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Results: 1 - 15 of 97
Janet Gobert
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Janet Gobert
2021-06-22 11:57
My name is Janet Gobert, and I am of Ojibwa descent from the Peepeekasis first nation in Saskatchewan.
I currently serve as the community initiatives coordinator with the Bonnyville Canadian Native Friendship Centre located in Bonnyville, Alberta, which I acknowledge is Treaty 6 territory and is a traditional gathering place for many indigenous people.
The Bonnyville Canadian Native Friendship Centre is dedicated to bridging the gap between indigenous and non-indigenous people culturally, socially, economically and recreationally by promoting communication and delivering effective programming within our community.
In 2020, I acknowledged a gap in service provision that could be addressed by a project called Iskwew Iskowtew, or “where women heal by fire”. It implements promising prevention and intervention practices that advance knowledge and enhance empowerment supports for at-risk populations and survivors of human trafficking in the Bonnyville and Lakeland region.
The objective of this program is to reduce violence against women and human trafficking through evidence-based programming, which includes, but is not limited to, providing a safe haven where clients will have access to relevant programming and support services. Utilizing a wraparound approach, our holistic crisis support mentor, peer support worker, indigenous wellness worker and critical incident stress management coordinator deliver consistent programming with traditional knowledge keepers who share their understanding on site in addition to providing access to land-based activities and cultural ceremonies.
During the development of this program, I acknowledged that assisting indigenous women and girls transitioning out of sex work would require the support of numerous organizations within the community to address issues such as education, housing, employment, mental health and substance abuse issues. Hence, a board indicative of the aforementioned was established.
It was noted within our meetings that there are three essential components that are necessary to the creation of social and political change within the sex trade. These are social services, law enforcement and community education. I would like to address the latter.
With regard to our service area, it was identified that our program needed to concentrate on community education. Within our community and surrounding area, human trafficking is not acknowledged, and this is a barrier that we need to overcome. It was duly noted that opening this Pandora's box within the community would need to be navigated with accurate information, education and promotional tools in order to be effective. This component of our program will be executed no later than September of 2021, with continued ways of change in its wake.
The debate that surrounds laws and regulations placed upon prostitution-related offences is rooted within a framework that distinguishes prostitution as either sex work or sex trafficking. As the former represents a choice in regard to prostitution, the latter represents forcible containment within the sex trade. As legal responses to prostitution-related activities vary depending on a community's social, political and economic commitments, criminalizing sex trafficking victims renders their experiences of violence and labour exploitation less visible, thus producing a tendency to discount the human rights of women involved in sex trafficking.
As sex trafficking in Canada is inherently harmful and dangerous, specifically towards indigenous girls and women, a public policy change must be enacted in order to address such issues. The issue of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls is a sociological phenomenon in Canada that is entrenched within Canadian policies, laws and institutions. In Canada, indigenous women and girls form only 2% of the total population, yet they constitute 16% of the total population of women who are murdered or go missing.
Traffickers choose vulnerable, exploited women because they are perceived as expendable, thus reducing them to the status of a mere sex object rather than an actual human being. Often we have victim-blamed these women for their own murders due to their high-risk lifestyle, such as working in the sex trade, whether by force or by choice.
By creating a program in the Lakeland region that addresses issues such as education, employment, housing, mental health and treatment services, we make it much simpler to create an exit strategy for women within the sex trade. As indigenous women and girls in Canada face these socio-economic issues, this project could help to reduce the rate at which these women are involved in human trafficking, go missing or are murdered.
Finally, the lack of knowledge surrounding sex trafficking and the laws that pertain to its origin are why it is so difficult to detect the sex trade as well as to exit from it. It is integral to understand that these women live their lives in the community as grandmothers, mothers, daughters, sisters and friends.
I would like to thank each one of you for this opportunity to share our new program initiative with you.
Thank you.
Coralee McGuire-Cyrette
View Coralee McGuire-Cyrette Profile
Coralee McGuire-Cyrette
2021-06-17 11:07
Good morning, Chair and committee members. My name is Coralee McGuire-Cyrette. I am the executive director of the Ontario Native Women's Association.
This year marks ONWA's 50th anniversary, making us the oldest and largest indigenous women's organization in Canada. With a mandate to address violence against indigenous women, ONWA works on such key safety issues as human trafficking, missing and murdered indigenous women and girls, and child welfare.
Before I begin, I want to acknowledge the bravery, wisdom and leadership of all survivors on this issue, as they are the experts. ONWA has been working with survivors for many years. This experience forms the basis of our recommendations. Survivors and knowledge-holders have reminded us that motherhood is the oldest profession, and this is what we must reclaim in our work.
I'll be framing my presentation today based on three key points. While I do not have the time today to explore them in depth, it's imperative that they are kept in mind while we continue.
First, in 2019 the United Nations released guidelines on combatting child sexual exploitation. They state that a child under the age of 18 can never consent to any form of their own sale, sexual exploitation or sexual abuse, and any presumed consent of a child to exploitative or sexual acts should be considered “null and void”. Additionally, article 35 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child states that the government has a responsibility to ensure that children are not abducted, sold or trafficked. ONWA advocates that both principles must, without exception, be adhered to.
Second, the impact of colonization has caused the fabric of strong, self-sustaining indigenous communities to be eroded. Indigenous trauma, together with more recent constructs, has fostered conditions of normalized violence towards indigenous women and girls. Direct links have been drawn between the rates of violence that indigenous women continue to face today and the paternalistic policies emerging from colonization. This systemic discrimination has not been addressed adequately in Canada. This leaves indigenous women and girls at a heightened vulnerability to experience victimization, including human trafficking.
Article 18 of the UNDRIP affirms that “Indigenous peoples have the right to participate in decision-making in matters...through representatives chosen by themselves” and to “maintain and develop their own...institutions”. From this, ONWA asserts that it is fundamental that indigenous women have the capacity to participate in a wide range of leadership efforts to support our communities, including leading the prevention, intervention and response to issues that we face.
Third, the COVID-19 pandemic has deepened pre-existing inequalities. By virtue of our gender and our race, we are, as indigenous women and girls, disproportionately experiencing the consequences of COVID-19. This results in an increased risk of indigenous women and girls being targeted for human trafficking, as well as worsening the situation for those already in trafficking situations. The pandemic has underscored that solutions to human trafficking must be part of an equitable COVID-19 recovery plan.
In 2017 we engaged with over 3,360 community members and service providers, including 250 indigenous human trafficking survivors. The storytelling that was heard resulted in the creation of a strategy, titled “Journey to Safe Spaces”, to address this issue.
Survivors taught us what trauma-informed care is and what systems need to be changed. Their intentions were clear. They wanted to protect other indigenous women and girls from trafficking. We also learned that there are often systemic failures that subject indigenous women and children to risk. The relationship between child welfare and human trafficking is complex. In our engagements with survivors, we heard many stories. In some instances, the abuse was not identified by any service provider, and children experienced horrific childhood exploitation. In other instances, sexual exploitation began after child welfare became involved.
Children must be protected from exploitation—period. This will involve systems working together to protect and ensure the safety of our children.
Our report provides clear recommendations for change. All changes must be underpinned by the fact that indigenous women have human rights. The recommendations from survivors provided the basis for our courage for change program, which provides the only long-term, intensive case management and support. Our program supported 176 indigenous women and girls to safely exit human trafficking from 2017 to 2019. Last year, in 2020, we saw a 37% increase in exits.
Before I conclude, I'll highlight five essential recommendations, many of which can be found in ONWA's “Reconciliation with Indigenous Women”. In this report, we recommend actions that are very specific and targeted to end human trafficking while supporting survivors. The missing and murdered indigenous women and girls national action plan does not include our report's recommendations sufficiently.
First, collaborative mechanisms must be put in place to allow for provincial and national data collection on the human trafficking of indigenous women that protects the privacy of survivors who access services with data collected by the legal reform.
Second, sustainable programs and services that address human trafficking survivor-specific needs, including wraparound support and 24-hour services for human trafficking in cities all across the country, must be implemented.
Third, specialized trauma-informed services for survivors who appear in court must be created. When charges are laid against a trafficker, survivor safety must be prioritized throughout the legal process.
Fourth, the federal government needs to clear the records of survivors of any criminal offences for prostitution-related offences and with debt forgiveness for student loans.
Fifth, additional funding is urgently required to address human trafficking well beyond the provision of funds for education-related activities only. This is to include comprehensive human trafficking exiting supports, such as mental health and addictions services, housing, specialized long-term healing and supportive services.
In closing, I encourage the committee to review our “Reconciliation with Indigenous Women” report and our “Journey to Safe Spaces” strategy in full, as they provide a road map to keep indigenous women and girls safe from human trafficking and to the supports needed to rebuild their lives.
Meegwetch.
Cherry Smiley
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Cherry Smiley
2021-06-17 11:17
Thank you for inviting me to speak on this topic and thank you for studying this very difficult issue.
My name is Cherry Smiley. I'm from the Nlaka'pamux Nation in B.C. and the Navajo Nation in the southwestern United States. I'm currently a Ph.D. candidate at Concordia University, where my research works to help end male violence against indigenous women and girls in Canada, including prostitution. I'm the founder of Women's Studies Online, a decolonizing educational platform for research, education and action.
As part of my doctoral project, I did field work in Canada and New Zealand on prostitution. Before beginning the Ph.D. program, I worked at a rape crisis centre and transition house for battered women and their children.
There is, of course, a lot to say. I know that my friends here today, and the others who've spoken before this committee, have given a solid overview of the dire circumstances of indigenous women and girls in Canada related to sexual exploitation.
I will address two topics today. First, I'm going to talk about the difference between sex trafficking, prostitution and sex work. Secondly, I'm going to talk about issues when it comes to doing research on sex trafficking. I'll conclude by making some recommendations.
Language matters. This issue is a controversial and political one. The term “sex work” implies that some women are obligated to provide “sexual services” to men for money. This is not a term I use and I hope most others don't use this term here either.
Janine Benedet has described the difference between prostitution and sex trafficking as follows: Sex trafficking always involves a third party—a trafficker, a pimp or a brothel owner—while prostitution can, but doesn't necessarily involve a third party.
Prostitution and sex trafficking are more similar than they are different. The impacts on women bought and sold are the same. The men who purchase sex acts from these women and girls are the same. The men don't care how she got there.
Secondly, sex work researchers try to make a distinction between chosen sex work and forced sex trafficking. This isn't a realistic or helpful way to look at the issue. What it ends up doing, actually, is harming victims.
Sex work researchers have adopted a very anti-woman and anti-feminist theory of sex trafficking that narrowly constructs a false perfect victim. It is a woman who, for example, may not speak English or who is kept locked to a bed in chains. There is absolutely no doubt that women are sexually exploited in this way. I've met women who have been exploited in that way. In the same way that patriarchy has constructed a false narrative of the perfect rape victim who fights off her rapist in just the right way, or the perfect battered woman who, of course, never goes back to her battering husband, few women, if any, would fit the definition of the perfect sex trafficking victim.
Does this mean that women haven't been sex trafficked? No, it doesn't. This means, actually, that there's a profound and, I would argue, deliberate lack of understanding about male violence against women and a lack of feminist research being conducted on this issue today.
We've already seen what's happened in New Zealand. A lack of understanding about male violence against women has resulted in the decriminalization of men who pimp and buy women. In turn, this means that women who don't very obviously and distinctly label themselves as trafficking victims and accept whatever help comes their way aren't trafficking victims.
Trafficking doesn't exist in New Zealand, according to the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective. This is an outright lie. Sex trafficking absolutely does exist in New Zealand, only the police have less ability to investigate potential cases of trafficking. Cases of sex trafficking are reclassified as family violence, for example, to bolster false claims that decriminalizing men who pimp and purchase sex acts helps women in prostitution. Women and girls who are in prostitution and who have been sex trafficked have no support services available to them. There are no exiting services in New Zealand. Services for women who have been assaulted by men in New Zealand aren't equipped to work with women who have been sex trafficked or prostituted, because they don't understand prostitution as a form of male violence. It's simply a job like any other.
I'll conclude by saying that sex trafficking and prostitution are linked. One of my recommendations, like that of Diane Redsky, is that we keep and improve on the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act.
Buying sex must remain illegal, and women must not be punished for their prostitution. If PCEPA is repealed, we as a country say that it's okay to purchase that group of women in prostitution over there but not this group of trafficked women over here, and that's just completely unacceptable.
We also need a guaranteed livable income. We saw how quickly the government recognized the economic impact of the pandemic on Canadians and acted accordingly. A guaranteed livable income recognizes the economic impacts of patriarchy on women in Canada and acts accordingly. Women must have more economic options that don't include sucking dicks for 10 bucks.
The third recommendation I'll make is that, while culturally relevant services are essential, what's more essential is that non-indigenous organizations and indigenous organizations have a feminist understanding of the impacts of colonization on indigenous women and girls. There's a whole body of knowledge out there that feminists have created on male violence against women, and this is where we need to start.
Feminism is the only theory, practice and social-political movement that always prioritizes women and girls, and we need to learn about this and put into practice a feminist understanding of sex trafficking and prostitution. Without this understanding, it's too easy to blame and shame women and girls for their prostitution and too easy to let men off the hook for their unacceptable behaviour.
Without this feminist foundation, even culturally relevant services won't be of much service to sex-trafficked women and girls. As my friend Fay Blaney mentioned the other day, we need core funding for autonomous indigenous women's organizations so that we can do this work and do it more easily than we do now—on shoestring budgets or, in my case and in the case of many other women, with no budget at all.
Last, patriarchy and what Adrienne Rich and Carole Pateman call the “male sex right” are the sources of harm in sex trafficking and in prostitution. In addition to preventative programs aimed at girls and women, we need preventative programs aimed at boys and men to stop them from sexualizing women and girls, feeling entitled to do so and exploiting them in the first place.
Sex trafficking and prostitution are issues of sex-based inequality. Men are overwhelmingly the buyers, and women and girls are overwhelmingly the sellers of sex acts, so we need to approach this issue using feminist theory.
My final recommendations are to stop watching porn and perhaps, for example, to propose that MPs and others in government pledge not to pay for sex acts from any women or girl, trafficked or not. Treating all women with respect is a reasonable requirement of leadership in Canada.
Thank you.
View Sylvie Bérubé Profile
BQ (QC)
You also talked about the consequences of the COVID‑19 pandemic. Can you tell us more about those?
Coralee McGuire-Cyrette
View Coralee McGuire-Cyrette Profile
Coralee McGuire-Cyrette
2021-06-17 11:39
Yes, during COVID-19 not every home was safe to be in, if you had a home. The level of violence increased against indigenous women and girls, and the level of violence in exploiting children and youth also increased during this time. The level of community safety response across Canada wasn't there. There is no safety plan for indigenous women and girls comprehensively across Canada. That's really where we're able to see in the pandemic, for instance, that drug trafficking of indigenous women increased. Because people didn't have access to the usual types of drugs that they use, you've seen an increase in overdoses and increases in deaths due to that.
Who has suffered as a result of that? It is the women and children, those currently being exploited, as well as those being recruited, especially online. When you're looking at online childhood exploitation, everybody's online during this pandemic. We're looking at increasing high-speed Internet to our indigenous communities. We need to build in safety protocols to ensure that, in regard to what they currently don't have access to and they're going to, we protect the children in those communities. We need to make sure that the cyber-services are protecting children.
View Sylvie Bérubé Profile
BQ (QC)
My question is for Ms. Smiley, from Concordia University.
You are doing your Ph.D. on violence against women and you created a platform. Can you tell us more about that?
Cherry Smiley
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Cherry Smiley
2021-06-17 11:41
Yes, I'm just about finished my doctorate, so hopefully I'll be a doctor in the next couple of months, but the platform I founded was actually a response to my experiences in university, coming from an anti-violent frontline worker background, being involved in feminism for the last, I don't know, 15 years and realizing that, in universities, there more places to talk about all kinds of theories and intellectual exercises but fewer places to talk about the material conditions of women's lives.
I created this platform as a way to teach, basically, radical feminist theory so that we can learn from all that knowledge that we've created and we can build on it. We can reject it or we can decide that it's great. We can decide that we like this part and not that part, but we can actually learn that theory before we dismiss it as being irrelevant.
I think there's a lot of really good stuff in there that we can build on, as well as do research on issues of male violence related to indigenous women and to make sure that this research is looking specifically at male violence against indigenous women and girls. Of course, there are other types of violence, but this type of violence is incredibly....
Globally, it's everywhere. It's systemic, but it also has particular histories for indigenous women in Canada. Because of those particular histories, there are particular solutions that we need to be looking at. It's very much keeping the focus on this type of violence and going from there.
View Rachel Blaney Profile
NDP (BC)
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you to all our witnesses today.
Ms. Skye, I'd like to come to you with my first question. You talked about this in your introduction to us, but could you be more specific about what makes indigenous women and girls more vulnerable to violence? How do those responses impact them and the communities around them?
Courtney Skye
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Courtney Skye
2021-06-17 11:44
Thank you for the question.
It's really important that we highlight the specific need to address the specific root causes of violence and colonial violence that indigenous women experience. If you look to some of the reports that have been developed around things like the homicide report that StatsCan produces, and you see a comparative study between aboriginal and non-aboriginal identified women within that study, you see, since 1980, a decrease in the overall number of women who have been killed, while the rate of violence against indigenous women has remained consistent across those years, and as a result, indigenous women represent an increased proportion of the victims.
That type of analysis or that type of information being made available really demonstrates that indigenous women experience different causes of violence and that the interventions that have been developed through feminist theory, through typical responses, haven't actually reached these populations, haven't supported them in the way that they need to be supported and haven't developed the same kind of access to services and supports that indigenous women require.
There are, of course, underlying human rights issues that underpin that. I appreciate that there is a need for a special response from government especially, to consider all the different populations that are impacted and all the different realities of people, to draw out strong policy responses that address, as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples says, the need for special measures in certain circumstances. However, we also have to remember that there's a broad experience related to this issue that needs to be addressed. Any type of widespread legislation or national legislation has to consider and be respectful of many different experiences.
View Eric Melillo Profile
CPC (ON)
View Eric Melillo Profile
2021-06-17 11:56
Thank you very much for that.
I also want to pick up a bit on a similar topic. You've already mentioned in your conversation with Marcus some of the transportation gaps in the north. Many of the communities in my riding are remote communities that are serviced by Thunder Bay, Sioux Lookout or Winnipeg, and many indigenous people, and many indigenous women specifically, of course, have to leave for basic medical care, for job opportunities, for school and for a number of things. Obviously, that puts them in a more vulnerable situation.
I'm not sure how much time you'll have to respond, but if you can talk a bit more about that as well, I'd appreciate it.
Coralee McGuire-Cyrette
View Coralee McGuire-Cyrette Profile
Coralee McGuire-Cyrette
2021-06-17 11:57
Yes. Thank you.
Something we learned from the national inquiry, from survivors, was for example, when you're looking at the Highway of Tears, when you're looking at Barbara Kentner here locally in Thunder Bay, what it's telling us is that it's not safe to be an indigenous women walking. It's telling us about the lack of safety. With transportation and the Greyhound system, those issues there.... There are no safe systems for transportation across Canada. We need to look at how we are going to address that so that we have safe transportation. That's something that is concrete that we can address. When you are looking at Kenora and that district, what's the safe transportation to get to and from larger centres for medical appointments, for instance? It's not there. It doesn't exist—never mind getting across Canada.
When you're looking at having to hitchhike or at having to be trafficked in order to get to a medical appointment, that's just not acceptable. That's part of that human right to access basic services. We need infrastructure. Safe transportation will address violence against indigenous women.
View Arnold Viersen Profile
CPC (AB)
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thanks for the admonition there. I appreciate that.
I'll go back to Ms. Smiley.
I appreciate your testimony. One of the things you talked about is a defence of our current PCEPA bill. Could you expand on that a little more?
Cherry Smiley
View Cherry Smiley Profile
Cherry Smiley
2021-06-17 12:23
It's absolutely necessary that we keep that legislation. We can keep it and we can try to improve it. Of course, there's lots of room for improvement there, but the fundamental message the legislation sends is that it is not okay for men to purchase sex acts from women.
I would respectfully disagree with my friend here, Courtney. There is no right to sell sex, because there's no right to buy sex. That's not a fundamental human right.
If we get rid of this PCEPA bill, it really does open the door for traffickers, for pimps, for brothel owners. They come in and they set up shop. If you're are not targeting the demand for paid sex acts, you're not really going to get anywhere substantial, because there will always be women in the current circumstances in which we live who are poor enough and desperate enough and who just have very few choices available to them, so they will make the best of their circumstance. A lot of times we talk about meeting women where they're at, and that's fantastic, but we need to meet women where they're at and not leave them there. That's the second part.
The PCEPA bill is incredibly important in sending that message. If you're saying that you like to suck all the dicks, fine, but putting that aside, men do not have a right to expect sex from women and girls on demand and they don't have an entitlement to that simply because they have the financial ability to pay for it.
It's really important that we start there. We can move our way out and work with women, of course, where they are at. That's also why it's so important that we have a feminist understanding. If we look at battered women, for example, so often women will leave and go back, and they leave and go back, or I could think of women who are in the hospital with their throat slit open by their husband, saying “I don't want him to get in trouble, though. He really loves me.”
How do we understand these types of sentiments, because they don't really make sense? If we have a feminist understanding of male violence and how it impacts women, both materially in our conditions but also psychologically in the messages we're getting day in and day out, it's so important that we look at the root cause. The root cause of sex trafficking is the male demand for paid sex acts, so we need to start there and make sure we target that, because the men really don't care. They don't care if she has been trafficked or not. They don't care if she's underage or not. They don't care if she likes her job or not. They really don't care, so we really need to start there.
Fay Blaney
View Fay Blaney Profile
Fay Blaney
2021-06-15 11:55
I couldn't get onto Zoom. It was insane.
Anyway, Cherry said to me that incest is the boot camp for prostitution. My second point that I really want to make is that indigenous girls are sexually exploited, and it leads right into being trafficked or prostituted.
In my final section, I want to offer some recommendations. I'm titling that section “Nothing About Us Without Us”. It's kind of ironic, and I'll explain that later.
In the first part about the complexities that indigenous women face, I want to borrow from the literature review that the Native Women's Association of Canada did. They cite a UN global study talks about how trafficking victims are targeted. Traffickers go after women who are young, female, poor, undereducated and who come from dysfunctional homes and are searching for a better life. To that I would add the child welfare system. Indigenous women coming out of the child welfare system are very much targeted for trafficking.
I really want to underscore the fact that there's a huge lobby in this country to legalize prostitution, the sex work lobby. They're one dimensional in their perspective. I want to point out that there are huge complexities with indigenous women that are not factored into their equation. I don't need to say a whole lot about that because there has been so much happening in the media, such as the 215 children, plus the 104 more who have been found.
We know we struggle with racism—deeply rooted racism—and genocide in this country. Out of that we have a great deal of poverty. That's showing up in the levels of homelessness across this country. Indigenous women and their children are very much impacted by that.
Further, I just think that misogyny gets missed so much in our conversations around colonization. Misogyny plays a huge role—patriarchy plays a huge role—in what's happening to indigenous women and girls.
We have a member of the Aboriginal Women's Action Network—I'm hoping she's watching today—who never lets us forget that women with disabilities are often not considered in our conversations about sexual exploitation. Often, indigenous women become disabled as a result of violence.
We're marginalized in all of the institutions across this country. There are the cases that have been brought forward by Cindy Blackstock on child welfare, and right across this country there is the fact that so many of our children are in care.
The justice system, the racism within the justice system, and the police misconduct.... It's right through the whole system; I'm not picking only on the police. There have to be justice reforms. There should have been more in the mandate of the national inquiry to address the behaviour of the justice system.
The health care system, as my friend there has mentioned, the way she was treated.... Within our first nations government even, indigenous women are marginalized in all of those systems.
Within that process, we begin to believe what's being imposed on us, what's being force-fed to us. That message comes to us daily, routinely, everywhere. Every which way you slice it, indigenous women are marked to be lesser than, so we're very much targeted for trafficking. That's deemed to be the only role that we're capable of in Canadian society.
That's my first point. The complexities that indigenous women face in how we end up being sexually exploited have to be factored in. It's not an isolated instance of, “Oh, I'm so proud to be a sex worker, look at me.” There are many more factors at play that result in women being sexually exploited in the indigenous community.
For my second point, with regard to young women and girls, I often point to Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond's report when she was the representative for children and youth here in B.C. She released a report that looked over a three-year period. She examined all cases of sexual abuse within foster homes. The result of her study was that almost 70% of victims were indigenous girls. I think 20-something per cent were indigenous boys. When you look at all those percentages, there's barely anybody else being abused besides indigenous children.
We are definitely groomed for sexual exploitation, and we come to accept that as our fate in our lives. There are numerous other studies. I looked at the study that came out of the Vancouver Rape Relief & Women's Shelter, where they also examined 100 calls over a certain period of time. In their report they said that 12% of the callers were under the age of 14 when they were being sexually exploited, 12% were between the ages of 14 and 15, and 18% were between the ages of 16 and 18. That's pretty high when you think that almost half of indigenous callers were underage when they were being sexually exploited or trafficked.
In the report by Melissa Farley and Jacqueline Lynne, they tell us that of the women who were involved in their study, 96% of the indigenous women said they were being sexually abused as children before they entered into prostitution, or were being trafficked.
View Lenore Zann Profile
Lib. (NS)
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses for being here.
I have to say that time is of the essence, and I do believe that we've been waiting too long and need to move on with this. We've heard from many different witnesses who have said that this will actually help decide projects going forward and take away some of that uncertainty, so I am of the mind that we need to move on with it.
I want to ask Mr. Obed this. In addition to the specific Truth and Reconciliation Commission's calls to action 43 and 44, which call on government to fully adopt and implement the declaration and develop an action plan to achieve its goals, the declaration is also referenced throughout the calls to action and in the final report of the national inquiry into missing women and girls.
Can you expand on why you think that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the national inquiry both emphasize the declaration as such a key part of reconciliation, and also offer your own views on how this could help prevent the blight of racist, misogynistic violence and femicide of indigenous women and girls?
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