Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Sept. 28th, 2016

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

We'll come to order.

Welcome, everyone.

I'll mention that Yvonne Jones, the parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada, is with us today, as is Hunter Tootoo, the member from Nunavut.

Welcome to you both.

Joël Lightbound is sitting in today for Rémi Massé, and Alistair MacGregor is sitting in for Charlie Angus, so we have some different faces around the table today.

Welcome to you all.

I'll begin by acknowledging that we're meeting today on traditional Algonquin territory and we're very thankful for that, as we are at every meeting.

We have two panels today. In the first hour we're welcoming Leave Out Violence Nova Scotia Society with three representatives of that organization. I'd like to introduce you to Sarah MacLaren, the executive director; Shurenda Michael, a youth leader with LOVE; and Richard Taylor, operations manager.

I'll review the rules. We're happy to have you speak for up to ten minutes. When we get to about nine minutes, I'm going to show a yellow card, which means we're nearing the end. The red card means to please try to get to your point as quickly as possible and then we'll get to the questions.

I'll use the same cards for questions from committee members, which are also timed.

With that, I'm happy to give you the floor to share the ten minutes amongst yourselves as you see fit.

[Shurenda Michael, Youth Leader, Leave Out Violence Nova Scotia Society]

Hello.

My Name Is Shurenda Michael. I'm from Shubenacadie. I am a third-year university student at Saint Mary's.

This meeting is important to me today, because at 12 years old, I told my family I wanted to kill myself. My mom reacted saying, “I'll kill you before you kill yourself”. That was the reaction on her part. Later that day my grandfather, who was in the RCMP at the time, came home, and they said, “You have to break it to him.” I said, “Okay.” I broke it to him and I said, “I want to kill myself.” He said, “What's your plan?” I was 12 at the time and I said, “I don't have a plan; I just feel pain.” He said, “When? Why?” and he asked me all the questions and communicated with me, and it was important for me to realize that it wasn't only me who was going through this. He said, “Rough day on a job, family arguments.” He thought the same. It astonished me, and I couldn't believe that someone who was so respectable in my eyes and so strong was broken too. It wasn't just me.

Another reason this is so close to me is that my mom lost her best friend when she was 22 years old—she had just had me—to suicide. She didn't know that 19 years later I would go through the same thing and lose a friend. She always asked herself why and what she could have done. She always beat herself up about it.

It's an intergenerational thing in these communities. It's not just one generation; it's not just my generation. This was 20 years ago when she lost her best friend, and then I lost a close friend of mine to this.

The thing I find important is leaving that stigma at the door, because the stigma of, “Oh, you're just having a bad day, not a bad life” doesn't let you explain, and there's a lot of, “You're the problem of it all” and “You want to break everyone else down” when really you don't; you just want help. You want to be able to tell people. When my mom told me that she was going to kill me before I killed myself, I felt like a bigger mistake.

My father wasn't in my life, so my mom called my father before my grandfather stepped up. I asked him, “Why weren't you there for me?” He said, “I don't know.” He didn't have an answer for me. At 12 years old that made me feel like I was a mistake to my father, and that hurt me even more. When my grandfather hugged me and told me, “It's okay. I've felt this way too” and he communicated with me, it made me feel like it wasn't only me going through this. Opening that door and being able to communicate that you aren't the only one going through this made me able to....

I know I go through it every now and then because I'm in university and I let my anxiety and depression eat me every now and then to this day, but there are different ways I can reach out now. I have the support of the LOVE program and different supports now.

That's what I have to say.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

Thank you so much, Shurenda.

There's lots of time remaining, Sarah or Richard.

[Richard Taylor, Operations Manager, Leave Out Violence Nova Scotia Society]

Thank you, Shurenda.

I was told that if you commit suicide, you go to hell. I was told that if you commit suicide, you can go into limbo. I was told this by the Catholic school that I went to, which is Lester B. Pearson Catholic High School on Jasmine Crescent here in Ottawa. At home, my mother was very fearful that I, my family members, my brothers and sisters, she, her husband, would some day somehow end up in hell. She was taught that from her mother. She was taught that from the Indian day boarding school. Fear was the mechanism to teach, so the moment that I got out of line there was fear. The moment that my brothers and sisters got out of line, there was fear. My mother loves me, and my mother loves my brothers and sisters. She loves her grandchildren. She lives now with regret.

The effects of Indian residential school, and to a greater extent an overall Eurocentric societal model, transcend much of what we deal with today, because it's been going on for 500 years.

I work with kids now and I have been working with them for many years. I see all the symptoms. I see those who are fragmented. I see those who have incarceration issues, those who may have lost family members to violent ends, including suicide. It is my hope that through the sharing and telling of their stories, under their terms and gently, over time, they in effect are healing by virtue of unpacking the traumatic experiences they have undergone.

I hope this committee will consider that in their processes. The healing is in the story. The story is in the individual. Collateral healing can happen at a community level.

Welálin. Thank you.

[Sarah MacLaren, Executive Director, Leave Out Violence Nova Scotia Society]

Hello. I'm the least credible voice amongst my people here. The only reason I get to sit here today is that people have been kind enough and generous enough to teach me, so I want to acknowledge my teachers.

I'll make three really quick points. You can ask me about them when my minutes are up.

One, for those of us who are members of the dominant class—the white, privileged class—if we want to do this work with any integrity, we must humble ourselves. We are used to dominating spaces, the economy, language, and conversations. We are used to it. We will not be effective if we walk into spaces with that attitude. It requires humility. To build a partnership with trust, we have to humble ourselves and become listeners and learners.

Two, I just want to speak to politics. This issue is too important.

I'm sorry but I'm really distracted by your side chit-chat. I don't mean to be rude; I just can't handle it.

Whatever is decided by this committee cannot fall victim to party politics. It is more important than one party's term in office. It is more important than whoever comes next. If Ottawa can't agree across party lines then you're in trouble, because the solution is going to take so much time, commitment, and persistence, that everyone has to agree on what you're going to do. It's more important than what party you support or belong to. People are dying.

Third, I say this to you who are funders. I think that at the end of the day there will be a decision on how you spend your money to address this problem. You need to do something radically different from what has been done. It is time to get some creative brains involved in the process to determine how you're going to spend your money. Anyone who runs a not-for-profit knows that the money goes to the best grant writer. The money goes to the person who knows how to do it best. It doesn't always penetrate into the community.

The solution to this problem is in relationships. It is deeply human. A bureaucratic approach is not going to be successful. You need the money to get to the elder who's feeding five children because they're hungry. You need the money to get to the guy who's running the sweat lodge so he can buy wood to run his sweat lodge. You need the money to penetrate into the community, and that requires a creative approach to how you fund.

That's all I have to say. Thank you for hearing me.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

Thank you very much, each of you, for your testimony. We will move right into rounds of questions from the members.

The first question today is from Michael McLeod.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the presenters. I apologize for being a little bit late.

We just returned from visiting a number of communities in the north. Kuujjuaq was one of them, as was Iqaluit. I'm from the Northwest Territories, and we've been discussing the suicide crisis going on in our communities. We figure that in Yukon, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories, Nunavik, and Labrador in the last 15 years, well over 1,000 people have committed suicide.

When we talk about solutions, they raise things like housing and overcrowding as being huge issues. I think a number of the organizations that presented to us stated that it would probably solve 50% of the problems if we could deal with the housing issue.

It was also stated that we need to fix the people who went through the residential schools. The children are saying, “Fix our parents.”

The economy, of course, is something else that is really lacking. A healthy economy that provides jobs, employment, and training is just non-existent in those areas.

I'm not familiar with your part of the country, so I want to ask you what factors and circumstances you think are contributing to youth experiencing a sense of despair or mental health problems. Is it depression? Is it anxiety? Could you talk a little bit about that?

[Shurenda Michael]

Our issues are pretty much the same as those in the north. There's a community in Cape Breton right now that has brown water because their water tank hasn't been fixed, so people aren't able to cook with their water or shower. Then there is housing. This is my personal aspect; we had three generations in one house before. We had about 17 people in my house, in a two-bedroom house with a basement. This was when I was about 12, so this was about the time when I was ready to end my life. It's a lot about jobs too. In Eskasoni—they are about an hour away from town—if you don't have a vehicle or a licence, how are you supposed to have a job, if you can't get to the job?

How are you supposed to do this when you're isolated? How are you supposed to talk to people when your elders have gone through residential schools and they don't know how to talk about things? I know my grandfather used to tell me my father never talked about things and he went through the residential school. Somehow my grandfather went through programs and stuff. I know when he was growing up with my mom.... My mom said “you saw a different man than I did, you saw the healed man in front of us today. I got the broken man.” She had a lot of resentment about her dad being a father to me instead of the father he was to her. It's a lot of that too. It's the same down there. My community is about 20 minutes from Truro and an hour from Halifax, but we still can't get anywhere because we're put in these spots where we feel isolated. Our community couldn't even get an exit off the highway. It takes 20 minutes to get onto the highway from my community, when there could have been an exit right at the overpass and it would take only five minutes.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

Thank you for that response.

It's interesting how we're spread all over the country as aboriginal people, but we have so many of the same challenges. The communities in my riding are next door to a diamond mine, yet most people can't find a way to get to work because it's three hours away. It's only women who can get to work because all the men can't pass the criminal records check. They all have criminal records from when they were young and they can't get them dealt with. It takes 10 years to deal with a criminal record, to get a pardon.

One of the things we heard about regarding the communities of Kuujjuaq and Iqaluit was the need for crisis centres, family centres, and cultural centres. I keep thinking about that recommendation, but I also look at what we have already in all parts of Canada, which is the friendship centre program. In Nunavut, I think there's only one, so it's not so much there. Is there such a facility or program in your community that could deliver programs of sport, culture, language, or issues of mental health if it were well-resourced?

[Richard Taylor]

Within the city of Halifax, there is the Mi'kmaw Friendship Centre, which runs an array of programs for the aboriginal population in Halifax. Within the community of Sipekne’katik where LOVE operates our programs, we have a youth coordinator who runs a number of various activities for the youth in the community. There is consistency there. This is a position that has only recently been created and it has been quite successful. She accesses the gym and has a number of events happening at the gym. Our largest complaint from our youth is that there aren't things happening on the weekends. It's on the weekends when the most terrible things happen. When kids are left to their own means, they often find themselves doing things like partying, drinking, and so on and so forth. There you have it. It's one component of a larger picture.

I would like to touch on the previous question. If we have a child who has suffered traumatic experience from the time they are born, if, say, they suffer from fetal alcohol syndrome, from the moment that child is born, they will contend with issues for their entire life. While they have to deal with that issue from the moment they are born—which they had no choice in—they might also have had a family member who had died or who might have committed suicide or who might be in prison or might have gone missing, and their father is drinking and their mother is drinking, and they live in a house where there are a bunch of kids and families who are all dealing with the same things and they are all self-medicating. Of course there are going to be issues and of course there are going to be problems. Until the trauma is looked at and taken into account, we can not really begin to move forward. I dealt with the trauma in my life by seeking it out in the sweat lodge and by doing the sun dance. That's not for everybody though. Part of the solution has to be looking at that trauma and admitting that the trauma is very real and that the larger society has a role in addressing it.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

Thanks so much.

The next question is from Arnold Viersen.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our guests for being here today.

We're hearing repeated things from most of our witnesses. The ITK has put together what is perhaps a nice template of how to proceed. They have the protective factors and the risk factors. We seem to have a fairly clear idea of what is causing this. Two of the things that really jump out for me are cultural continuity and family strength. These are two areas that they've outlined as protective factors; so if your family is intact, if your family members are all in a loving relationship with one another, you're much less likely to be involved in suicide or other risky behaviours.

We seem to have identified the issues; there are a whole host of organizations across the country that are working towards this. I imagine that suicide prevention is just one of the aspects that you deal with, and none of these things happen in a vacuum. Economy, family, and education are all parts of the solution.

Could you elaborate a bit about what your organization is doing to promote strong family ties, to promote cultural continuity, and to promote the local economy in terms of food production?

[Sarah MacLaren]

Thank you for the question.

Rich could probably speak to this better than I will in some ways, but I think it's not just what you do; it's who does it. It's equipping people with the skills to do things that need to be done. At LOVE we do basically whatever our kids need from us. Yes, we have a weekly program in which we bring food; we engage in conversation; we engage in conversation that, for the most part, other people are not engaging in with our kids. We talk about things, and our kids will say to us, oh, nobody's ever talked to me about that before; nobody's ever talked to me about my strengths; nobody ever told me I was worthy; nobody ever said those things to me. We create a circle of support amongst a peer group driven by the kids. Now Rich goes for two days a week and he basically responds to what our kids need. This one needs to apply to community college; we know they're not going to do it on their own. This one needs to go to the doctor and get a prescription for whatever. What we found really works is, essentially, not having a cookie-cutter response to anything. It's basically asking individuals what they need, and then providing them with the support to get that, because humans are different.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

That's entirely the case. Everything you've outlined to me up until now seems to say that you're dealing with crisis and crisis and crisis. What I'm more going after is whether you have maybe a longer-term goal, like renewing the culture or renewing family ties, essentially. I know that each individual family deals with a lot of these things in broader Canadian culture—

[Sarah MacLaren]

Sorry, I'm interrupting.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Go ahead; this is a discussion.

[Sarah MacLaren]

We're not just dealing with crisis.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Okay.

[Sarah MacLaren]

We're preparing young people to maybe one day sit at a table like this if that's what they want. That's not crisis; that's skill-building; that's confidence-building; that's relationship-building, so they will have that. You handed a card over. Who knows what that may mean to Shurenda one day? You never know. It's those connections and exposures that again, because of isolation, our youth don't have. On the cultural piece, obviously, that is not for me to speak to; that would be more for Rich.

[Richard Taylor]

As an example, I believe that Shurenda is here with us, as a young person, from our community, and as Sarah is describing, it's a big deal to her. I don't mean to embarrass her by saying this, but Hunter is somebody she looks up to very much. Here she is in a situation where this can happen, and it might otherwise not happen.

We focus our efforts on trust. Whatever activity or event is happening is secondary to trust, which simply means that.... We might be doing an exercise we call an “F-write”, in which you write whatever you want—“F” standing for what you think it stands for—

[Sarah MacLaren]

The kids like that one.

[Richard Taylor]

—and it's not about the exercise of writing it down; it's about it being okay for you to write whatever you want. If you have to go to the doctor, it's okay for you to tell me that you have to go to the doctor. I'm going to keep your secrets. We tell our kids there are only three secrets that we can't keep. Those are that you're going to hurt yourself, that you're going to hurt somebody else, or that someone is hurting you. Those are the only times we will break confidence. Our kids are very savvy, because they will tell us things without revealing that it is they themselves who are experiencing it.

So our main focus is trust. I bring kids into a sweat lodge for the very first time. Some of them are scared. Some of them are afraid because it's not Catholic. Our own community members are resistant to the idea of traditionalism. In the Atlantic region, the Catholicism is so strong that it was there and it has stayed. We've been living with it for the longest. Therefore, our own community members will often resist the old traditional ways and that will become ingrained into the children.

I take that and I tell them it's okay; they don't have to go in; they can just come to eat. Because there can't be any more pressure. They don't need any more pressure. They have got enough. They walk with it every day. It's normalized to them. Just because it's normal doesn't mean it's okay. We build trust.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

Thanks.

Our next question will be from Alistair MacGregor.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Richard and Shurenda, I want to thank you so much for coming to the committee today and for displaying what I think is a very high level courage to let this committee know of what was a very painful moment in both your lives. So thank you for that. I think this committee needs to hear more stories like that, and indeed this whole country does.

Sarah, I really appreciated your words on being humble. My riding sits on the traditional territories of the Cowichan people, and also the Malahat, the Lake Cowichan, and the Songhees and Esquimalt first nations, as part of the Coast Salish network on Vancouver Island. I have participated in a few events. One of them was called Understanding the Village, in which they walked the non-indigenous population through the process of colonization. At the beginning of that, it forced us to be humble to accept what we were about to experience.

Some witnesses have come to this committee and spoken about a national strategy on suicide. I know that national strategies may not always work because there are many different regions in Canada, but I wanted to hear a little bit more from the three of you on what you think some of the potential advantages and maybe disadvantages of implementing a national suicide prevention strategy would be.

[Sarah MacLaren]

We know them the disadvantages. The people in this room probably knows them better than most people do. Our country is made up of different areas. Where you live isn't the same as where I live. Our communities need to feel as though—I'll just speak really bluntly—the government isn't taking a cookie-cutter approach to their individual communities. I think the potential disadvantage is that if you walk down a path and it's the wrong one and nothing gets solved, you further isolate already isolated and disenfranchised communities and you also let some of the dominant, ignorant members of the public say “we threw another $500 million at it and it wasn't solved. What are we going to try now?”

The danger is that you cannot do something customized on a national level. I would say that is your biggest challenge. How do you roll out a national project that allows for individualism and that communities can own?