Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Feb. 8th, 2011

[Mary Polak]

Let me first acknowledge that.... We have to remember than when non-aboriginal people came to North America, what they found was a people who were proud, who were very strong, who were very self-reliant. These were not a people who were cowed in any way. Our goal has to always be to see them return to that and for them to be the ones leading it.

I think that's where the challenge lies to the greatest extent. I can only speak to British Columbia, but I think what we have learned is that traditional approaches, where we simply create dependence on systems such as welfare, do not provide the kind of inner confidence and identity and community development that needs to happen. There needs to be investment in the kind of infrastructure and support that truly is community development.

We often talk about programs, not that there is anything wrong with a program—that's how governments function. But we need to be thinking about our design of programs and our design of funding in a community development model, not in a welfare-social assistance type of model. I think therein lies the source of the problem you've described: young people who don't feel they have hope to achieve what their neighbours in non-aboriginal communities may wish to achieve.

That means we need to build up those young people and build up their leadership capacity. If we want long-term change, we have to remember how large a population of our aboriginal folks are young people and recognize that it's that generation who will be the future leaders. If you think about someone like a Shawn Atleo, it becomes clear to you just how much positive influence one person can have when he or she is a leader with significant capacity. It can cause so much positive change.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Mr. Lévesque, there is unfortunately no time left for another question. Perhaps Mr. Richard could provide a short answer.

[Yvon Lévesque, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Perhaps in 30 seconds.

[Kenn Richard]

Just briefly, I agree with early intervention, working with youth such that they feel empowered to create their own programs, sports and recreation for smaller communities that don't have those options, lots of good mentors, and leadership that is nurtured and developed—and sometimes that can be expensive--such that they can work with their own people.

Again, it's back to a life-cycle approach, where we've learned a few things about what works. We know Head Start works. We know that social recreational programs for kids 14 to 15 work very well.

The investment in those communities, allowing all children access to them, is going to make a difference. You're always going to have that percentage that have sufficient trouble in their lives that they're going to have to have special considerations. That's where the social workers can come in. But if you develop your community appropriately, I think your reliance on social service interventions, apprehensions, is going to reduce accordingly.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you.

[Kenn Richard]

But it's long term.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you, Mr. Lévesque.

Mr. Weston, you have five minutes.

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Madam Minister, Madam Du Toit, Mr. Richard, we are happy to be meeting with you here on Parliament Hill.

I have three comments, Minister, and two related questions.

First, over the last two years, your cabinet colleagues and you have worked very hard in engaging with the Government of Canada in the economic action plan, and there have been tremendous results across British Columbia. We thank you for that.

Second, it's great to see a minister with a related background. Clearly, you're dedicated to your task, and your experience is animating much of what you do.

Third, it's great to hear the candour with which you address the problems and the challenges. Thank you for those things.

My questions relate to governance. We're hearing that there will be possibly new governance models that you intend for your ministry, and it's unclear to me how those might affect first nations children and families on reserve. Here are my questions. As you develop those new models, how will they likely result in better outcomes for first nations children and families? Second, can you tell us how these models might differ between the way delegated agencies offer their services and how the ministry might offer those services directly?

[Mary Polak]

I will start with the last part first.

You can begin to understand some of the challenges with the delegate agency model by just looking at the name. The fact that we would consider having first nations deliver services to their children and families is something we have the inherent authority to delegate; it's something we have to offer. That, in and of itself, is not a concept we would support in British Columbia. It is the system we have. I completely accept that it has been developed with the best of intentions, but the best of intentions have followed us all the way along this process of working with aboriginal people, and they have not always materialized in the best possible way for aboriginal people.

What we envision is a circumstance in British Columbia where we have government-to-government discussions with first nations. So as the Ministry of Children and Family Development or the Government of British Columbia, will not design an overall British Columbia/aboriginal approach. As the Government of British Columbia, we will, for example, have discussions with the Government of the Haida Nation and ask them, government to government, how we are going to move to the point where they have full jurisdiction over the children and families in their community. Between our two governments, how would that best find its way into appropriate legislation, into appropriate regulation?

I'm sure you realized as I spoke about it that this is a very long-term look, but that is what we eventually need to get to. We know that when communities look after themselves in all manner of ways, not just in child protection and prevention but in a very holistic manner, the outcomes are better, not only for their children, but for their communities overall and their economic well-being.

It is the same reason why the Prime Minister has been anxious to move forward on a maternal and child health agenda internationally. We know that is the key to changing everything else about those communities.

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Are you anticipating a core curriculum or something that will guarantee some consistency, so whether you're in the north, the centre, or the south of our wonderful province you may have something unique that reflects your first nations culture, but there will still be some consistency...and then driving back to the equality of outcomes we hope for?

[Mary Polak]

Do you mean specifically in the K to 12 sector, or do you mean in terms of training our workers?

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

I mean in the models you're talking about, which I guess really focus on K to 12.

[Mary Polak]

In British Columbia we have such a broad range of first nations. Many are urban and from other places outside of British Columbia, so it's difficult to have a specific culturally based program of aboriginal culture in all schools across the province.

On what has happened in on-reserve schools, or even reserve schools reaching out to non-reserve schools, there are first nations that have assisted in developing curricula around their language, for example. In British Columbia we have quite a powerful selection of courses on first nations in our secondary schools. We have indicated our intent to try to enhance language instruction when it comes to the younger grades. So it's perhaps not a standard that you might envision across the piece, but it responds very much to local circumstances, and it certainly tries to infuse the understanding of aboriginal history in British Columbia across the curriculum.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

We now come back to Ms. Crowder, for five minutes.

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

Chair, I have a couple of comments. One is that there are some really great examples out there of universities that are doing very wonderful work around first nations. I have to mention Vancouver Island University. They've got the first nations child and youth care program, and they integrate. They've got elders in residence, and the University of Victoria does as well, and I know the minister would be well aware of that. I just wanted to be on record that there are universities out there doing fine work.

The second comment I have to make is on something that I know you as witnesses are really well aware of but people who may be listening to this may not be. There's a very real consequence for us not dealing with the issues around child welfare.

I'm just going to read one stat here. It's a Manitoba stat, but I'm sure B.C. has something similar. In Manitoba, for example, aboriginal youth represented 23% of the provincial population, aged 12 to 17 in 2006, but 84% of youth in sentence custody. This is out of the report from the Canadian Council of Provincial Child and Youth Advocates. But we also know, and Mr. Richards referenced it, about underachievement in education, we know there's a direct impact on health, and sadly, there's also a direct impact on violence against aboriginal women. Although this may have nothing to do with the child welfare system, of course, we had a young woman in Cowichan murdered a week ago, an 18-year-old girl, and the community is still in shock. But there's also that whole problem that Cowichan and I know other places have with youth gang violence. So there's a real cost for us in not doing this. It's a loss for generations.

I want to just come back to Jordan's Principle for a moment. I, of course, was the mover of that motion, working closely with Norway House Cree Nation, the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada, and many others when I brought the motion forward. And in Ted Hughes' report of April 2006, he specifically referenced the jurisdictional issues causing unnecessary problems, and he talked about how an inordinate amount of a small agency's time and energy can be taken up with dealing with gaps and overlaps.

I just want to clarify this, Minister. I understood you to say that Premier Campbell, shortly after Jordan's Principle was announced, endorsed it in principle, but to my knowledge no agreement has yet been signed with the federal government around the implementation of Jordan's Principle. In Manitoba there was a very narrowly defined implementation agreement. In Saskatchewan there is an interim agreement with the first nations in Saskatchewan. In British Columbia...I understood you to say two things: you have endorsed the principle, and if there are jurisdictional disputes, the province will take the lead and argue about the money later.

Have I got that correct?

[Mary Polak]

We have what you might call a working agreement. We do not have a formally signed agreement as to what you're outlining, so I apologize for not explaining that accurately.

The reason we have not reached the position where we have actually signed off on a formal agreement is the issue of the definition. So we have an agreement such that we have a working agreement, and yes, in British Columbia, if there is a question about who ought to be providing the service, we will provide the service. We will argue about the money later. That is the approach and understanding that we have attached to Jordan's Principle.

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

Great. That's really positive news, and that's what we're hoping will happen across the country. I think you may also be aware that the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society and the chiefs of Manitoba, on the anniversary of Jordan's death, have relaunched the campaign around Jordan's Principle, because it's just not happening very quickly across the country and there are still jurisdictional disputes over kids who need access to services.

On the government-to-government issue, it's great news that you are saying that you're operating on a government-to-government basis with these agreements, but I guess what you would also need is for the federal government to come to the table with money. We're talking about first nations on reserve, and you have the provincial responsibility around child welfare, but the federal government is the one that's funding the on-reserve delivery. Is that correct?

[Mary Polak]

That is correct. We need to have the partnership with the federal government. That is certainly our hope, in terms of what will come out of the discussions around the prevention framework. There is a cultural change that needs to take place on the part of those of us who are non-aboriginal, and this is all part of that process. But from where we stand, we continue to work in good faith with those first nations, and we very often have very positive experiences with the federal government in terms of the work to come to agreements, be it Haida, be it Maa-nulth, or in other areas where we've been working with them. We're hopeful that we'll see some more of that, but 20-1 is certainly the area that concerns us most greatly in terms of our on-reserve role.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you, Ms. Crowder.

Now we'll go to the final question and back to Mr. Rickford for five minutes.

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

Let me take the opportunity to develop this discussion around a broader sense of or a more comprehensive approach to prevention.

I'll preface my remarks as briefly as I am capable of by saying that I share your view, Mr. Richard, about the investment in children. Again, I don't want to make this a discussion or a debate about not enough money being invested, because I think in the process of certainly where we're at--and it varies from one health authority to the other--we see this cluster model in the EPFA model, which I talked to the minister about, giving more flexibility between operations and maintenance and prevention.

This is not a phenomenon for the federal government. In the cluster model that it developed with Health, Mr. Richard, there was an allocation of resources to programs like FASD, aboriginal head start, and maternal and child health, programs that could, if implemented well, be determinants to the identification of or the prevention of some of the issues that give rise to a child eventually going into care. So the flexibility is the same there.

I've had private experience doing this, in looking at aboriginal head start and the flexibility to put it into other programs. I have a real passion for aboriginal head start and early childhood development. My concern has simply been that across the departments--and I think I got some agreement from the minister--perhaps even provincially, we don't do a good enough job of taking a look in the aggregate at how all of this is turning out for important statistics like children in care. There's an unprecedented investment in schools. HRSDC has invested more money than previously in youth internships specifically for first nations communities, and I've been involved in those.

I guess my question is, Mr. Richard, do you think this is a good way to go? To provide the flexibility of health authorities to prioritize and move resources out of those programs is a great first step. I think we can then more fairly and objectively assess the resource question, and then, further to that, work with Child and Family Services. They operate in the same community on the ground. Can you comment on that?

[Kenn Richard]

The funding arena in aboriginal child welfare is very chaotic. It changes from one year to the next and is very difficult to figure out. What we do on the front line is.... I'll use a metaphor: if the funders drop a nickel, we'll crawl towards it, fight each other for it, and try to get it to the kids.

One of the things that we have found to be very effective--and sometimes it skirts the rules a bit--is to leverage one funding to another. If they all want to fund the same kid, and maybe they all want a little piece of that kid, well, we assemble that kid into a whole and we get everybody to participate in that whole--

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

I'm sorry to interrupt you, Mr. Richard. I guess what I'm talking about is more to a point you raised earlier with respect to that pre-emptive work, the investment in children and youth outside of the area that you're clearly highly specialized in. Let's focus the discussion on that for just a minute, if you would.

[Kenn Richard]

I'm not sure how clear I was about how extensive my agency is. I mean, we're everywhere. We have--

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

I appreciate that.