Recommendations to guarantee economic security for Indigenous women in the DTES

Employment security

Recommendation 77: Rectify Indigenous women’s exclusion from the economy by:

1. Developing equitable and inclusive hiring policy and standards.
2. Creating a diversity of low-barrier jobs in the DTES with priority hiring and support for Indigenous women of the community.
3. Creating peer-based employment programs including navigation positions throughout the housing, mental health, substance use, and income support systems.
4. Ensuring Indigenous women peer workers are paid a living wage, have full benefits, and have the right to unionization.
5. Creating jobs that value and compensate skills such as weaving, beading, drum making, food harvesting, and traditional healing, and support the creation of an Indigenous women’s cooperative in the DTES.
6. Improving employment supports and workplace accommodations for Indigenous women who are single parents and/or in recovery to ensure that they are not setup to fail in their employment due to systemic barriers.

Recommendations to guarantee economic security for Indigenous women in the DTES

Employment security

Recommendation 79: Recognize the role and contribution of volunteers in the DTES, and create accredited volunteer programs to transfer skills and enable access to employment opportunities.

Recommendations to guarantee economic security for Indigenous women in the DTES

Universal public services

Recommendation 86: Implement better educational supports:

1. Expansion of the Head Start program for Indigenous families.
2. Guarantee a school breakfast and lunch food program in all public schools that is free, nutritious, and culturally diverse.
3. More Indigenous-focused schools with Indigenous teachers, Indigenousbased educational methodology and curriculum, and that is supportive to urban Indigenous students needs and contexts.

Recommendations to guarantee economic security for Indigenous women in the DTES

Universal public services

Recommendation 87: Free postsecondary tuition:

1. Free tuition for all postsecondary education for all Indigenous women and girls.
2. Eliminate all interest on existing student loans for Indigenous women and girls.
3. Under the Single Parents Employment Initiative, extend tuition coverage to multi-year degrees and training programs and remove the restricted list of eligible careers and programs.

Recommendations to keep Indigenous families together in the DTES

Support Indigenous families

Recommendation 122: Guarantee free and culturally appropriate child care and early childhood education for all children on and off reserve, with adequate staffing ratios and support for children with special needs.

Recommendations to keep Indigenous families together in the DTES

Support Indigenous families

Recommendation 128: Implement existing recommendations by the Fostering Change Initiative and First Call: BC Child and Youth Advocacy Coalition. In particular:

1. Remove eligibility restrictions and increase financial and other supports for youth and young people on Youth Agreements and Agreements with Young Adults. Agreements with Young Adults should be increased to at least $1400 per month with no clawbacks.
2. Remove the maximum number of months during which young people are eligible to remain on Agreements with Young Adults.
3. Extend the age till 25 years old for how long MCFD should support young people as they transition into adulthood and continue to receive housing, food, transit, cultural, and other financial supports.
4. Remove the age limit to be eligible for free postsecondary tuition and eliminate the requirement of months in care to be eligible for free postsecondary tuition.

Recommendations to end criminalization of Indigenous women in the DTES

Access to justice

Recommendation 164: Prioritize funding to train Indigenous legal advocates, court workers, and lawyers including through increased funding and capacity for Indigenous court worker programs and initiatives under the Indigenous Justice Program.

Recommendations to end criminalization of Indigenous women in the DTES

Access to justice

Recommendation 165: The Federation of Law Societies of Canada, law schools in Canada, and the Canadian Judicial Council must provide mandatory training to all law students, lawyers, and judges on the legacy of residential schools, Canada’s obligations under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Indigenous legal traditions, Gladue principles, and the systemic failure of colonial legal systems to uphold justice for Indigenous people.

Recommendations to end criminalization of Indigenous women in the DTES

Correctional facilities

Recommendation 175: Increase supports for Indigenous women on conditional release, particularly through income assistance, employment, counselling, and child care. Permit conditional release options that facilitate Indigenous women to be housed with their children.

Recommendations to end criminalization of Indigenous women in the DTES

Correctional facilities

Recommendation 176: All day-to-day programs and services at remand, provincial, and federal facilities must be accessible, timely, and long term with the goal of decarceration and successful reintegration. Access must be unconditional, not contingent on classification, and not withdrawn as a punitive or disciplinary measure. Guaranteed programs and services must include:

1. Independent prison legal services.
2. Independent healthcare in accordance with the U.N. Mandela rules including 24/7 appropriate healthcare; mental health counselling; access to gender-affirming surgery; detox on demand; heroin-assisted and injectable hydromorphone treatment; and safe needle exchange and tattooing program.
3. Culturally appropriate and non-punitive healing programs that understand physical, mental, spiritual, and sexual traumas as intergenerational collective traumas caused by colonization.
4. Free phone calls.
5. Nutritious food.
6. Library, reading materials, and computer literacy.
7. Increased visitation, including increased hours, more opportunities for physical contact, and decreased security checks for visitors.
8. Access to meaningful employment and higher prisoner pay.
9. Support for release planning.