Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on June 2nd, 2009

[Chief Conrad Polson]

What the Western Quebec School Board was told to do was to pay the same rates as the Department of Indian Affairs pays.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

So even if those provincial students go to a provincial school, the provincial government would pay the provincial regional rate, but when they actually go to a first nation school, even though they are not reserve children, the provincial government actually gets a break on its education rate.

[Chief Conrad Polson]

Yes.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

How do you make up the shortfall then?

[Chief Conrad Polson]

That's why I say it creates a lot of uncertainties for the teaching staff to be able to commit to coming back year after year. In our case, we have been very fortunate to have teachers who basically fell in love with the community; even though the salary is at least 30% less than what they would get off reserve, they keep coming back because they love working with the kids. They love the atmosphere and are very dedicated to what they do.

It is definitely difficult. If we hire a group of teachers for next fall and 10 or 20 kids decide to go to a different school, then we are stuck with the contract and still have to pay for the teaching staff who are there, and that's already 30% or 40% less than what we're receiving.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Mr. Bagnell, you have three minutes.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

I wonder if you have any estimates of the increase in the cost of inflation each year for the education system, and also an estimate of the increase in aboriginal population in the education system, because these are obviously going to increase your costs over and above the fact your funding is not even sufficient at the moment.

[Raymond Sioui]

Over the period from 1996 to 2006, the increase should have been 6.2% in Canada, and in Quebec it was less; I think it was 4.3% or something like that. So the gap was 2%.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Are you talking about inflation?

[Raymond Sioui]

That is the growth of population and cost of living, both together, per year.

Here I have a document from the province saying that their spending on education has increased much more than inflation, at 31.9% versus 15.2% from 1999-2000 to 2006. So in the province, the growth of their budget has been higher than inflation and the growth of the population, but it was the opposite for first nations. So the gap is still bigger.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Right.

I have one last question. You talked briefly about language. I wonder if you could expand on that—and make sure you separate whether you're talking about French or aboriginal languages.

My understanding is that when this government first came in, there was a huge cut in the proposed aboriginal funding in Canada. That was in the Canadian Heritage department, I think.

[Lise Bastien]

Well, again about the funding formula, I mentioned there was $215 per student for language instruction. The program of Heritage Canada was for $160 million over five years, and it was cut three or four years ago, I think.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Are you talking about aboriginal language?

[Lise Bastien]

Yes.

And we have a situation in our schools. In many of our schools we need to teach two languages--French and English--and we should primarily teach the aboriginal language, but of course you know the budget is not there.

[Raymond Sioui]

I would like, if I have time, to say it's very important to compare the same things. Sometimes we refer to funding coming from outside of education, but in Quebec and all other provinces, they also get funding coming from outside of education, so we have to be careful with that. Let's compare education with education.

And similarly, very often we hear about comparison with the average provincial school. We cannot compare a first nations school with the average of the provincial schools. We have to compare with comparable schools, taking into consideration socio-economic conditions, isolation, and all this, and language. So we have to be careful when they make comparisons with the average provincial school. That is not good.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

I just had a couple of very brief questions.

I'll first go to Madame Bastien. You made a comment and actually cited a quote from Monsieur Bryant, the former Ontario Minister of Aboriginal Affairs, as well as Premier Charest. And the comment was that the funding difference equalled half. I wonder if you could just clarify the context of the half, because I see the gap is identified in your report at around 4.3%. What do you think Premier Charest meant by saying that the funding gap was half?

[Lise Bastien]

First of all, Premier Charest mentioned that twice the difference was 100%, but I don't know where he got the numbers, because we have a little bit more in our survey. So I think it came after the program that was presented in the budget in February 2008, mentioning $70 million for integration. After that, the provinces started questioning whether they were going to take first nations education under their system.

That's why I think we had all these things from different ministries of different provinces mentioning that it was good and that maybe they would be interested in having first nations education under the province. But there is a problem with the budget, and actually the budget they receive is too low.

I don't have the English version, but I know it was mentioned that before transferring anything of that sort, we would like to revisit the budget.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Okay.

I have one other small point. I think it was Chief Picard who mentioned having some concern about why some of the education funding was coming through what you referred to as “financial contribution agreements”. I wonder if you could give an example of a specific agreement or a program you were referring to within “financial contribution agreements”.

[Chief Ghislain Picard]

The question could probably be best answered by Chief Polson, because he is involved in signing those agreements himself.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Sure. Okay, thank you, Chief.

[Chief Conrad Polson]

Well, maybe I'll tell you about a teacher's salary enhancement. We receive $14,000 a year to make salary adjustments for our teachers.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

And that's a specific program, or a certain line on your.... Okay.

[Chief Conrad Polson]

Yes, it's a specific program that's added in. The plug could be pulled on it any day.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

And is that separate from the so-called 2% cap? So you have this program out here called salary enhancement, which you can tap into. And is it on an application basis that you do that?