Good morning, Madam Chair, committee members, guests and staff.

Ullaakkut, Chair. My name is Rosemary Cooper, and I'm the CEO of Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada. Pauktuutit is a national representative organization of Inuit women, girls and gender-diverse Inuit in Canada. We advocate for their needs in health, violence and abuse prevention, justice, social and economic development, equity and self-determination.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak on femicide specifically as it impacts indigenous women and gender-diverse people in Canada. You may be expecting Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada to focus solely on Inuit women described in our experiences, the trauma we continue to face and the statistics of violence against us, but we've done this for decades and have found that knowing how and why Inuit women are targeted isn't enough.

Across the Americas, femicide has long been used as a term to describe the targets of politicized killing of women and girls by institutions and states, including forced disappearances. It is important to make these links, because we are talking about purposeful, instrumental targeting of women and gender-diverse people because of who they are.

Following the inquiry of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls, the Government of Canada accepted the finding of genocide, and it is this intersection that we want to focus on today. We often hear calls to listen to Inuit women, but are Inuit women being heard?

Today we need to focus on the other side of this conversation: the inaction and the lack of priority and investment to end this violence and the systems that allow this violence to continue without adequate intervention, prioritization or accountability for those responsible. The national inquiry into MMIWG offered valuable findings, but it didn't provide sufficient data to give a full picture of the violence that Inuit women face. Key data held by the RCMP remains unreleased, restricting our understanding of the true scope of this violence. We demand that this data be released to national indigenous women organizations immediately. The government has accepted the inquiry's findings of genocide, but acknowledging this genocide must be matched by concrete action.

The sixth convening of the Trilateral Working Group on Violence Against Indigenous Women and Girls was recently held in Mexico. Our board chair, Nancy Etok, and all our indigenous women continue to raise the issue of inaction of the governments in Canada, Mexico and the United States.

When we talk about femicide and the violence against indigenous women and Inuit women, we must acknowledge that this violence is political. As Inuit women, we live the personal as political every day in ongoing settler colonies. At the intersection of colonialism and patriarchy, where men typically hold the authority and privilege, indigenous women are targeted not by chance but because erasing us strengthens settler power. This is not accidental violence. The systems we live within were built on the dehumanization of indigenous women. Ending this violence demands the same intention that went into creating these systems.

We've seen major commitments on paper, but let's talk about the actual investment. The national inquiry into MMIWG was originally funded at $53.8 million, with a later investment bringing it to $92 million. Yet in the same year, $2.6 billion went toward innovation and research.

MMIWG essentially received 3.5% of the investment into the innovation budget. Since 2021, Canada has allocated $29.5 billion in investment for small businesses, the green economy and AI start-ups, while indigenous communities received $2.2 billion in broadly spread funding that didn't directly address the MMIWG crisis.

In the same period, only $125 million was directed to MMIWG-specific initiatives, and only two out of the 231 calls for justice have been fully implemented. This disparity reflects the significant gap between the commitment to economic development and the urgent need for targeted action to address violence against indigenous women, girls and gender-diverse people. What is our priority? What message are we sending to indigenous and Inuit women, girls and gender-diverse people, and to those who perpetuate this violence? By these numbers, we're saying this is not a crisis. This isn't genocide; it's business as usual.

We continue to add our voices—

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