Thank you. Mr. Gargan.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ms. Peterson, I have looked at the list of visits. You have gone into the communities from Hay River all the way to Fort Smith, Inuvik, Fort McPherson, Arviat, Rankin Inlet, Iqaluit, Broughton Island, Coppermine, Cambridge Bay, Fort Good Hope, Fort Franklin, Rae-Edzo and Yellowknife. Those are the large communities that you would see having those problems.

As aboriginal people, we have never addressed the issue of gender. We have always addressed it as a nation of people. Now, we are seeing even aboriginal women caught up in this gender war. It is not happening in the communities smaller than 1,000 people, for example. We do not see women walking the streets in fear at night. Nor do I see it for men. Perhaps, in Yellowknife, both women and men should be concerned about walking the streets in the evenings. I wanted to bring that out because you have about six people on your staff who helped you do the report. It is a very good report. The women who did this report also must have had a good education.

In your recommendations, one of the issues is plain language in the judicial system. I find a lot of the stuff in here very hard to read. I do not know what you mean by the definition "sexless." The report was done by a very bright group of people. If you put this into the communities it would be very difficult for the people in the communities to understand. Is it because of time that you have not gone to many of the traditional communities? When I refer to traditional communities, I mean those such as Fort Wrigley, Fort Liard and Fort Providence. They are not too caught up in your Canadian mentality, perhaps. This is not reflected in this report.

Thank you, Mr. Gargan. Ms. Peterson, would you like to respond?

Thank you. To answer your question, Mr. Gargan, it was a balancing act in terms of trying to visit communities in each of the regions and trying to visit communities of different sizes. I would disagree with you that all of the communities visited were large communities. Broughton Island and Fort McPherson are not large communities. We attempted to strike a balance in undertaking this report. The financial responsibility and the time available to complete the report necessitated that we make a choice about the communities which we visited. While, in some of the small communities, women may not have a fear of walking down the street in terms of the violence that they may have in a larger urban centre, I will strongly point out to you that women have fear in their homes. That prevails whether they live in Wrigley, Lac La Martre, Broughton Island, Pond Inlet or any other community in this territory.

While violence does not always occur on the streets within smaller communities it definitely occurs within the home. That violence is even more troublesome because it occurs in positions of trust and in situations where women have very little power and little option of leaving an abusive situation and making a better life for themselves and their families. In small communities people who are suffering from abusive behaviour have very few options available to them to correct or rehabilitate that behaviour. All of those needs, particularly in small communities where people are isolated and have little in the way of other support mechanisms, must be seriously addressed. It costs money.

Thank you. Mr. Nerysoo.

Mr. Chairman, first let me indicate to Ms. Peterson our appreciation for the trouble you took trying to come up and deal with this particular report. The time that many people took to be involved with the development of the report and recommendations, including those who were a part of the group who developed the report and made their presentations and made their issues known, is important. I do not deny that these issues are important. It is important for all of us to try to understand and appreciate the issues before us in terms of gender equality or those issues that do affect women very differently. It is not to diminish the importance of the recommendations or the issues in terms of recognizing how we view, both as men and women, the issues or how they are dealt with differently, it is more that there is a responsibility on the part of everyone to deal with these issues. We have to be prepared to try to appreciate the differences. You have noted that. We cannot always disassociate our responsibility as men from addressing these issues, the same way that women cannot dissociate their responsibility of dealing with those issues and concerns that apply to how we deal with men.

The point which Mr. Gargan made, perhaps not as gently as he could have, is that when you stereotype the issues and do not place the responsibility on all people, both men and women, to deal with these issues and to address gender equality between men and women, and their understanding, then the general public loses, the women lose, society loses, and the men lose. In many respects we are concerned that you do not want to place these issues in the context of being simply women's issues. It is far more important than that. It is the responsibility of society to respond to these issues.

I have read most of the recommendations, and I have no problem with them, in many respects. I do not necessarily say that all of the recommendations cost money. I think there is a suggestion sometimes that reports are going to cause the public purse a great deal of dollars. I know there are costs but I am not certain that the costs are so substantive that people cannot deal with them, either now or in the long run.

Mr. Chairman, our discussions here today may be not be as long as you want them to be, but as I pointed out to the Minister earlier, I think the recommendations in the report which has been brought before us requires some clarification and some comment from you with regard to the intent of the report, the intent of the recommendations. Even more than that, I think a fairly clear interpretation is needed on the part of those organizations that are also involved in trying to resolve the matters of violence against women and equal treatment. No matter how it is done, it is not acceptable and should not be put up with by anybody. The fact is that in our society this is occurring every day. It is important and incumbent upon all of us to somehow become responsible for getting rid of those kinds of action and reaction. I wanted to make this particular point because I do not want you or the public to get the impression that our short discussion today ends the whole issue because it does not. We want the aboriginal native organizations, the Inuit Women's Association, the Native Women's Association and the Council on the Status of Women to deal with these issues with us.

In many respects the report only highlights those issues and those recommendations which you and your review committee felt were important enough to highlight. The question now is, who is involved in the implementation of these? The government and other organizations who are watching us every day to make sure that we respond to the needs of women and to the issues they raise. It is responsible of us to make sure they have their input into helping us respond to this along with our government, to lay out a plan as to how we are going to address these particular matters.

Thank you, Mr. Nerysoo. Would you care to respond, Ms. Peterson?

Briefly, Mr. Chairman, I agree with Mr. Nerysoo's remarks that the solutions to these problems require a dialogue between men and women, and throughout society as a whole. It is not one gender's problem or the other's. In that dialogue, men and women must hear one another and understand one another. If we can accomplish that we will have accomplished a great deal. I draw no conclusions from the length of your discussion today. These problems are not solved overnight. They are solved with long-term commitment to the issues. I also agree that a consultative approach is appropriate in that it will be a learning approach for both Members of this Assembly and for those groups that may participate in it. The only word of caution that I would add to this, is that women's organizations have borne the principle responsibility for addressing these issues over the last many years. Those organizations, and the women who work in them, grow tired, and they need your help.

Thank you. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. From speaking with people in the communities, not only people who, as individuals, have dealings with the court, but those who are charged with responsibilities within the court system, it is clear that there are some difficulties with the Victim Impact Statement. There were some difficulties with the distribution of this statement to the pilot project communities, how the statement was to be used, the role of police officers in obtaining the statement and explaining to a victim that she could in fact be cross-examined on the statement if the statement was not accepted. These are not simple issues to resolve, particularly the issue surrounding cross-examination on the Victim Impact Statement. In that situation you may find someone who has been a victim of a violent or traumatic assault who is breathing a sigh of relief because they do not have to give evidence in a trail on that matter. The guilty plea has been entered and the matter is just going to sentencing. That victim fills out a statement saying this is how this crime has affected me and how I will think it will continue to affect me in the future. If that statement is not accepted by defence

counsel, the witness is then asked to attend court and can be cross-examined. The trauma of the whole incident may be revisited upon her as a result of this.

There are issues to be worked out in the use of Victim Impact Statements and the resources that are allocated to support obtaining Victim Impact Statements in ways that are meaningful and useful to the court system. I would be hard pressed to disagree with the Minister in terms of his comments about assessing the usefulness of Victim Impact Statements. I think that with all kinds of issues associated with the administration of justice we have to be in a period of constant assessment to see whether these things are working for us. Mr. Dent has indicated that it may be appropriate to try those statements in communities where there may be more in the way of resources to support their use within the court system. I think that is a valuable comment.

Thank you, Ms. Peterson. Mrs. Marie-Jewell.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. First of all I want to echo the comments of my colleague indicating to Ms. Peterson that appreciation is being expressed for the way the report has been developed. I also want to thank the women of the N.W.T. for participating in the process and bringing forth their concerns. That in itself has to be commended because it is difficult for an individual to bring forth these concerns and experiences. The courage is certainly to be recognized and commended.

Mr. Chairman, my comments are not with respect to the details of the report. I know the report has been submitted to the Minister's office and I recognize the recommendations with respect to training and awareness. I know that many of the recommendations are to request the people in positions who can enforce many of the laws that are currently in place to work with more vigour. Has there been any movement on his part for a plan to be developed to address this report?

Thank you. Minister of Justice.

Thank you, Mr. Kakfwi. Mrs. Marie-Jewell.

Mr. Chairman, recognizing that this report has been on our agenda for some time, and recognizing the recommendations at the back of the report, I would like to ask the Minister if it would be possible for his department to develop a plan categorizing what areas have to be developed. We recognize that some recommendations are in the right format now, however, as the Minister said, it is a matter of dealing with them and bringing them to the appropriate department. I would like to see if the Minister is able to develop a plan categorizing these recommendations and to determine which areas of legislation have to be updated, and which areas of training departments can focus on and start developing and implementing in the near future.

I would like to ask the Minister if it would be possible for him to bring that forward to the House by February, when the session convenes.

Thank you. The honourable Minister for Justice.

Thank you. Mrs. Marie-Jewell.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to thank the Minister for making that commitment and I look forward to seeing his developed plan as a result of this report. I would like to thank, once again, Ms. Peterson for developing the report and the women of the Territories who were courageous enough to bring forth their concerns on ensuring that this report be developed with their concerns expressed. Thank you.

Thank you. The honourable Member for Baffin Central.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to thank Ms. Patterson and the women across the north for having come up with the report on the gender issue.

However, my concerns are the same as those about which my colleagues have spoken, and I find that there are rarely any recommendations placed in the traditional aboriginal concept. It does not do a good job of clarifying that the problems leading to gender inequality have been imposed by the Euro-Canadian social framework. Aboriginal people did not ever split community concerns into men's issues and women's issues; they faced them together as a community. The report can be criticized because it does not reflect that philosophy clearly enough. Even though many of the recommendations are good, the special advisor seems to feel that men are not interested in solving these problems. That is not true of our elders in the small communities. What does the special advisor think of that?