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Karen Pictou
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Karen Pictou
2021-06-22 11:14
Thank you, everybody, for inviting me to speak at this very important meeting today. I'm going to apologize up front because I was invited to this meeting late last week and I haven't had due time to prepare as thoroughly as I would normally like to. I've written some speaking notes, but I am going to kind of wing it a bit as well. Please feel free to ask all the questions you want at the end.
I am Karen Pictou. I am Mi'kmaq from Millbrook First Nation, Nova Scotia. I am the mother of four daughters. I have three grandsons. I am the daughter of Bill Pictou and Philippa Pictou. I am the executive director of the Nova Scotia Native Women's Association. I came to this role three years ago. I followed my heart. I left a well-established career I had made for myself in first nation employment and partnership development and took a leap of faith to enter this role because I felt it spoke to my heart, it spoke to my lived experience and it spoke to what makes me feel good about the work that I do. I feel that I bring a lot to this position, not only from what I've learned in school or what I've learned in my career but also from what I've learned through my life. I am a Mi'kmaq woman who lived off reserve for my childhood, moved back on reserve, was a teenage mother, was a victim of sexual violence, was a victim of domestic violence, and also, as at least one person here knows, was a victim of human trafficking.
I feel that my life experience has brought me full circle to be in this role and to feel that I'm making a positive impact, not only for my community and for our province of Nova Scotia but for all indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people across the country.
I take this role very seriously and I have given it my all. When I came into this role three years ago, I didn't know a whole lot about the Nova Scotia Native Women's Association. I knew the gist, that they were an entity that spoke up for the needs of indigenous women in our province and that they have a long history. Since entering, however, I've learned so much more.
The Nova Scotia Native Women's Association is actually the third-oldest Mi'kmaq organization in Nova Scotia. Following the release of the “1969 White Paper”, there was a large political uprising of the Mi'kmaq in Nova Scotia. This led to the creation of our first Mi'kmaq organizations in 1969 and 1970, the Micmac News out of Membertou and then the Union of Nova Scotia Indians, which is now called the Union of Nova Scotia Mi'kmaq and is one of our two tribal councils in Nova Scotia.
During this time, the White Paper made it very clear that the Government of Canada wished to cause extinction of first nations people across Canada through policy. However, indigenous women across Canada were already facing this threat of extinction through government policy, through the Indian Act. This was not a new situation for the Mi'kmaq women of Nova Scotia, but it became a situation that impacted all Mi'kmaq people in Nova Scotia.
Even after the White Paper policy failed to go through, the political uprising continued, and so did the realization of our rights. However, during that time, indigenous women were still excluded from politics, whether within the province or on reserve. Shortly afterward, our first two female chiefs were elected in Nova Scotia. A community member from Membertou named Helen Martin travelled to each of our communities in 1970, gathered the women and talked about the issues of the day. All of the women agreed that something needed to be done to address these ongoing issues and the threat to indigenous women's survival, as well as their right to be Mi'kmaq, to be a part of our communities and to all that is held within that.
At that time, they agreed unanimously that they would create the Nova Scotia Native Women's Association. We were founded in 1972, so next year we will be celebrating our 50th anniversary.
However, despite the Nova Scotia Native Women's Association being one of the oldest and most highly recognizable Mi’kmaq organizations in the province, we continue to struggle and to be in survival mode.
About three years years ago, we finally received long-term provincial core funding and then, shortly after that, received a smaller amount of short-term federal core funds. The federal core funds have now been cut, to my understanding, despite the increase of capacity and the increase of work. The increase of work being asked of us by Canada is to assist with things like human trafficking, to assist with economic development for indigenous women and girls and to assist with healing our communities.
That valuation, however, has not translated into giving us core funding to take us out of survival mode and proposal-based funding. That needs to happen in order to address human trafficking. The Nova Scotia Native Women's Association is the only indigenous organization in Nova Scotia that is working to address human trafficking to provide support and services for those impacted by and currently in human trafficking, as well as for leaving it.
A number of issues cause us to be more vulnerable, including colonialism. That was the first one, right? That completely impacted the way our people lived and the way they viewed gender roles. Mi’kmaq people had very strict gender roles. That is not to say that women were less valued—certainly not. Women were highly valued, as were two-spirit people. However, colonialism changed that and flipped it on its head.
I'm sorry. I feel that I'm rambling a bit now. I'll get back on the topic.
In 2014, the Nova Scotia Native Women's Association opened the Jane Paul Indigenous Women's Resource Centre in response to a large number of indigenous women and girls who were involved in the street sex trade in Sydney, Nova Scotia. The population in Sydney is only around 25,000 people; however, there are at least 80 indigenous women and girls working on two city blocks in Sydney. This would amount to over 800 non-indigenous women on two city blocks.
This issue is glaring. We see it. We see these women all the time. However, I don't know that most of Sydney really and truly sees these women. They see them as an obstacle and want to push them further out into the industrial areas, and this is going to cause more harm.
The Jane Paul Centre is one of a kind. I don't know of one that exists anywhere close by in the Atlantic region. We started off from one office space in this little office that I'm actually sitting in right now. It's about 500 square feet. That's where we started. Over the last few years, we were able to expand to take over the basement of this building, which offered us some workshop space and a private counselling room. This year, we're actually planning a grand opening. We've taken over occupancy of 95% of this building, so we're able to offer the services where there were still gaps.
Some of those things still need to come to fruition. For example, there's the need to have a Family Court lawyer accessible to our women. Many of the women who are accessing the centre on a daily basis are being impacted by poverty, by the child welfare system, by grief and loss, and by the Indian residential schools, as well as being descendants of Indian residential school survivors. The first language of many of our women is Mi’kmaq, and they prefer speaking in Mi’kmaq. Many of them have experienced violence. Many of them have been impacted by MMIWG cases here in Nova Scotia.
They come in here faced with huge barriers, but with a lot of hope still, and here at the centre we thrive on that hope. We try to build that hope and we try to give them the tools they need to survive, to flourish and to have options. I think that's the biggest thing when we're talking about how to address human trafficking. We can get someone out of the life, but what options will they have? What opportunities will they have to sustain themselves to not go back to that life, to be able to have a secure home, to be able to fight to have access to their children again, and all of those things? If they cannot do that, I guarantee that they'll slip back into that life, despite its atrocities.
Here at the Jane Paul centre, we have a full-time counsellor on staff. We have program coordinators. We actually just opened up a new space, called a makerspace, where women can come in and make a craft. They can sit with an elder or a cultural support person. They can talk. They can learn new skills. When they're done making that, we actually buy it from them and we'll put it into our Sisterness Trading Post, which is right next door. That grand opening is happening soon and it's online, so I'll plug that later.
They can get money in hand right then and there to go and get what they need. They can go have a meal downstairs collectively. They can go to our food bank. They can take in a workshop. They can get clean needles. They can get condoms or whatever it is that they need at that moment.
The main thing is that they're taking in a cultural activity. They have a supportive environment and they're leaving here with food in their bellies and money in their hands so that they may not have to go back onto the street that night.
There are a variety of ways that human trafficking looks. Yes, human trafficking happens in the classic way of a charming man who comes and grooms a young girl and convinces her of this dream in the big city, and takes her off. Sure, that happens. That happens every day here in Nova Scotia. We see that.
It also happens many times to our women here as a result of being vulnerable or grieving or maybe being a product of the child welfare system. Maybe they have parents with addiction issues. Maybe they have a vulnerability from poverty, lack of housing or lack of education. They become prey to various things and then get into drugs and that type of thing.
They don't see themselves as human trafficking victims most of the time. They say, “No, that's my boyfriend. He loves me.” Would your boyfriend still love you if you said no, you weren't going to work the streets that night? Would you boyfriend still love you if you weren't paying for his addiction as well? Chances are the answer would be no.
It's very difficult for a lot of these women to even view themselves as being a victim of human trafficking. They feel they're making the choice. They feel that they've made their bed, so they'll lie in it, and this is the only choice they have. It's simply not true.
What we hope to do here is to find hope through hopelessness, not to isolate them and tell them they have to leave their boyfriend because he's harmful. No. It's to give them the tools to make that choice on their own.
I could talk on and on—
View Jaime Battiste Profile
Lib. (NS)
Thank you for your testimony, all of you.
Part of this committee's work is to make recommendations to our government on how we fix the problem. What supports are there right now for women who are trying to transition away from human trafficking or sexual exploitation? How are we helping to transition and support indigenous women? What are the programs that are working out there? Do you have any recommendations that you'd like to share with this committee on what we can do? What are the big priorities?
Coralee McGuire-Cyrette
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Coralee McGuire-Cyrette
2021-06-17 12:47
I can jump in there, if that's okay.
We do have one of the first pilots. Ours is called the Courage for Change program. We started it locally here in Thunder Bay. We just did an expansion provincially in order to ensure that we have those on-the-ground supports for survivors of human trafficking.
That's critical in what's missing. Our program is unique because it was developed by survivors in our engagement report. They let us know that they need on-the-ground support. We have so many education and awareness campaigns on this issue. We need to be able to do concrete action. Our specialized trauma-informed care has been critical in seeing over 200 exits safely. Now, as we've expanded across the province, we're going to be able to have on-the-ground support to safely help to transition women across the province. We know that violence doesn't know boundaries; it doesn't know jurisdictions.
Cherry Smiley
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Cherry Smiley
2021-06-17 12:48
I was watching on Tuesday, and I know there is a lot of really good work being done in Manitoba—provincially there—with different exiting programs. There is a patchwork of programs here and there across the country, but we need a broader approach and a more holistic approach.
One thing that I think is a huge problem is that so much of the funding is project-based. The amount of time that it takes for a woman or a girl to recover can be a lifetime. It's not that she enters into a program and after a year she's good, she's done and away she goes. Maybe that's the case, but maybe that's not the case. We're putting these very, almost bureaucratic, in some ways, timelines on women's healing. That is something that I think we need to really look at.
As Cora was saying, these on-the-ground supports, the basic crisis supports, need to happen. Once you move through that, there is housing, which is so important, to have a stable base to work from. There's employment training and education. I know there was a mention on Tuesday about internships for women who have been sexually exploited.
All of these types of things need to happen, with the recognition of the ongoing emotional impact of being in that circumstance. That might show up six months later. It might show up 10 years later. There are women I know who, 10 years out, killed themselves because of that trauma. It doesn't just disappear. Investing in women and investing in indigenous women and girls, I can't think of a better thing to do, really.
Courtney Skye
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Courtney Skye
2021-06-17 12:50
I think it's important, if we're talking specifically about providing services for young people, that they not flow through child welfare agencies.
For the committee's information, in Ontario, Peel child and family services is a centre of excellence on responding to human trafficking. At the same time, Peel Regional Police indicated, in the first year after Ontario passed human trafficking legislation, 100% of the young people who had been trafficked were clients of the Peel child and family services. There is a huge disconnection between child welfare, their inability to really support children, and then asking them to service the people who have not been able to access [Technical difficulty—Editor] services.
I think there are community-based organizations outside of the child welfare sector that could be better positioned and have more credibility in the community to deliver services to young people.
View Jaime Battiste Profile
Lib. (NS)
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'd like to return to the subject matter at hand. My question is going to be for Ms. Anderson-Pyrz and Ms. Brown and then Ms. Blaney. Our government put $2.2 billion in the recent budget to address the calls to justice by the murdered and missing indigenous women and girls inquiry. One of the things we've done is to introduce a national action plan on June 2, and we're hoping to use that money to end systemic racism and violence against indigenous women in Canada.
I'd like each of you, in one minute, to tell us what your recommendations would be on how we could best utilize this money to address the challenge of the trafficking of indigenous women across Canada, so that we can come up with recommendations back to the government that say this is what we heard and these are the important things that need to happen first and foremost.
Ms. Anderson, could we start with you?
Hilda Anderson-Pyrz
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Hilda Anderson-Pyrz
2021-06-15 12:37
Yes, absolutely.
I think the first thing the government can do is implement guaranteed livable income because poverty is a major contributing factor to human trafficking and sexual exploitation.
Provide opportunities that are barrier-free for healing from colonial violence and the impacts that are rooted in culture. Provide ceremony and land-based healing opportunities as well.
Thank you.
View Jaime Battiste Profile
Lib. (NS)
Thank you for that.
Ms. Blaney or Ms. Brown, did you want to chime in with some recommendations on how we can use that $2.2 billion to address the issue at hand?
Bryanna R. Brown
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Bryanna R. Brown
2021-06-15 12:38
I think it would be really important to ensure that consultants who are survivors of sexual abuse or human trafficking be consulted and paid for their work and for their traditional knowledge.
It would be very useful to have training programs or presentations to bring more awareness to indigenous peoples of what they are going through with regard to the history of residential schools and intergenerational trauma and how that relates to the sexual abuses and normalization of human trafficking in communities, how that develops within our communities and how we can prevent it.
Diane Redsky
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Diane Redsky
2021-06-15 13:01
Okay, good. We were having technical difficulties earlier.
[Witness spoke in Ojibwe]
[English]
My spirit name is Love Eagle and I'm from the Caribou Clan. I acknowledge the treaty territory that I have the privilege of living and working on: Treaty 1 in the homeland of the Métis Nation. I also acknowledge the traditional territory of my ancestors, Treaty 3, Shoal Lake 40 First Nation, which also provides the water to the city of Winnipeg.
Thank you for the opportunity to be here. I apologize for the technical difficulties and not being able to participate in the whole session, but I'm really happy to see some of the leaders working on this issue with Hilda and with Fay here. I want to acknowledge our survivor as well, who is bringing a really important voice to this really vital issue.
I'm hoping that you have learned through.... It appears that you've had a few meetings on this particular issue with a number of people who have been informing this group. I'm glad that you're getting a lot of different perspectives that are building on why this is the most extreme form of violence against indigenous women and girls, how indigenous women and girls and two-spirited LGBTQQIA are also uniquely targeted for the purposes of sex trafficking in our country, and why it is critically important to have unique resources that are available and accessible that are indigenous-led and trauma-informed and that honour harm reduction. I hope those are some key messages that you have picked up on.
The work that I have been working on, really, on this issue for over 30 years now has been to address and find solutions—to problem solve—on how to end the sex trafficking of, particularly, indigenous women and girls. My career has been focused a lot on that, including leading the National Task Force on Sex Trafficking of Women and Girls in Canada.
The organization that I work for is called the Ma Mawi Wi Chi Itata Centre. It is located in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Treat 1 territory. We currently operate a rural healing lodge. It is and continues to be the only rural healing lodge in Canada for child victims of sex trafficking. This is a very unique resource that is under the portfolio of the provincial strategy called Tracia's Trust to end sexual exploitation and sex trafficking in our country. It's a provincially funded rural healing lodge.
I want to just give you some insight into that rural healing lodge and our experiences of operating a rural healing lodge. These are for girls and transgender teens between 13 and 17 years of age. These are some of the things that we have heard from girls. Again, these are minor children who are involved in the child protection system because they are girls in need of protection, and they need the support to be able to begin their healing journey.
Here are some of the key points that they have shared with us over the years of operating Hands of Mother Earth, the rural healing lodge: Their sexual exploitation started young, as young as nine. They are groomed and lured online and in person. Girls from northern first nations are particularly at risk, in that a lot of it is online, and sometimes other girls are manipulated and forced to go into northern first nations communities to also do recruitment and luring and bring girls back into Winnipeg or larger urban centres.
The control by the trafficker can take on many forms. He can pose as a boyfriend or a drug dealer, an older man supplying them with drugs or a place to stay. He can pose as an uncle or a father figure, even “daddy” in some cases, so how traffickers are targeting indigenous women and girls is very relationship-based. They are coerced to perform sex acts as many as six to 10 times a day, continuously, seven days a week, and hand over their money.
They're often on some really harmful drugs as well—for coping, as well as what is given to them—such as meth, heroin, crack and those types of drugs that can really impact their ability to give proper consent to anything. Meth is continuing to be a huge factor in controlling girls. A girl is more profitable to a trafficker than an adult woman, but the trauma-bond component to the trafficker is making it very hard to intervene. The target is primarily girls who are in child and family services care. Depending on where they are across the country, sometimes that place is more dangerous than others, such as Ontario and Saskatchewan, where the CFS age of majority caps out at 16. There's that period between 15 and 18 where there really aren't any adults who are actively responsible for their care and protection, which leaves them very vulnerable to traffickers.
We know that many men are buying girls to sexually abuse them—and that is the correct language to use. It's pretty diverse as well, so if we're looking for who the typical abusers and offenders are, it's men of all ages, from different cultural backgrounds and socio-economic situations.
What is also important about what we've heard from our young residents is that this is a long journey on their healing. Their healing journey will take forever, and that's not meant to be a bad thing, because with proper supports, indigenous-led supports and opportunities to continue to heal, this journey is a really important investment in their long-term healing journey. It does take a lifetime to heal from the most extreme form of violence against women and girls, so having that safe place to start the healing journey is critically important.
I have some recommendations for this committee. Within the federal national action plan to combat human trafficking, I'd really like to see an emphasis on it being indigenous-led, and then having an indigenous stream that is really focused on making those strategic investments across the country. We have to outsmart what is already out there.
I would agree on how critically important data collection is, because there is no common data collection, so we don't have an accurate number of what's happening across the country. Women and girls are presenting themselves in shelters and they're documented as cases of domestic violence instead of sex trafficking, so there's a lot of complexity around data collection, but there still is a really important opportunity for this across the country.
We really need to have and develop a victim service strategy that is directed to their life-long healing, and not contingent on their being involved in the court system. Many of our girls from the Hands of Our Mother Earth Rural Healing Lodge have participated in the court system. It has been just a terrible experience from beginning to end, so we really need a victim centre, a victim service strategy, to ensure that we are really giving a strong level of support to young girls, and anybody, any victim, who is impacted by sex trafficking while they're going through the court system. Just in one case, where there were multiple victims, we had several girls who participated in that court system who made several suicide attempts, some of which succeeded. We really need to ensure that we're creating that strong safety net as they go through the court system.
It is critically important—as it relates to what we have now overall and which could at least help and not make anything worse—not to repeal Bill C-36. This is the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act. It is a really critical piece of legislation not only for the community, but for policing agencies to be able to intervene at times, so that they have a full venue or a number of tools they can use to intervene between a trafficker and those they are abusing and sexually exploiting.
I'm going to say two more things. Advocates like me and many others really want, need and encourage the investment in the voices of survivors. It is critically important because that is where the answers are. That is where we need to support survivor leadership. We need to be investing in those survivor-led voices and in those survivor-led organizations because those are where the strategies and the solutions lie. There's a critical need to make investments into survivor voices and particularly indigenous-led voices.
The last thing I'll say is that any form of buying sex from women and girls is violence against women—bottom line. We need to stop normalizing this form of violence and saying it's okay because there's money involved.
That is what I'd like to bring to this committee. Thank you again for the opportunity to be here.
Nathalie Levman
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Nathalie Levman
2021-06-01 12:28
Thank you for welcoming us all to your study of sex trafficking of indigenous peoples.
I speak with gratitude from the unceded territory of the Algonquin people.
The Department of Justice works closely with Public Safety Canada, which leads the national strategy to combat human trafficking, as you've just heard. In particular, Justice Canada is responsible for the criminal law framework governing human trafficking. That framework addresses human trafficking through a range of offences, including offences that specifically target human trafficking conduct.
While the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act includes an offence that addresses transnational human trafficking, the Criminal Code contains specific offences on human trafficking that address transnational cases as well as those that occur entirely within Canada. The main human trafficking Criminal Code offences prohibit recruiting, transporting or harbouring of adults or children to exploit them or to facilitate their exploitation by someone else. Exploitation occurs when a reasonable person who was in the victim's circumstances would believe their physical or psychological safety would be threatened if they failed to provide their labour or services, and this includes sexual services.
In determining whether exploitation occurred, courts may consider a broad range of factors, including whether the accused used or threatened to use coercion, deceived the victim, or abused a position of trust, power or authority.
Other trafficking offences prohibit receiving a material benefit from trafficking children or adults and withholding or destroying travel documents to commit or facilitate trafficking. This is regardless of whether those documents are authentic.
These are all serious offences, with maximum penalties of up to life imprisonment. More severe penalties are imposed when the victim is under the age of 18 years. Moreover, sentencing principles require courts to give primary consideration to the objectives of denunciation and deterrence when imposing a sentence for an offence that involves the abuse of a person who is vulnerable because of personal circumstances, including because the person is indigenous and female.
Other charges are often laid in trafficking cases, such as sexual assault, uttering threats, intimidation and extortion, because human trafficking is an offence that often involves the extraction of another person's labour or services over time. Traffickers may commit these other offences to maintain control over their victims while they extract labour or services from them.
Traffickers may also be charged with sex trade offences in sex trafficking cases, such as procuring others to provide sexual services and profiting from others' sexual services. Individuals who purchase sexual services from trafficking victims may be charged with the Criminal Code offence that prohibits purchasing sexual services, regardless of whether they knew that the person from whom they purchased sexual services was a trafficking victim.
Through Justice Canada's victims fund, the department provides $1 million annually in funding for projects and activities that focus on the needs of victims and survivors of human trafficking. Since 2012, the department has funded 47 human trafficking-related projects by community organizations and law enforcement agencies. These projects include improved services for victims of human trafficking, training for law enforcement officers and frontline service providers working directly with victims of human trafficking, and support for labour trafficking victims.
I'd be very happy to answer any questions you may have on the criminal justice system's response to human trafficking.
Thank you very much.
View Sylvie Bérubé Profile
BQ (QC)
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I am on the territory of the Cree and Anishinabe of Abitibi—Baie‑James—Nunavik—Eeyou in Quebec.
My question is for Ms. Van De Bogart.
Ms. Van De Bogart, you mentioned a hotline earlier. What are the advantages and disadvantages of this hotline that people can use to report cases of human trafficking?
Michelle Van De Bogart
View Michelle Van De Bogart Profile
Michelle Van De Bogart
2021-06-01 12:53
Thank you for the question. I hope you can hear through the translation.
The hotline is a toll-free service. I mentioned that it's available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It refers victims to local law enforcement, to shelters and to other supports and services. Because it's available all the time—and, as I mentioned, in over 200 languages, 27 of them indigenous—it allows an opportunity for people to call and obtain all sorts of information and to have specific supports put in place that they might need.
We speak about victims, but this service allows people to find avenues for shelter or perhaps for addressing issues around sexual and physical abuse and domestic violence, and they can get information from law enforcement as well.
The hotline has trained operators, and they are trauma informed. There is an understanding and a recognition when they are speaking to these individuals of how to interact with them and how to support the victims and be able to direct them to the supports that they require.
View Sylvie Bérubé Profile
BQ (QC)
I have another question for you.
Do indigenous people use this service? Is it consistent with their culture? Do you have any statistics on this?
Michelle Van De Bogart
View Michelle Van De Bogart Profile
Michelle Van De Bogart
2021-06-01 12:55
The hotline does keep track of some information. I do not have it at my fingertips, but I would be happy to get back to you on what's possible.
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