Evidence of meeting #75 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 indigenous.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:05 p.m.
Senator, Manitoba, ISG
It does. In fact the war that was waged against indigenous people around the world, where indigenous and non-indigenous people came together, was less military than it was legal. It was through a war of law that indigenous people were subjected.
4:05 p.m.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Peter Van Loan
We have to move on to the next round at this point. It will be the NDP.
Ms. Kwan, you have seven minutes.
4:05 p.m.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to our witnesses.
Senator, on the broad issue of systemic racism, when you speak about the residual effects, when the racist is gone and you see in the system that is discriminatory toward a group of people that is systemic racism. The current situation with the indigenous community—the first nations, Inuit, and Métis—where they're living in third world conditions, to which boil water advisories have been issued over and over again and they're still living in those conditions, would you say that's a result of the racism that is now systemic in Canada?
4:05 p.m.
Senator, Manitoba, ISG
It comes about largely as a result of a number of factors that need to be taken into account. One is their location to begin with, the fact that indigenous people were taken off very thriving parts of the land, particularly in the Prairies, for example, where they were maintaining farming communities and very successful agricultural activities, and moved into barren lands, and as a result couldn't function and maintain their existence. Then there was a practice by the Government of Canada for many generations to not provide any infrastructure to those communities they'd relocated them to. Only recently, in the last two or three generations or so, have they undertaken to provide infrastructure: roads, sewers, water, electricity. This is a relatively recent phenomenon in indigenous communities. It's very much an example of systemic discrimination that's occurred over the years.
4:05 p.m.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
In that same vein, we have inequality or inequitable funding, if you will, for indigenous children in the education system. We have a situation with the tribunal coming out with a pending fourth order for aboriginal children to be treated fairly and equitably and still no action has been taken. We have a situation where our government spent $110,000 in legal fees fighting against a Cree child who's in pain and needs to get $6,000 worth of braces. Those are situations where systemic discrimination is playing out before our eyes. Would you agree?
4:05 p.m.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
Thank you.
Moving on, what do we do about it? This committee is to make recommendations to the government so we can take some concrete action to not only address the obvious racists who are out there, but also the situation that is the hangover from so many years ago, especially in this era of reconciliation. Concrete recommendations on actions need to be taken. For example, my colleague Romeo Saganash has been working on his private member's bill that he's hoping to table in the House, to recognize the UN indigenous rights and turn that into law. Would that assist this process in addressing systemic racism that we're talking about?
4:10 p.m.
Senator, Manitoba, ISG
The first step in addressing the issue of systemic discrimination and racism in the laws of this country, and in particular the degree to which they comply or do not comply with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, is to do an inventory of those laws. An analysis has to be done to determine which of those laws are standing in the way of the exercise of those rights the United Nations has declared indigenous people have and which Canada has accepted. That inventory has not yet been done. It needs to be done. When it is done, then I think those laws that are in conflict with the UN declaration need to be brought in line.
It isn't necessary, in my view, for the UN declaration itself to be declared a law. I think that's a problematic approach because in itself a UN declaration cannot become a law. It directs governments to do certain things to make it comply with the principles in the declaration. What really needs to be done is to look at those laws that Canada has put in place and continue to have an impact, or those laws which on the face of it do not have an intentionally negative impact but have a differential impact by virtue of practice, and change the way those laws are worded or carried out.
4:10 p.m.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
Thank you.
I actually think that my colleague's bill is not intended to turn the UN declaration into law. Pardon me; that's my misspeaking. Rather, the intention is exactly as you stated.
4:10 p.m.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
Yes. Thank you for that correction.
I'm going to turn to Kevin.
In the urban aboriginal community we have a significant set of issues as well. I'm going to move right to recommendations. In terms of concrete action, you talk about localizing the issues and then implementing resolutions. Would a national strategy to support local communities in realizing those issues in a real way help? Could you quickly offer thoughts on that subject for us?
4:10 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Metro Vancouver Aboriginal Executive Council
I definitely agree that something needs to be done formally with the urban indigenous population. In some regions we're representing 70% or 80% of the overall population within those provinces.
I think the federal government wrongly tends to rely on working with the on-reserve population, because the reserve is an infrastructure that's there, and they think it's the easiest to do. Yet so many people are moving off reserve out of necessity.
One thing I talk about at our agency is the psychology of poverty. It's not so much that our people are poor; there's a psychology that goes with it that comes from multi-generations of poverty. We have to find ways to break that and reverse it.
Often, service delivery works within certain rules and doesn't take into consideration that indigenous persons who present themselves and who come from an impoverished background, just as Senator Sinclair pointed out, often don't have the resources to respond to a certain situation. Therefore, the system kicks in and takes a child or incarcerates somebody, or whatever, just because there's not a support system there. We're working our hardest to try to reverse that psychology of poverty and put in place systems, but we need something formally at an urban level.
The federal government has just instituted the urban programming for indigenous people. I think there are a lot of flaws in that program, quite honestly.
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
4:10 p.m.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
I was just going to say that maybe Mr. Barlow could send in recommendations for the committee, because I ran out of time.
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Peter Van Loan
Everyone can do that. It's a welcome idea.
We will now move to the next Liberal round, with Ms. Dabrusin for seven minutes.
4:10 p.m.
Liberal
Julie Dabrusin Liberal Toronto—Danforth, ON
Thank you both. I have questions for both of you. In fact, I wouldn't mind, If one person is answering and somebody has another thought, that you jump in. I'd like input from both of you.
My first question is for Mr. Barlow. You spoke in your opening remarks about needing more cultural competency. I was wondering whether, as we approach this study, you have ideas about what that would look like. What should we be doing to develop that cultural competency?
4:15 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Metro Vancouver Aboriginal Executive Council
We just developed a beginner-level cultural competency curriculum. The problem is that we don't necessarily have the people within my agency or the funding to provide that education and training to non-indigenous service providers. There are people who are doing it in the private sector, but you can't always guarantee the standard or the quality of the training that's happening. The more we look at commissioning some standardized curriculum and getting the training delivered, the more we will see people coming to a better understanding of the realities that indigenous people live.
As a real example right in Vancouver, a few years back, one of the housing societies' CEOs was flying down to some exotic location. Here they have a housing society that's dealing with homeless people, and the CEO and the board are going down to these exotic locations. Vancouver therefore said no more travelling outside Vancouver.
What that means for indigenous people who are land-based and need healing outside a city, such as going to a sweat lodge and stuff like that, is that we can't use our funds to take somebody outside the city limits. These are examples of how sometimes there are good intentions but they're not well thought out.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Julie Dabrusin Liberal Toronto—Danforth, ON
That seems to go to the differential impacts Senator Sinclair was talking about being mindful of.
Do you have—
4:15 p.m.
Senator, Manitoba, ISG
May I just comment on the issue of cultural competency training?
4:15 p.m.
Senator, Manitoba, ISG
The only thing you can really accomplish with cultural competency training, in my view, is to show people that they don't know everything. It's difficult, if not impossible, to make people culturally competent through a training program. Cultural competence comes through a lived experience for a certain period of time.
People who are serious about it first need to understand how much they don't know and then to be given resources or access to resources or people who will help them to learn more, if they want to. Lawyers, as one example, think that once they've talked to one indigenous client, they know everything for all indigenous clients. That's a big mistake. A little education there can be very damaging.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Julie Dabrusin Liberal Toronto—Danforth, ON
If you think from the perspective of what we are trying to do—we are being asked to come up with some recommendations with respect to systemic discrimination—do you have any ideas how we can bring that about? How do we actually get people to see where the need is, and then, how do we fill that need?
4:15 p.m.
Senator, Manitoba, ISG
I think that we have to begin with three things. One is that we need to look at developing more culturally consistent materials so that we have materials that we can provide to people. People in the various professions that you are identifying as needing this cultural competency training, whether they are social workers, educators, lawyers, or judges, generally come from a background of needing written material in order to be able to refer to it and utilize it in the course of their lives. We also need to give them access to individuals who can help them understand or who can answer the questions they may have. It's about funding the appropriate research and development of appropriate materials. Right now, that's hard to find.
In addition to that, giving them opportunities such as we experience, for example, in French language training.... I've been to many French-language training courses as a judge. We actually immerse ourselves in the language for a period of time. When it comes to cultural competency training, we need to give people an opportunity to immerse themselves in the culture for a while. Cultural immersion programs really need to be part of what we do, not just for professional people, but also for children who are coming from indigenous families that have lost their culture.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Julie Dabrusin Liberal Toronto—Danforth, ON
Do you have any ideas about programs that already exist in different places or projects that we could look to as examples of what we might want to implement?