Evidence of meeting #71 for Canadian Heritage in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was discrimination.
A video is available from Parliament.
6:15 p.m.
Liberal
Dan Vandal Liberal Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB
I have a question for Ritu Banerjee. How long has the community resilience fund been around?
6:15 p.m.
Senior Director, Canada Centre for Community Engagement and Prevention of Violence, Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness
Budget 2016 announced the funding, so $35 million over five years with $10 million ongoing. It started in 2016. The money came in at the end of 2016. Each year for the next five years it's a gradual increment for the community resilience fund.
6:15 p.m.
Liberal
Dan Vandal Liberal Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB
So it's a brand new program that was brought in in 2016?
6:15 p.m.
Senior Director, Canada Centre for Community Engagement and Prevention of Violence, Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness
Yes.
6:15 p.m.
Liberal
Dan Vandal Liberal Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB
Okay, I was not aware of that. That's excellent news.
Could you tell me a bit more about the community resilience fund and the communities at risk: security infrastructure fund?
6:15 p.m.
Senior Director, Canada Centre for Community Engagement and Prevention of Violence, Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness
The security infrastructure fund, or SIF, is a separate program that has been around for many years, I think four or five years, and got renewed in the last budget. That's $2 million a year for the next five years, and that's more specific to institutions, primarily religious or educational institutions that want mechanisms to beef up their security—surveillance, fences, perimeters. It's physical security to protect specific establishments.
The community resilience fund is different. It's really there to address issues related to radicalization and violence more broadly.
6:15 p.m.
Liberal
Dan Vandal Liberal Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB
Could we get a breakdown in writing about the funding over the last four years for the communities at risk fund?
6:15 p.m.
Senior Director, Canada Centre for Community Engagement and Prevention of Violence, Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness
Yes.
6:15 p.m.
Liberal
Dan Vandal Liberal Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB
Thank you.
Mr. Michaud, what does the RCMP do to build relationships with indigenous communities across Canada?
6:15 p.m.
Deputy Commissioner, Federal Policing , Royal Canadian Mounted Police
We have different programs that exist within the indigenous communities that we serve across the country. Like I said earlier, some of it is on our day-to-day operations and engagements with the communities. We also have mentoring projects with some of the communities for the youth who may be at risk. All of our members who work in those communities are usually involved in the communities themselves outside of their work, so they will be involved as coaches and in different community events. Those are the ways that we try to build the relationship with those communities. Speaking specifically on a program that may exist nationally—I'm not in charge of the aboriginal policing program—I could ask that program if there's anything else that we're doing, if you're interested.
6:20 p.m.
Liberal
Dan Vandal Liberal Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB
Okay. How long have those initiatives been ongoing?
6:20 p.m.
Deputy Commissioner, Federal Policing , Royal Canadian Mounted Police
The ones that I'm referring to have been ongoing since we've been policing in those communities, but if we have a national program, I'd have to go back and check and get back to you.
6:20 p.m.
Liberal
Dan Vandal Liberal Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB
Would you be able to present that to us or send that to us in writing?
6:20 p.m.
Deputy Commissioner, Federal Policing , Royal Canadian Mounted Police
6:20 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
I'm going to take the opportunity to ask a couple of questions.
In the 1990s, Canada took intersectionality to the world stage. We talked about the various discriminations that occur because of the various components that make you a minority. I am surprised that there is no study, working with the RCMP, etc., when you have a case, to look at whether intersectionality is a big part of that. That would give us a lot of data. I'm hoping that you would start working on this. We have been using the term intersectionality in the last two years; we need to put some teeth into it and get some data. Maybe Ms. Banerjee, and Statistics Canada, and even Treasury Board, can start looking at this, because it would be able to tunnel down into the nature of systemic discrimination.
Ms. Aitken, you said that you didn't have an action plan. Ms. Kwan asked you that. I know that when I was minister for multiculturalism, we had a very active action plan. You are governed by the Canadian Multiculturalism Act per se. You're supposed to make sure that the Canadian Multiculturalism Act is carried out. Programs and projects are fine, but what are you doing in your department within Heritage Canada, under the act, to ensure that minorities, regardless of their ethnicity, race, religion, etc. are able to participate fully? The mandate of the act is to participate fully in the economic, social, political, and cultural life of the country. Is anything proactively being done to ensure that happens?
When I was the minister for multiculturalism, we worked very closely with Statistics Canada, not just to find out what they are finding out, but to actually put questions to Statistics Canada, so that they could again tunnel down to intersectionality to get at the root of it. Systemic, institutionalized racism and religious discrimination is quite often propagated by institutions, unwittingly or otherwise. When we hear people say that the RCMP, especially in certain parts of this country, pick a fight with aboriginal people, and will racialize them, as they do with certain black communities, we need to be able to find out if that is actually true and if so, how are we getting information on that.
I wonder if multiculturalism programs should be more proactive in terms of getting information and working closely with others.
By the way, I want to say, Ms. Banerjee, I love what you're doing in your sector. I think it's important.
6:20 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Strategic Policy, Planning and Corporate Affairs, Department of Canadian Heritage
I would like to go back and make sure that I wasn't unclear. With respect to the Multiculturalism Act, the program under the act certainly is active. In May of this year, the minister announced a call for proposals with a specific focus on projects that work toward eliminating racial discrimination, as well as projects for youth for community engagement and bringing people together through our culture or sport. That is the most recent call for proposals under the program. I didn't mean to suggest that we weren't doing that.
I might ask my colleague to respond to your question about working together with Statistics Canada.
6:20 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
I didn't just mean projects. I think projects and programs are great, but I wanted to talk about proactively ensuring that we foster or we give marginalized communities the ability to be able to participate fully. What are the barriers they face? How can you help them with the skills and tools? That's the use I'm asking about because that was a big part of multiculturalism at one time.
6:25 p.m.
Director General , Strategic Policy, Planning and Research Branch, Department of Canadian Heritage
We're working with a lot of the departments to raise awareness. We have champions in every department. We give them tools. What are the questions you need to ask yourself when you develop policies and programs? If you were in the minority group where issues of intersectionality matter, how should you go about your policies and programs?
Even within Canadian Heritage, dealing with diversity is not only about the multiculturalism program. We have a range of arts and culture programs that support a lot of festivals, a lot of museum exhibits, and so on that talk about full participation. The fact that we're seeing people from a range of communities on your TV screen, or on stages in theatres, is also about full participation. Within the department we're not limiting ourselves when we talk about full participation in the multiculturalism program.
As to working with Statistics Canada, we're engaging constantly with them about new tools, new ideas, things they could study. I think they have their own challenges in what can be found in a statistical study, as opposed to another type of research, to say where the real discrimination happens. There are limits to the statistical versus other types of research. That's why we also work with other academics who are looking into these issues, so we get other perspectives on the issues of discrimination. We're very active in monitoring and working with academics so we understand better what the situation is now on the ground in terms of discrimination.
6:25 p.m.
Senior Director, Canada Centre for Community Engagement and Prevention of Violence, Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness
I don't have anything specific to add, other than to say that in our context, we are supporting a range of research that's more focused on the effectiveness of specific programming countering radicalization to violence. For example, we're supporting programming that's led by local law enforcement to look at at-risk youth and find different social service providers that are better placed to address the issues of that radicalized youth, rather than have them go further into the criminal justice system. So these are hub models, but we are also supporting researchers at Ryerson, for example, and the University of Alberta to study, assess, and evaluate those models to see if they're effective and they're actually working. There are three models in particular. That's our approach in terms of the data; it's looking at metrics to see what programming is affected in Canada. Again, our context is a little narrower than what multiculturalism and Canadian Heritage is looking at; what's actually working.
6:25 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Thank you very much.
I want to thank everyone for coming and presenting and being engaged.
6:25 p.m.
Conservative
David Sweet Conservative Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON
Madam Chair, there is still one more rotation for us.
6:25 p.m.
Liberal
6:25 p.m.
Conservative
David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
In the future if the chair is going to ask questions, she should take it out of the Liberals' time because Mr. Sweet just lost his opportunity to ask questions today. We're very happy to have you ask questions but it should come out of the time of the Liberal Party. They had the last 12 minutes here, and Mr. Sweet missed his opportunity to ask questions.