Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Dec. 6th, 2010

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

I invite you to take a look at it when you analyze the tripartite agreement with Quebec. A large amount of money is allocated to aboriginals who cannot physically live on reserve because there is no more room. Services are offered off reserve, for instance in Aboriginal Friendship Centres.

[Sheila Fraser]

I think that this is an excellent point. We will follow this up.

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you, Mr. Lemay.

Ms. Glover, you have five minutes.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to take a moment, Ms. Fraser, because after we spoke very briefly....

Making things public is very different from getting information that is not allowed to be released. I want to make sure that the committee understands, when we're talking about the provinces and what they supply as far as information goes, that there is information that we have to get permission from the provinces to make public.

I want to ease the minds of some of the committee members who ran with that statement...that INAC does get a lot of information, but we must negotiate with the provinces to make sure that some of that information can be made public. At times, both sides of the negotiations aren't always in agreement as to what can and what cannot be made public. I just want to put that on the record.

With regard to the Alberta experience, I'd like to ask Ms. Lavallée a question. The early indicators are that the Alberta experience is producing outcomes showing that the numbers of children in care are going down; that more families are accessing the enhancement programs that exist; and that there has been a rise in permanent placements for children. That is what the early indications are telling us.

Tell me what you think of that.

[National Chief Betty Ann Lavallée]

Those are the programs with preventive measures, and I think it's great. That is something that we at the congress have continually said, that there have to be preventive measures put in place for the child and the family, basically from womb to tomb.

But let's be realistic, too. There are some families that are broken and that will never be fixed. There are children who unfortunately will have to be placed in a secure family environment, and they deserve to be in that family.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

Very good. I respect your statement about that. I too am familiar with some of those broken families, and it's unfortunate. Try as we might, we'd like to solve all of those problems, but it's not always possible. I appreciate that you've acknowledged them.

When we talk about changes over the years, though, as the chair mentioned we have doubled the amount of money, but the number of children in care has remained pretty constant for decades and decades. If this Alberta experience in the early indicators, that I just mentioned, show that it is going down, are we on the right track with our enhanced prevention-focused approach?

[National Chief Betty Ann Lavallée]

You have to address the whole family. We're talking of intergenerational dysfunctionality, to put it bluntly. These are issues that are being dealt with through the truth and reconciliation forum, too, that's ongoing right now.

What has occurred over decades is not going to disappear overnight. Sometimes it's not about just throwing money at the issue; it's about addressing the family situation and working with the whole family--i.e., putting preventive measures in place to deal with it.

If a child does not have a safe, warm, happy environment, with good food in order to learn, or a warm bed to sleep in at night, or a full belly, he's not going to learn. That's the bottom line.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

And whose responsibility is that?

[National Chief Betty Ann Lavallée]

I believe that's the responsibility of the parents, and that's the responsibility of the community working together, along with the services that are provided, to change their circumstances.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you, Ms. Glover.

Ms. Crowder, we go back to you.

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

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

As a quick comment, a couple of people have mentioned Jordan's Principle. Although it was passed unanimously in the House, I want to remark that it has only been minimally implemented. Although the will of the House was that we would implement Jordan's Principle and end the funding disputes, that still hasn't happened in many cases.

To Mr. Doyle, two things: first, in response to somebody else's question, you mentioned that when a child has been identified as aboriginal, there's an attempt to look at culturally appropriate services. Could you comment on exactly how culturally appropriate services are determined?

Second, has any work been done on comparability between provincial service delivery and on-reserve service delivery? I think you noted that currently on-reserve service delivery still is not funded for the enhancement model, it's still only at the apprehension model.

Could you comment on those two questions?

[John Doyle]

I don't know what “culturally appropriate” means, and neither does anyone else, because they can't get to an agreed definition. I think all of us are looking forward to the point when that is made clear and there is agreement around it.

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

Can I just interject there? I heard you say that they were referred to “culturally appropriate services”, but am I understanding you to say that there is no definition of what that might be?

[John Doyle]

I think what I said was that they should be referred somewhere where they could be dealt with in a culturally appropriate way, which isn't quite the same meaning.

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

Right.

[John Doyle]

One of the things we found when we conducted our work was that there was this emphasis that the services provided to these children should be appropriate for their circumstances, the physical needs, but also their culture. What we found was there wasn't altogether a lot of agreement about what that actually looks like.

I think the second part of your question was about on reserve...?

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

The on-reserve delivery and provincial delivery: that seems to be really at the heart of what we're talking about when we're talking about funding.

[John Doyle]

The on-reserve delivery is normally provided by the groups that have been developed over the last 20 years. Some of them have sophisticated processes whereby they can deliver interventions, although not much in the way of prevention.

Others are still in the embryonic stage, even after 20 years, and haven't really reached a level of maturity to deliver services. The reasons are that it's been quite difficult for them to, first of all, get the funding, and secondly, to recruit the people who can actually deliver on a local on-reserve type situation.

When it comes to in the cities or off reserve, there are entities that provide appropriate support--other than the provincial government, the ministry--in a similar way to the on-reserve area, but there are some difficulties and problems with that. So what you find is that, initially, there is an attempt to provide the right service provider. If they can't provide the right service provider, then they default to the provincial government, the ministry, if you will, to provide the support services they need.

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

So although the standards should be the same, because it's a provincial service delivery system, there still is that discrepancy between what the reserves are funded to do and what off reserve is funded to do?

[John Doyle]

Correct.

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

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Doyle.

That's it, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you, Ms. Crowder.

We have time for a couple of short questions.

Mr. Clarke, followed by Mr. Bagnell.

[Rob Clarke, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll share my time with my colleague Mr. Weston.

Mr. Doyle, we talk about cultural sensitivity, and I'm going to throw you a little bit of a curveball. Just for my own curiosity, I'd like to know, just in regard to non-aboriginal intakes, in which cultural group do you see an increase in...or do you see a decrease in the non-aboriginals? What are the numbers there for other ethnic backgrounds, and is there an increase in intakes?