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IWFA Committee Report

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CHAPTER TWO — SCOPE AND SEVERITY OF
VIOLENCE AGAINST ABORIGINAL WOMEN AND
GIRLS IN CANADA

Aboriginal women and girls are among the most vulnerable in Canadian society.[10] Statistics show that they are significantly disadvantaged, particularly with regard to access to housing, education and employment. Aboriginal women and girls are also more likely than their non-Aboriginal counterparts to be victims of violence both within the family unit and outside their home.

Violence against Aboriginal women and girls is a serious concern for us all. The Committee learned that many of them are exposed to violence on a daily basis. Throughout our study, witnesses discussed the many factors that increase the vulnerability of Aboriginal women and girls. These factors, discussed in the next chapter, are complex and interrelated.

From the outset, it is important to mention that the statistics available in Canada on violence against Aboriginal women and girls reflect only part of a much more serious problem. The scope of the violence is not fully understood nor is it quantified. The under-reporting of incidents of violent victimization, particularly in cases of domestic violence, is a long recognized problem in Canada. However, under-reporting is probably a more serious problem in the case at hand because of the historically strained relationship between the police and Aboriginal communities and the difficulty still today that members of these communities have trusting police and believing the police will protect them.

Police were viewed in those days as the people who came and took the children away. We’re still living with that. We’re still trying to convince communities that we are there to support and help them. The residual effect of those beliefs is still common in a lot of our communities, so it’s an uphill battle for us to convince them that we need to move beyond that.[11]

A. TROUBLING FINDINGS

Year after year, data released by Statistics Canada shows that Aboriginal women and girls are more likely to be victims of violence than their non-Aboriginal counterparts.

One manifestation of this violence is the violence done to them in their own homes. The General Social Survey (GSS)[12] of 2009 found that, like in 1999 and in 2004,[13] the rate of domestic violence targeting Aboriginal women is at least twice what it is in the general population.[14] The survey also found that Aboriginal women who were victims of domestic violence reported injuries more often than non-Aboriginal women. They are also more likely to say they fear for their lives.

Violence against Aboriginal women and girls is largely perpetrated by an acquaintance of the victim, usually a man. This situation is similar to that of non-Aboriginal women. However, Aboriginal women and girls are much more likely than their non-Aboriginal counterparts to be victims of violence at the hands of strangers who take advantage of their vulnerabilities.

All forms of violence combined, the GSS shows that:

  • Aboriginal women are three times more likely to be the target of violent victimization than non-Aboriginal women;
  • the majority of victims are Aboriginal women between 15 and 34 years old;[15]
  • in many cases, the violence is not an isolated event, as more than one-third of all Aboriginal female victims were victimized two or more times.[16]

Based on data collected by the police, Aboriginal women are also more likely to be murdered. Between 2004 and 2010, they accounted for at least 8% of homicide victims, despite accounting for 4% of the total female population in Canada.[17]

Some witnesses told the Committee that Aboriginal women and girls are also greatly over-represented as victims of commercial sexual exploitation. Many of them work as prostitutes to support themselves and their children; others are victims of trafficking and forced by pimps to work as prostitutes.

We know that sexual exploitation is present in mining and resource extraction projects around the world. We're not sure yet of what's happening in our communities. We've heard anecdotally of 42 Inuit women who have been trafficked through Ottawa in the last four years. Trafficking routes include transit across the Arctic, across the east coast of Canada, as well as to Las Vegas and Miami.[18]

Diane Redsky, Project Director, Task Force on Trafficking of Women and Girls in Canada, Canadian Women’s Foundation, argued that many girls in Canada are first trafficked into forced prostitution when they are 13 years old. She added:

Along this continuum, particularly for indigenous women, is the horrifying reality that they are methodically targeted by traffickers when they are teens and young women, their vulnerabilities are exploited, and they become trapped in a life of absolute chaos, abuse, and extreme violence.
It doesn't end there, though. When they are no longer of value to a trafficker, they become the women in the survival sex industry: 40 years old, poor, and dying. Women's bodies are not equipped to handle the physical and psychological trauma of being sexually exploited and trafficked, whether by circumstances or by force.[19]

Kim Pate, Executive Director, Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies, told the Committee that we have an obligation to take all forms of violence against Aboriginal women seriously, “including sexual violence, not just in the family, not just in a domestic sphere, but also in the context of the increased commodification of women and girls.”[20]

B. DISAPPEARANCES AND MURDERS IDENTIFIED BY THE NATIVE WOMEN’S ASSOCIATION OF CANADA

There is no official data on the number of missing and murdered Aboriginal women and girls in Canada. The figure most commonly used to reflect the magnitude of this problem comes from research conducted by NWAC through its Sisters in Spirit initiative. This initiative, which received a federal grant of $5 million over five years, was intended to address the root causes, circumstances and trends related to the disappearances and murders of Aboriginal women and girls and to raise public awareness about the violence against them.

This first initiative, which ended in 2010, identified 582 missing or murdered Aboriginal women and girls across the country.[21] However, these are only the known cases. The actual number may be much higher, according to NWAC’s Director of Safety and Violence Prevention, Irene Goodwin.[22]

The murders and disappearances of Aboriginal women and girls do not belong to the past, insisted Shawn A-in-chut Atleo, the National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations (AFN). He noted that this tragedy is still unfolding today.

The circumstances of the murders and disappearances identified through the Sisters in Spirit initiative are varied. Lisa Hitch of the Department of Justice reminded the Committee that the cases:

range from the victims of serial killers … through to domestic violence circumstances, family violence circumstances, cases where women have died either crossing highways, because it's the only way to go home, or have disappeared from highways. There are a lot of instances of women who were fully employed and are missing or murdered, in circumstances that were very different from the circumstances that were looked at in the Oppal commission [British Columbia’s Missing Women Commission of Inquiry]. There were a lot of young girls who were going to school. There are a number of instances where people died of exposure.[23]

According to information gathered by NWAC, 70% of disappearances and 60% of murders occurred in urban areas. Moreover 87% of missing or murdered women and girls were mothers of at least one child.[24] This finding is troubling, especially since NWAC’s research shows a cycle in which “a mother would go missing, and then the daughter would go missing years later. In some particular family lines, several individuals have gone missing.”[25] These cases also impact the many children who now have to live without a mother.

Of the 582 cases in the database, 39% occurred after 2000, while 17% occurred in the 1990s. Homicide charges were laid in only 53% of cases. In other words, nearly half of these murder cases remain unsolved, a low percentage compared with the Canadian average. According to data from the 2010 homicide survey, 75% of homicides were solved by police.[26]

The lack of progress in missing persons cases increases the suffering of families who still hope for news. Charlene Belleau of the AFN told the Committee about the impact of unsolved cases on victims’ families:

The alleged perpetrators in most cases are still out there, because police haven’t been able to resolve those cases, so families continue to live in trauma from the loss of their daughters.[27]

From the research gathered through the Sisters in Spirit initiative, of the 261 known cases where criminal charges were laid, 23% of women and girls were killed by a current or ex-partner and 6% by a family member. Approximately 17% of these women and girls were killed by an acquaintance and 16% by a stranger. Lastly, in half of the cases for which information was available (149 cases), the missing women and girls were not involved in prostitution.[28]

NWAC continues to gather information on new cases of missing or murdered Aboriginal women and girls. However, it is difficult to collect reliable data and conduct the necessary investigations to clarify the circumstances of the disappearances and deaths and determine whether the victim was Aboriginal if the victim’s ethnic identity was not already established. In March 2013, NWAC put the number of cases of missing or murdered Aboriginal women and girls at 668. In her appearance on 30 January 2014, a representative of Human Rights Watch Canada, Liesl Gerntholtz, noted the following about the number of missing and murdered Aboriginal women and girls:

Recently published research indicates that the number of missing and murdered indigenous women across Canada may be over 800, but comprehensive data collection efforts are hampered by the fact that there is currently no precedent for the standardized collection of ethnicity data by police forces in Canada.[29]

Several witnesses called for the establishment of an independent public inquiry into the issue of missing or murdered Aboriginal women in Canada, adding their voices to those of leaders of national Aboriginal organizations, premiers and leaders of provinces and territories and several international organizations.[30]

Witnesses expressed several objectives for the desired independent public inquiry, including:

  • allowing victims’ friends and family to be heard and communities to start on the path toward reconciliation;
  • educating the Canadian public about the root causes of violence against Aboriginal women and girls;
  • developing a coordinated national action plan to address such violence and its causes; and
  • establishing benchmarks for evaluating initiatives aimed at ending violence against Aboriginal women and girls in Canada.

Other witnesses, including Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada, believe that the needs of Aboriginal communities are too dire to spend money on establishing such a commission, saying it would be better to use the money to fund community services and programs:

Every day, I hear stories about girls being raped and girls being beaten — every day —and instead of the government spending millions of dollars in hearings over the next couple of years, we need your help now, today, to hear us as Aboriginal people, and to put some money into the police forces to find who’s responsible for the violence, for the missing and murdered women and girls.
We need funds and resources to develop awareness and education programs on the reserves and in schools, programs about violence and the missing and murdered women, because some of these women come from the reserves. They have really big dreams of starting school, but they get grabbed by a pimp and the next thing we see is that they’re in the newspaper because they’ve been murdered.
What I’m asking for most is the protection from violence for the women and children and to find who’s responsible for the violence and the murdered women. The government and the police services have the responsibility to provide justice for victims and end the violence.[31]

C. THE NEED TO COLLECT DATA ON INCIDENTS OF VIOLENCE AGAINST ABORIGINAL WOMEN AND GIRLS

Following the completion of Sisters in Spirit in 2010, funding has been provided through Evidence to Action and Evidence to Action II, to build on the information learned through the first project and to support communities in their response to the root causes of violence against Aboriginal women and girls.  A number of witnesses criticized the decision not to continue funding for the original project.[32]

In Budget 2010, the Government announced that it would establish a national database for missing persons and unidentified remains as part of the new Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) National Centre for Missing Persons and Unidentified Remains. Even though such a database would obviously be helpful in solving missing persons and murder cases, some witnesses said they feared that this database will not adequately capture the Aboriginal identity of the victims. The NWAC representatives stressed that there are “substantial gaps in the collection by the RCMP of information on the Aboriginal identity of victims, which makes this a poor source of information.”[33]

Lynn Barr-Telford, a Statistics Canada official, noted that police officers do not often collect information on Aboriginal identity because of the operational difficulties of definitively establishing a victim’s background and conflicts between privacy legislation and policing policies. Rebecca Kong, Chief of Statistics Canada’s Correctional Services Program, also spoke about Aboriginal people’s reluctance to share this information with police, emphasizing the following:

Part of that is having the community buy-in and having public relations and public education campaigns to explain to the indigenous people there the advantages of providing that information.
The issue of collecting information on Aboriginal identity of victims through police-reported data had been long-standing. From 2001 to 2010, Statistics Canada worked with partners in the policing community and in the ministries across the country to try to improve the information. We tried to put in place some recommendations. We did some consultations with communities in Saskatchewan. In the end, there were still issues regarding internal policing policies around providing the data and concerns about the quality of the information based on visual identification. There were also concerns in terms of the actual collection of the information and whether that question is always asked.[34]

A number of witnesses expressed concern about this lack of reliable data on the Aboriginal identity of victims. They believe that police officers should systematically collect information on the Aboriginal identity of victims and alleged perpetrators. Such information would provide a better picture of the experience of Aboriginal women and girls in the justice system and contribute to finding solutions that meet their needs. Ms. Porteous, Executive Director of the Ending Violence Association of British Columbia, pointed out during her appearance that “we need to have that information if we’re going to be developing appropriate and useful public policy.”[35] In the same vein, Mr. Shawn A-in-chut Atleo, National Chief of the AFN, said the following: “Police services need to work together to produce verifiable numbers on incidents of violence against Indigenous women and girls so that progress can be measured.”[36]


[10]           For example, see the testimony of Jeffrey Cyr, Executive Director, National Association of Friendship Centres, 5 December 2013.

[11]           IWFA, 2nd Session, 41st Parliament, Evidence, 28 November 2013 (Chief John W. Syrette, President, First Nations Chiefs of Police Association).

[12]           The two primary objectives of the General Social Survey (GSS) are to gather data on social trends in order to monitor changes in the living conditions and well-being of Canadians over time and to provide information on specific social policy issues of current or emerging interest.

[13]           For the reference to the GSS of 1999 and 2004, see the testimony of Lisa Hitch (Senior Counsel, Family, Children and Youth Section, Department of Justice), IWFA, 1st Session, 41st Parliament, Evidence, 25 April 2013.

[14]               Shannon Brennan, “Violent victimization of Aboriginal women in the Canadian provinces, 2009,” Juristat, Statistics Canada, Catalogue No. 85-002-X, 2011.

[15]           “In particular, close to two-thirds, 63%, of aboriginal female victims were aged 15 to 34. This age group accounted for just under half, 47%, of the overall female aboriginal population.” IWFA, 1st Session, 41st Parliament, Evidence, 2 May 2013 (Lynn Barr-Telford, Director General, Health, Justice and Special Surveys Branch, Statistics Canada).

[16]           IWFA, 1st Session, 41st Parliament, Evidence, 2 May 2013 (Lynn Barr-Telford, Director General, Health, Justice and Special Surveys Branch, Statistics Canada).

[17]           Ibid.

[18]           IWFA, 1st Session, 41st Parliament, Evidence, 6 June 2013 (Katharine Irngaut, Manager, Abuse Prevention, Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada).

[19]           IWFA, 2nd Session, 41st Parliament, Evidence, 6 February 2014.

[20]           IWFA, 2nd Session, 41st Parliament, Evidence, 30 January 2014.

[21]           The 582 cases that have been reported in Canada and entered into the database are discussed in NWAC’s April 2010 report entitled What Their Stories Tell Us. To be included, the Aboriginal woman or girl must be missing or have died as a result of homicide or negligence or in circumstances family or community members consider suspicious. These circumstances include incidents that police (and sometimes coroners) have declared natural or accidental but that family or community members regard as suspicious.

[22]               IWFA, 1st Session, 41st Parliament, Evidence, 30 May 2013 (Irene Goodwin, Director, Violence Prevention and Safety, Native Women’s Association of Canada).

[23]               IWFA, 1st Session, 41st Parliament, Evidence, 25 April 2013 (Lisa Hitch, Senior Counsel, Family, Children and Youth Section, Department of Justice).

[24]           IWFA, 1st Session, 41st Parliament, Evidence, 30 May 2013 (Irene Goodwin, Director, Violence Prevention and Safety, Native Women’s Association of Canada).

[25]           Ibid.

[26]           To be classified as a “solved homicide,” the police have either laid or recommended a charge against the accused, or the accused has died by suicide or other causes. Tina Hotton Mahony, Homicide in Canada, 2010, Juristat, Statistics Canada, Catalogue No. 85-002-X, 2011.

[27]           IWFA, 2nd session, 41st Parliament, Evidence, 5 December 2013 (Charlene Belleau, Assembly of First Nations).

[28]           Highlights of NWAC’s 2010 report entitled What their Stories Tell Us are in a draft working document called Draft Justice Framework to Address Violence Against Aboriginal Women and Girls, approved in November 2013 by federal, provincial and territorial ministers responsible for justice and public safety to facilitate ongoing dialogue with Aboriginal groups and organizations and other partners.

[29]           IWFA, 2nd Session, 41st Parliament, Evidence, 30 January 2014 (Liesl Gerntholtz, Executive Director, Women’s Rights Division, Human Rights Watch Canada).

[30]           The establishment of an independent public inquiry to shed light on missing and murdered Aboriginal women and girls in Canada has been recommended in several international reports, including a report by Amnesty International (Amnesty International Canada, Stolen Sisters, consulted on 28 February 2011) and the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (Concluding observations of the Committee: Canada, CEDAW/C/CAN/CO/7, 7 November 2008).

[31]           IWFA, 1st Session, 41st Parliament, Evidence, 13 June 2013 (Marie Sutherland, as an individual). Ms. Sutherland works for the Native Women’s Transition Centre and for high-risk groups.

[32]           Because disappearances are not in themselves offences under the Criminal Code, Statistics Canada does not collect data on them.

[33]               IWFA, 1st Session, 41st Parliament, Evidence, 30 May 2013 (Irene Goodwin, Director, Violence Prevention and Safety, Native Women’s Association of Canada).

[34]           IWFA, 1st Session, 41st Parliament, Evidence, 2 May 2013 (Rebecca Kong, Chief, Correctional Services Program, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Statistics Canada).

[35]           IWFA, 1st Session, 41st Parliament, Evidence, 6 June 2013 (Tracy Porteous, Executive Director, Ending Violence Association of British Columbia).

[36]           IWFA, 2nd Session, 41st Parliament, Evidence, 5 December 2013 (Shawn A-in-chut Atleo, National Chief, Assembly of First Nations).