Human Resources Committee on Nov. 30th, 2009

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

The challenge we have is that there are so many great things we get to hear, but we're constrained by time. We appreciate everyone doing their best.

I now have Susan Anderson Behn. You're with the Fraser River and Approach Working Group. The floor is yours and you have seven minutes.

[Susan Anderson Behn, Representative, Fraser River and Approach Working Group]

I'm going to be fairly quick here.

I'm with Jeff Thomas, who is with the same group, and he's going to speak to the handouts you have. Jeff is a councillor from Snuneymuxw First Nation, and I am the coordinator. I am working for the Vancouver Island first nations on this group.

Just to give you a little background on the group itself, access to food, social, and ceremonial fish is a huge issue in first nations in British Columbia. Certainly everybody from B.C. knows we have not had sockeye returning the way it used to. There's going to be a judicial inquiry, but we have been suffering greatly at the community level because of this in the last couple of years.

Salmon have a four-year cycle. They come home and spawn, and four years later they come back again. If you have a failure in one year, four years later you're going to have a continued failure. So three or four years in a row implies that this is going to be a long-term issue in first nations.

The first real failure was in the summer of 2007. In January 2008 the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans called together and asked first nations--everybody who used the Fraser River inbound fish--to get together to talk about how to share the very limited number of food fish they could see coming in subsequent years. Out of that working group has come the Fraser River and Approach Working Group, which does have DFO officials in it. We're the Vancouver Island portion of it. There are B.C. interior first nations, the lower Fraser, Vancouver Island, and the marine approach first nations involved in it.

To give you an idea of the scope, there are 203 first nations in British Columbia, some large and some small--more small than large. Of those, 97 are in the Fraser, from Musqueam at the mouth to Uchucklesaht at the headwaters, and between 50 and 60 of them are on Vancouver Island and in the marine approach area. This means that of the 203, something like 150 first nations are largely dependent on Fraser fish. So it's not a small issue. We're just the Vancouver Island portion of it.

I'll just make a couple of points. Our communities really were wealthy communities on the coast. There was commercial fishing available. People made good income from it. It allowed them to continue to live in their traditional locations and still have good income. It didn't used to be a situation where you had to pay any money in order to have the fish that you took home and ate. Fishing was done by community members, by family members. Fish was available and it didn't cost anything.

There's quite a bit of detail in the brief. Basically what we're looking at is that the few people who are left in our communities who are commercially fishing are people who have been able to weather the storm. They are entrepreneurs. They've been able to figure out how to fish five or six different types of fish and stay in the business.

With two or three years like this, their ability to continue to do this fishery is getting more and more limited. We're in the situation where, if you live on a reserve, you've put a good income into your home, but it has no value. You can't sell it to anybody other than to a band member, so you're in an uncomfortable situation where you have no capital that you can take out should you want to move. You have a comfortable house, but you're really kind of stuck with it.

We're now, through FRAWG, trying to find ways to coordinate the acquisition of food fish so that what fish there are can be acquired and distributed at the community level. And the big issue, of course, is that it now costs money and there is no source of money in the Indian Affairs budget or anything like that to provide for those costs.

I would just say that first nations administration have a very limited budget. Where first nations have spent money, it mostly comes out of the social assistance budget, and that in itself is problematic. Just to give you an example, in the community where I work, this year we paid $1,500 and we delivered about 300 food fish to the members of a community of 600 people. Five years ago we were delivering between 4,000 and 6,000 pieces of fish, and that would be normal. We would anticipate that an average household would be eating fish once a week. We are looking at 50 or 60 fish per household. That would have been a normal level of food intake.

That's not traditional. Traditionally, it would be much higher than that. But that's what we've been accommodating and that's what we're not getting now. We can't get that without some kind of level of income.

I would just leave it at that. I will leave it to Jeff to speak to the rest of it. We do have a brief and we have at least three specific questions for you. We're looking to see if we can get some assistance from the committee or some understanding that we need a source of funds, maybe from Health and Welfare or some other federal government agency or provincial government, so that communities can organize and manage and get their own fish when there's low abundance. Next year we might not need it, but definitely it's an issue now.

There are some issues in terms of fish management, where fish are being dumped because they're the wrong stock. We're doing food, social, and ceremonial fish on sockeye, and then if you happen to go on a pink salmon bycatch, we're not allowed to bring it in. It's just thrown away at sea. It's perfectly edible fish. In fact, our community got pinks this year, which was bycatch, because we went up and got it from a commercial fisherman who would otherwise have had to throw it away. So that's an issue.

Then we have an EI issue as well to do with the two kinds of seasonal EI and wage EI.

So I'll leave it at that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Thomas, we'll turn it over to you for some concluding remarks.

[Jeff Thomas, Councillor, Snuneymuxw First Nation, Fraser River and Approach Working Group]

Good morning. I'm Jeff Thomas, from Snuneymuxw First Nation, which is at Nanaimo just across the Georgia Strait from here. I think Susan has covered most of this, but I want give it to you from my Indian point of view.

Having lived on the coast here for many years and now being involved in this committee trying to get an adequate number of salmon to our members, as Susan was saying earlier, it gets a little more difficult each year. In my younger days, I used to work on the fishing boats as a seine fisherman. I got pushed out of the industry over the years because of the lower numbers of fish each year. A lot of us quit the fishing industry and came back to the beach to look for other types of employment. I've gone from being a seine fisherman to being an insane fisherman because of what I've seen over the years with the decline of our stocks.

It's not only salmon, but it's the halibut, lingcod, crab, and oysters. I guess this decline in stocks is due to overfishing, pollution, urbanization, and industry close to the water and beaches, such as saw mills and pulp mills. This has caused a traumatic change to the way of life we've enjoyed.

I myself am from Nanaimo and I have watched the abundance of my river in Nanaimo, as the river comes right through my reserve. I look back 40 to 50 years to when we had good stocks of spring salmon, cohoe, chum, and pink in that river and contrast that to today, when we even stop our own members from fishing this fish because of conservation. It was hard for us to do that. I'm a council member for our reserve and I've been on council for about 16 years. We've had to take those drastic steps within our own first nation and stop members in the name of conservation, even though the river runs through the reserve.

The difficult part for us in doing such a thing is that in Nanaimo we're signatory to the Douglas Treaties, which means we're able to fish as formerly for sustenance and also to sell, but we haven't done that because of the low numbers of salmon we've had for many years. Even today it's getting more drastic. This past year, there were no salmon that we were able to distribute to our members. The year prior to that, there were four salmon. The year prior to that, there were five salmon. You can see just from those numbers—I think it was nine salmon in three years.

Traditionally we'd go out and hire a seine boat at a cost to our first nation of approximately $50,000 to $70,000 per year. We would do that for our members. We would contract the same boat to go out and get these fish for our members. But with the declining stocks we haven't been able to do that lately.

I have no idea how we can work together with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to somehow work on the pollution we do have on the beaches. For the longest time we were eating the fish, clams, and oysters, but now the decline of the halibut and lingcod in the Georgia Strait, as I said, has had a serious impact on our ability to bring food fish home to our people.

The two previous speakers, Fred and Susan, as I've said, have covered a lot of this, but it's very crucial to our way of life. Growing up on the river, growing up as a commercial seine fisherman, starting off as a gillnetter with my father in my young days, almost 56 years ago, to where we had even in Nanaimo, my first nation, having 400 commercial little boats to fish, today we have one fisherman still hanging on. I think that fact can be said to exist from Victoria right up to Prince Rupert, where we've had a good industry over the years. And the commercial fishermen, be it seiners, gillnetters, trollers, and all the other type, the herring fishermen, as I said, was a very lucrative industry. I don't know how we can ever get any of these fish back to sustainable levels, to where it can sustain a commercial fishery as well as a food fishery.

As Susan was saying, we're looking for support and to access funds during these low periods that can happen in any type of fishery.

Also, the seiners that are out there now food fishing for us, they're there at a cost to each of our first nations. We were quite lucky in organizing ourselves a while back. We organized about 18 first nations, so we were able to cut our costs. It worked very well, but we haven't done that over the last couple of years because of the low abundance of salmon. We do have that capacity to come up with these organizations within our own first nations to make it more cost-effective, because, as I said, food, social, and ceremonial within our communities means a lot.

As well, down on the coast here, Nanaimo to Victoria, and over on the southern mainland, we also have our winter culture where a lot of our fish are used in our longhouse societies. Like I said, it's tougher for us now because we have to go to Costco or Superstore for the fish to feed our people, something that we've been traditionally doing for the last, I guess, 10,000 or 20,000 years. Even going back a mere 150 years, when we were discovered, all Nanaimo used to be longhouses all along the waterfront. So you can imagine how we used to live off this very sustainable fish. But today it's at a very sad state.

Another thing that angers me a lot—

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Mr. Thomas, if you could just wrap up, please. Thanks.

[Jeff Thomas]

Yes.

Another thing that angers me is the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, when we're food fishing for our people, we're not allowed to keep pinks and other types of fish. Yet we're throwing them back. We're bringing up 20,000 fish in a set. A lot of these pinks, which are probably about five, six pounds, are getting crushed by these bigger fish, and then we're throwing them back. Not all get crushed, but some do, and then we're throwing them back. Those could still be used as some sort of food fish for members.

I could talk a long time about a lot of other things. Social assistance, within my community, is $185 per month for a single person. Housing, a very rich community of Nanaimo... Having owned a lot of land in the Nanaimo area, we're now down to 624 acres, 200 of that on a flood plain. So you can see the housing crisis there within our first nation also.

I'll leave it at that. Hay ce:pqa.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thanks, Mr. Thomas.

To the members, because we're going to be a bit over time, I'm going to reduce the rounds to five minutes so we can get through at least one round. I appreciate your staying a bit longer, of course.

I'll turn it over to Mr. Savage for five minutes.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Thank you very much.

Thank you, all. It was a very informative panel, and I appreciated your viewpoints.

Ms. Track, you mentioned the universal periodic review and the fact that Canada reluctantly accepted a couple of the recommendations on housing. You'd be aware that in that same review they did not accept a recommendation that we should have a national plan to eliminate poverty, which is a concern.

B.C. doesn't have an anti-poverty plan. B.C. has high rates of child poverty, skyrocketing food bank usage. I know civil society has been encouraging the government. Where does that stand? Mr. Quantz, are we close here?

[Daryl Quantz]

I would say no. When the child poverty report card was released last week, again the response seemed to be this argument over the numbers. When we can't even agree on a measure, I'm not sure if we're really close to acknowledging we need a strategic platform.

There are piecemeal individual initiatives, and of course they're necessary, but again, we're calling for a strategic comprehensive plan that would help us move forward.

Adrienne, do you want to comment on that?

[Adrienne Montani]

We do feel our provincial government's in denial on this issue, quibbling about either the measurements or giving us lists of things it's doing, all of which have merit. The numbers are the numbers. We're the worst in the country on child poverty for six years in a row, and we're the worst in the country on poverty in general.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

I wish you well. I hope that when B.C. does have an anti-poverty plan it's a really serious and robust one. As you know, they vary. A province like Newfoundland and Labrador, with a Progressive Conservative government, has a serious anti-poverty plan. It was the second province in the country to commit to it. It's not a political issue. We have Liberals, we have New Democrats, we have PC governments across the country taking it seriously and others taking it not as seriously. My own province of Nova Scotia has a plan, but it's a very weak plan. I'm hoping the new government of my friend Darrell Dexter from Mr. Martin's party will make it a more robust plan.

Ms. Montani, you mentioned specifically... And I thank you for your recommendations. We're looking for specific recommendations. You talked about a child tax benefit, national child benefit, and the UCCB, the universal child care benefit. It's your idea that the UCCB--and advocates have talked about this since it came in--has to be rolled into one more robust plan that would specifically target families in need.

[Adrienne Montani]

That would be our recommendation. The UCCB, as you know, is perhaps misnamed as a child care benefit. It doesn't create new spaces or buy much child care for parents. There's nothing wrong with a national family benefit or something like that for all families. We like universal programs, but it doesn't do what it said it would do. We think there needs to be better thought. It's very complex for people to keep having different pieces to try to put together an income that's sufficient for them.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Thank you for that. That's the kind of specific recommendation we're looking for, for our report.

Ms. Track, you talked about the cost of homelessness. There's more and more discussion of the cost of poverty in general. If you take a look at the investments we could make, whether it's for homelessness specifically--and everybody talks about the need for a national housing strategy--or the cost of poverty versus the cost of not doing something about poverty, whether it's jail costs or whether it's addictions costs for people who have mental health issues that cause problems that could have been dealt with earlier, it seems to me one thing we all need to look at more is the cost of not doing something about poverty, as opposed to looking at the little costs. So much could be significant in investing in social infrastructure that the cost is really of not doing something about poverty, as opposed to making investments.

I know the chair is telling me I'm out of time. If you have a quick comment on that, I'd appreciate it.

[Laura Track]

I wholeheartedly agree. Really commit to taking a long view on this issue. You're right to point out there are short-term capital costs to addressing poverty and homelessness that one should consider and the long-term financial savings, and also the lost human potential by allowing homelessness and poverty to exist, and the economic spinoff benefits of addressing it.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Thank you all very much. That was a very helpful panel.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thanks, Mike.

We'll move on to Mr. Martin, sir, for five minutes.

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Thank you for coming this morning, and for your contribution.

As I've done with the first two panels, I extend my apologies on behalf of Libby Davies, who wanted to be here today to ask questions and show her support. She's in Ottawa, as are many other members of the committee who normally travel and are part of this very important work. They have been participating very actively and constructively to try to find something that we could all sign onto in the end and deliver it to the government, and challenge government to act on. We're looking at the federal role in a national anti-poverty strategy, of course in partnership with the provinces, territories, municipalities, first nations, and all the good community efforts that are happening out there.

We've heard a number of things here today that we heard down east in the spring and in Ottawa. Certainly housing is a huge issue. Income security is another huge issue. In terms of trying to figure out how we engage government in actually doing something on some of these things that would be substantial, I like the comment, Darryl, that you quoted from Dr. Butler-Jones: society is only as healthy as its least healthy members.

I was in Finland a few years ago, where there is the concept of social welfare is the welfare of society. If society is well, then it works better for everybody. I think we have to get our heads around that and begin to think in that way.

The other thing we've heard here today that was different, in my experience, is this whole question of our first nations and the impact of the decline of the salmon fishery on your communities. I heard Jean and others, such as Peter Julian, talk about it, but never in the same way that I heard it here this morning. For me, anyway, we'll be bringing that back and hoping that we can get some immediate movement on it.

It's been suggested by some that a guaranteed annual income, a basic income, would be one thing we could put in place that would lift everybody. Are there any thoughts on that?

[Adrienne Montani]

I was reading Senator Segal's arguments in the paper the other day, and he's been advocating that for a long time. I listened in on the earlier panel, so I heard some of Jean Swanson's provisos, things you need to take into account. So I think the idea of a guaranteed annual income a lot of us would support, but the devil is in the details, and we'd have to make sure that it's set, and we'd want to have some input into what is a reasonable threshold, who wins, who loses, and how it is paid for. Those are all key questions.

It's not a bad idea, and certainly replacing a plethora of small programs that some families get and some don't, and some know how to get and some don't, and some work against each other, or get clawed back too early... We really do have a bit of a dog's breakfast of programs now, and they're inadequate, and people are falling through. it's not a bad idea, but it really needs the community's help in putting it together.

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Another concept that I hear as I read and research and try to figure out what it is we can do that would be effective in Canada is the notion of social inclusion, where all people should be able to participate in their community in the ways we do, and take for granted often. Is this something that you feel should be part of a national anti-poverty strategy?

Susan, you're nodding your head.

[Susan Keeping]

Yes, I agree. I definitely agree. I think there are so many areas when we talk about inclusion, everything from recreation to being able to access a bank account. So I would echo what's already been said: that there are so many great ideas, but we all need to have input and we need to work on them together, because we all have different pieces of the puzzle and different information. We would have to look at the details.

[Adrienne Montani]

I would just quickly comment on the issue of tax credits. We really need to look at that. If you take something simple like access to recreation for young people, the current tax credit doesn't work, because you have to have the money to put up front to get the tax credit. For low-income families, they just can't get their kids into soccer or whatever in the first place, so a tax credit does them no good. So those kinds of solutions really aren't helping those who most need the help.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thanks, Ms. Montani. Thanks, Tony.

We're now going to move to Ms. Cadman for the last five minutes.

[Dona Cadman, Conservative, Surrey North, BC]

Thank you.

I think we could all agree that there's going to have to be a national housing strategy plan set up. I would like to know from you what you think the key components of this would be. Do you have any ideas?

[Laura Track]

I'll start.

I think the key components to a national housing plan--I'm not going to prioritize them necessarily--would include collaboration and consultation with communities, with municipal and provincial governments, most definitely with aboriginal communities, and with advocates who are doing the work on the ground and have the experience to help inform what that plan should look like. It should entail--and maybe this is the priority--first and foremost, the construction of new affordable housing. The federal government has invested significant resources this year in renovations, and these are much-needed investments, but to tackle the homelessness crisis in Canada we really need to be building new affordable units, somewhere along the lines of the 20,000 to 30,000 units of social housing we were constructing under the previous national housing strategy.

I recall your question to the last panel. Part of a national housing strategy has to include investment in support services for people dealing with mental illnesses and people dealing with addictions and other barriers in their lives. Providing housing first is an important first step to providing a sort of foundation to allow people to address their other issues, but having care and health services and medical support available to people with other issues is a crucial component of any housing strategy.

[Susan Keeping]

If I can, I would like to make a comment about that. I'm involved with an integrated homelessness partnership table that is run through the province, and at that table we have different ministries. We have Fraser Health Authority. We have mental health. We have B.C. Housing. We have social development. We have a couple of churches. We have some non-profits. It's really experiential, in that we're just seeing what we can do.

We have been placing people in housing. There is an initiative going on for which we had a target, and we have been putting those supports in place so that people can stay in housing. We have found that to be very challenging. I think to date, out of 60 people who were placed, mostly in B.C. Housing, only 30 of them are being successful. We're still trying to unravel the pieces of the puzzle, but we even have the problem of gangs getting in, because you have somebody who's homeless and more vulnerable to becoming engaged in criminal activity or being victimized by crime or someone who's using drugs. So therefore we have a street presence--a gang actually--in one of the local units.

So there are all these challenges. It sounds great, and we want to support it, and we have numerous supports in there. There are a number of agencies trying to do whatever they can. There are volunteers, and we're still working really hard. It's a problem when you have 60 people and only half of them are somewhat successful at this point.