Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Aboriginal Peoples
Issue 35 - Evidence - April 17, 2013
OTTAWA, Wednesday, April 17, 2013
The Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples met this day at 6:56 p.m. to examine and report on the federal government's constitutional, treaty, political and legal responsibilities to First Nations, Inuit and Metis peoples, and on other matters generally relating to the Aboriginal Peoples of Canada.
Senator Vernon White (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Good evening. I would like to welcome all honourable senators, members of the public who are watching this meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples on CPAC or on the web.
I am Vern White from Ontario, chair of the committee. The mandate of this committee is to examine legislation and matters relating to Aboriginal peoples of Canada in general. In considering what studies the committee might like to undertake, from time to time we invite individuals and organizations to give us an overview of topical issues within their constituencies. Today we will hear testimony from the Native Women's Association of Canada on the issue of Aboriginal women and the criminal justice system.
Before hearing from the witnesses, I would like to take this opportunity to ask the members of the committee who are present to introduce themselves.
Senator Dyck: Senator Lillian Dyck from Saskatchewan.
Senator Lovelace Nicholas: Senator Lovelace Nicholas from New Brunswick.
Senator Sibbeston: Nick Sibbeston from the Northwest Territories.
Senator Demers: Jacques Demers, Quebec.
Senator Raine: Nancy Greene Raine, B.C.
Senator Patterson: Dennis Patterson, Nunavut.
Senator Enverga: Tobias Enverga from Ontario.
The Chair: From the Native Women's Association of Canada, please help me welcome Erin Corston, Director, Health and Environment, and Fiona Cook, Research and Policy Officer. We look forward to your presentation. I am sure it will be followed by questions from senators, so please proceed.
Erin Corston, Director, Health and Environment, Native Women's Association of Canada: I will start. Thank you for inviting us here today. I am Erin Corston and I am Cree from treaty 9 territory in northern Ontario. I am the Director of Health and Environment at the Native Women's Association of Canada, and I want to send regrets from NWAC's president, Michèle Audette. She is occupied at a meeting in Winnipeg today and could not be here. I am here on her behalf. Fiona Cook is here and she is the technical lead on the projects you are interested in hearing about, Arrest the Legacy, as well as the Gender Matters report. Ms. Cook is no longer employed with the association, but has taken time away from her family to be here.
It has been several years since NWAC has had capacity to focus on justice and corrections related issues. With Ms. Cook's departure from the organization and the end of the Advocacy and Public Information Program, NWAC will have next to no capacity to respond to these types of issues and requests to present. The pattern of funding that NWAC has received to work on justice related issues is inconsistent and irregular as best. While we are always grateful for project-based funding, it all too often allows us to just scratch the surface and leaves us wanting to do more. I think when you hear of these reports, you will agree.
Regardless of our funding challenges, we have managed to examine and expose some root causes that perpetuate trends we are seeing with the urgent and alarming over-incarceration of Aboriginal women in this country. In collaboration with those most impacted, we have managed to tap into some of the potential solutions. I want to present three key messages tonight, the first being that Aboriginal specific justice issues are extremely complex. I do not think I have to tell you that. As such, solutions require a complex, multi-layer, inclusive approach that engages all sectors of the community. My second point is that solutions must reflect input and perspectives of those most impacted or those most vulnerable, and my third point is that violence prevention must become part of our concept of justice in Canada.
All the work we do at NWAC is grounded in an effort to raise the voices of those who have been silenced and promote their perspectives on issues. Time and again we come to the same conclusions. It is the cycle of poverty that drives these issues and their outcomes, from the disproportionate burden of ill health that Aboriginal women carry to the alarming rates at which they experience violence, abuse, victimization and incarceration.
The Advocacy and Public Information Program, or APIP, funded by the Department of Aboriginal Affairs, provided NWAC with support to strengthen our relationships and networks of partnerships with community- based and advocacy-type organizations across the country. We worked closely with staff and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada on this project. As Director of Health and Environment at NWAC, I can provide you with on overview of the differential impacts that Aboriginal women experience and I can paint a picture of how Aboriginal women have been affected by the long-standing and deep-rooted discrimination inherent in the system, but I am not entirely sure I would be telling you something that you do not already know. In preparing for today, I thought about what I could say that has not already been said, about how I could present the facts and the statistics and the way that would impact you most.
What could I tell you that would help you and others in your position understand the urgency of the issues that face our women? Then I thought about why you asked NWAC here today. I can only assume that, as the Aboriginal Affairs Committee, you aware of why Aboriginal women are disproportionately represented within the justice system, how the situation has been perpetuated and represented, and how the numbers continue to climb. I would like to think that this committee is interested in hearing about solutions and perhaps even hearing how each of you can be part of the solution.
Ms. Cook will enlighten you on the details of the Gender Matters report. It presents a whole manner of issues that pervade the justice system and, if addressed, might bring about a decline in the numbers of incarcerated Aboriginal women or alleviate the situation somewhat. The Gender Matters report captures a series of recommendations that were developed directly from input provided by women and girls who participated in our focus groups. Each recommendation could stand alone and if implemented could forge a path toward change. However, I would like to generate some discussion around the solutions. NWAC has long promoted the need to look at issues from a holistic, culturally relevant, gender-based perspective. Our mandate is to achieve equality for Aboriginal women in Canada. It is no small task when you consider that Aboriginal women and girls are a staggeringly five times more likely than non- Aboriginal women and girls to experience violence.
How can we ever achieve true equality in society, communities and in our homes and lives when we are not afforded the basic human right to live free from violence? Clearly, the issues are complex. We believe the solutions lie in taking a multi-pronged approach and from our perspective, I think you will agree that the solution lies in prevention.
If gender mattered, we would already have a national strategy to address violence against women and children in this country. If gender mattered, we would never let the situation get as bad as it has. The statistics are shocking. If gender mattered, we would look at violence through a preventive lens because we would truly want to prevent it from happening in the first place.
I think we can all agree that never has there been such criticism of Canada's treatment of its First Peoples. I cannot remember a time in history when there has been such widespread frustration, dissention and uprising among our peoples, especially our youth, nationally. Clearly, we need to do something about it now.
Someone recently described this concept of violence prevention as a solution to the over-incarceration of Aboriginal women to me using an analogy she that described as a "house of justice." In our house of justice, there are four pillars. We have the courts, the police services, corrections and the fourth pillar would be prevention. In our house of justice, we invest in violence and crime prevention in the same way we would invest in the other pillars. We would look at prevention as an opportunity and once we invest in this opportunity, we begin to see systemic changes occur. This is an investment that would see steady, long-term, sustainable reductions in crime and violence against Aboriginal women.
Before I close and hand the floor over to Ms. Cook, I would like to say a few words about the work NWAC has been involved in related to sexual exploitation of children and youth. It is an area where the Aboriginal population is disproportionately overrepresented. It is linked to violence, poverty, the child and social welfare systems and the justice and correction systems. It is a stop many of our children make on their way from residential schools to prisons.
It is through this work that I learned about a tool that is being piloted by the Status of Women Canada. It is an audit tool rooted in work done at the international level, promoting the development of community safety audits for the purpose of preventing crime at the local level. This crime prevention approach is currently being spearheaded by the National Crime Prevention Centre at Public Safety Canada, the departmental lead on Canada's task force on human trafficking.
The tool is basically a how-to instructional guide for local communities, municipalities, urban centres, et cetera that involves engaging all sectors of the community — including education, health, housing, justice, local political representatives, private industry and businesses, and academia, including those most impacted by crime and violence — in conducting a safety audit. The audit is developed through evidence-based research and paints a picture of the current and most urgent problems the community faces related to safety, crime and insecurity.
From there, a local action plan is created that responds directly to the problems identified in the audit, and their causes. It is a local safety audit guide and it focuses on preventing trafficking in persons and related exploitation, but can be applied to any issue, violence and crime in particular. It is in everybody's interest if not to participate then to support this type of a local audit. It requires an honest assessment of where our communitis and cities are falling short and where they need to focus their energies and resources.
I like it because it can be culturally relevant, gender-specific and inclusive. It is prevention oriented and with political will and community buy-in, it might be the solution we are looking for in changing the lives of those most vulnerable. Thank you.
Fiona Cook, Research and Policy Officer, Native Women's Association of Canada: Thank you for inviting us here tonight to discuss this important topic. I want to thank you for the invitation to present on this critical moment because we are at a crossroads. My name is Fiona Cook. I am Anishinabe and mixed with African descent from Little Current, Manitoulin and also an adopted family in Saskatchewan. I use the term "crossroads" because with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission talking to survivors at this very moment, there is an invitation to all Canadians to embark on a new relationship. The work that we did on over incarceration was in the framework of reconciliation. Ms. Corston mentioned it had been funded by Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada under the APIP specifically linked to the residential school survivors.
It was also specifically to outreach to all Canadians and to try to involve them in the process of reconciliation.
We chose to look at over incarceration when we started this research — and we could have chosen so many issues — because when you think of residential schools, the history, how it impacts people today and what difference we would could make as a women's organization and by bringing a gendered lens to the issue, we were disturbed by the high numbers of incarceration of women and also girls. Since reconciliation is something that looks to the future, the future generations matter a lot. When we realized that statistics from 2008 and 2009 said 44 per cent of girls in youth custody in this country were Aboriginal girls, it shocked us. We thought oh, my gosh, in a few years, half of the girls in custody will be Aboriginal girls if the trend continues. That was before Bill C-10, and now we are concerned that could become a reality.
The federal statistics are shocking enough. You have seen it through the Sapers report. The Correctional Investigator's report shows there has been an almost 50 per cent increase in the past 10 years of Aboriginal incarceration. It is much worse at the provincial and territorial level. There are some provinces, some of you are well aware, especially in the west and the Prairies where the levels are 87 per cent Aboriginal people incarcerated. We are very concerned about what the future holds. When we see that many young Aboriginal people and when the situation is not getting better, we think something needs to change. That is why we decided to focus on this issue as opposed to education or any other issues where there are great disparities.
We created a national steering committee from across the country, with people with expertise in Aboriginal corrections from the Aboriginal Justice Strategy, from the advocates who work with people in prison, and community-based workers and lawyers. We had a range of people with us to advise us. Then, we took that research into the community. We held focus groups across the country, from the Northwest Territories to Thunder Bay, to Saskatchewan and B.C. We met with over 300 people, including Aboriginal women and girls who had been incarcerated. We had RCMP and other police officers with us. We had Crown prosecutors with us at some of the circles. We also had the community-based workers — the shelter workers, the John Howard and Elizabeth Fry workers. Our first day of these three-day circles was dedicated specifically to Aboriginal women and girls who had been in jail, and that was a day for them to look at the links, at what got them there. That was the day for them to sort of look at what had happened in their lives, what path had led them into that situation and what had helped them because, at this point, they were out of custody or jail. We thought it was very important to see what had helped them. I want to get to that in a minute.
The second and third day, we invited in the other people who work with Aboriginal women and girls who have been incarcerated, and it was an opportunity for a very rich dialogue, a sharing of perspectives. Again, we were able to learn as well from the other kinds of challenges that are faced by those who work in the courts or in the other areas. We thought we needed this holistic perspective to really get a sense of what to do.
Over 300 people in all participated in the circles, and the Gender Matters report is the result. It captures the essence and recommendations that came out of the five circles that we had across the country.
In the Gender Matters report, we argue that, in trying to find solutions, we need to inquire into the way that individual families and communities were impacted both by the historical events, such as the residential schools and the Sixties Scoop, and by systemic barriers and discrimination at all levels — the mezo level, the organizational level, the macro level — in terms of policy, that continue to play out. We found that it was only in this way that we would be able to understand the degree to which, for Aboriginal people today, prisons are really the new residential schools.
We thought that it was not enough to look at the past and say, "Residential schools happened in the past. What does that have to do with today?" or to just focus on healing. Healing is important, but we cannot just stop there. We cannot just look at the individual as a damaged good of the residential school system and look at it as a cause and effect; we have to understand how those same conditions, in some cases, that set up the residential schools and the Sixties Scoop are still very much alive with us today. They are with us in our institutions today. They are with us in the stigma that Aboriginal people face today.
Aboriginal people spoke a lot about the ongoing stigma that they experience with those involved in the justice system — from police in courts — and within the jail systems and youth custody.
Our recommendations were fourfold. The first area is prevention, which is very critical. The second area is addressing systemic discrimination. The third area has to do with accountability measures and the need for the accountability. That is probably the area closest to the Correctional Investigator's report and some of his recommendations that have come out. Our fourth area, which is a big part of our report and was a big part of our early research, is finding alternatives to jail. In this regard, we looked quite specifically, though not only, at some of the younger women, at what can be done in the early phase with the young offenders just starting to get into trouble, the kind of attention that needs to be paid to interrupt the cycle so that they do not go through years and years of re-arrest and a career in incarceration.
Starting early, we say, "Be gender specific and prevent." The girls who had been in conflict with the law and who were with us in our circles, particularly those in more northern and remote areas, told us that there were not enough programs and services for them or they sometimes had to pay for programs and services, and poverty and material resources are real issues. For example, they could not pay for access to a pool. What were they going to do on a Friday night? They need things to do. In the absence of some of the most basic programs, bored teenagers get into trouble. Sometimes it is not something so huge that we have to do. That was a real need. I was very sad to see that some of the partners, some the people at our circles and some of the people I have worked with on other projects for NWAC have lost their funding, including some of those in the downtown east side, programs with the Urban Native Youth Association, who do critical work. Sports programs for youth have lost their funding, and that is really sad. Youth, especially if they are at risk and there is a lot of negativity around them, need to have good role models and some positive, alternative things to do so that they can develop well and go on a good path.
Of course, we know that there is a high correlation between the violence experienced by children and youth and later incarceration. There is also a high correlation between the children who are taken into child welfare and later incarceration. Someone might look at that and say, "If they are experiencing so much violence in the home, you just have to take them out." However, we know that that has not worked, so we have to have other solutions. The whole question of trying to have a holistic view of this problem, looking at what we can do around the child welfare system, supporting more community-based ways of helping families and having more of a family approach is needed. We have to help Aboriginal families and try to stop the cycle of kids just being taken out of families without remedy.
Huge numbers of the people we spoke to — adults and youth — had been through the child welfare system, so we have to look at what can be done early in that regard.
There was also a lack of interagency communication. You know a lot of this. Agencies operate in silos. A youth might be picked up for public disturbance or alcohol or drug use at a very early age, 12 and 13-year-olds in some communities, and kept in holding cells very temporarily. Then, a social worker is not called, and they do not get any help. They are just released. That is a problem. If people can identify, at an early age, that there is something going wrong, there is an opportunity to get the person and their family some help.
Schooling came up in a lot of the research, and other people have talked about that. There is a high correlation between early dropouts and youth who end up in juvenile detention, custody and then, later, in adult prison. Some of those youth have fetal alcohol syndrome or other significant mental health challenges. Dropping out of school at an early age is something we have to pay attention to and try to help them with because, if they are not in school and are feeling like failures, we know that the chances are that they might use drugs and alcohol and fall into peer groups that are negative. That, again, leads to youth custody, which goes, very often, straight into adult jail when they come of age.
There is a lot that we can do in that regard. In terms of the gender specific nature of the programs for girls, we think it is very critical to pay attention to the violence that girls experience and the fact that a lot of girls, if they experience violence, leave their homes. People have questioned why the girls have to leave their homes and why the person who perpetuated the violence against them is not dealt with more.
The second area is to address the systemic discrimination. We are very happy that we had police and RCMP in our circles. We had people who genuinely came to the circles and said things like, "This is quite new to us. We did not really learn about the residential schools. We just thought that that was long time ago and far away." They were appreciative of the fact that they had to think about why it was relevant today and how this horrific history of having almost like a nuclear bomb explode in the middle of Aboriginal families and communities tore at the fabric of communities and continued to affect people's abilities to have positive relationships today.
That being said, it was an eye opener because we realized how little people do understand about the history and how much individual blaming still goes on. There is a lack of understanding of, I guess, the atrocities of colonization in Canada. There is a denial of it. As a result, there is not a lot of empathy. That is missing in the justice system. It is there, of course, on the individual level, but it is missing systemically. To that end, what we need is an attitudinal sea change.
Perhaps one reason that so many of the Correctional Investigator's reports have been ignored for so long, as have so many other recommendations, such as the Louise Arbour report and RCAP, is that we still do not believe in the beauty, strength and intelligence of Aboriginal world views, Aboriginal ways of being in the world, Aboriginal ways of justice and Aboriginal ways of raising families.
When we call for more attention to Aboriginal-specific ways of working with youth and adults who are in difficulty, we find that the resources are not forthcoming to the degree we would like, or if they are, they are always at risk of being cut. The Aboriginal Justice Strategy is a good start and there are so many more programs being undertaken across the country, but they are always very precarious, and many of them have been lost.
Just to call for more funding for them would miss the point. The point is that we have to believe in them. We have to believe and know that Aboriginal justice programs work. They are really effective. The people who came to our circles told that having people who understand the culture helped so much, that sitting with the elders helped so much, as did going-on-the land programs and reconnecting with what was lost. That is important. The residential schools took that away, they took Aboriginal justice protocols away, they took away the dignity and knowledge that Aboriginal people had distinct local protocols.
Beyond just reconciliation, we need a form of restitution and a return to supporting some of these forms of justice. There are many great examples. We met many people who worked in wonderful ways with people who are having trouble with the law. They are helping them develop a more positive identity through reconnection with culture. There is no one-size-fits-all. We have so many communities across the country and they all have their distinct forms and protocols.
People were also very disturbed by the fact that there was no real oversight. People in jail who wanted to raise a complaint were not always allowed to do so. There was discretion on whether their complaint would be brought forward. We were very concerned, of course, with the segregation and isolation of Aboriginal women. Other very important reports have looked at that, including one from the University of Toronto. We are concerned about some of the human rights violations that take place in jail. The only way to get to that is to have an oversight mechanism. We support the recommendation from the Correctional Investigator to have a mechanism of oversight.
We need alternatives to prison. We should start with those who have serious mental health problems. Jail is not the place for people with such problems. They need help and support; they need professionals who are attuned to their special needs. We have many youth with fetal alcohol syndrome and we are very concerned about the amount of time they are spending in remand and in corrections without getting the help they need.
With regard to young women, our recommendations for alternatives are that they are wrap-around. Restorative justice is one wedge, and that is important, but the wrap-around alternatives include things like housing, which is a linchpin. Many of the women we spoke with, and even the youth, had very insecure housing. Some of them had escaped from violence, some were trying to leave abusive relationships, many lived in poverty, and some struggled with addictions at the time of their arrest. That was a big issue. The insecure housing was the one common factor we found that seemed to make a difference as to whether they fell back into prison. Supportive housing for people who have multiple challenges is key. In the absence of that, jails end up housing a lot of people that they should not be housing.
When people are in jail, they need much more support before they come out. There is a big gap there. People were very unprepared when they came out of prison. We are very concerned as well that there was a loss of funding to some of the Elizabeth Fry local chapters. The work they did was so critical in finding housing and practical support for people when they came out of jail, and that is needed. People really appreciated hearing from community groups before they came out of jail. They wanted more community groups and educational groups to come in to give them a sense of what their future was going to be like when they got out of jail. To spend all that time isolated and then suddenly be catapulted out and not to know how to survive and what to do to turn your life around is very difficult. It is not enough just to house people in jail. They will come out, and it is our responsibility to help people onto a better path. Better than that, we must prevent them from going to jail in the first place.
The Chair: Thank you, very much.
Last week I spent half a day at a youth drug treatment facility in the west end of the city. One hundred and ninety young ladies under the age of 18 had been through there over the previous 15 months. Ninety-eight per cent of the young women who had been through that program had identified that they committed at least one criminal offence in the six months prior to entering into the program. That is from an addictions perspective. The vast majority also had mental illness. The vast majority of those young women were not Aboriginal.
Do you see the same type of statistics in young offender Aboriginal women that we are seeing in non-Aboriginal women for mental illness and, more important, the addictions?
Ms. Cook: A recent report from Toronto said that about 30 per cent of Aboriginal women may have mental health difficulties, but I think the numbers might be under-reported. With youth, people think that number is very high as well.
The Chair: I am focusing on addictions primarily because, as many argue, a lot of the mental illness seems to come secondarily to the addictions.
Ms. Cook: That is a very important question. I do not know the exact statistics, but I have read that a very high percentage of people are actually under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time of arrest, both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal. When you look below the addictions, you very often find trauma. With Aboriginal people we have trauma, and addictions are used to cover the trauma. Programs that are effective in that regard give enough time to deal with underlying trauma. We really like Tsow-tun Le Lum on Vancouver Island. It is a correctional program, but at the same time it deals with residential school impacts in a very holistic way and it is culturally relevant. People struggle if they are given a six-week program. It is not enough time.
Senator Dyck: Thank you for your presentation. You gave us a lot to think about. As you said at the beginning, it is a very complex issue.
My first question is related to Saskatchewan. In our newspapers lately there were a couple of articles about our Deputy Minister of Corrections, Dale McFee, who used to be located in Prince Albert. He adopted a model that originated in Scotland and applied it in Prince Albert. It sounds like the model of policing there is one of prevention and intervention before people are incarcerated. His model brings together all the different parties involved; social welfare workers, the schools and others.
Do you know anything related to this program in Prince Albert and whether or not, from what you have read or heard, it has been successful? Has it made an impact? Of course, in Prince Albert, the Aboriginal population is at least 30 per cent of the population in that city alone.
Ms. Corston: I do know that the model that I spoke about is in line with what they are implementing, I guess, out in Saskatchewan. A call was put out by the Status of Women Canada just this past fall, I think in November or December, and they are piloting the model in six cities across the country, right now. I know that they are just in the midst of it. I am sure they do not have any success or best practices yet.
Somebody gave me the work that has been done internationally using that model, and I am sure that if we went through this in a little more in detail that there are those success models in other countries. I think it is definitely a good path.
The Chair: For those senators who want to look for it, it is called the "Hub model" out of Prince Albert, started in Scotland. It is a good model.
Senator Dyck: With regard to factors within a person's life that make them more vulnerable to ending up in being imprisoned, education is one of the them. Our chair asked about addictions, and I was quickly looking at a speech I have given before, but I could not find the numbers.
One thing that concerns me is that we know the Aboriginal population now is very young, and I am wondering if you have noticed in the numbers whether there has been an increase of incarceration. Is that a reflection of the demographics? More than half of the population is 25 and under. In the last few years, has that been part of the contributing factor?
Ms. Cook: I do not know if anyone studied that. You would have to look at what the numbers were before and comparatively, to look at the drop off and do the graph on it. I do not know if anyone has done that.
Even if that is part of it, it could not account for all of it and it could not account for all the disparities.
I want to give another statistic that is related, and this is for youth. Between 2004 and 2009, there was a 26 per cent increase in the number of Aboriginal female youth admitted to remand compared to an 8 per cent decrease in the number of non-Aboriginal female youth. We have to worry. That was in the years following the youth justice act. While the act had many positive elements to it, we have to be concerned with an act when there is a disparity in the years following. Why does the same act affect one population differently than others?
I think the other thing we have to do is whenever we pass any policy, we try to think ahead to see if there are any surprises in it, if there is anything in it that will cause a greater disparity the Aboriginal population.
Senator Dyck: Within Canada, there is a different distribution of Aboriginal people, and on the prairies, the percentage is quite high, 14 to 15 per cent, according to the 2006 statistics.
Do you know if there is any difference in the rates of incarceration across the country? What I am trying to get at is that some of the surveys that have been done about racism have indicated that the prairies are probably worse than Ontario. As an anecdotal story, I have a friend who moved to Peterborough, Ontario, and she worked in a women's shelter, and previous to that she lived in Saskatchewan. She said she could not get over the difference in the culture between Peterborough and Regina, that in Peterborough it was no longer a significant factor that she was an Aboriginal woman, but in Regina it most definitely was a negative contributing factor.
Do you know if the incarceration rates reflect those differences in racism across our country?
Ms. Cook: I think it is speculative as to exactly what are the different causes. There is no doubt that racism exists very strongly in Saskatchewan. I have lived in Saskatchewan, too, and I have had many experiences as well. There is no question about that.
There are differences across the country. Maybe we need to do more research, or maybe, just assuming that racism does exist and is a factor within different institutions, we need to do something about that.
Senator Dyck: Thank you.
Senator Demers: I am a father of three girls and three granddaughters, and I thought your presentation is extremely well done, but I kept imagining while you were talking how fortunate my daughters are and my granddaughters. I also have a son, and it is hard for me to accept, being a father, that this happens to young girls who are innocent, and it is sad and there are young men too.
I have a question that you may have answered in many ways, and, hopefully, it is not something that you have already answered.
What gender-specific challenges, if any, do Aboriginal women and girls experience in Canada's correctional system? When they are in the system, they say there are times — and I have visited different prisons — where some come out and have a different and positive life, but some come out worse than when they came in.
How is the system with respect to women and young girls specifically?
Ms. Cook: Thank you for your question. That is really important.
There is a saying that Aboriginal girls in Canada are over-policed and under protected.
They are under protected because there are sexual predators; under protected because when they are in conflict with the law, they risk being strip searched and there are inappropriate procedures that take place; under protected because sometimes when they are in youth custody, they are sometimes subject to co-ed facilities, which puts them at risk for sexual harassment, degrading strip searches and sexual abuse by prison guards and officials.
I would say that the unlawful segregation that we see in this country has been something that has particularly affected Aboriginal women. Many of the cases before the courts right now have involved a vast majority of Aboriginal women, non-Aboriginal women as well, but the vast majority are Aboriginal women.
Very often, with women and young girls who are at risk, there is a fine line sometimes. Somebody might be a victim and a perpetrator at the same time, so it is not uncommon for a female youth, who is Aboriginal, who has been, for example sexually assaulted and who is called before the courts to testify, to be brought out of jail to do so. Young women who are vulnerable, again, with the lack of housing and poverty, histories of abuse and addictions, can be put in very vulnerable situations where they may become both victims and also perpetrators of crime. Often the crimes are not necessarily violent crimes but they are crimes nonetheless.
In that situation, when they are the victim, there is also a tremendous amount of discrimination. The case that I am happy to say finally had a more positive ending, but really concerned us for a long time, was the Martin Tremblay case. He was a sexual predator who preyed on young girls in B.C., and particularly young girls who were in child welfare. He gave them free alcohol, free drugs, and he sexually assaulted them and he filmed that as well. Two young women died in his house at one point. However, it took the longest time to get him into jail and to keep him in jail. We had the problem with a judge declaring that he was not a dangerous offender and the girls were blamed for their behaviour.
We have a problem of stigma that goes back to the European notions that were brought to the country of a sense of superiority, of a sense of the savage Aboriginal person where there was a lot of gender discrimination and the girls were seen as sexual and savage. We still have that stigma and it is evident sometimes in the courts. I say we need a sea change because, when young girls who are vulnerable face the justice system, whether they are victims of crime or perpetrators, they are sometimes looked at through that lens of stigma. In that way, they are not protected in either case.
Senator Demers: That explanation is clear. Is the system working? Is it getting better? Do you see improvement? There is a lack of people to help and support, as you mentioned before, and lack of money, yes, but there is more than that. Do you feel the system is working? I do not know if you could ever say the problem is eliminated, but it seems the numbers are growing instead of shrinking. Is it because you do not have enough people to support you? Is that a fair question?
Ms. Cook: When you say the system, do you mean the judicial correctional system?
Senator Demers: I mean the system of rehabilitating those young girls. Are there enough people there or do they get into a situation of leaving jail and going right back to where they got themselves involved in those problems?
In a stronger system they would be given some kind of education or better direction. Do you have enough people to be able to help them out and direct them?
Ms. Cook: Again, that is an important question. It goes back to Ms. Corston's original point that it is complex and multi-faceted. We need a whole range of services, agencies, views, programs, attitudes, all of this working together, and the isolation of the systems is a problem. If you have child welfare here and the schools there and police there and no one is talking to each other, and also there is still a paternalistic attitude very much at play in the justice system, then it is not working well.
Young women and older women tell us what works well is to be able to not feel judged, feel supported, feel believed in, tough love, yes, but at the same time they want to be believed in and to have role models. Peers help a lot. Having people who had been through the system and got out and turned their life around in a positive way really helps a lot, as well as having those culturally relevant programs such as sweat ceremonies that people said really helped them a lot. We are not necessarily doing it in the right way and we should trust the Aboriginal communities to implement many of their own protocols.
Senator Demers: Thank you very much.
Senator Sibbeston: My first question is simply whether you have considered the government's approach with respect to criminal matters in our country and the emphasis on mandatory minimum sentences. Do you feel this will contribute to more Aboriginal people being sent to jail? Under the system, as you know, judges do not have discretion. Certain offences have mandatory minimum sentences. Can you comment on that?
Ms. Cook: It is very worrying for sure and we believe it will increase the number of people incarcerated and in remand. We are already concerned because in the fly-in communities people can stay in remand waiting for their court case to come up for a very long time, to the point where I think it is a human rights crisis. The time is not respected for due process.
When more people are incarcerated there is more double bunking. We have heard there is triple bunking at times. We think it creates pre-riot conditions. I would not want to be a guard in a prison in Canada right now. It is setting everyone up in a dangerous situation. We need to be concerned about Aboriginal people and about those who work in the facilities as well.
Senator Sibbeston: My other line of questioning is to do with alternatives to the present system. I was a lawyer and worked in the Northwest Territories. As a lawyer, my biggest contribution to the cause was being able to deal with people in their own languages and also knowing the culture of the people and bringing the background of the person who has been charged to the criminal system, including the judge, the prosecutor and so forth. There is a big gulf there and it is a problem.
I worked briefly in the mid-1990s to develop justice committees in the small communities, with the idea of Aboriginal people taking over their own justice system. I used to say to people in the communities, "Why have the RCMP and all these white people do your dirty work? Do it yourselves."
In the few years that I worked there, we were able to develop committees in a number of communities and we had circle sentencing and that has been very effective.
There has been a movement in our country with respect to trying to help Aboriginal people deal with offences themselves. In the States, the Navajo, for example, have been held up as a group of native people who have their own justice system, right from the judges to the policemen. They have their own laws and so forth.
Do you think, in our own country, there has been any real positive movement in that direction? The answer for native people is to do it themselves and solve their own problems. Would you comment on that?
Ms. Cook: There are some wonderful examples of restorative justice across the country and there are also wonderful examples of Aboriginal justice, which often is a form of restorative justice using traditional protocols and there are relationships between the two forms.
It is an issue that Aboriginal women's groups have also raised some flags about, in wanting to first make sure it is safe and make sure it is done in a way that will respect the primacy of the safety of women and children in communities as well. The fundamental tenet of that is this accountability measure. We know that Aboriginal justice world views differ from Western world views, whereas punishment, removal of a person for a time period, punishing them and then releasing them after they have done their time is part of the Western tradition. In the Aboriginal community they actually have to face the victim and make some kind of restitution to them. They are called to account. Some people in Aboriginal communities have complained that the non-Aboriginal justice system does not call for the same accountability. In a way, it lets the person off the hook. They do their time and they do it often in atrocious conditions that we are concerned about, without oversight, but they do not have to do any therapy. They do not have to face the victim and make amends.
There is a lot more that could be done in support for the Aboriginal protocols. We have seen programs cut, for example, that have been doing terrific work at the grassroots level with people. We hope those will continue and that they will follow local protocols and be informed by people on the ground. I do not think you can mandate that at a distance. People have their own protocols that they want to go back and find: their own justice models and their own ways.
The Chair: As a follow up, probably the Yukon has been the most successful long-term restorative justice program in the country.
Do you see different statistics of Aboriginal women incarcerated coming out of the Yukon than another provinces and territories?
Ms. Cook: I have not looked at that. There was a report from a Yukon women's group on justice, but I have not looked specifically at that.
The Chair: The other issue that has been raised in the Yukon from Aboriginal women has been what they feel is the overuse of restorative or community justice in particular, where they do not feel safe and whether or not there is an automatic gain of restorative justice once it is implemented, so just out of interest.
Senator Lovelace Nicholas: Thank you for your presentations.
You mentioned poverty and you mentioned education. Do you think some women are being incarcerated because they cannot afford lawyers? Would that be part of it?
Ms. Cook: Yes. We have even heard of people being incarcerated for food or in the winter because it is cold.
Poverty is a horrible thing. I do not know if anyone can imagine it if they have not lived with a hungry stomach, sleeping on a floor, especially as a woman being dependent maybe on an unsafe male. People do all sorts of things to survive.
Senator Lovelace Nicholas: Under education, do these women who are incarcerated have access to cultural awareness programs or any type of education like that?
Ms. Cook: I believe Corrections Canada does have protocols for access to cultural programs. Our one concern is if people are classified under very high security, as we know there is an over classification of Aboriginal women as high risk, high security, then they would not have access.
At one point I went to Grand Valley Institution. We were trying to let the women know about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission so they would have a chance, if they wanted to give a statement, and we were pleased at that moment that they allowed out, as a rare exception, a few women who were under a higher security classification, but that does not happen very often.
Senator Lovelace Nicholas: It is not available to all the women who are incarcerated, then.
Ms. Cook: That is right.
Senator Lovelace Nicholas: I think there is a problem with policing cutbacks in First Nations communities. Do you think, because of this, there will be more men and women incarcerated?
Ms. Corston: When I spoke about this house of justice that somebody told me about, it is a shift in thinking and moving away from funding things from a project-based perspective. We typically fund preventative programs on a project basis, but we do not do that with the courts or policing in urban centres. We do it with policing in First Nations communities because every project has a beginning and an end, and I think what happened with policing on reserve is that their project was coming to an end and there was a real fear.
Senator Lovelace Nicholas: That there would be more crime.
Ms. Corston: Yes, so that shift in terms of thinking of these things outside of project-based funding, that is a big piece that needs to change.
Senator Raine: Thank you very much, both of you. You have given us really good insight into the situation.
I want to go back to the communities, and I know there are a variety of different First Nations communities across our country, but if you take a typical small community, maybe 500 to 1,000 people, in those communities you have schools, churches, for instance, and you have usually community centres and elders. I know the important role that elders play.
What do you see as the role for the elders and those sort of in between? You have the younger kids coming up, just maybe 12 or 14 years old and stepping out a little bit, and then you have their mothers, probably in their early 30s, and then their elders, their mothers. There is a continuity of women in the families.
How is this strength passed on and how are the younger girls supported by the family situation?
Ms. Corston: We had a project at NWAC called Daughter Spirit that came out of the Sisters in Spirit initiative, which you might remember. Basically what that project was about was bringing youth and elders together and revitalizing that link for a lot of the youth. It was a bunch of small projects at the community level that were led by youth, and they were able to bring in the elders, whether it was a volleyball game, basketball game or hockey game or whatever, and the elders became part of those activities at the local level. The issue that they were trying to deal with was suicide prevention and building mental health strengths, and the youth-elder connection that was built as a result of that project was phenomenal.
I heard from a couple of youth who were personally impacted by the fact that they were able to connect with their elders and learn traditional protocols and traditional teachings through that connection. I think that was a really important part.
Ms. Cook: In terms of why that is so important in our reconciliation perspective, because what was lost, one of the things, of course, that happened, and you might know this, when Europeans came they brought a view, this hierarchical view that men were more important than women, sons were more important than daughters, property owners were more important than peasants. It sort of went down the line.
That was so different from the Aboriginal view, which saw the circle of relations and had roles, and equal but different roles that were respected. Women's roles in families and communities as transmitters, teachers and educators were lost. That is very much directly related to a lot of the traumas and violence and the lack of respect we see today. If a young boy or girl grows up not seeing their mother or aunties respected, that sets in play a whole series of problems and leads to a condition as well as to how they will treat women in the future.
These programs are critical, and it is about restitution as well, for returning and having the opportunity to regain that respect and the roles that were lost. When we were up in the Northwest Territories, some of the young girls told us they wanted to go on traditional hunts, and that was something that happened a long time ago, but then things changed through the residential schools, and when it returned only boys were hunting. Some of the female elders said they would take you, but they did not have the resources to do it. They said they want Canada to know — they knew I was coming back to Ottawa — that they want on-the-land programs and, as the elders, they want to be able to teach again to the young people.
Senator Raine: Those kinds of programs are not necessarily expensive. We are not talking about buying hockey equipment or something like that. We are talking about going out and learning how to find the food and the berries and all those kinds of things. I hope that there is some thought given to that.
Today is the one hundredth anniversary of the Big Brothers Big Sisters program in Canada. They had 100 young people, little brothers and little sisters, on the Hill. It is a great organization and it is mostly volunteers, but they have said they are looking at doing programming with Aboriginal communities. They have been welcomed and there are some pilot projects happening. There is a time in your life when you cannot talk to your mother; you do not want to talk to your mom. If there is another adult or an in-between person that you can confide in, it can really help. That sort of sisterhood is not just in the family, it is in the community. In terms of that kind of mentoring, are there any thoughts or anything happening that you know about?
Ms. Cook: I have not heard of that program. That is great, and I think we need a lot of programs that bring Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people together of all ages and all generations. It is shocking. There are still a number of communities that live side by side, but they do not interact. We did work called Pathways to Reconciliation that was supported by Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development. It was making films to bring an understanding of residential schools to non-Aboriginal youth across the country. To write the script, we wanted to have focus groups with Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal youth together. That was possible in some places, but not everywhere. Why not in this day and age in 2013? The trust is not always there. People feel judged sometimes, so there is still stigma, racism, discrimination.
There is a lot of work to do. Initiatives that take leadership and forge a new relationship are really important. Those young people might become the new justices of the future and then your police. That is also critical because we are saying it is really important. Those people who work in public safety and corrections have to understand the history of what happened in the country and be open-hearted in terms of developing the new relationship.
The Chair: As a follow-up to that, I have looked the education material that the TRC has developed with assistance of Aboriginal Affairs, and have compared it to the educational program that all grade 4 students in Australia are obligated to take in relation to their missing generation. Do you have any opinion as to why we have not taken the next step to making it mandatory that all young people — certain ages and grades — through our school system would be obligated to also learn about our past misdeeds as a country?
Ms. Cook: It was a recommendation from the interim report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. I am not sure if they used the word obligatory, but they were encouraging all schools to teach about the truth of the history. I am sure in the final report, which is due in 2014, those recommendations will be further defined. I think the Northwest Territories might have started already.
The Chair: Which is interesting, and I appreciate if anyone has taken up the mantle, particularly in the place I formerly lived in the Northwest Territories. However, realistically the vast majority of Canadians live within 100 miles of the border and the vast majority of Aboriginal people live 1,000 kilometres from the border. Personally, I think it is important that all Canadians see it.
Senator Enverga: This will be more like a follow-up to Senator White's question a while ago. Are there any Inuit, Metis or Aboriginal groups that have been more successful in this area because there is less incarceration? Would you say any particular group has a good news story? I know everything that was mentioned earlier was more like a sad story, but I want to know if there is any such thing as a good news story that you can relate to us. What has been successful and what part of the country is more successful than others?
Ms. Cook: It is a whole other study, because we brought women and girls who had been in jail to our circles and our focus was really what worked for them in turning their life around, given they had had this experience already. It was a different question, but that is very important. With suicide, people will do that. Suicide statistics are very high so people will ask where the communities are where suicide is low and learn from that. I imagine someone might have done that study, but I have not seen it. Certainly we cannot think all Aboriginal people are destined to be in jail. The majority of Aboriginal people do not go to jail or have run-ins with the law. We have to keep that in context.
Senator Enverga: Yes, but for those who are incarcerated, how many are successful in going back to their own community?
Ms. Cook: I have not seen a study. However, one thing I heard relating to youth being released from youth custody is that the workers in the youth corrections were so frustrated that they had nowhere to send the youth to. Often they had no housing afterward, so it was a huge gap. They were really worried because these worked very hard with the youth inside, tried to prepare them and became kind of attached to them as human beings. They were really worried and they would hear these youth were in shelters, the shelters were full. They were insecure and were on the street and it was just not helping.
Senator Enverga: The reason I am following this is I want to ensure that if there is ever any good news story, I would encourage that because it is more of a learning process. We want to model that so we can apply it to every other individual. If there is nothing, that is okay, though.
Ms. Corston: There are indicators. There has been research by Chandler and Lalonde who identified indicators of success. I cannot identify specific communities where it has been implemented, but cultural continuity is a huge indicator of successful individuals, whether it is education or that kind of thing. Chandler and Lalonde have done a lot of research in the area of indicators.
Senator Enverga: I am new to the committee. That would be a lot of help in how we can assist our incarcerated people.
Senator Raine: Ms. Cook, you said that in your circles you asked the question of people who came who had been incarcerated about what they experienced that kept them out. Could you share that with us?
Ms. Cook: Definitely. Not feeling judged was key, and having peers who had been through the system, having the advocates there to help them in practical ways. Housing was really important, people they felt they could confide in and trust, having support for the addiction that was long enough, so the short period was really a problem, having access to culture and traditions, having access to community support people who could open doors for them and show them what they could do after jail as well.
Then of course, we spoke to a lot of people who worked toward trying to prevent people from going into jail in the first place and often they were very effective. The interventions of Aboriginal court workers and the Gladue writers were really key. Those who worked, for example, with the Urban Butterflies program in B.C., which is an award-winning program that worked with young girls in child welfare specifically, Aboriginal girls, many who were having difficulty with the law as first time offenders. They had a form of transformative justice program with them where they would try to get into their head and find out what was going on at the time they committed that crime. It unpacked a world and they tried to see the person behind the criminal act.
Sometimes it was shoplifting; they might have stolen a shirt. Then they found out they stole a shirt because they wanted to look good for a boy to go to a party with, but found out that boy was actually a man and these were minors.
They started to get to know them and understand them, and that way they were actually much more able to help them and intervene in their lives and try to make a positive difference, get them into programs, doing crafting, beading, all sorts of circles, learning about culture traditions, positive peer culture and providing them alternatives to just having these predatory men around them in a negative way. Those were key.
Senator Patterson: Thank you for a very compelling presentation. I would like to follow up a bit on Senator Raine's question about those workshops. You also spoke with the girls and women in the workshops about what got them there to jail and what it was like. There is a lot of statistical information, but could you give us some narratives, as you do well, on what you heard, please?
Ms. Cook: They are very painful stories, often. I will say we are grateful that we actually had the support of Health Canada staff with us at these circles, the Indian residential school survivor society elders as well and resolution health support workers, because they were painful to tell.
People often came from very challenging families where addictions, neglect and abuse had been present. Some of the women had escaped violence and ended up on the streets. Insecure housing. Some of them had been involved in prostitution as a way to raise money then for the addictions. When we talk about the trauma behind the addictions, that is key.
A lot of them spoke about shame, that they felt tremendous shame. A lot of them had been in child welfare. They had been taken from their families. It was not always that there had been abuse in the families. Sometimes it had been poverty. They had been taken from their families largely because their families had been poor and considered by child welfare to not be adequate, and that is where the stigma and the racism comes in as well, during the whole Sixties Scoop. That allowed for the removal of children who lived in a house that was considered inferior by another standard.
The shame. People tended to blame themselves and felt very ashamed of the poverty that they had grown in or the violence that they had experienced. Many people spent many years in addictions. We had many residential school survivors and intergenerational survivors with us as well. They talked about the difference, sometimes very inconsistent upbringings, and they related that back to the residential schools. On the one hand, things might have been extremely rigid one day, very strict parenting, and then laissez-faire, nothing, loose, the next. It was difficult for people to find their grounding and balance.
Those who had children themselves, as we know many women in prison, the majority, are mothers, often repeated. That came down the generation. They were not there for their parents, and they felt shame about that. They felt horrible. At the time, of course, of the circles, many had gone through treatment, so finding the right kinds of treatment for addictions was key. That was very important. Many of them were in the process of either getting their children back or had their children back as well and were feeling much better about what they could contribute and give now to their grandchildren and breaking that cycle.
Senator Patterson: On a slightly different tack, your Gender Matters report was concluded in March of 2012. I am tempted to ask you if there has been any progress on the recommendations vis-à-vis the federal government. I also wanted to ask you about the Correctional Investigator's report that came out more recently on Aboriginal persons in the correctional system. Did that report mirror some of your findings, and do you have any comments about that report in relation to what you found in your work?
Ms. Cook: The main difference is Mr. Sapers' report was federal, so he looked at conditions within federal corrections. Our work was not specific to federal, so we spoke with people who had been involved in provincial and territorial corrections as well as federal, and youth, young offenders as well, and those who worked with them.
One of the main thrusts of our report was really recommending let us get as many people out of jail as we can. Let us stop people from going into jail to begin with, and let us look at what we can do instead. His job, as a correctional investigator, is to look specifically in the jails and look for abuses and disparities and problems there.
We thought there are so many reports already. We know that he puts out reports regularly that are very important. Louise Arbour, of course, put out an excellent report many years ago. We had the RCAP that had a section on justice. We had many that had been ignored. Largely the recommendations of many of these reports had been ignored. We did not want to just write another report about the problems within corrections federally. Our recommendation on that is implement the recommendations. Implement the accountability recommendations from the Louise Arbour report.
We need an oversight mechanism, a judicial mechanism, that has teeth and is responsible and accountable to Parliament. There were so many things that need to be done. We need to be very cautious about the isolation and segregation, which is a very concerning human rights problem, and the amount of time people are spending in isolation. We are concerned about remand. There are many things we are concerned about within the conditions, but our main focus was actually on what are the alternatives, how can we prevent and support the alternatives to jail.
The Chair: If I may, you are talking more about the fact that Mr. Sapers is downriver and you are trying to get us upriver right now.
Ms. Cook: I would not say downriver. I would say he is right on. He is right on spot.
The Chair: From a criminal justice perspective.
Ms. Cook: He is writing in the place that he is situated in, that he needs to be looking at, and we need someone to look at that, but we need someone to look at it who has a power where there is an accountability attached to it.
The Chair: If we look at where Mr. Sapers is on the river, if I may, we have talked a lot about gender incarceration, and we have talked about geographic incarceration, a few of us. Actually a few of us in this room, including Senator Watt, who is not here tonight, have talked about demographic incarceration, in other words facilities specific to a demographic to try to bring together programs that are more relevant culturally, linguistic, maybe even opportunistic in rehabilitation.
Has NWAC ever looked at any programs internationally? I do not think there are any nationally that are specifically demographic based. We had been talking about Inuit, to be fair, but I am not suggesting that if it would work for the Inuit community, it would not work for other Aboriginal communities as well. If the answer is no, I am okay.
Ms. Cook: We did have one presenter at one of our circles in B.C. He was a retired Crown prosecutor who presented on international dimensions of indigenous justice, and he had been involved in some research in a few different Latin American countries where indigenous groups were attempting to reinstate their own justice protocols, and that was wonderful. It was a wonderful presentation. It was really important. He felt that Canada actually could do a lot more in that regard. We have started to some extent to recognize some protocols, but we could go much further.
Senator Dyck: On that note, I wonder whether the healing lodges would be able to do that kind of programming. They are specific. The healing lodges I am aware of are specific for the Prairies, specific for the Prairie culture, the Cree culture and the other cultures on the Prairies. In a sense, we do have some, but they would not fit for up North because the culture on the Prairies is different than it is up North.
The Chair: We have these constructed buildings that incarcerate people, and typically they are based on a whole number of things, but almost never demographics. I should not say that, rather, almost never based on demographics from a cultural or historical perspective. It is about gender or geographic. I was trying to find one that would fit, as we have these discussions as to whether we could convince others that it is important.
Ms. Cook: The one in Canada, of course, that gets a lot of international attention is the one in Saskatchewan. Dale came to speak; he is the horse whisperer. He works in one of the healing lodges helping incarcerated women in a therapeutic way through developing relationships with animals, empathy and compassion, and he works with horses. It is a traditional Aboriginal program. We know people who have come from around the world to look at that program, and we included that as we an example of something positive in our report.
Senator Munson: Thank you for being here tonight. It is a good conversation, but that is what it is — a conversation. I would like to follow up a bit on Senator Patterson's question.
When you have a good night's sleep, the glass is half full; when it is getting late at night, the glass is half empty.
I took a look at your report, and it is March 2012. I am just thinking that in the year since your report was released and these recommendations are here, what has changed for Aboriginal women?
Ms. Cook: We are concerned; that is for sure. On the justice front, we are concerned that we are losing ground. We were very concerned with Bill C-10 and the impact that will have on increasing over incarceration. We have not seen the numbers drop, so they are either staying the same or might be increasing.
Given the fact that we have so many young people, an increasingly large number of young people and more remand centres being built, we are worried that the situation in terms of justice is deteriorating. It does put people in dangerous situations, and we must remember that they will come out of jail. We cannot just put people away for X amount of time in overcrowded, dangerous conditions and expect them to come out as wonderful citizens, and we will all pay the price on their release. We need to think of the alternatives.
I wish I could say that, in the year since this report, we have had all these wonderful new initiatives. In fact, we are concerned; the response to the Howard Sapers report was very worrying. It was almost a non-response.
We should be concerned in Canada that in the past ten years there has been a doubling in the rate of Aboriginal people incarcerated. We should be extremely concerned about the high rates of young Aboriginal people incarcerated. We cannot afford a non-response, and, particularly, if we are serious about reconciliation, we need to address the reconciliation within a justice framework, and that involves some kind of restitution and recognition of the Aboriginal protocols.
Senator Munson: "We cannot afford a non-response." What does that mean?
Ms. Cook: We cannot afford not to be shocked. It worries me when we hear these numbers and these disparities, and if it does not rustle feathers, as a country, we have to ask and assume that we can do better. We should be disturbed enough to want to make a change. To assume that Aboriginal people have high incarceration rates, or say that "Aboriginal people, those numbers are going again" — we cannot do that. I would say that there is racism and a stigma behind that, which fails to see the gravity, which stigmatizes Aboriginal people as that is just because they are Aboriginal that there is high incarceration. We have to be shocked by it, and say we can do better as a country.
Senator Munson: Where does Idle No More fit in this conversation?
Ms. Cook: I have not heard any of the Idle No More claims associated with this particular issue of justice. It may be just because I have not heard that. Maybe they are out there and I have not read the right paper at the right time and missed it.
However, I guess in the big picture, Idle No More arose because people were feeling frustrated that the dialogue was broken, that too many bills and policies were being passed without Aboriginal people's free, prior and informed consent or input, not being at the table as equal players. Again, reconciliation is about co-presence; it is about restoring an equal relationship.
When laws and policies are passed, regardless if they are justice or any in any other area, without consultation, again the paternalism comes in. There is a sense that Aboriginals are wards of the state; they are not equal partners; we do not have to consult. I think that is what made people angry enough to say, "No, you have to listen to us. We have to be at the table. If you are going to talk about changing the Indian Act or the waters act, we have to be at the table as equal partners."
I would say the same thing about justice. Aboriginal people have to be at the table and included in these conversations. We were not consulted on Bill C-10. I do not know of any Aboriginal organizations, AFN or any others, that were consulted about Bill C-10, and it affects Aboriginal people so profoundly. You just look at the numbers. We know Aboriginal people are affected profoundly, so we have to be consulted and be at the table.
Senator Munson: Tonight we are listening. We are having the conversation, as I said before, and it is good to listen to the conversation and be part of hearing the recommendations, but has anyone enacted any of your recommendations that we see in this report?
Ms. Cook: No, not that I am aware of.
Senator Munson: Thank you.
Senator Raine: There are a couple of things that bother me. One is when you hear people in the business community talking about the Aboriginal birth rate being high, and that is our labour force for the future, and is it not wonderful. Then you speak to other people who are on the ground in the communities who say, yes, but the rate of FAS babies being born is as high now as probably other years. We all know that fetal alcohol syndrome is very likely to wind up in trouble with the law. Then we know that help in the early years, especially help with a young person or not so young, if that person gets pregnant and continues to drink, then it is just so sad.
Are there support programs? These can be identified by public health and health agencies early on, and interventions can be done. With the children who are born, if you start school in grade 1 and you are already behind, you never catch up. With respect to early childhood education programs, the Head Start programs, do you see any increase in programming for those kinds of situations?
Ms. Cook: There is one community in Alert Bay, and I really liked the approach because it was very a holistic way of working. We had one of their members on our steering committee for a while. They had this sort of cradle-to-grave approach, so they had very early childhood intervention programs. They had preschool programs, they had Head Start and they worked with young families and single parents. They worked with the teenagers at risk. They had Wednesday night suppers with elders and seniors in the community. They had a very global perspective. They also had restorative justice programs, and it takes all of that.
With some of the emergency response programs, social services gets involved in this kind of situation, and we are worried that if they remove a child because of fear of a mother drinking, but without helping the whole family and the mother, then we are setting up a condition again of Sixties Scoop, and we know that that has not worked, either.
We need a holistic approach. If there is fetal alcohol, there is a family a risk there and we need to help the whole family.
Senator Raine: Has that program at Alert Bay been successful?
Ms. Cook: They have managed to bring a lot more of their children back into the community, and the same with the Saulteaux. They had many children taken away.
They were able, through restoring many programs within their own community and strengthening people within their community, to work in a multi-dimensional and multi-faceted way. They were able to develop relationships with justices as well. They invited judges to their big house and said, "We want the person back in our community. We will work with them." After developing those relationships, in many cases, judges agreed.
There are so many different lenses and angles.
Senator Raine: Are you in a position at NWAC where you can pass along their model and promote that in other communities?
Ms. Cook: I do not think they even call it a "model" yet. It is not like the hollow water model. It has not become a model per se.
Their approach is very global. The one challenge, though, is that funding is April to April in some cases for programs, and it relies to some degree on volunteers and people who overextend themselves and get exhausted, too. Some of the people whom we work with and have partnered with across the country are the most incredible people who do the hardest work in challenging circumstances, but we need to support them better.
Senator Raine: Yes, pay now or pay later.
The Chair: With the pay now or pay later model, I want to thank you both very much for being here this evening. We could have been here for hours more.
I would ask steering to stick around for five minutes more after we conclude.
Thank you very much.
(The committee adjourned.)