It is my honour to stand in support of the member for Kiiwetinoong’s motion to adopt the recommendations of the official opposition’s report on the Indigenous determinants of health. Racism is a structural and social determinant of health. This will unequivocally improve the lives of indigenous peoples and their communities across the province.

As the critic for women’s social and economic opportunity, I want to pay special focus to what this motion means for Indigenous women. In Indigenous cultures, women are held in a special regard in many Indigenous teachings and traditions. For instance, “To the Ojibway, the earth is woman, the mother of the people, and her hair, the sweetgrass, is braided and used in ceremonies. The ... Sioux people of Manitoba and the Dakotas tell how a woman—White Buffalo Calf Woman—brought the pipe to their people. It is through the pipe that prayer is carried by its smoke upwards to the creator in their most sacred ceremonies.”

It was through colonialism that this was gravely disrupted, as we continue to witness today in Ontario, in our communities, and across our nation.

To quote Indigenous author Paula Gunn Allen, “Since the coming of the Anglo-Europeans beginning in the 15th century, the fragile web of identity that long held tribal people secure has gradually been weakened and torn.”

Gender and gender identity have now been listed as social determinants of health in this country, because to identify as a woman is to have barriers placed in front of you from birth because of a sexist world. These are not inevitable, but rather socially constructed. They are also not felt equally, and few are also impacted by the joint forces of colonialism and patriarchy as Indigenous communities are.

We have called on Ontario to recognize gender-based violence as an epidemic. We’ve called on this Conservative government to do so. Our calls are often unheard.

Indigenous women know all too much about gender-based violence, sadly. Indigenous women are at least three times more likely to experience violence, and at least six times more likely to be murdered. While just 4% of the Canadian population identifies as Indigenous and as women, they represent 24% of homicide victims. Many of them are never found, never even looked for, leaving their families shattered and without closure. No day of significance, no database, no event in our communities will bring their sisters, mothers, friends, partners and loved ones home.

We need action, and we demand that action today: action like committing to enacting every one of the missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls report’s 231 individual calls; action like saying yes to my colleague’s motion, a systemic approach to doing better by placing Indigenous self-determination at the centre and by recognizing Indigeneity and colonialism as overarching—I want to say it again—overarching and intersectional determinants of health across government ministries and across every political group. These need to be recognized as the facts that they are.

Thank you, Sol. Thank you for this motion. I support it wholeheartedly.