There are rumours running around the communities right now that there's a capital freeze in place until 2016. The department has said that's not the case, but when we hear numbers like that, even if there's not a capital freeze in place, there's still less money going into infrastructure.
I just want to come back to comparability for a second. There was a national policy review in 2000, which estimated federal child welfare funding was 22% below provincial funding levels. And then there was the Wen:de report in 2005 that found a minimum of $109 million per year in additional funding was needed to account for the shortfall. INAC actually participated in those two joint policy reviews, so there was some work done on comparability.
Then, back on March 19, 2009, the deputy minister wrote to the chair of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts in response to a question around comparability, and in that response acknowledged that funding varies from province to province and so on, but went on to say that with the move to an enhanced prevention-focused approach, INAC has been working with participating provinces and first nations to develop child and family service models that provide comparable INAC standards across the provinces.
So it seems that despite what the department told us last week, in fact the deputy minister, in this letter, has indicated that there was work being done around the standards.
Ms. Fraser, in your report in section 4.49, you indicate that where provinces deliver their service, “in these provinces, INAC reimburses all or an agreed-on share of their operating and administrative costs of delivering child welfare services directly to First Nations and of the costs of children placed in care”. So it seems that in some cases there's an agreement that they'll pay the provincial rates.
Given that there has been work done, by the department's own admission—the department participated in a joint review process where there was some comparability done—can you suggest some next steps that should be taken, in terms of the comparability? It seems to be the crux of the matter in terms of delivering adequate services.