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Letter from Minister Nicholson and Minister Ambrose to the Native Women's Association of Canada

November 24, 2010

This is the text of a letter sent by the Honourable Robert Douglas Nicholson, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, and the Honourable Rona Ambrose, Minister of Public Works and Government Services and Minister for Status of Women, to Jeanette Corbiere-Lavell, President of Native Women's Association of Canada.

November 24th, 2010

Dear Mrs. Corbiere-Lavell,

We would like to begin by commending your efforts on the five year Sisters in Spirit research project. The main objectives of the program were to raise awareness of the complex origins and impacts of violence against Aboriginal women, gather knowledge to "understand the root causes of this violence and identify measures to increase the safety of Aboriginal women and girls". Sisters in Spirit succeeded greatly in both these regards.  The government, based on the work done for the Sisters in Spirit project, committed significant resources to address this issue.

We would also like to reassure you that the ability of NWAC to continue to use the Sisters in Spirit name or to conduct further research using other funding sources is not in doubt.  

It is the government's position that in a five-year time span, the Sisters in Spirit research and awareness project has accomplished much of what it was intended to do.  It is time to move to action, by taking the research and implementing it on the streets. 

For this reason, Status of Women Canada is currently providing funding to your organization for an eight-month project entitled "Evidence to Action 1", in the amount of $500,000. Building on the work of Sisters in Spirit, this project uses concrete tools and strategies to strengthen the ability of 500 Aboriginal women and girls across Canada to recognize and respond to issues of gender-based violence.  As you know, Status of Women Canada is pleased to continue to work with NWAC on a three-year project - Evidence to Action 2 - to build on Sisters in Spirit and Evidence to Action 1.

On October 29, 2010, the Government of Canada announced an investment of $10 million over two years for the Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women initiative, and we were pleased to have NWAC participate in our announcement.

Since this time, however, we have read with great concern the inaccurate media reports on your organization's reaction to our announcement.  The comments are troubling in that the information does not reflect the facts about our new initiatives.

These criticisms have been most disconcerting as we spoke to you prior to the announcement to explain details of this initiative, and the many ways in which NWAC can play an important part. We recall your words at the time being "this has been a long time coming, but worth the wait".

We explained to you the goal of the Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women strategy, which is a multi-tiered approach to provide new tools for law enforcement, improve the justice system, enhance victims' services, and introduce community programs to help prevent these troubling acts and bring those responsible to justice.

Attached you will find details of the Missing and Murdered Aboriginal initiative. You will find it is a comprehensive, evidence based approach, with many initiatives identified by the Sisters in Spirit project.  Our government truly believes that Aboriginal women deserve respect, dignity and the right to feel safe, which is the premise upon which our iniatiative is based.

We see the Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women initiative as an opportunity to forge better relationships across Canada between all partners involved in addressing this issue:  law enforcement agencies, organizations, governments, the justice system and stakeholders, including NWAC.  It is by working together to put in place effective measures that we will have a greater impact on the number of Aboriginal women that go
missing and get murdered each year.

We welcome your help to continue to work with Justice Canada and Public Safety Canada to develop sound projects and concrete actions that will help achieve the best outcomes for all.

Sincerely,



Hon. Rob Nicholson
Minister of Justice



Hon. Rona Ambrose,
Minister for Public Works Government Services and Status of Women




Annex:  Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Initiative description

Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Initiative

School and Community based projects - The Sisters in Spirit study, among others, pointed to the additional vulnerability of young Aboriginal women to violence. $1 million will be made available by the Department of Justice to Aboriginal groups who wish to develop school-based or community-based projects that will to help heal, move forward and encourage young Aboriginal women to reduce their vulnerability to violence by providing alternatives to high-risk behaviour. The government will not be developing content, but rather looking to Aboriginal communities and groups to tell us what strategies should be developed and tested to effect positive change. The overall goal of the initiative will be to reduce the vulnerability of young Aboriginal women to violence.

Victims Fund - Funds will be added to the Department of Justice's Victims Fund to help the western provinces (those with the highest instances of missing and murdered Aboriginal women) develop or adapt victim services for Aboriginal people and specific culturally sensitive victim services for families of missing and murdered Aboriginal women. This will be done in partnership with Aboriginal groups. Additional investments in the Victims Fund will also be made available to Aboriginal community groups to respond to the unique issues faced by the families of missing or murdered Aboriginal women at the community level. This funding will total approximately $2.15 million over two years.

Community Safety Plans - The Department of Public Safety Canada will provide $1.5 million over two years for Aboriginal groups to develop and carry out community safety plans to improve the safety of Aboriginal women within Aboriginal communities. The plans will enable First Nation and other Aboriginal communities to take responsibility for identifying their own needs, and how to meet those needs to improve community safety and wellness. This will allow communities to structure their own process for dealing with the challenges facing them. Real change requires each community to decide for itself what and how to change to create a safer place for their own people. While media attention has been on those Aboriginal women murdered by serial killers, we cannot forget that that is a small portion of the cases identified by Sisters in Spirit, and that many more were killed in or near their homes and communities by those they knew.

Awareness Materials - In 2010-2011, the Justice Partnership and Innovation Fund will make available approximately $850,000 to Aboriginal, and educational groups (working with Aboriginal groups), to develop materials for the public on the importance of breaking intergenerational cycles of violence and abuse that threaten Aboriginal communities across Canada.

Compendium - The Department of Justice will also invest almost $500,000 in the development of a national compendium of promising practices in the area of law enforcement and the justice system to help Aboriginal communities and groups improve the safety of Aboriginal women across the country. These "best practices" will be identified in a number of fields: law enforcement, victim services, Aboriginal community development and violence reduction. Aboriginal groups will be central to the participation and success of this project.

Criminal Code Amendments - There are two additional initiatives of the Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women plan that focus more on governmental and institutional improvements. The Department of Justice will introduce amendments to the Criminal Code to streamline the application process when specific court orders or warrants need to be issued in relation to an investigation for which a judge has given a wiretap authorization. This amendment will improve the efficiency of investigations into serious crimes, including those that involve missing and murdered Aboriginal women. Other amendments will provide authority for wiretapping without a warrant in emergencies. These circumstances will include murder or kidnapping investigations relating to missing and murdered Aboriginal women.

RCMP's National Police Support Centre for Missing Persons - The new Support Centre, with a two year investment of $4 million, will make four concrete differences.

  • First, part of the money will be used to add fields to the current CPIC (Canadian Police Information Centre) database, to ensure that more comprehensive information is available to law enforcement in the field about missing persons. We would like to reassure you that valuable information that your organization collected will be continue to be an irreplaceable resource for the ongoing investigations of missing women, and to identify the killers of those who have perished. For this we thank you. The improved CPIC database, to be operational in the Fall, 2011, will also be linked to the National Aboriginal Policing Services. In this way, if someone is detained for some reason, the police officer would know immediately if a missing persons report has been filed on that individual. This is not currently the case and will surely lead to missing persons being found faster.

  • Second, the new Support Centre will provide specialized services to support both the five specialized Task Forces currently in the field and local police forces conducting missing persons investigations. As one example, this will allow assistance in comparing missing persons cases across jurisdictions, which will assist individual police forces in spotting more quickly patterns suggesting a single offender. The Centre will also develop national standards and protocols to ease inter-jurisdictional cooperation between police forces.

  • Third, a new website will be modelled after several successful websites that ask members of the public to provide tips to match unidentified human remains to older cold cases involving missing persons. In particular, the website in Ontario has been very successful in providing new information to investigators and allowing closure for families.

  • Fourth, the Support Centre responds to many of the concerns identified in a number of reports, including a resolution of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police calling for federal leadership in the area of missing persons, the Sisters in Spirit report which expressed concern about limitations in jurisdictional reach between various police forces, the recent report of the Federal Provincial and Territorial Working Group on Missing Women, and many others.

The Support Centre will take into account the lessons learned through the Sisters in Spirit report. The design of the new National Police Support Centre for Missing Persons includes one permanent officer on loan from the National Aboriginal Policing Services. This is specifically to ensure that the focus is kept on missing Aboriginal women, and to provide a liaison to both the Aboriginal groups and community. Furthermore, as the RCMP uses databases as its primary source of information, they are welcoming of any information they could use from NWAC to assist in investigations. They will continue to work with NWAC to keep Aboriginal communities healthy and safe.

The Support Centre will clearly not just be specific to women or Aboriginal women. The benefits of this initiative are easily and inexpensively extrapolated to the rest of the Canadian population, including missing children.

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Date Modified:
2010-12-10