Human Resources Committee on March 4th, 2014

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Ms. Harris.

[Joan Harris]

Our organization is solely funded under the ASETS program, so it's more limiting. Of the 34 subagreement holders that we have, about a quarter have funding over $400,000. The remainder are very small agreements. Once you factor.... For example, if your agreement is between $100,000 to $200,000 and you only have a 10% administration budget, it quickly becomes very small, so therein lie the challenges I was speaking about.

Within that budget several accountabilities need to be met, including of course the very important statistical tracking of clients. However, successes still exist within that, it just takes a lot more ingenuity to manage your funding. The informal partnerships on reserves that I was speaking to make that funding go further. First nations use their funding, along with funding—the work opportunities program, Active Measures, and those types of things—to be able to provide more training for their clients.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Thank you.

Mr. Paterson, do you have any comments or any relationships with either of those?

[Kent Paterson]

Not at the present time, no.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Okay, great.

Ms. Harris, I would presume the new electronic system is providing some fairly reasonable data for analysis. Can you take 30 seconds to share with us what the goals of the new electronic system are designed to do?

[Joan Harris]

Yes, absolutely.

We did have to pick a system, and we tried to find one that's user friendly because there are varying levels of experience on the reserves. Everyone would find it easier to use this program. We've switched to a program called an accountability and resource management system. It allows us to regularly track targets. It's online, and it's live. We're not waiting for a monthly upload to government and for those numbers to come back to us; we can view it in real time. It's allowing the first nations to know where the shortfalls are, if any, and what they need to track. It's assisting them to be more aware of what the stats are.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Thank you. That's time up on that round.

We move to Mr. Cuzner, from the Liberal party.

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Thanks to all witnesses.

I'd like to get a clarification, and you may think this isn't related to the study, but I'll loop it in. I'm taking this out of the archives, from maybe 2001-02, when Nunavut was granted a shrimp allocation and there was no real capacity within that community. I think a problem arose, that the allocation was actually fished by a non-Canadian boat. I think it was a Norwegian boat or something that fished that allocation.

Do we have that capacity now in Nunavut? Are you guys doing your own shrimp?

[Elisabeth Cayen]

Absolutely. We're up to an overall allocation of 75% now in the waters adjacent to Nunavut, which is part of the land claim agreement as well. The capacity is there now. We have about six or seven vessels that are either Nunavut owned completely, or owned partially as a majority owner. The number of foreigners on the boats is decreasing, and that's our goal. Our goal is to move our—

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

That would have started around 2001-02.

[Elisabeth Cayen]

Yes, and it took a few years to get the NFMTC on the ground. Part of that was the guys weren't used to going fishing. They would go fishing traditionally for their day fishing, but not away from home for six or eight weeks at a time.

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Yes, I thought I remembered that correctly. It was a revenue stream, but there were no real far-reaching benefits on that.

[Elisabeth Cayen]

That has really changed.

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

You mentioned that the funding stream is set to lapse at the end of March.

[Elisabeth Cayen]

It is.

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Are there negotiations going on? Are you getting any of sense of that?

[Elisabeth Cayen]

I've secured funding for next year. Not all of it is coming from the Government of Canada. In fact, that's a very small part. I've been able to develop a relationship with the Government of Nunavut, and under their labour market strategy they'll be our main funder for this coming year.

With the new programs coming in 2015, we're hoping to move back to the federal government, but for this year, that's what we're going to do.

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

I have a quick question for Ms. Harris.

You work in partnership with program delivery, providing employment and training opportunities through a subagreement with the Province of Manitoba.

Do you know if some of these training opportunities are currently being supported through the ALMA, the labour market agreement?

[Joan Harris]

No, they're not. The funding is through ASETS. Some of the first nations do have partnerships with the province, but very few. The majority of them, our 34 first nations, usually partner with other federal funding programs. One of the challenges that I mentioned was that we really would like to have our federal funder facilitate that relationship with the provincial . There's not that significant relationship there at the moment.

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Thanks.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Thank you, Mr. Cuzner.

Now we go to Mr. Armstrong.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

I'd like to pick up on that.

What you're saying is that the money, which is all federal money that the provinces administer, you're having trouble tapping into that through the provincial government out there. Is that accurate?

[Joan Harris]

That's what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that we do need to work together because our aboriginal clients need to tap into that, absolutely.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

What's the province's reasoning for not allowing aboriginal clients to tap into that? Do you have any opinion on that?

[Joan Harris]

There's no indication of the reason. What we're looking for is some consultation at the front end of when programs are being developed.