discussions. At one point or another, you have to remove it from the formal scale, right.
Ms. Cameron: I would like to add, of course, that I would vote for Hawa or Nasra for Prime Minister. I would vote for either of these women for Prime Minister, speaking of miracles and things to aspire to. I would also like to add that elected officials, more elected officials are fantastic, but I also think it is only part of the solution. If we have 52 per cent women in Parliament and we still have high levels of sexual assault against women and girls, the sexual exploitation of girls, girls living in poverty, you know, it is a step in the right direction, but it is a part of a larger solution.
Senator Poy: Yes. Thank you.
Ms. Nasra Mire: I wanted to say before we get to the policy and that level up there, it is hard enough for us as minorities and as individuals even getting a part-time job, an $8 an hour job. I think that we should look at that as an aspect and say that even when we apply for a job in a restaurant we are looked down upon. It is hard. We have to prove ourselves. There is always a level of proving ourselves, so maybe we should look at that first before we move on to bigger issues.
Senator Nancy Ruth: If in our report we try and be gender specific around issues of children, what kind of words do we use to deal with the issues you have raised of racism or poverty or intersectionality, what kind of words are there to say that?
Ms. Cameron: There are many words in the FREDA report, which is a good place to start. Talk about girls and women, use those words; point specifically to the statistics that tell Canadians and senators and members of Parliament the disproportionate level of violence that girls are experiencing, and compare them to boys and men.
Ms. Hawa Mire: Can I ask you a question? What would make you more willing to get involved at our level? What would it take us to get you more interested in what we do each day?
The Chairman: I think that is a personal question, so perhaps individual senators can reflect and think about it. I think that is why we are here. It is a struggle to put your issues on the agenda in Parliament. I think we are taking the first step, but we are struggling as to how to speak for you, but not speak for you, if you know what I mean. We want to really listen and hear what you are saying and to try and reflect it in our words. I hope you will see in our final product some of the struggle we have had and some of your wishes.
Each one of us has come to the Senate by way of appointment and that is part of our problem as legislators, but it is also a part of our ability in the Senate. We have more freedom, we represent many more walks of life, I think, than in the House of Commons because we have been selected in a different way, so we are not quite the same as the House. I am hoping all of that translates into something. We chose the Convention on the Rights of the Child. One of the strongest things in there is to hear the voice of the child. Women struggle to be heard as well as children. Now we are talking about the voice of youth, et cetera. Whether we do a good job or not will be for you to judge, but I hope our report and how we approach it answers your question.
While I think I have heard you strongly about the gender specific and those issues, the universal declaration of human rights is basically put in another way, do not give up on anyone. Your allies are everywhere and so the message has to go through over and over again. The spokespeople may be of your colour, they may be of your gender, they may be of your race, and they may not be, so what we are trying to do is touch everyone and change the dynamics of how we relate to each other.
We have gotten the message that gender specific programs are really important at your level, whether it is employment or housing or racism. However, if we do not break down some of the processes across the board in Canada and across the genders, we will not succeed. We are looking for the greatest constituency to support your message. I think you will see some of that in there. That will be, I think, the greatest miracle, if we are using the miracle thing.
I want to thank all of you for coming and certainly giving us evidence from a different perspective than we have heard in our other hearings and our other panels. You have brought a different perspective. You are all very young, by the way, in our eyes. Some of you are under the age of 18, some slightly older, and some maybe a little more than that, but we are hearing more youthful voices. We need to hear these voices more often and be more honest to the wishes and aspirations of the conventions. I hope you will see some of what you have said reflected in our report. Thank you for coming.
The committee adjourned.