Canadian Heritage Committee on Oct. 25th, 2017

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you so much, Madam Chair. I want to thank both groups for their wonderful presentations.

Dr. Blackstock, thank you so much for your advocacy around the systemic inequities in the services offered to first nations youth, families, and children. I know that your advocacy has led to a lot of positive change, particularly within our own government. We now have a Minister of Indigenous Services who is very interested in this issue. I know she's met with you many times. She's very passionate about making sure that Jordan's principle is implemented.

We've added quite a bit of money, and I know that 99% of the requests have been approved. Some 20,000 more children are getting services they didn't have before, but we have a heck of a lot more we have to do.

I very much appreciate your recommendations today.

We're grappling with developing a whole-of-government approach to reducing systemic and religious discrimination. We've had a number of groups come before us. We've had the black community, the Chinese, and the Iranians. We've had many. We've had a number of religious groups. We had the Muslim and the Jewish communities come before us.

As we're putting forward some recommendations, I want to see where we put indigenous people. Is it a separate plan? How does it fit within a national action plan?

[Dr. Cindy Blackstock]

I think it is a distinct relationship. It's a distinct constitutional relationship, a distinct historical and discriminatory relationship.

Take the systemic underfunding of first nations children's services. That is not is something other groups of children experience in this country. It is something that is unique to the experience of indigenous children, and it's not a positive experience. We're hopefully going to get there. I think it's very important that it be treated distinctly.

I'd also recommend this approach for other groups as well. It's so easy sometimes to collapse people's experiences together and try to come up with general solutions. There are, however, some things that are universal. For example, there should be an anti-racism strategy. That's something that United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination recommended to Canada in its recent review. That is an important piece.

I think that we need to totally respect the distinct circumstances that different groups experience in this country. We need to also redouble our efforts with children and young people. We need public education that teaches respect across differences—not overcoming differences. Overcoming differences could be colonialism. What we want to do is respect differences by co-creating a peaceful and respectful society where diversity is welcomed.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Okay. I appreciate that.

We've also talked quite a bit about intersectionality and taking it into account. We heard from Senator Murray Sinclair. One of the statements he made was that there's more discrimination against indigenous women than there is against most of the rest of the groups across Canada. Would you have a comment on how we should incorporate intersectionality into our national action plan?

[Dr. Cindy Blackstock]

I think it's really key. When I was recruited by the women's movement, I couldn't relate to it. The discrimination I experienced as a first nations person was far greater than what these women were experiencing in the workplace. Of course, I had that on top of it, but compared to what I had already experienced, these other women had undergone much less.

I think it's very important to understand that you can have compound layers of discrimination. That has to be respected. People should be able to identify the various groups they belong to that may be discriminated against. You may be a first nations person. You may be a women. You may be a person living in poverty, which is a huge area for discrimination that we don't talk enough about. You may be a person with a disability.

I think it's important to recognize these compounds layers in public education. We should do that piece as well. People should be alerted to the fact that we may be welcoming and we may not think of ourselves as racially discriminating, but we may actually be discriminating in other ways. We need to be appreciating that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Just a minute, Ms. Dzerowicz.

I wanted to ask for the unanimous agreement of the committee to finish up the five minutes. We'll have ample time to get to the vote.

Do I get it? Yes. Good.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Let's also give unanimous consent to discussing the finance figures being passed around.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

All right. We have a couple of new finance figures.

We're going to make up the time. Don't worry, Julie. We will make up the time.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

We're talking a lot about education, and one of the other elements when we talk about education is coming up with a counter-narrative. We've been talking a bit about that. We've also been talking a little bit about the role of media and maybe some recommendations around them.

I don't know if you have any for us.

Then I want to move over to the Canadian Labour Congress.

[Dr. Cindy Blackstock]

I think the media really are an outgrowth of the type of education about indigenous peoples that's been offered in this country, which means that very few of them have had any meaningful education at all on first nations, Métis, or Inuit peoples in this country.

I'm grateful to those people in the media pool who really have doubled up their efforts and are doing some excellent coverage despite that, but I would like to see the major broadcasting companies undertake mandatory training, not just for the field reporters and researchers but also for the producers and the administrative staff at those various media outlets as well, so that the story is told accurately and we use the great power of the media to do education.

We should also be promoting things like APTN more often. It is a great way for the average Canadian citizen to learn more about first nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples. Promoting indigenous media as part of mainstream education is important.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you so much.

I'll turn now to the Canadian Labour Congress.

What steps does the Canadian Labour Congress take to ensure that systemic discrimination and religious discrimination don't happen within labour groups right now?

[Larry Rousseau]

First of all, I think that if you look at the constitutions and policies of any union affiliated with the CLC, you'll see that we all have very clear statements.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

How do you ensure that they're followed and that they're actually adhered to?

[Larry Rousseau]

I don't think there is any union meeting held at which we don't read the statement right up front. We have a statement on harassment and discrimination, such that if anyone experiences it in any form, within the union there is a process for them to bring that forward, along with complaints and all of that. We try to teach by example, so if there's zero tolerance for it within our unions and in all conventions, all meetings, and all conferences, that's the way it should be in society.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have 30 seconds.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

I'm asking this because we're also looking at how under a national action plan we would work with organizations like the Canadian Labour Congress. What would be your recommendation in terms of how we could do that? It could also be with similar groups.

[Elizabeth Kwan, Senior Researcher, Canadian Labour Congress]

I would say that the unions are very strong. We have a lot of internal groups that work on equity issues, and we have different equity groups, so it's not just one. We have indigenous, racialized, workers with disabilities, and LGBTQ working groups.

We have done a lot of work in the past. Of course we do policy work on all of these fronts, but we also provide a lot of supports to our own members in terms of tools, in terms of outreach, and in terms of making sure that things are delivered in their own communities and in their own unions.

For the Syrian refugee situation, for example, unions raised $350,000 without a blink to support Syrian refugees, but that wasn't enough, because we wanted people to actually do something outside of just writing a cheque, so we provided them with a tool for working in their own communities with community groups to learn how to work together to support the newcomers.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much, Ms. Kwan.

I think we have made up the time for Ms. Dzerowicz.

We need to go in camera to get the okay on a small piece, and this is my fault. I gave you the budget, but I didn't give you the video conferencing budget.

We are going to go in camera now, so people will have to leave the room very quickly.

Thank you very much, Dr. Blackstock, Mr. Rousseau, and Ms. Kwan, for your very important testimony.

[Proceedings continue in camera]