As shown in Chapter 3, numerous factors put Aboriginal people, particularly
women and girls, at greater risk of violence. According to witnesses, there is a
need to address these factors through targeted measures and the introduction of
a social safety system that is at least equivalent to that which serves the
rest of Canadians. However, no system is perfect, and if we are to protect
Aboriginal women and girls in a fair and equitable manner, we must also ensure
an appropriate response when an act of violence is reported. The following
chapter examines the resources and services that are called into action when an
act of violence or a disappearance is reported.
Throughout the study, witnesses pointed to significant shortcomings
in the protection given to Aboriginal women and girls who are victims of
violence. Generally speaking, Aboriginal women who are trying to flee an
abusive situation, especially women living on reserve or in rural or isolated
communities, face considerable challenges: emergency and support services are
lacking or inadequate; women often have difficult relationships with the
police; and they fear losing custody of their children if they turn to the
authorities. Witnesses also emphasized that there have been serious breakdowns
in communication between the police and the families of missing and murdered
women and girls.
Many Aboriginal communities, particularly First Nations and rural or
isolated communities, are ill-equipped to assist girls and women who are
victims of violence. These communities face a number of daily challenges,
including the lack of a continuous police presence, a shortage of shelters and
second-stage housing for abused women and their children, and limited resources
to ensure their safety over the long term.
In many cases, emergency services are underfunded and unable to meet peoples’
needs on a “round-the-clock basis”.
The Committee heard that access to emergency shelters and
second-stage housing is far from equal across Canada. Many Aboriginal women
living on reserve and in rural or isolated communities have no safe place to go
when they need it. Michèle Audette, President of the Native Women's
Association of Canada, described the situation on First Nations reserves:
How come we have 633 First Nations communities and
we only have [41] shelters to protect women and children—[41] shelters here in
Canada?[68] We have nyet, zero
second housing houses to which women can go afterwards. A shelter is just to
protect you; there is no real healing process there or empowerment for the women.[69]
Women living in Inuit communities also have very limited access to
emergency and second-stage housing. Tracy O’Hearn, Executive Director,
Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada, told the Committee that more than 70% of
Inuit communities do not have a shelter for abused women and children. For
example, Nunavik has three shelters to serve 14 northern villages. This
poses a major problem, said Ms. O’Hearn, given the seriousness and extent
of family violence. As she told the Committee, “[F]amily violence continues to
be the most significant issue in Inuit communities.”[70]
Some witnesses stated that shelters on First Nations reserves also
receive less funding than others. Anita Olsen Harper, a consultant with the
National Aboriginal Circle Against Family Violence, stated that, “In some
places they are funded half of what mainstream or provincially funded women's
shelters are.”[71]
The situation is critical, and many witnesses said they are hoping
for additional government funding so that all women and girls who are victims
of violence can get timely access to the protection and support they need.
Witnesses called for action on two fronts. First, there is an urgent need to
increase the number of shelters and second-stage housing on reserve and in
rural or remote communities. Second, the funding for existing shelters must be
increased. Chief Shawn A-in-chut Atleo spoke on the type of funding that First
Nations require:
[T]here need to be immediate increased investments
in front-line services and shelters on reserve and in rural areas so that every
First Nations woman and girl experiencing violence has access to immediate
support .[72]
According to the testimony, the lack of a continuous police
presence in many Aboriginal communities fails to protect Aboriginal women and
girls who are victims of violence by making them more vulnerable. This issue
was raised by many witnesses, including John Domm, Chief of Police in Rama,
Ontario.
With … a lack of policing presence there is no
law. It's a sense of lawlessness. It's a lack of a sense of security and
safety. Even if you wanted to report it who are you going to report it to? If
you do report it who's going to be there to safeguard you? Who's going to be
there to help you? And it's not just for the first few hours or the first day
but the next day, and the day after that, and the week after that.[73]
Committee members heard that the financial and human resources
allocated to policing in Aboriginal communities are largely inadequate, whether
services are provided by First Nations, the province or the RCMP. Witnesses
called on all levels of government to increase funding for policing in these
communities. According to Chief Domm, it would also be beneficial to create a
dedicated position within all Aboriginal police services to deal with female
victims of violence.
The funding of police services is an important issue for many Inuit
and First Nations communities. The Committee heard that this is a particularly
pressing issue for communities that manage their own police services through
the First Nations Policing Program (FNPP). The FNPP is a national policing program
for Inuit communities and First Nations reserves. There are two
main types of policing agreements under the FNPP:
- self-administered
agreements, where a First Nation or Inuit community manages its own police
service pursuant to provincial policing legislation and regulations; and
- community
tripartite agreements, where a dedicated contingent of officers from an
existing police service, typically the RCMP, provides policing services to a
First Nation or Inuit community. [74]
The FNPP is funded according to a cost-sharing formula, with 52% of
costs being covered by the federal government and 48% by the provincial
government. The FNPP is not intended to replace policing services usually
provided by the province or territory, but rather to provide Inuit and Aboriginal
communities on reserve with police services that are professional, effective
and culturally appropriate. Evaluations of the FNPP are generally positive.
Other witnesses stated that funding levels for the FNPP are clearly
inadequate, especially given the geographic and socioeconomic conditions facing
many Inuit and First Nations communities. The Committee also heard that First
Nations police services must receive the necessary support and funding if they
are to provide a service comparable to that enjoyed by the rest of the Canadian
public.
The RCMP traumatized my life in the past, back in
my drinking days. They hurt me. They didn't protect me. Every time I got
involved with them the only way that they had to deal with my anger issues was
to throw me in jail, or get hit one way or the other.[75]
I've lived quite a painful life. I have been
gang-raped, and raped. I have been beaten up. I did go to the police, and
was dismissed. I'm standing there at the hospital with my lips cut open, black
eye, knowing and telling them who did it, but they're telling me that alcohol
was a factor, that we were probably drunk. I can't tell you what that does to a
person after hearing it so many times.[76]
Throughout its study, the Committee heard credible and very moving accounts
from victims’ families, women and stakeholders. Their testimony indicates that
the police do not always take incidents of violence involving Aboriginal people
very seriously. A number of witnesses also complained of the hateful and racist
remarks that the police made to them. This type of remark makes it very
difficult to build a relationship of trust between Aboriginal people and the
police.
The Committee heard testimony that police forces share best
practices for how they investigate missing person’s cases with First Nation’s
police institutions. In Ontario, training that is offered to the
Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) with respect to missing persons investigations
is also made available to all of our First Nation policing
partners. Police organizations also indicated to the Committee that
they were unaware if the percentage of resolved cases relating to murdered and
missing aboriginals differed from that of the mainstream population.
Most of the victims’ families who met with the Committee said that
they felt the police had treated them unfairly. They also had the sense that
the police had not made every effort to solve the case of their missing or
murdered family member. In many instances, the police did not seem to take the
report seriously. The following testimony illustrates the sense of injustice
that many families felt with regard to their treatment by the police.
When my sister went missing, she was reported
missing, but it was 10 days before her case was even looked at. My other
sister, Tina, was told that she was probably out there somewhere; that's what
the police told us, that they weren't going to do anything right now, that
she'd turn up, she always did. My sister was exploited at a very young age.
She used drugs to cope. Claudette wasn't a person who wouldn't keep in contact
with her family. She always phoned someone. She was really close with my sister
Tina and stayed with her a lot of the time, but Tina hadn't heard from her. A
report was made, and 10 days later.... Only because we started putting pressure
on the police did they start looking into her case.[77]
The night we reported Denise missing the one
officer had the nerve to say to the other officer right in front of Glen and
me, “She's probably downtown doing whatever she has to do to get her next fix.”[78]
The second night that she went missing, my sister
said, “My daughter is not the kind of person to go out and prostitute herself,
get drunk, and be rowdy and disappear — not my daughter.” Her daughter was
going to university. Nobody believed my sister. The RCMP said, oh no, she's
doing her own thing — the audacity. If one of your children was missing, you
would know your daughter or your son so well that you would know that they
would come home or not come home. You'd know. All of us know our children and
what they're capable of. My sister knew her daughter was not the kind of girl
to go out all night long. Sure enough, four years later, the RCMP made a
statement and they found out who killed my niece. They found out who killed her
because he had told on himself. He was bragging about how much he despises
native people.[79]
A recurring theme in the testimony is the failure by police to
respond to acts of violence against Aboriginal women. Carole Brazeau, National
Project Coordinator for the National Aboriginal Circle Against Family Violence,
commented on this issue:
The role of the police is to serve and protect, I
believe. When women do call in cases of family violence, it is important that
the police intervene. It is a criminal act. We did have reports from shelter
directors that in certain communities the police were not intervening. It would
be important for them to intervene.[80]
Lastly, while the Committee did not receive any specific data about
sentencing in cases involving violence against Aboriginal women, some witnesses
were outraged by the light sentences given to offenders who abuse Aboriginal women.
Six months before Denise was murdered, I barely
got my younger daughter out of the exact same situation. He had taken a
baseball bat to her face. She had to have full facial reconstruction, and she
has brain damage. He got three months in jail — that was all, three months.[81]
… judges and the police making deals. What about
the families, the ones who suffer? They're the ones suffering today. We're the
ones suffering today. We carry that every day. We go to bed with it at night,
and we get up with it in the morning.[82]
A commission of inquiry was established in British Columbia after
Robert Pickton was convicted of murdering six women. Part of the mandate of the
Missing Women Commission of Inquiry was to determine the reasons why the
Vancouver Police Department and the RCMP failed to arrest this serial killer
sooner, despite numerous cases of women reported missing from Vancouver’s
Downtown Eastside between 1997 and 2002. In the Report of the Missing Women
Commission of Inquiry, published in September 2012, Commissioner Wally Oppal
pointed to a number of shortcomings in the handling of these cases,
particularly with respect to report taking and follow-up on reports of missing
women, police investigative strategies, information sharing between police
services, the lack of cultural sensitivity and training among officers, and the
failure of internal review and external accountability mechanisms.
The Committee heard a limited amount of testimony concerning the
status of police investigations into cases of missing and murdered Aboriginal
women and girls. That being said, several of the families that appeared before
the Committee were critical of the slow pace of police investigations
concerning the fate of their loved ones. One of these families felt that some
of the evidence that could perhaps have made it possible to find their loved
one was lost because police services failed to react promptly.
In a report entitled What Their Stories Tell Us: Research
Findings From the Sisters in Spirit Initiative, the NWAC, much like the British
Columbia Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, argued that overlapping areas of
police jurisdiction impeded the effective resolution of some investigations.
NWAC has found that overlapping and unclear
jurisdictional areas of RCMP, First Nations, municipal and provincial police
forces has impeded effective resolution of some cases. Family members have
shared stories about jurisdictional conflicts when attempting to file a missing
persons report outside their community of residence. For example, while one
police service says the report needs to be filed in the city where their loved
one went missing, the other maintains the report should be filed with police in
her home community. Jurisdictional issues such as this act as a tremendous
barrier to families and loved ones who try to make a missing persons report,
but also to the investigation into a case.[83]
To enhance the effectiveness of police
investigations into cases of missing and murdered Aboriginal women and girls,
witnesses recommended that standards and procedures be developed on how police
forces should deal with these cases. These standards and procedures should
provide for the rapid launch of multipartite investigations so as to enhance
cooperation between police services. According to Human Rights Watch, these
procedures should include surveillance mechanisms to oversee the entire police
investigation into the case of a missing or murdered Aboriginal woman or girl
from the moment such an incident is reported. Goals should be set to review the
police response to cases of missing and murdered Aboriginal women and girls at
regular intervals so as to compile and release to the public a report on best
practices and lessons learned.[84] This
is important for families. As Westley Flett noted :
I have a sister who has been missing for four
years already. It's really hard every day not knowing whether she's alive or
gone.[85]
Witnesses also emphasized the importance of improving training for
police officers on the history and socio-economic conditions of Aboriginal
people so they can interact with them in a more appropriate manner. Such
mandatory training would be given to both new recruits and existing personnel.
Chief John Domm of the Rama Police Service felt that police training should
place particular emphasis on violence toward Aboriginal women and girls.[86] Several witnesses felt that, to be effective, training should be developed in
collaboration with Aboriginal organizations and human rights advocacy
organizations.[87]
During her appearance before the Committee, Susan O’Sullivan, the
Federal Ombudsman for Victims of Crime, urged the government to create a
missing persons index of DNA information — a recommendation echoed in the
recommendations of the Report of the British Columbia Missing Women Commission
of Inquiry. The 2014 federal budget proposes the creation of this databank.
This national DNA missing persons index will supplement the work currently
being done at the RCMP’s National Centre for Missing Persons and Unidentified
Remains. The announced funding will also serve to support police forces and
coroners’ offices that submit samples of unidentified remains and personal
effects belonging to missing persons, and to facilitate the comparison of DNA
profiles thus collected against those of samples from the National DNA Data
Bank. The Committee hopes that the creation of this index will bring some
reassurance and peace of mind to the family members of those reported missing.
The handling of complaints is a key aspect of the relationship
between the police and Aboriginal people. During the course of the study,
witnesses related that they had been victims of misconduct and improper
treatment at the hands of police officers. The Committee also spoke with
representatives of Human Rights Watch. In February 2013, this organization
published a report entitled Those Who Take Us Away — Abusive Policing and
Failures in Protection of Indigenous Women and Girls in Northern British
Columbia, Canada, which documents alleged cases of violation of Aboriginal
women’s and girls’ rights in northern British Columbia. In particular, the
organization pointed out the following problems: under-protection of Aboriginal
women and girls; failure to promptly investigate certain reports; abusive
policing and failures in accountability.
On 15 May 2013, in response to the troubling allegations made in
that report, the Chair of the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP
initiated a public interest investigation into the conduct of RCMP members
involved in carrying out policing duties in northern British Columbia.[88] This independent investigation was on-going at the time of publication of the
present report.
Some witnesses told the Committee that police forces need to be
made more accountable to the communities they serve. Human Rights Watch stated
that meaningful police accountability required independent civilian
investigations of all allegations of serious misconduct by police officers.[89] Tracy O’Hearn advocated the creation of an ombudsman
to oversee people who work in law enforcement and the justice system.
This ombudsman would be responsible, among other things, for reporting to the
public on matters and concerns pertaining to racism and other systemic problems.[90]
We live with this pain every day. We carry our
hurt and suffering with other people, and nobody is there…[91]
When I see another mother, another child, another
brother, another son, gone missing and murdered here in Canada, nobody seems to
care about us brown people. Nobody seems to care.[92]
These excerpts from the testimony given by Brenda Osborne, the
mother of Claudette Osborne, who went missing in Manitoba in July 2008, and by
Susan Martin, the mother of Terrie Anne Dauphinais, who was murdered in Calgary
on 29 April 2002, bring to light a feeling shared by many of the families
we met. The loved ones of these missing women feel abandoned and have the
impression that nobody cares about missing Aboriginal women and girls in
Canada.
The families of these women want to be heard. They would like the
Canadian public to know the stories of their missing loved ones. They also want
to be kept informed of progress in police investigations and to receive
financial and psychological support throughout this trying time.
The Committee heard testimony illustrating the lack of respect
shown by some police officers in their exchanges with the families of victims.
It is not surprising to see people lose confidence in the police when they
encounter this kind of treatment.
My wife was phoning the officers in Winnipeg one
time. One of the officers on the other line said they were not a babysitting
service. She was crying out on the other end saying why couldn't anybody help
us out. We didn't think about it for a while — we were just in shock. We
started calling the RCMP again in Winnipeg asking could they please help us
out, give us a little bit of information. They kept putting us on hold all the
time. We got no answer there from anybody. So we just went out on the streets
and started putting all these posters up, talking to other people.[93]
We were always calling to find out if there were
any updates on Claudette's case. We weren't asking for information on the case
because we know that they can't give that out. What we were asking for was some
accountability to us, to say that they were working on it and that they were
actively out there searching for her. Communication broke down and we had to
get the chief of Claudette's first nation to come out and facilitate dialogue
with the police and us.[94]
Some witnesses made recommendations to improve communication
between police forces and the families of victims. All were in agreement on the
need for better training of police officers who are responsible for
communicating with families.
We also need to train our police officers to deal
with family members and not say, well, your daughter was a prostitute.[95]
Liaison officer positions should also be created. The mandate of
these officers would be to communicate with the families of victims and to
establish clear policies and practices regarding the transmittal of information to the families of missing or murdered people.
Lastly, some witnesses proposed that a fund be created to assist
families with expenses related to the loss of a loved one. In particular, this
fund could serve to reimburse expenses incurred for the psychological support
needed to cope with the disappearance of a loved one.
The 2014 budget supports the implementation of the Canadian Victims
Bill of Rights as well as the DNA Missing Persons Index. According to the
Budget document, this bill of rights “will stand up for victims of crime and
give them a more effective voice in the criminal justice and corrections
system.”[96] It
will provide victims with online resources that will help individuals access,
among other things, the federal programs and services available for victims of
crime. The index once created would help bring closure to the families of
missing persons through DNA matching.
The Committee encourages all initiatives that enhance support for
victims of crime. It is the hope of the Committee that the Canadian Victims
Bill of Rights will take into consideration the specific experience of
Aboriginal victims.