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.

Status of Women Canada was in agreement.

In 2019, the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, in consultation with Women and Gender Equality Canada, developed 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 in not a statutory requirement, so this or any future government can stop the practice at any time. Moreover, the results of this internal GBA are not public and there is nothing stopping the cabinet from proceeding with a proposal for which the GBA 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 private members’ bills 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 — including 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 on 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 — teachers, nurses, nuns and priests — and I came to accept that inequality was the norm for us Indians and I didn’t challenge that.

The need for gender-lensed analysis as an additional protection and oversight for all women in Canada is important. Within that context, First Nations, Metis, 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 has stated at page 4 of her 2007 document entitled, Culturally Relevant Gender Based Analysis and Assessment Tool:

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 equally to male and female persons. This is a fundamental constitutional recognition of the equality of Aboriginal women, and we find a similar fundamental acknowledgement 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 ideal 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 resources to overcome the barriers and challenges that have been placed in their way.

When all women are treated as a homogeneous group having a homogeneous 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.

It should be noted that, historically, Indigenous women had a very different traditional role than their European counterparts. This is described, in part, by author Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux within the book, Restoring the Balance, which states, on page 16:

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.”

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. . . .

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 . . . The persistence of “rigger culture” in . . . work camps perpetuates a form of racism and misogyny [that] undermines the human worth of Indigenous women —

— and girls —

— 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 bill is about minimizing the deleterious effects while maximizing the benefits in the environmental, social and cultural realms of exploration and resource activities.

This shows that when capitalism is a major component in bills, those bills will require 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 and so on 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 in the 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.

Colleagues, when it comes to 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, Metis 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; 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 oppressed? How do we use the power and privilege we have been bestowed to address the disparities in environmental burdens? We need to take resistance by First Nations, Metis 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 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-218 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, Metis and Inuit people; LGBTQ2 and gender-nonconforming people; those living in northern, rural and remote communities; people with disabilities; newcomers; children and youth and seniors.

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 from 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 can begin to operate on a sustained level of equality amongst all Canadians. Equality is the foundation from which everyone can lead happy and fulfilling lives.

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, Metis, Inuit and non-status peoples — the most vulnerable — we want substantive equality and equity on par with other Canadians. There should be no place for inequity in this land of opportunity with a history of treaty relations. Unfortunately, the sidelining of First Nations, Metis, Inuit and non-status peoples — and especially the women — from economic activity, employment and culturally appropriate education is a reality that needs to be addressed. Remedying this, in part, will be one of the many accomplishments of this bill.

I urge you to join me in supporting Bill S-218 and the consistent application of a gender-lens analysis to all future legislation.

I just wanted to mention that I’m meeting with a group of women on Thursday, and they have developed their own Indigenous GBA. The women are doing this to protect themselves because nobody else is protecting them. Isn’t it egregious that they have to do that? We are trying to do our part in the Indigenous community to move forward. We are not just sitting there. I urge you to join me and support this bill. Thank you.