Health Committee on Sept. 14th, 2017

[Clara Morin Dal Col]

We don't have Métis-specific funding. Everything is provincial health funding and the money that comes to the provinces. In B.C. we have 204 first nations, so Métis are way at the bottom of that list. We always encourage the federal government to step forward and include the Métis. We don't have any Métis-specific funding in British Columbia, and there is very little in other provinces.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

That's a huge gap as well.

Thank you. I think that's my time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Mr. Davies, seven minutes.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you for being here, all of you.

Chief Day, was the Assembly of First Nations consulted by the federal government on the drafting of this legislation?

[Chief Isadore Day]

To our knowledge, no, not to any great extent. There have been minimal notifications, but there clearly has not been a meaningful engagement.

Let me qualify that. One way that the federal government tried to come in and speak on this issue was from the health perspective. As the chiefs' committee chair on health, I have been privy to a couple of times that the federal government came in, but they came into this discussion with a lot of other mandates attached to the dialogue. That simply is not a focused or fair way to begin meaningful engagement.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Let me read you a quote from the task force report, the McLellan report, which was issued in fall 2016:

Canada's governments, and many other organizations, will need to work quickly to prepare for the implementation of the new system, increasing or developing capacity in many areas relating to production, distribution and retail, quality control and enforcement, and research and surveillance. This increase in capacity will require new resources (human and financial), enhancements to existing institutions and the creation of new ones. Having all elements in place will be necessary for the proper functioning of the regime.

They recommended, “that the federal government...[t]ake a leadership role to ensure that capacity is developed among all levels of government prior to the start of the regulatory regime.”

In terms of the first nations or indigenous governments in Canada, has the federal government been working with you on a nation-to-nation basis to develop those capacities?

[Chief Isadore Day]

No, they haven't, and again, it's going to be really critical. I would ask the committee to visualize where we're at as the Assembly of First Nations. We have been given many assurances by the Prime Minister and other line ministries on a number of fronts.

Currently, there's the first ministers' meeting that will take place October 3, the law and policy review, and we have a fiscal table. Those are three critical tables that the AFN is just now getting to in any meaningful way. It's very challenging.

If you try to take the issue of, say, the environmental legislation that is being reviewed right now in this country, and look at the cannabis bill, the process of reviewing, engaging, and making determination of where capacity is needed has to be done well in advance. The legislative process, the capacity, and the mutually agreed-upon processes as to how we're going to gel and work together to meet a collective outcome are going to be the challenge. That is simply not happening with this government.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Let me pick a specific focus. We've heard a lot of evidence about the need for education, particularly aimed at young people. Has the federal government been working with the assembly—or any indigenous first nations groups—on developing specific, targeted educational material in collaboration with indigenous and first nations input to roll out in advance of July 1 of next year, or has it given you any money to do so?

[Chief Isadore Day]

No.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Pardon me if you've covered this, but I'm not sure I understand exactly. How prevalent is cannabis use among first nations, generally, and youth?

[Chief Isadore Day]

Right now, there are two reasons why people use cannabis. One is for recreation purposes, and the other is to medicate, so health and social. The numbers are glaring. There is obviously more use within first nations communities. Why is that? It is because of the social and legacy issues in our communities. The rates of addiction are obviously higher. Suicides are higher. The addictions and the use of cannabis from that perspective are going to be higher.

Another thing we're finding is that more people are wanting to get off opiates. They're wanting to find better pain management for cancer. We're finding that people are saying they're just going to use cannabis for pain management, because it works. This is a reality. The issue at hand is that no studies have been done yet to substantiate that these are, in fact, effective. We have a problem because right now we're looking at individuals who have prescriptions for medical cannabis. They're currently not covered under NIHB, whereas veterans in this country are covered under that program. There are some very contradictory plays at hand, and we feel this needs to be addressed.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

I keep using the term “indigenous first nations”. Correct me if I'm using the term incorrectly, Chief Day.

When you submit reimbursement requests for medicinally prescribed cannabis to the government, it's not paying, but it is paying for veterans?

[Chief Isadore Day]

That's correct.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

We've heard already, and we all know indigenous people are disproportionately represented in the Canadian justice and prison systems. How has cannabis criminalization factored into that, specifically?

[Chief Isadore Day]

You can just assume that some of these summary convictions and ongoing addiction problems of our young people, and being charged for breaches and for carrying marijuana, have created many issues in our communities. Because policing programs are not adequately funded, the training in community-based policing is not going to be there. You have the heavy cost of the justice system in our communities. You have remote situations where, if someone is caught with marijuana and charged with an offence, that charge is left hanging because court only happens every so often.

The impacts of cannabis in our communities are much greater. Just those small examples should suggest strongly to the committee that the impacts of cannabis on first nations need to be looked at in great depth.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Your time is up.

Mr. McKinnon.

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

I'm going to start by perhaps answering in a small way some of your concerns about funding. I note that in terms of helping to implement Bill C-46, the provinces and territories can access up to $81 million for the purchasing of and training on oral fluid drug screening devices and training for field personnel for field sobriety testing and drug recognition expertise and so forth.

Provinces and territories will be responsible for distributing this funding to municipal and indigenous police forces within their jurisdictions. Beyond that, I think the funding concerns are the taxation and sharing schemes and are certainly beyond my scope. I think those are things that you're probably best advised to address with the new Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations, as well as the Minister of Indigenous Services.

In terms of concerns that we are being rushed, I've heard this from a number of sources, of course, but from my experience in project management, it is important to have target dates. If you don't have target dates, things just slide out into infinity. It is important to have these dates to work towards, and I have found that it helps people to put the resources in place to try to meet these dates. I think they will be challenging, but I think we have to do our best to do it.

In terms of being ready, what aspects are most concerning to you? What aspects of this legislation do you think are going to be the most difficult for you to meet?

[Chief Isadore Day]

I think this year it's just timelines; we're mere weeks away from this legislation. The federal government has started off on a bad foot already. Our communities simply are not ready.

There is a lot of education that has to happen at the community level and also in terms of the engagement of local leadership. For example, there are going to be treaty regions that have vested authority and interests within their regions when it comes to negotiating permits and licences. These are all things that the legislation is there to support and help expedite. I think the actual literacy with respect to the legislation is going to be the first real challenge. Obviously, the point you made about us having to address this issue with the minister of INAC is also going to be a problematic piece. For us, if the committee is thinking like that already and thinking that we're going to be relegated under the line ministry of INAC and not deal directly with line ministries within the context of this emerging legislation on a government-to-government level, then we're going to have problems.

In terms of going forward, for the bilateral work that is going to be needed within the regions with the Assembly of First Nations and on the ground with first nations specifically, the whole relationship piece as to how this law recognizes the legal rights and authority of first nations jurisdictions will be a piece that I think you're going to have to come to grips with. In order for us to do that, we need to get that dialogue happening on a government-to-government basis.

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

My suggestion to talk with the Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations is fundamentally because this committee is charged with the responsibility of studying this law.

[Chief Isadore Day]

Yes.

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Some of these other things you're talking about, I think, are well beyond the scope of this law. I would certainly welcome specific suggestions you have on how we could improve this law for your needs.

[Chief Isadore Day]

I will give you one suggestion. Put it right in front of the law and policy review that is currently before the AFN and the Prime Minister's Office. I think it's one that is going to affect our communities. It should be on the roster of laws and policies that should be reviewed. It's better to do it if it's at the inception stage, rather than one that's left the barn already.

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Would the Métis council like to address these questions?

[Wenda Watteyne, Senior Policy Advisor, Métis National Council]

Thank you.

I think part of the brief that the Métis National Council put forward does reflect upon those recommendations that the task force made in terms of governments working together. There needs to be better coordination. There hasn't been bilateral engagement between the Métis nation and the Government of Canada to date, at least not in a meaningful way.

I do want to point out that it's very clear that the provincial governments have a fair bit of jurisdiction when it comes to the regulations. If I may respond to one of the questions raised earlier in regard to access to mental health supports, I'd like to point out an example.

Fairly recently, all provincial governments, as you know, finalized federal-provincial agreements on health. There was considerable funding there for mental health, as well as home and community care. I believe that about $11 billion over 10 years was to be invested in these areas. An ongoing concern for the Métis nation is that when federal resources are transferred to provincial and territorial governments, it does not always mean that there actually will be any level of collaboration with or investment into Métis communities. We expect that this will probably be the case with mental health. As far as I'm aware, there isn't any funding being provided by the federal government directly to the Métis nation for mental health.

That's the case in many instances, so I want to make the point that the level of coordination between all three levels of government is extremely important. It's a broad recommendation, but I think it's one of the most important foundational ones from our perspective. That's why we reiterated the same recommendations that made sense to us and that the task force had advised.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

That completes our seven-minute round. We'll go to our second round of five minutes, starting with Dr. Carrie.