Health Committee on Nov. 7th, 2006

[Peter Dinsdale]

Certainly no one is going to turn away a $1,200 option to buy better food. I'll try not to get caught up in the politics, but I'm going to tightrope this as best I can. I wonder if that might have been the best use of the money for our community, given the kinds of day care challenges that exist across the country and given what was being thought of—I'm trying to be polite—in response to...it could have been otherwise. But I'm sure the $1,200 will go a long way toward buying better food for those who have access to it.

There's a challenge for us with the fitness tax credit. We had an opportunity to consult briefly with Finance on it. We're in the lowest income bracket as it is, and very few of us make enough to even get into paying the tax rates. The $500 tax credit results in close to $70 in your pocket, depending upon what tax code you're in.

Frankly, our people aren't really participating en masse in those kinds of hockey leagues and those kinds of other leagues that are going to generate the tax credit and make it valuable for us. We have kids who can't afford a change of clothes or shoes, and I think we're really at a different level. It has an impact for middle class Indians like me, and that's fabulous, but in the general communities, with the challenges we're facing with our clients, it's not necessarily going to have the biggest impact.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Mr. Keeper.

[Lorne Keeper]

I really don't know how government does its business in terms of legislation, but there has to be some sort of subsidy maybe for the proprietors in these communities. They do it with alcohol. I made reference to Winnipeg and Churchill and the Manitoba Liquor Control Commission. But on milk, maybe Mr. Jim Deyell, with the North West Company, could respond. I don't know what the price of milk is up in Nunavut or in some of the isolated communities.

[Dave Batters, Conservative, Palliser, SK]

How can we facilitate this, Mr. Deyell?

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Your time is gone, but I'll allow him time to answer.

[Jim Deyell]

I will give quick numbers then. Four litres of milk are indeed $11.99 in your community, and also in Pond Inlet, where Ernie comes from, but the actual freight on four litres of milk to Pond Inlet is $50, so thank God for INAC's subsidy program. The fact is that four litres of milk weigh ten pounds, sir, and even at 80¢ a kilo, which is the mail rate, that's $3.70 freight on it alone.

[Dave Batters, Conservative, Palliser, SK]

But when you compare it to whisky, we can do it with whisky, but we can't do it with milk?

[Jim Deyell]

I agree. I don't like it myself. It's a typical program in Quebec that has been changed, but it was the same situation there.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Okay, thank you.

Ms. Fry, you have five minutes.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Once again you hear that poverty has a huge impact on childhood obesity and the availability for children to have proper nutrition. We hear that again and again.

I thought it was an interesting question, and I did not really hear the answer. My colleague Mr. Batters asked it. You have $1,200 a year. It's meant to go to early childhood education and child care, but you have to make a choice between helping your children be educated in the earliest years of their lives so they can get out of poverty--which as we know is one of the answers--or giving it for food. What a choice to make. How do you choose between food or early childhood education and the long-term well-being of your children? That's the first question.

The second question I would like to ask is this. It's obvious that you're talking about life skills--lifetime of change, a new behaviour, and a new attitude--to move people out of poverty and into being able to take control of their lives. I think programs and projects don't do that; they don't give you that ability to change in the long term. Would you suggest a way you could make those long-term changes, in other words, to apply funding to the things you know will allow for behavioural change, as opposed to waiting every six months to see whether you're getting money for another project? I mean, it's been shown that projects don't matter. That's the second question.

The final one is whether anyone has done a cost-benefit analysis of the cost to educate, to feed, and to change the lives of aboriginal people so that they can get out of poverty--and the long-term results, and obviously that's what a cost-benefit analysis does, of the better health, better housing, better education, and the high employability rates of aboriginal people. Does anyone have that study?

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Who would like to start?

I see everyone is eager.

Peter, go ahead.

[Peter Dinsdale]

I don't always like to jump in first.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Jim, go ahead then.

[Jim Deyell]

I simply don't think we can answer that question.

But one thing I would point out is that whatever program and whatever education about nutrition we want to put in place is really useless if the product is not affordable to start with. That's our point. If we can't get the product to the communities at a reasonable price, all the teaching you want to do is not going to be for naught, but it's going to be difficult to carry out when you get home.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Peter.

[Peter Dinsdale]

There were three questions. I'll be quick.

People are incredibly resourceful with whatever they get. They're going to put that $1,200 toward whatever is going to make their family the most healthy. It's not likely to be child care, frankly, because they wouldn't be able to do that. It's going to be whatever it is they can do. I don't think there's any question.

With respect to projects, there was a question about six months, six months, six months. I think nationally we have been involved in a couple of programs. The biggest challenge for us, ever since grants and contributions, has been the amount of scrutiny we go through with Treasury Board and the finance department to get the programs out there. They have a five-year window. We go through those independent evaluations, and the programs stop while that occurs. We sometimes get a one-year extension as an administration year. The projects stop entirely while the rationalization occurs, and then they start up again. It's a five-year process. Really, because you have the administration year, you're into a four- or a three-and-a-half-year programming cycle, which is really problematic.

I think it's not an aboriginal diabetes initiative; I think it is across the board. With the heritage department, we have a problem with the urban multipurpose aboriginal youth centre initiative that has historically late funding. It's a year program, and we get six to nine months of programming because it takes that long to get the funding out the door. It's a huge challenge.

I think it's more systemic than it is any one program. I think we're talking about the financial framework in which we operate as program administrators, whether it's grant or contribution funding in terms of our terms and conditions.

The cost-benefit analysis has been done, interestingly enough, in some western ridings. There has been some research on an aboriginal man who graduates from university. He is going to have x amount more of income throughout his life than if he didn't graduate.

We have 13 alternative schools across the country, and friendship centres. Young aboriginal people who dropped out of school are going back and getting their high school through these education programs. We're in the process of trying to secure funds to do a study, not only to impact on what they're doing here but to expand that program nationally, to have the benefits everywhere.

I think those were all of your questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Thank you.

Mr. Fletcher, five minutes.

[Steven Fletcher, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank all the guests and witnesses for coming today. This is excellent. I wish we had more time to delve into the issues.

I'll keep my comments brief. First, I need to just say, on the day care issue, under the program that was offered by the previous government, there were no day care spaces created, and in rural areas there would be no impact at all in the vast majority of cases. If we accept the argument that the first nations people don't pay as much in taxes, or your comments along those lines, or are not in as high a taxable income range, it suggests then that the $1,200 benefit will be fully beneficial to the recipients because they won't be taxed on that. So certainly $1,200 is a lot better than nothing. I am pleased that $1,200 benefit will have an impact on first nations parents and children.

As a Manitoban, I was really struck by what my colleague Mr. Batters raised, and yourselves, in regard to the cost of whiskey being the same in Churchill as it is in Winnipeg. Since you have raised issues of the social challenges that exist in all communities in the north, I wonder if it would be helpful to have the cost of alcohol in remote areas reflect the actual market price, and inversely, have food somehow subsidized or transportation arrangements organized in such a way as to make the cost of food more affordable. It seems that we have a plan for alcohol in this regard, but we can't get it right for all the stuff we want people to have--nutritious food.

I wonder if the witnesses could comment on that two-pronged approach question: the alcohol floating price, and getting affordable, nutritious food to the people who need it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Would anybody like to take a stab at that?

Lorne.

[Lorne Keeper]

When I made reference to alcohol...I know that in most first nations there's no liquor store. There might be some side businesses in the community, but I don't go there.

In terms of nutritious foods, I don't know what the answer is. The government has to look deep down inside. I know, Mr. Deyell, that with North West stores it's the cost of freight. I don't know the answer.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Just for the committee, to clear that up, are you suggesting then that the liquor companies subsidize the freight of whiskey?

[Lorne Keeper]

No.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

I thought you said it was the same price. Oh, the provincial government does? Of alcohol?

[Steven Fletcher, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia, MB]

Absolutely, it does. The provincial government does subsidize it through the liquor commission.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

That's fine. That's valuable for me to know. I didn't quite understand that.

Jim.