Moved second reading of Bill S-213, An Act to amend the Department for Women and Gender Equality Act.

She said: Honourable senators, I want to thank Elise Hurtubise-Loranger and Charles Feldman, who are the parliamentary counsel in the Office of the Law Clerk, for their expertise, direction and help with Bill S-213. I also want to thank my staffers James Campbell and Ovadia Lawrenchuk for their help and their support. I want to acknowledge the role many women across Canada have played in championing women’s rights, including this bill.

Honourable senators, I rise today to move second reading of the bill, an act to amend the Department for Women and Gender Equality Act. I would like to begin by highlighting why this slight but powerful and timely piece of legislation is so critical.

This bill would enshrine the requirement of the Minister for Women and Gender Equality to table a statement that sets out potential effects of a bill on women and particularly Indigenous women.

This gender-lensed analysis or statement would be a requirement for every future piece of legislation to assess the gender-specific impacts of policies, legislation and programs on women and men. This allows decision makers to consider gender differences.

You will note the specific mention in this bill to “Indigenous women.” I would like to illustrate the importance of this by referring to an analogy from page 151 of Kimberlé Crenshaw’s Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex:

. . . Imagine a basement which contains all people who are disadvantaged on the basis of race, sex, class, sexual preference, age and/or physical ability. These people are stacked—feet standing on shoulders—with those on the bottom being disadvantaged by the full array of factors, up to the very top, where the heads of all those disadvantaged by a singular factor brush up against the ceiling. Their ceiling is actually the floor above which only those who are not disadvantaged in any way reside. In efforts to correct some aspects of domination, those above the ceiling admit from the basement only those who can say that “but for” the ceiling, they too would be in the upper room. A hatch is developed through which those placed immediately below can crawl. Yet this hatch is generally available only to those who — due to the singularity of their burden and their otherwise privileged position relative to those below—are in the position to crawl through. Those who are multiply-burdened are generally left below unless they can somehow pull themselves into the groups that are permitted to squeeze through the hatch.

As parliamentarians, will our efforts facilitate the inclusion only of those who are positioned to squeeze through this “hatch” or those for whom it can be said, “when they enter, we all enter”? What is this ceiling that, as parliamentarians, we need to pay particular attention to? It is important to know, as this ceiling prevents many from getting to the upper room and thereby having the privilege of substantive equality in their lives.

As senators, we make decisions and amendments on bills and laws that affect Canadians. We use a system to assess the impacts that laws have on Canadians: our committees. That is why the selection of witnesses is so important; the witnesses help us assess the potential impacts, positive or negative, of initiatives on Canadians, on communities and on our country. The witnesses help to identify risks and make recommendations for mitigation strategies. All of the work we do affects Canadians, and using a gendered lens helps us consider the full impact of government bills and initiatives from the perspectives of diverse people, and to identify potential challenges at an early stage.

It was through this lens that I saw the negative impacts that resource extraction specifically had on Indigenous women with Bill C-69. We all knew that the impacts of resource extraction did not affect everyone equally and that a certain segment of the population, the Indigenous women, were affected differently. It was our responsibility to know what barriers existed that impeded equality. It was also critical that we didn’t — and don’t — reinforce historical inequities.

With the reference “particularly Indigenous women,” this bill aims to mitigate some of the shortcomings of a single-axis perspective of disadvantage by facilitating the inclusion of those who stand at the intersection of multiple sources of disadvantage and thereby include the voices who can best articulate the shortcomings and considerations that are relevant to their situation — in this case, First Nations, Métis, Inuit and non-status women.

The First Nations, Métis, Inuit and non-status women have been, and remain, inordinately affected by the social conditions in which they live, because these social conditions were shaped and continue to be shaped directly or indirectly by the Indian Act. The social conditions that affect First Nations, Métis, Inuit and non-status women not only include features of individuals and households, such as income, educational attainment, family structure, housing and transportation resources, but also include the features of communities, both on- and off-reserve, such as the prevalence and depth of poverty, residential and geographic segregation, rates of crime, accessibility of safe places to play and exercise, availability of transportation for jobs that provide a living wage, welfare status, availability of good schools and sources of nutritious food.

As was evident through testimony on Bill C-69, countless resource extraction sites, toxic waste disposal and environmental degradation are situated near Indigenous communities. No other group has had to experience living with ongoing trauma from so many different institutions.

Martha Cabrera, who works on trauma recovery programs in Nicaragua, describes it best when she refers to her society as “multiply wounded, multiply traumatized, multiply mourning” after experiencing several decades of conflict. The ongoing collective multiply traumatized and grieving can be witnessed through the missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, children in care, over-incarceration of Indigenous peoples, suicides, sex trafficking, environmental and climate degradation, increased cancers and mental health issues.

In the book Little Book of Trauma Healing: When Violence Strikes And Community Security Is Threatened, author Carolyn Yoder states on page 13:

Historical trauma is the “cumulative emotional and psychological wounding over the lifespan and across generations emanating from massive group trauma.”

She continues:

The “event” or institution is in the past, but the effects are cumulative and are seen in individual and group attitudes and behaviors in succeeding generations. . . . Cultural traumas are created when attempts are made to eradicate part or all of a culture or people. This has happened for many native and indigenous groups worldwide.

Honourable senators, in getting back to the bill itself, the statements generated by this bill would indicate whether or not there are potential effects of a bill on women, particularly Indigenous women, and if there were, what those effects are.

This statement would be tabled in the house in which the government bill originated no later than two sitting days after the bill is introduced. Furthermore, this bill would also require a gender-lens analysis to be undertaken by the minister for all private members’ bills once they are referred to committee within their respective house of Parliament. This stage of committee referral was chosen as the statement trigger for PMB, as it is indicative that a bill is meaningfully progressing through its house. For PMB, the analysis must be tabled in the house of origin no later than 10 sitting days after the bill is introduced.

To close any loopholes, the minister would finally be required to table an additional statement on amendments that are made to a bill, theoretically ensuring that any potential effects on women are identified from first reading to Royal Assent. Of equal importance is the requirement of the minister to publish every statement on the departmental website, making them accessible to all Canadians.

The enhanced responsibility bestowed upon the minister has recent precedent; specifically, a similar clause is used in subsection 4.2(1) of the Department of Justice Act, which requires the minister to ascertain whether any of the provisions of new legislation are inconsistent with the purposes and provisions of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. That minister is also required to report any such inconsistency to the House of Commons at the first convenient opportunity.

It has previously been insinuated that this Charter statement would encompass gender analysis for government bills. This is incorrect. To be clear, Charter statements do not list all of the possible implications a bill could have on the rights and freedoms described in the Charter. Rather, they focus on only the biggest and the most immediately apparent impacts on Charter rights. An analysis under Bill S-213, in contrast, requires that a focus be put on how the proposed legislation impacts women and Indigenous women specifically, which could serve to ensure the rights of these groups are not overlooked in broader analyses of proposed legislation. Moreover, since Aboriginal rights are not contained within the Charter, Charter statements do not outline the impact a bill would have on these rights, nor would Charter statements necessarily address equality issues with respect to these rights that could be impacted by a bill.

Colleagues, I would now like to address why this bill does not mention any specific instruments through which to undertake this analysis. This bill does not expressly mention gender-based analysis, the Charter, the Beijing Declaration or any other tool, domestic or international. The reason for that is one of prudence. I wanted to ensure that this bill is protected against change, essentially rendering it future-proof. If it were to mention the government’s gender-based analysis and a new or better technique is developed, the statute would need to be amended to keep it current. The bill, in giving discretion to the minister, ensures that analyses undertaken do not fall out of step with trends in policy analysis. The minister will be expected to use the most current and relevant means of undertaking this gender-based analysis, whether that be other statutes and legislation, declarations, agreements, treaties and so on.

Any time you give discretion to the minister, there is a risk that a narrow-minded minister could interpret this provision in an under-inclusive way. However, that is where Parliament plays a role in questioning and pressing the minister on their statement, if it becomes evident that they only engaged in this responsibility in a half-hearted way.

Colleagues, in the 2015 Fall Reports of the Auditor General of Canada under Report 1, Implementing Gender-Based Analysis, the finding was that:

Overall, we found that in 20 years since the government committed to applying gender-based analysis (GBA) to its policy decisions, a GBA framework has been implemented in only some federal departments and agencies. In the departments and agencies that have implemented a GBA framework, we found that the analyses performed were not always complete and that the quality of the analyses was not consistent. This finding is similar to our finding in 2009.

The auditor continues:

However, the government did not make it mandatory for federal departments and agencies to conduct gender-based analysis and did not give authority to Status of Women Canada to enforce its application.

In the recommendation 1.61, the auditor states:

The Privy Council Office, Status of Women Canada, and the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, to the extent of their respective mandates and working with all federal departments and agencies, should take concrete actions to identify and address barriers that prevent the systematic conduct of rigorous gender-based analysis. Such actions should address barriers that prevent departments and agencies from taking gender-based analysis into consideration during the development, renewal, and assessment of policy, legislative, and program initiatives, so that they can inform decision makers about existing or potential gender considerations in their initiatives.

All three agreed. In the recommendation 1.63, the auditor recommends that:

Status of Women Canada should assess the resources it needs to deliver its gender-based analysis mandate and assign sufficient resources to its periodic assessments of and reporting on gender-based analysis.

The Status of Women was in agreement.

In 2019, the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, in consultation with the Women and Gender Equality Canada, developed a primer on Integrating Gender-Based analysis Plus into Evaluation: A Primer (2019). The purpose of the document was to provide advice for evaluators, particularly those at the junior and intermediate levels, on how to integrate GBA+ into every stage of Government of Canada evaluations, in order to support commitments and directions. The document is a general discussion of each key stage of an evaluation: planning, conducting and reporting.

Honourable senators, currently speaking, the memorandum to cabinet indicates that proposals for new bills must include a gender-based analysis. Although this is a positive step forward, it is insufficient for several reasons. The first is that this analysis is not a statutory requirement, so this government or any future government can stop the practice at any time. Moreover, the results of this internal GBA analysis are not public and there is nothing stopping cabinet from proceeding with a proposal for which the GBA analysis is not positive, or the analysis is not done at all; ill practices that may be happening now. Finally, this internal analysis, if done, is only being undertaken for government legislation and not PMB at the present time.

Through the requirements of this bill, the undertaking of a gender-lensed analysis would be enshrined into law and not determined by the whim of the government. It would require that the analysis be made public and it would ensure an analysis was done for all legislation; government and private members’ bills alike.

Colleagues, as our world views come from different contexts, I feel it is important to understand the real-world application of this bill. Equality and equity for Indigenous and other women means equality and equity in real conditions, in material outcomes, and therein lies the need for a consistently applied gender-lensed analysis. It is my hope and belief that other women — and men for that matter — within this chamber will add their voices to mine over the course of debate on this bill and share their own stories and perspectives of why this bill is so crucial.

The perspective that I bring, colleagues, is that of a First Nations woman who grew up in the reserve system and whose life was controlled by the Indian Act. I didn’t see the inequality and marginalization as something wrong. We were treated differently in residential school and on the reserve from the others who lived among us, such as teachers, nurses, nuns and priests, and I came to accept that inequality was the norm for us Indians and I didn’t seek to challenge it then.

The need for gender-lensed analysis as an additional protection and oversight for all women in Canada is important. Within that context, First Nations, Métis, Inuit and non-status historical and current oppression is unique in Canada, hence the need to highlight “particularly for Indigenous women.”

As our colleague Senator Boyer stated in her 2015 document entitled Culturally Relevant Gender Based Analysis and Assessment Tool, at page 4:

Section 35(4) of the Constitution Act, 1982 provides that notwithstanding any other provision, the Aboriginal and treaty rights referred to in subsection (1) are guaranteed equal to male and female persons. This is a fundamental constitutional recognition of the equality of Aboriginal women, and we find a similar fundamental acknowledgment of that equality in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Section 25 of the Charter prevents the guarantees of the Charter from detracting from Aboriginal treaty and other rights and freedoms; section 25 is subject to section 28 of the Charter, which provides that all Charter rights are guaranteed equally to women and men. Thus, the Aboriginal rights protected by section 25, like those protected by section 35(1), must be made available on an equal basis to women. Not only do sections 35(4) and 28 protect the position of Aboriginal women within Aboriginal polities, but section 15 of the Charter guarantees that Aboriginal women cannot be discriminated against vis-à-vis non-Aboriginals. For Aboriginal women, the development of a culturally relevant gender based analysis is therefore a constitutional obligation.

Honourable senators, as parliamentarians we need to re-examine and challenge the idea of equality and claims to fairness, and that this ideal applies to all Canadians. It doesn’t. We need to disrupt the ideas of a monoculture, including assimilation, as well as universality or pan-Canadian approaches as solutions. These approaches have never worked due to the lack of equity for those groups who require the resources needed to overcome the barriers and challenges that have been placed in their way. When all women are treated as a homogenous group, having a homogenous interest, it contributes to the invisibility of Indigenous women and the marginalization of their concerns and voices.

The right to vote and status were closely tied to gender as well. Indigenous women were excluded from the Canadian suffragette movement, which was dominated by middle- and upper-class White women. For all of their important work, leaders in the Canadian suffragette movement, specifically Nellie McClung and Emily Murphy, worked to keep female Indigenous voices out of the arena.

I left residential school as a young woman without life skills, without critical thinking skills, without parenting skills, without budgeting skills and without a safety net or knowing what it meant to be a human or a woman. I entered society as an easy target for predators, much like the children in care today. The marginalization and vulnerability make it easier for others to commit violent acts toward us without repercussion. Gender-based violence is intimately tied to analysis with a gender lens. Gender-based violence is a significant barrier to gender equality. Gender-based violence is a reality that I first encountered in residential school and remains so prevalent in society today, including here on Parliament Hill.

This is further explained by author Cynthia C. Wesley-Esquimaux within the book Restoring the Balance, which states on page 19:

As First Nations people became isolated from meaningful contacts with the externalized world, and increasingly cut off from inner traditional social meanings, their world views faltered and diminished. In effect, First Nations people began to walk backwards into the future, unarmed with the social and psychological strengths that would have been passed to their children if their societies had remained intact.

She continues on page 23:

For First Nations people, loss of their cultural identity was not an abrupt event, but continued in one form or another through centuries of pain and suffering, and so they were never able to reach a full stage of recovery in the cycle of grieving.

Still from the book Restoring the Balance, on page 16 it says:

Native women were removed from their traditional roles and responsibilities and pushed to the margins of their own societies. The missionaries brought into the New World an old-European social hierarchy where “a woman’s proper place was under the authority of her husband and that a man’s proper place was under the authority of the priests.”

Colleagues, when we came out of residential school, we were ill-equipped to understand ourselves as women in either the traditional cultural role or in the western role. Introducing this bill is one measure toward creating stability out of the social and economic chaos for First Nations women. It is an attempt at creating a new social reality out of unfavourable circumstances that have been thrust upon us through policy and law. It is a chance for lawmakers to reverse what was done and to do right.

In a policy paper entitled Indigenous Gender-based Analysis for Informing the Canadian Minerals and Metals Plan, Adam Bond and Leah Quinlan of the Native Women’s Association of Canada state on page 4:

Indigenous women have unique and more proximate social and cultural relationships with nature than non-Indigenous groups. The intersectionality of their gender and indigeneity equip Indigenous women and girls with special roles, knowledge and responsibilities, but also expose them to greater risks. The socio-cultural relationships of Indigenous women with nature and their physiology result in pronounced negative effects of local mining-related environmental impacts.

They continue later on page 4:

The purposeful exclusion of Indigenous women from community decision making, consultations, and negotiations with the private sector perpetuate the continued disproportionate negative environmental and social-economic effects of industrial activities on Indigenous women and girls. Consultation processes require good faith on the part of both the Crown and community. The marginalization of the voices and concerns of Indigenous women from these processes undermine the legitimacy of the ultimate decisions and agreements.

Sexual violence, harassment and discrimination are prevalent realities for Indigenous women that are often exacerbated by the presence of industrial projects, including mining projects. The persistence of “rigger culture” in mining work sites and work camps perpetuates a form of racism and misogyny the undermines the human worth of Indigenous women and exposes them to heinous and entirely intolerable acts of sexual violence and discrimination. Whatever the positive economic effects of mining activities are or may be, the continued prevalence of these offences slides the scale firmly against a net socio-economic benefit for Indigenous women.

The failure of mining companies to exterminate rigger culture and the failure of governments to impose adequate administrative conditions and legislative and regulatory requirements to protect Indigenous women is not only a mammoth burden for Indigenous women to shoulder, it is a major obstacle for the industry to access a much-needed workforce and stands firmly in the way of developing trust-based relationships with local communities. Ultimately, so long as the presence of mining activities constitutes a threat of sexual violence, there cannot be a reasonable conclusion that the industry is a positive force for Indigenous women and girls. No community can ever be reasonably expected to support a project that puts their women and children at risk of rape.

Honourable senators, this shows that when capitalism is a major component in bills, those bills will require these critical gender considerations to be applied in future federal policies and laws. While I use the example here of the impacts of the resource industry on Indigenous women, it is important to stress that there are other areas, such as health, law, geography, et cetera, that impact different groups of women in unique and complex ways. In some circumstances, the intersectionality of capitalism, health, geography and law, with identity, gender and indigeneity, affects people as is shown above. In the CRI-VIFF no. 6, January 2011, it states:

This means that girls and young women often find themselves at the crossroads (intersecting sites) of various systems of oppression such as patriarchy, capitalism and colonialism as they encounter different forms of violence related to these systems simultaneously.

Honourable senators, the ever-changing relationships between governments and First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples, and between industry and these Indigenous groups, makes it difficult to challenge the status quo. What is the status quo? It is the continuing dependency of the Indigenous populations and it persists in the face of concerted efforts to address it.

In her paper, Separate but Unequal: The Political Economy of Aboriginal Dependency, Frances Widdowson states on page 1:

Despite the serious nature and pervasiveness of aboriginal dependency, the subject has not been an area studied extensively in Canadian political economy. Instead —

Frances Widdowson continues:

. . . Instead, most of the analysis of aboriginal marginalization and deprivation has occurred outside the discipline, where the expropriation of aboriginal lands by European settlers and the destruction of native traditions by the Canadian state are advanced as the dominant explanations. The focus is on the racist attitudes of Non-Aboriginals, rather than examining how the historical requirements of capitalism have influenced the current circumstances of aboriginal peoples.

She goes on to ask:

. . . why [did] aboriginal peoples became marginalized after the fur trade, while the rest of the country developed[?] Since labour shortages existed in Canada during the 19th Century, why weren’t the natives proletarianized and integrated into the emerging economy, instead of being sidelined by workers from Europe?

A complex and tragic division dominates Canada today. Canada has emerged on one side as a pattern of great and increasing wealth, but First Nations, especially First Nations women, have yet to attain this; restrictive policies and legislation had cut them off before they could also go through the great movement of economic and social momentum. The gap between the rich and poor has become the most tragic and urgent problem in Canada today and Indigenous women continue to be the hardest hit by this reality, as is evidenced by research.

Honourable senators, changes produced haphazardly by colonialism in Indigenous communities didn’t produce a new and coherent form of society as it did in other parts of Canada. The colonial impact introduced problems that offered immense difficulty in achieving any solutions. There were and there remain obstacles placed by federal and provincial departments that ensure change in the social and political environment among First Nations was and continue to be made difficult, and the result is that a dual society was formed. First Nations were caught between a world that had died and a new world that could not yet be born, and this is a recipe for psychological and social strain. Today, First Nations continue to be suspended between contradictory worlds of someone else’s making, all because of the land and her resources — the greatest asset Canada has — and because Canada has not honoured the treaties.

In resource-rich areas, First Nations remain in an apparently unbreakable deadlock. Breaking out of this deadlock would allow the forces of modernization to flow through First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities. Yet, being intentionally placed in a powerless position allowed industry to overwhelm First Nations communities when these communities were “in the way.” Research has found mostly negative outcomes regarding social, economic, cultural and health impacts for Indigenous and non-Indigenous women, when a resource development project is situated near their community. These include child care challenges, temporary low-skilled and low-paying jobs, increases in violence and harassment, increases in sex work, homelessness, lack of affordability of housing, decreasing health resources due to the influx of workers, and so on. Again, this is but one facet of life where discriminatory policies result in excessive hardships for women to deal with.

There is a term used by Steve Lerner to describe places as “sacrifice zones.” These are low-income and racialized communities shouldering more than their fair share of environmental harms related to pollution, contamination, toxic waste and heavy industry. In the Senate, do we create our own type of sacrifice zones or support the existing ones by not taking into consideration how legislation we consider and pass affects the marginalized and the oppressed? How do we use the power and privilege bestowed on us to address the disparities in these environmental burdens? We need to take resistance by First Nations, Métis and Inuit seriously, rather than treating the concerns and protests as merely obstructionist.

Honourable senators, recognizing the extent of the problem and calling attention to it is only the most basic step toward actually addressing it. To stop there is an overt abuse of the privilege that creates and reinforces a flawed system. It is on us to go beyond this at every opportunity. With that, I see the impacts of Bill S-213 as twofold. The first is creating equity amongst all Canadian women. How has privilege afforded equality to one group of women and why are certain other groups left behind?

The underlying issues and individual needs of underserved and vulnerable populations must be effectively addressed by ensuring policies do not discriminate against marginalized groups. This includes the unique needs of all women and girls, First Nations, Métis and Inuit, LGBTQ2 and gender nonconforming people, those living in northern, rural and remote communities, people with disabilities, newcomers, children and youth, and seniors. I am sure women and men of different backgrounds and experiences can think of ways in which this bill would bring equity for these and other voiceless groups.

Alongside equity amongst all Canadian women, the second step this bill will take is to ensure equity of women to men. These two steps will naturally occur at the same time, as every instance during which a gender lens is thoroughly applied to legislation. It ensures women of all walks of life will be further protected from any negative consequences, intended or not. Once these steps are taken and equity is achieved, that is when we begin to operate on a sustained level of equality amongst all Canadians. Equality is the foundation from which everyone can lead happy, healthy and fulfilling lives.

It is said that a rising tide lifts all boats. I view this bill as the rising tide, which will inevitably work to lift all women and, by extension, all Canadians to new levels of equality and fairness, free of discrimination and individual and collective deficit.

Honourable senators, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. It is time to act to prevent further avoidable, discriminatory, policy-based and legislation-driven issues at the outset to avoid the need for future generations to correct our wrongs.

As First Nations, Métis, Inuit and non-status peoples, we want substantive equality and equity with all Canadians. There should be no place for inequity in this land of opportunity with a history of treaty relations.

I urge you to join me in supporting Bill S-213 and the consistent application of analysis with a gender lens to all future legislation. Thank you.

Yes.

Thank you for the question. I actually was so intent on my speech, to give it the proper spirit and soul that it required, that I didn’t notice that there were conversations going on. I know that it happens, and I make it a practice to listen to people when they have made the effort to give a 45- or 50‑minute speech, because it honours the work they do and we’re here to support each other. Thank you.