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Results: 136 - 150 of 488
Courtney Skye
View Courtney Skye Profile
Courtney Skye
2021-06-17 12:17
If there's one thing I believe in, it's drawing strong policy from good data. It's critically important to know the populations you're working with. I echo what some of my colleagues on the panel here have said. In all of my work with indigenous women and people who've experienced violence, they want to know that we're actually ending violence. They want to know that women are actually being made safer, and if we don't have the data to back that up and show it, we're not actually going to deliver on the commitment that women and communities want and expect from their leadership. We have to be able to prove it.
I think it's really important that we look at and challenge the way that data is collected and the way it's reported, because especially with the work of the national inquiry, we found that there were a ton of gaps in information in terms of being able to identify whether or not someone was Inuit, whether someone was Métis, whether or not their data was being collected, whether or not their nationality was being properly recorded, whether or not white-passing or Black-presenting indigenous people are having their identities properly assessed, and whether or not there's been an effort to correct misinformation around people's identities, specifically around things like the way that Indian status is assumed to be patriarchal.
For people like my nation, which is matriarchal, we say that my status card says this but I'm actually this, because the way the federal government administers Indian status is completely patriarchal and doesn't include matrilineal descendancies. I'm enrolled under my paternal grandfather, as opposed to my maternal grandmother, the way it should be according to my culture.
Also there is the question of whether we are doing the work to respect people and their gender, and whether we are doing the work to identify trans people and their accurate gender, which is something that's completely lost in many of the forms, and a challenge that has been levied against some of the StatsCan data and the police-reported data around people who have been victimized. They don't actually have confirmation whether or not a person's gender identity has been accurately captured, and whether or not trans women are being accurately assessed and counted.
All of those things need to be addressed, but it starts with having a consistent expectation around, especially, how the police are reporting data, and standards and regulations around how they are assessing and directed on how to collect that data.
View Adam van Koeverden Profile
Lib. (ON)
Thank you, Ms. Skye.
Perhaps I could get a quick reflection on a universal basic income from whoever would like to do that.
Cherry Smiley
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Cherry Smiley
2021-06-17 12:20
I hear what you're saying about how it has been successful in other places. I know there have been studies done and experiments with universal basic income in Manitoba. There have been some recently in the States.
If we think about what I heard a man refer to as economic opportunity maximization, he was talking about prostitution, that indigenous women should be maximizing their economic opportunities by selling their bodies. That's where we end up if we're like, well, everybody should just be able to go and make the most money they can. If we're looking at that in a very narrow way, it just doesn't reflect our reality.
Either way, women are the ones who end up paying the price for that, so universal basic income does really provide a way to address that unlevel playing field. Even if we think about the gender pay gap that we currently still have, the universal basic income provides a way to help alleviate that.
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
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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.
View Arnold Viersen Profile
CPC (AB)
I know that the average trafficking victim raises or is worth about $320,000 a year. There's a lot of money in the sex trafficking world. How do we get that money out of the system? How do we end that demand? That's the big question.
Do you have any comments around that?
Cherry Smiley
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Cherry Smiley
2021-06-17 12:26
It is a big question. I think there are a lot of moving parts, but we absolutely cannot legalize and sanction that industry. It will not get the money out of the industry if we decide, okay, we'll just make it legal and fully decriminalize it, with brothels everywhere, as they do in New Zealand. Organized crime is very tied up in that, and it's a little bit easier for them now. They can function legally. They're businessmen. They're not pimps anymore. They're brothel owners. They have business associations like other businesses do. It has become that much easier for them to function and to move that money around.
View Jaime Battiste Profile
Lib. (NS)
Thank you.
I'm hearing loud and clear that decriminalizing prostitution is not part of the solution. What are your thoughts around decriminalizing drug offences and treating addictions like a health problem and not a criminal problem? What are your thoughts around that? Can you give me a sense of whether this is part of the solution?
Anyone can chime in, please.
Courtney Skye
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Courtney Skye
2021-06-17 12:28
I definitely agree with decriminalizing and treating addictions like a health issue. That's absolutely necessary. I also think, too, if we understand that people come to be exploited because they're made vulnerable by our systems and structures, then we have to turn to those systems and structures and understand what exactly about them creates that vulnerability. Going back to ONWA's submission around the need for housing, the need for economic stability and the need to have good access to health care services, especially to address drug issues, that should be the priority here. We're talking about creating systemic change.
I hear what you're saying around the need to respond to people who are addicted with dignity and respect, prioritizing them and viewing them as people who have value in our communities, whether or not they're using and whether or not they're choosing to use different types of drugs that are more addictive.
Cherry Smiley
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Cherry Smiley
2021-06-17 12:29
If we're thinking about drug use and addiction, one thing that we often advocate for is the Nordic model of prostitution policy. It's three-pronged. You decriminalize those who are prostituted and you criminalize the sex buyers and the pimps. There's a public education campaign. There are also robust social services to support people and to support the community.
You could kind of apply that to drugs as well. You have a population of people who are suffering from all kinds of different things. There are all kinds of issues going on there that make certain people more vulnerable to being trapped in addiction. Then you have the drug dealers who come in and exploit that vulnerability for profit.
I definitely think people should not be criminalized at all for drug use. I don't think that's a crime. I think that's a response to the conditions of our lives and the oppressions we deal with. There is a difference, again, between those who are in an active addiction and those who are exploiting and profiting from those people's vulnerabilities.
View Jaime Battiste Profile
Lib. (NS)
Okay.
Finally, we have $2.2 billion in the national action plan to end systemic racism and violence against women. What organizations do we need to fund to help women who are vulnerable right now? Just quickly, what's the most efficient use of those dollars?
Coralee McGuire-Cyrette
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Coralee McGuire-Cyrette
2021-06-17 12:31
I can jump in there if that's okay.
We need to not only do national indigenous organizations. I know that was a comment earlier, and I want to speak to it. We have to get the money into the communities where they'll do the community work best. When you're looking at autonomous indigenous organizations, the majority of them are not connected to any national indigenous organization. We need to have a balanced approach of the organizations that have a mandate to do indigenous women-specific work.
What is each agency's mandate? What are their priorities? You end up with mission drifts. We have to look at funding those organizations that have been doing the work, largely unfunded and unrecognized, for generations. That's where that comprehensive approach needs to come from. Autonomous indigenous women-specific organizations and agencies in Canada have been largely unfunded to date, and they need to be included in that funding model.
View Jaime Battiste Profile
Lib. (NS)
I'm just wondering if I'm hearing you correctly. Just give a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. I'm looking at you on the screen. Are you saying that we need to fund the local and regional organizations, not the national ones? Is that what I'm hearing?
Coralee McGuire-Cyrette
View Coralee McGuire-Cyrette Profile
Coralee McGuire-Cyrette
2021-06-17 12:33
I think you need to do both. You can't just do only one model, because otherwise you miss an entire, large urban indigenous population of organizations that have been doing this work but are not connected nationally.
View Sylvie Bérubé Profile
BQ (QC)
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Earlier, we spoke about programs and services that can be provided to children survivors of exploitation and human trafficking.
What types of care and services should be available to those children, who have been so deeply affected?
Results: 136 - 150 of 488 | Page: 10 of 33

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