Finance Committee on Oct. 6th, 2014

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

Thank you very much.

I will now turn to Michael Kirby with the Partners for Mental Health.

First of all, that was a very powerful ad you showed us, so I think you have a very good team making those.

Very quickly, what strategies can be used to lower youth suicides in Canada?

[Michael Kirby]

The evidence from elsewhere in the world—it hasn't been done in Canada—is that you have to do, as I said, a whole community approach, which means all of government services but a number of private sector services and volunteer services. You essentially have to get them all coordinated and working together. If you don't do essentially a full-service group working together, it won't work.

The second thing you need to do is have a significant role for youth in designing the actual program. The evidence elsewhere shows very clearly that coming in with a laying on of hands by some group of adults, whether they're local or not local, doesn't work. The kids don't buy it.

The best examples in the world, one in Germany and a couple elsewhere in Australia, have been cases not where the youth were running it but where they were a very major player and all of the various public, i.e., government, social services and the private sector typically not-for-profit social services got together.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you very much, Mr. Saxton.

Mr. Brison.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

I'll start with Chief Picard.

What would be the aboriginal versus non-aboriginal school funding gap today? We hear from various witnesses that there's a significant funding gap, but what would be the funding gap today in terms of the percentage of non-aboriginal school funding?

[Chief Ghislain Picard]

The rough figure that comes to mind is that an aboriginal student costs maybe half as much as a non-aboriginal student. I think this also speaks to the issue of what happens in other programs as well. I could easily tell you that in Canada tomorrow morning we need 60,000 new units in housing in order to meet the current Canadian rate of occupancy. I could easily tell you that there needs to be a look at the escalators, the annual escalators, when it comes to provinces, versus that of first nation communities, which have been capped at 2% for the last almost 20 years now.

The same principle applies in education. It hasn't been reviewed, and we fall into this cycle of coming to these committees and making our points.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

On a per-student basis, schools in aboriginal first nations communities receive 50% of the funding of non-aboriginal.

[Chief Ghislain Picard]

Well, it all depends—

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

As a specific question, though, in your written submission you call for money that was set aside in budget 2014 for first nations education to be released immediately. Why has the government delayed this funding?

[Chief Ghislain Picard]

To us, it's obviously tied to our position with regard to Bill C-33, first nations control of first nations education. That's been really what I would call the dialogue of the deaf since the spring, in the sense that there has been no communication whatsoever except our expressing our interest to engage government based on terms that we could also define as first nations.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Senator Kirby, thank you for your work on mental health. That's your latest initiative.

Given that we have the youngest and fastest growing population in Canada, which is aboriginal and first nations youth, and given that you were saying that there is four times the rate of suicide in these communities, would that not be in some ways the lowest hanging fruit to focus on, the one area where the federal government has a greater level of responsibility in terms of those communities to focus on fixing that incredibly severe social crisis?

[Michael Kirby]

I absolutely agree with your evaluation. It's scandalous. I actually thought about doing that, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that if you were going to get broad support for it, you really had to go beyond first nations, and I include Inuit—

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Both.

[Michael Kirby]

—because it's not as bad as first nations, but it's not good.

But you'd have to go beyond first nations and Inuit. As I said, a primary focus will be first nations and Inuit, but you have to include the rest of the population as well. I guess I would describe that as a pragmatic conclusion to try to make progress on the issue.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

In some ways, working in non-aboriginal and non-first nations communities in terms of the initiative helps build a broader coalition of support from the public for the initiative.

[Michael Kirby]

Extremely, and we know it does that.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Regarding the whole issue of the stigma around mental health issues, I know that organizations like CAMH, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, have done a good job in breaking down some of that stigma.

How important is that part of your work in terms of reaching out and changing people's minds, particularly young Canadians, about the stigma around mental health?

[Michael Kirby]

Addressing the stigma issue, which a lot of people are now doing, sort of began when the Senate report came out, and it as escalated over the 10 years since then, but just attacking awareness or stigma is not going to solve the problem with the individual children and youth who have a problem.

Take the Bell Let's Talk campaign, for example. The beauty of that campaign is that it has increased public awareness, but in the end what you have to do is take that increased sense of public awareness and ask what we are going to about the problem, because awareness doesn't solve the problem.

I've always been on the let's-solve-the-problem end of the business, which is a logical step to go. It would be much harder to do this if the public weren't nearly as aware of mental health as they are now.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Thank you very much for your work on this.

Ms. McCormick, from the CFS, you've spoken of the challenges in terms of affordability of post-secondary education, of the youth job situation, and the unpaid internships.

Stats Canada currently does not track unpaid internships. We know from anecdotes that it's an issue that's growing. Would that be the best starting point, that Stats Canada actually commence the tracking of unpaid internships in Canada?

[Jessica McCormick]

Yes. We appeared before the committee on a study about youth unemployment and we spoke about the need to track those statistics just to get a good idea of what it is we're dealing with, because we only have estimates that there are as many as 300,000. That would be a good place to start.

We're lobbying provincial governments to enforce provincial legislation around the issue as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Be very brief.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Mr. Rogers, on some of the work of Senator Kirby, I think there may be some opportunities, particularly around eating disorders in young people, for some collaboration. You may have some thoughts on that in terms of collaboration.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

We're right up against the end of Mr. Brison's time.

Do you want to make a brief comment, Mr. Rogers?

[Bill Rogers]

Sure.

Absolutely, we brought Michael and his organization into where we are. It's just another cause of suicide among children, as well as death.

[Michael Kirby]

We've talked about that explicitly.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you, Mr. Brison.

We'll go to Mr. Keddy, please.