Finance Committee on Oct. 18th, 2018

[Annetta Armstrong]

That's a difficult question to answer because the residents have specific needs in each of my buildings. Easily 100 a year would try to come through the doors to stay in any one of our buildings, or who have left and are still trying to navigate the system. I'm dealing with so many CFS issues. For example, CFS would rather give their kids back to moms if they're living in apartments rather than living in one of my buildings, which doesn't make sense because the mothers are living next to meth dealers. It's been very frustrating.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Thank you very much. That's an important statement, that one family is impacted every three days. That's pretty important for the committee to know.

Mr. Olin, I think a lot of us around the table are very happy with your recommendation to facilitate access to the disability tax credit. We've seen Revenue Canada restrict access to it, and that's caused enormous problems in my riding and in other members' ridings across the country.

I truly believe the disability tax credit program needs to be expanded and access needs to be even greater than it is now. I'd be interested in knowing. When we look at chiropractors, would they charge if they had the ability to fill out the disability tax credit? Of course, one of the barriers right now is that many doctors are charging, so we have very poor individuals who can't afford the fee and aren't able to access the disability tax credit because of that.

[Gerald Olin]

Chiropractors do bill for reporting to several agencies like auto insurance and workers' compensation, but I can also tell you that within fee guidelines provincial jurisdictions would oversee that. The Canadian Chiropractic Association has an advocacy group that does not have any regulatory input on fee schedules around the country. But I know that it's a quite regular practice for chiropractors to complete paperwork like that at no cost to patients.

If we look at the list of health care practitioners who have the ability to complete disability tax credit forms, like physiotherapists for example, we would follow very similar types of rules to what they would as well. I know that this committee added nurse practitioners to the group last year. Again, we've followed a very similar type of situation to what they would as well.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Peco and Mr. Fritz, in your brief you talk about recognizing Canadian fairs and exhibitions as cultural and heritage events and amending the language of the Canadian Heritage grants. Then later on you talk about a $20-million funding program for the growth of fairs, festivals and events.

I want to be very clear so that we all understand the budget ask. If the language is amended for Canadian Heritage grants, that makes a smaller pool unless the funding envelope is expanded. Are you also asking for that envelope to be expanded, or are you saying that the funding program for $20 million a year would be sufficient? I certainly support your budget ask, but I'm worried that we're cannibalizing festivals and fairs and exhibitions if we have the same budget envelope but have more applications.

[Max Fritz]

Thank you for your question. I understand it.

I think from the Canadian Association of Fairs and Exhibitions' perspective, whenever we have an opportunity to take on a leadership role with our membership, it's about creating programs at the national level that we can disseminate down to each membership group in the provinces. On the idea of just having more access to pursue grants within the heritage sector, yes, if there are more people applying, obviously, I understand that question.

Ideally, we'd like to pursue that, because we do believe we have an important role in celebrating Canada and the heritage of Canada.

For the $20 million, we really don't have a national platform and a national voice around tourism. We rely on the good work of large fairs and small fairs to communicate opportunities to get Canadians out and enjoying fairs and festivals throughout Canada, but we don't really have a national program that speaks to one collective tourism industry.

We're not trying to take away from all the great work that Canada does internationally, or the provinces do at a provincial level, but we just feel we have an opportunity and a new place for us to play an important role in tourism overall in Canada.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

We go now to Mr. McLeod.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

Thank you, all, for your presentations.

I wanted to ask a question to the Indigenous Women's Healing Centre.

We've heard lots in the House of Commons about indigenous healing centres and women's jails. I don't know a whole lot about jails, but we do have a women's correctional facility in the Northwest Territories. There are no bars, no windows, no fence. I'm just wondering how that compares to what is considered an indigenous healing lodge or...? Is that what you call it, a healing lodge? It's an indigenous-led lodge. Are there similarities?

Do you know of any women's jails that have bars, barbed wire fencing, things of that nature?

[Annetta Armstrong]

Thank you for your question.

I have had the opportunity to go visit the Edmonton Institution for Women, which is of course in Edmonton, and there is fencing around it. The Edmonton Institution for Women has a max, medium and minimum security. I'm very impressed, actually, with the Corrections Canada model compared to the provincial models that I see here in Manitoba.

The medium-security women actually live in what looks like a neighbourhood, in houses, and from what I saw they were walking around on beautiful green grass and have mail keys. It's weird what sticks out. The maximum unit is quite different. The maximum unit is where the women kind of stay in their cells in hallways that are monitored by guards. The minimum security, they're more like dormitories. I believe the minimum security, if I remember correctly, in Edmonton isn't behind a fence.

In my experience with healing lodges and specifically to section 84, I've only been to two. One is for men in Manitoba, here in Crane River, and they live in cottages. Then there's a section 84 in downtown Edmonton for women. There is a locked facility but there are no bars. The women all have their own suites or apartments.

I think it varies. I can only speak to what I know that I'm going to offer, which is fully furnished apartments where each resident has the privacy of her own room, which will stay locked. Then she has access to a multitude of supports and counselling, and of course, reunification with her family and children.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

My next question is that I want to know how your centre collaborates with the mainstream medical system to ensure there is continuous care.

[Annetta Armstrong]

I've established a partnership with a local—for lack of a better word—pharmacy. It's a pharmacy but they offer medical services, methadone services, doctor and nurse services. We're working it out because this is still very brand new. This is all theory for me at the present time. We are including them in our holistic wraparound support for the women to make sure that they have access to the nurses and the doctors and all of their pharmacare needs.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

We just established an Arctic healing foundation in Yellowknife. Many of the people who are going to the facility are not indigenous, even though it has an indigenous kind of focus.

Is that your experience also, that you work with non-indigenous clients?

[Annetta Armstrong]

We have had a few. I don't like to say that I would turn anyone down who is interested in coming to live with us. It's about commitment. The importance to me is that they participate in all the programming. Our programming has a significant cultural lens and places traditional value on ceremony. The women who are asking to come to live with us have to participate in that equally with....

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

I know I'm running out of time, but one of the things that Status of Women and the native women in my constituency have raised a number of times is the need for assistance to navigate through the maze that exists for social programs and in the justice system.

Many women are in really vulnerable positions because they can't get the fathers to assist them or the divorce process is too slow or they can't find lawyers. They don't know who to go to. They're saying they need help, somebody to help steer them through the system and to provide support while they're doing it.

Is that something we should be looking at as a government?

[Annetta Armstrong]

Absolutely. I know that Winnipeg is very lucky to have a fairly good support network for indigenous women and for women in systems like that. My recommendation would be to make sure that, for whatever supportive home you can find to help these women navigate whatever program, it is going to be supported long term.

What I find is that many organizations that are funded only provide one-off support and one-time support. The key, in my experience, is long term. It's like having pre-care, then care, and then post-care through whatever system it is that they're navigating through, because it's never just one event.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

One of my observations, living in an aboriginal community all my life, is that many women are stuck. They can't get out of that community. They can't get out of that relationship. There's nowhere to go. If there's an opportunity—sometimes it's a medical appointment, sometimes it's getting out of a correctional facility, but whatever the case may be—they migrate to the larger centre and there are no support services there. They end up on the streets and sometimes end up in very dangerous situations.

We don't have any shelters. We have a shelter in Yellowknife, which is the centre, but not many other communities have them. I wonder whether this is something you're seeing in your situation here in Winnipeg: no housing, no job, abusive husband or abusive relationship, and they're just trying to get out.

[Annetta Armstrong]

Yes, I agree that there are so many issues. I can guarantee you that if there is an issue out there that a woman has been experiencing, whether from communities that are remote, such as you say you're from, or not, I've seen them all.

We try to take an approach whereby the issues of each individual resident who comes to stay are dealt with. That's the wrong word; I mean we provide individualized care.

One of the most important things, especially from an indigenous perspective, is that somewhere along the line our people have stopped having a long-term vision. It's not that they're stuck. It's that they don't know where they're going. One thing I take pride in working on is teaching women how to do simple goal-setting and vision work for themselves.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Okay, thank you all.

Mr. Kelly is next, and then Mr. Fergus.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Thank you.

I'll continue with Ms. Armstrong.

Perhaps for my own edification maybe even more than for the sake of the recommendations we're going to make, are the residents of the facilities you operate solely people who are under some form of custodial sentence from the criminal justice system, or do you provide service more broadly than that?

[Annetta Armstrong]

Thank you. That's a good question.

In two of the three facilities we don't necessarily take anyone who has any involvement in the justice system. At our Eagle Women's Lodge I think currently we have around 10 or 12 women who are involved with CSC, whether they're on parole with residence or are at a half-way house because their sentence hasn't been completed. At this time, however, because the section 81 proposal hasn't been negotiated or given the thumbs up yet by the Government of Canada, I have community women living there as well.

To answer your question, then, right now at our Eagle Women's Lodge site we have both. When section 81 goes through, I'm thinking that all of the residents who are going to be living in there will be connected to Correctional Service of Canada.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Okay, so you help women who interact with our prison system and you assist in reintegration, whether it's parole or nearing the end of a sentence. You also act as a community institution that helps women who are, as Mr. McLeod was speaking of, in horrific situations with nowhere to go, or with mental health or addiction or other problems.

[Annetta Armstrong]

Yes.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

I'll maybe quickly go to the festivals and fairs. Your first recommendation was around the definitions for access to heritage funds. Mr. Julian actually had a pretty good question about the issue that if you're just seeking a change in definition, you're competing for funds that would go to other groups.

I certainly want to support the assertion of exhibitions as heritage cultural institutions. Certainly the Calgary Stampede is the one that I'm most familiar with, and surely an institution in Calgary that, since its inception, has been dedicated to the exhibition of Calgary's heritage and a great success story, part of the very soul of our city.

In terms of funding, though, what would an institution such as the Calgary Stampede do if it could access a heritage grant?

[Michael John Peco]

I'll speak from the perspective of the Canadian National Exhibition. We are a right of passage as we welcome new Canadians into our community and they will spend time in the community. We sponsor and support emerging artists, both the performing artists as well as visual artists. We have all sorts of educational programming around, in the current context, responsible use of cannabis, where we had educational programming targeted at parents and families.

We have all sorts of programming that is very relevant to society's struggles.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Do these large and extremely successful exhibitions that generate quite large amounts of money not undertake these activities in the absence of, for example, a heritage grant? What would change from what you already do?

[Michael John Peco]

If I could speak to the Canadian National Exhibition's perspective again, although we have a $38-million annual budget, we rarely generate a surplus. It's only in a very successful year that there may be a modest surplus. Therefore, to suggest that these fairs and exhibitions are operating with significant funding and resources just isn't accurate. That would certainly be the case in any of the mid-size and smaller fairs across the country.