Mr. Speaker, I must admit that I was dumbfounded by the last remarks of the Liberal member. I have never heard remarks as serious and fabricated in response to a question.
This is certainly no way to convince me to support him in what he is proposing. The member attended the committee meetings. He heard as well as I and the other members did all that was said against the current process. He heard from individuals, seniors and aboriginal organizations that this process should be completely changed. Every stakeholder without exception, government officials excluded, found that the approach did not make any sense and that it was imperative to bring in changes as soon as possible, so that seniors who were in residential schools in their youth can receive what they are owed and were promised.
It is my understanding that this government's preferred approach or strategy is to drag any investigation out, so that—as was the case with the veterans—those concerned disappear and die before having obtained what they wanted.
The Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness came to the committee. We told her all that happened and conveyed to her all the criticism from the public, but she just kept repeating that there was no problem, that all was well, and that we should let her continue operating the same way, that spending would increase but that the money for these poor people would never be there.
The committee unanimously decided this would be what we would be tabling, and that is what we are doing today. I resent this attempt at convincing us to drop this motion or to oppose it, when we, in the committee, have already voted for it.
As you no doubt know, Mr. Speaker, what this motion states is consistent with our study and our decision. The committee considered the written and oral evidence presented.
Former students of residential schools met with us and explained that there were major problems that needed to be resolved in order for the process to work. Witnesses included the hon.Ted Hughes, Chief Adjudicator of Indian Residential Schools Resolution Canada; the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness and Minister Responsible for Indian Residential Schools Resolution Canada; Mario Dion, Deputy Minister Responsible for Indian Residential Schools Resolution Canada; and the Canadian Bar Association. The committee took particular note, in formulating the recommendations below, of the written and oral evidence of the former students and the representatives of former students and survivors’ organizations regarding their personal experiences in the residential schools and in the Indian Residential Schools Resolution Canada alternative dispute resolution process.
The witnesses were compelling for their candour and integrity about their experience as inmates in the residential school system and fair, frank and persuasive on matters of public policy.
The committee came to the inescapable conclusion that the alternative dispute resolution process is an excessively costly and inappropriately applied failure, for which the minister and her officials are unable to raise a convincing defence.
Specifically the ADR process is a failure becauseit is strikingly disconnected from the so-called pilot projects that preceded it. It is failing to provide impartial and even-handed due process. It is not attracting former students to apply in credible numbers. It provides grossly inadequate compensation when, grudgingly, it does so. It excludes too many of the some 87,000 remaining former students from eligibility. It is proceeding too slowly, allowing too many former students to die uncompensated. It is an arbitrary administrative solution that is vulnerable to political whim.
Many former students do not trust the process. There is no satisfactory evidence in the numbers that the program is working.
The committee took note of the consistency of the former students, the AFN and the CBA on five points. First, the necessity of compensation for those former students who are able to establish a cause of action and a lawful entitlement to compensation process. Second, the necessity of keeping the compensation referred to above separate and apart from compensation for sexual and severe physical abuse. Third, the absolute necessity for a settlement process that includes direct negotiations with the former students and the vigorous protection of their legal rights during the negotiations. Fourth, the wisdom of a court-approved, court-supervised settlement that is transparent, is arrived at in a neutral manner and cannot be tampered with politically. Fifth and last, the necessity of a settlement that is comprehensive and final and relieves the government of future liability.
The committee took note of three recommendations by former students and their groups:the need for continued financial support of healing processes, with a greater degree of local direction and personal self-direction on how that healing is to be achieved;the need for a respectful national forum and the urgency for prompt compensation, reconciliation and healing because former students are elderly and on average some 30 to 50 die each week uncompensated and bearing the grief of their experience to the grave.
The reconciliation payment should start with a base amount for any time spent at a school—for example, $10,000—and add an amount for each year at a school—for example $3,000.
The committee regrets the manner with which the government has administered the Indian Residential Schools Claims program and recommends that the government give consideration to the advisability of government taking the following steps. First, the government should take all the actions recommended hereafter on an urgent basis, with consideration for the frailty and short life expectancy of the former students.
Second, the government should improve the Indian Residential Schools Resolutions Canada Alternative Dispute Resolutions Process. It should also engage in court-supervised negotiations with former students. It should ensure that the courts have full and final discretion with respect to limitations on legal fees.The government should expedite the settlement of other claims involving aggravated circumstances.
In order to ensure that former students have the opportunity to tell their stories to all Canadians in a process characterized by dignity and respect, the government should cause a national truth and reconciliation process to take place in a forum.The government should also ask the Auditor General to conduct an audit of the Indian Residential Schools Canada Dispute Resolution Process from its creation to its winding down.Finally, the government should respond publicly in writing to the Assembly of First Nations report.
Other than Government of Canada employees, everyone who testified condemned the ineffectiveness of the alternative dispute resolution process. The only thing the government succeeded in doing was implementing an ineffective and very costly structure.
After all this criticism, the minister appeared before the committee to say that there was no problem and that everything was going extremely well. What a joke.
Here is what the aboriginals want: first, a lump-sum payment for former students; second, an apology; third, an Amerindian agency to administer the payment of funds to former students; and fourth, a commitment to reconciliation.