Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Nov. 30th, 2011

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

In the main estimates you did sunset $289 million for supporting investments in first nations infrastructure for school construction, water and waste water projects, and on-reserve housing. Has that money been put back into the budget in the supplementary estimates?

[Michael Wernick]

The spending this year will be very similar to that for the year before, except for the parts that were specifically tied to Canada's economic action plan, which had a two-year injection. The baseline spending this year will be very similar to that in last year, with the exception of the CEAP.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Do you know what that amount was?

[Michael Wernick]

Community infrastructure is around $1 billion all-in.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

How much of that would have been the Building Canada fund?

[Michael Wernick]

Sorry, the CEAP would have been on top of that. As the minister said, in the CEAP we got a two-year injection—one-time only spending, that is, use it or lose it—for projects that were shovel-ready, which amounted to about $1.3 billion or $1.4 billion. Those projects are all essentially complete now.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Wilks, go ahead for seven minutes.

[David Wilks, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank to the committee for coming back after the vote.

As you're aware, the rights of aboriginals are very important to our government. They're at the forefront. I'm wondering if you could elaborate on why it's important to have legislation to provide matrimonial real property rights and protection to people living on reserves.

[Michael Wernick]

I appreciate the question.

I think this committee will get ample opportunity to discuss this when the bill arrives for your consideration shortly. This will be the fourth attempt, I think, to pass matrimonial property legislation.

The situation was created by court decisions almost 20 years ago, which voided the application of provincial law in this area. It meant that spouses on first nations reserves, male or female, who had a marriage breakup because of death or divorce had nowhere to go to get recourse and no security in terms of matrimonial property division. If you or I had to do it, we'd always have the provincial courts to go to. First nations people don't have those, and so there is a very hard burden on first nations' women and their dependants. It has gone on for a very long time. There have been many attempts to wrestle with this.

We were talking about consultation and engagement. There was a process that cost nearly $8 million and criss-crossed the country. There was a special representative, Wendy Grant-John, for this. It's not an easy subject. There are a lot of technical issues in terms of administration and application. The government has retabled Bill S-2, and I understand that it is headed towards this committee.

[David Wilks, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Thank you.

I wonder if I could just switch gears for a second, Mr. Chair, and go back to something that was discussed prior to the break. Both Dr. Bennett and Mrs. Duncan alluded to this. It was with regards to water and waste water requirements of first nations. One thing they both failed to speak to was the fact that we need regulations and laws to come into effect to make sure that drinking water and waste water systems conform to safe standards. We see that off reserve, certainly with municipalities. I wonder if you could speak to that, and to how important it is to have the regulations and laws in place so that when we put waste water and water treatment systems in place in first nations communities, they stay in place for some time.

[Michael Wernick]

I would commend to the committee, if you want somebody's independent view on this, the spring report of the Auditor General, Chapter 4. Madam Fraser talks about this quite extensively and comes down very clearly on the need for a legislative basis and standards. I certainly agree with that, and I talked about this at the public accounts committee last month.

There are several pieces of the puzzle to improve results at the end of the day. There is no question that building the physical infrastructure—the plant for treatment and distribution of water and waste water—is part of it. What we learned in a number of communities on and off reserve is the importance of operator training and management. You'll remember Walkerton and Prince Albert, and other things. You must have people who are well-trained in the management and operation of these things, as well as a system of reporting and management and accountability on that.

What happens outside first nations reserves to pull it all together is that there's a legislative framework and a set of regulations. So engineers know what to design to, operators know what to manage to, and governments know what to police and regulate. That's completely missing in first nations communities. So the regulations are important glue in making the whole thing operate properly. It holds the operators to account, the managers to account, and my department to account as well.

[David Wilks, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Thank you.

Do I have time, Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

You have about three minutes left.

[David Wilks, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

I defer my time to Mr. Payne.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Thank you, David.

Thank you, Chair.

I'm very pleased to have you folks come back after our votes.

One of the things we were doing in the last Parliament was our study of Nutrition North. We heard there were a number of problems, particularly with the food mail program. I wonder if you could give us a bit of information on the high cost of living in the north and how Nutrition North is benefiting northerners.

[Michael Wernick]

I appreciate the question. Certainly we've talked about it at this committee many times.

The new program came into effect on April 1 and replaces the old food mail program, which, just as it sounds, paid Canada Post to deliver parcels of food to communities. There was very little transparency and accountability as to what happened with that money. I got lots of questions about the money we transferred to Canada Post in previous years.

The new system changes the design so that it is the retailer that is subsidized. We now have the point-of-sale data from retail stores telling us exactly what's being shipped. We have a set of rates per community and a set of eligible goods. All of that is out on the web and has been discussed quite a bit.

We have an advisory council of people who live in northern communities to help fine-tune this and there have been tweaks and adjustments made. There was a phasing-in period, which will end next year. Some things were left in the program but will drop out next year, and that's all been made clear.

We now know from the point-of-sale data where the subsidy is going and can report that to you more clearly. In the first three months, we know there were 6 million kilograms of food and eligible products shipped. We know about 25% of that was perishable vegetables and fruits; about 17% was milk and dairy products; 13% was fresh and frozen meat, poultry, and fish; and about 11% was perishable grain products.

The program is not designed to deal with all of the issues of the cost of living in the north. There are tax issues and northern allowances and other things that help compensate people. It's designed to focus the taxpayer subsidy on nutritious food commodities, and that's where we are right now, about half a year into the implementation of the program.

One of the things I like about it is that it's more transparent about where the money is going, and you as parliamentarians can see what you're getting for your $60 million.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

I don't know if you have any comments from your advisers in the north on that, and particularly from the individuals who are buying these products. Are they seeing some benefits? It is much more transparent for them as well, I presume?

[Michael Wernick]

It's difficult to judge from Ottawa. The people who are unhappy are the ones who get the media attention, and the squeaky wheel gets the grease, etc. There are people who are unhappy in some cases about the rate structure or the choice of commodities, and they've made that very clear.

My sense of it, from having people out in all of the nearly 100 communities, is that the program is being very well received. People are in a much better position and they're able to know who to complain to if the produce is not arriving in good quality. They start with the retailer and that's entirely appropriate.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Bennett, I do want to give you some time here.

Colleagues, I'm going to go a little bit past the time I had hoped, but I do know that you need to be out of here at 5:30. So we're going to have to run through the estimates very quickly, because I do want Ms. Bennett to get in at least a portion of her questions.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

It won't be in the estimates because it just happened, but with Attawapiskat, I understand that in your department's evaluation on intervention, the officials agreed that while third-party management was undesirable, it's occasionally unavoidable, or should be reserved for situations where there is unwillingness or a total lack of capacity, or where the creditors are threatening to garnishee first nations funds.

I also understand that it costs an average of about $180,000 to have third-party management. I am wondering what the process is. The minister gave an answer around efficiency, but it seems pretty brutal. I haven't seen any lack of willingness to cooperate on the part of the chief and council.

[Michael Wernick]

One of the other reasons you can invoke third-party management is for health and safety issues, and that was the recommendation I gave to the minister earlier today. Our people came back and said there was an urgent health and safety issue, and that's certainly the consensus in the media coverage.

The reason we did it was to get decisions taken quickly. I'm not in the business of blaming anybody here. This is a community that has had a lot of trouble with speed to decision. There's a long history here that will become clear when the audit is done and we've had a chance to dig deeper into it. They're doing their best in difficult circumstances, but they take a very long time to take decisions.

We want to deal with the current situation before the winter, to make sure there's a safe, warm, and dry place for people. The community twice chose not to use its own emergency management plan, and that's very frustrating to us, of course. The Red Cross did not speak to the Ontario emergency management people before they started intervening.

We need to make some decisions very quickly so that people are safe for the winter. Then there will lots of time to discuss what happened and whether the money was well spent.

One of the other things the minister asked me to trigger was an audit. The audit will look not just at what happened in terms of the flow of money through the community, but at our own vigilance and surveillance of that money as well. We'll let the chips play, and we'll see what information turns up.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

When there was the sewage backup two years go—again, from the donated construction trailer—the stories are that the department refused to help out in that situation, whether it was evacuating or getting these people out of the homes where the sewage had backed up.

Can you tell us about that, because it seems to be where the band got into some trouble in terms of cash management?

[Michael Wernick]

This was the first instance that I am aware of. I'll tell you what I'm aware of, and we may uncover more things over the next little while.

There is an emergency management plan. Each first nation has its own plan and they're responsible for developing and implementing it. There are safe facilities in the community. There is a healing centre. There are other facilities.

Evacuation out of the community is not the first choice for people: It disrupts families and so on. The community had choices in that situation that it didn't exercise, and I still don't understand exactly why. We're going to try to get to the bottom of the chronology of that.

They acted unilaterally, declared an emergency and a need for evacuation, which other people in the emergency management business didn't agree with, so we got into an argument about whether we should reimburse them for a unilateral decision or not.

But in all of these situations, we put the health and safety of the community residents first.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Thank you. I hate to jump in, Ms. Bennett. I know there are more questions, but it's important that we get through the estimates. I did want to make sure that you had at least an opportunity.

Thank you very much, witnesses, for being here. We appreciate the information you've been able to provide to this committee.

Committee members, I'd like now to run through the votes, if there is a willingness to do that.

You have copies of the votes before you. I think everyone had an opportunity to ask questions with regard to these votes, so I'm hopeful that we can move through these very quickly.

I will begin.

INDIAN AFFAIRS AND NORTHERN DEVELOPMENT

Department

Vote 1b--Operating expenditures..........$287,667,458

Vote 5b--Capital expenditures..........$2,783,054

Vote 10b--The grants listed in the Estimates and contributions..........$251,238,851

(Votes 1b, 5b, and 10b agreed to)

HEALTH

Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency

Vote 27b--Operating expenditures..........$308,094

Vote 29b--Contributions..........$1,697,756

(Votes 27b and 29b agreed to)

Shall I report the supplementary estimates to the House?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.