Human Resources Committee on June 16th, 2010

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Raymonde Folco]

Good afternoon, everyone.

This is the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills, and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities. This is meeting number 23, on Wednesday, June 16, 2010. Our orders of the day are, from 3:30 to 4:30, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), our study of the federal contribution to reducing poverty in Canada.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are very privileged to receive, from Nunavut by teleconference, Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., with Mr. Natan Obed, director of the Department of Social and Cultural Development, as well as Mr. Alastair Campbell, senior policy adviser.

Unfortunately, Mr. Paul Kaludjak, president of Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., could not be present on the phone.

We will proceed now with our witnesses.

Mr. Obed and Mr. Campbell, who will be the first to speak?

[Alastair Campbell, Senior Policy Advisor, Nunavut Tunngavik Inc.]

This is Alastair Campbell speaking. I can lead off.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Raymonde Folco]

Mr. Campbell, you have 10 minutes.

Is Mr. Obed with you, Mr. Campbell?

[Alastair Campbell]

Yes, he's here.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Raymonde Folco]

Good.

Welcome to both of you, then, by teleconference.

Mr. Campbell, you start off. It's 10 minutes for both of you.

We'll start off with Mr. Campbell, we'll follow with Mr. Obed, and then I will indicate to you that various members of this committee will be asking you questions. That will go on until 4:30 Ottawa time.

Is that fine with you?

[Alastair Campbell]

Yes, that's good.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Raymonde Folco]

Very good.

Mr. Campbell, senior policy adviser with Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., please proceed.

[Alastair Campbell]

Thank you, and good afternoon.

There are a couple of points to make. First is that you would have received, I hope, some copies of the submission that we sent down to your committee originally. It was just to give you a first glimpse of the picture in Nunavut.

What I would—

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Raymonde Folco]

Yes. We have the text in both official languages.

[Alastair Campbell]

Thank you.

So what I would like to speak about just very briefly is the importance of the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement for the well-being of Inuit--economic, social, and cultural--in Nunavut.

The agreement was signed in 1993 and was taken to represent a major change in the relationship between Inuit and government. It took 23 years from the date the first proposal was tabled with the Government of Canada to get to the final signing of the agreement. It was seen by Inuit, when it was signed, as a very basic document for--and is still seen as that--the basis for future well-being, and a document that, after 1982, is protected in the Constitution of Canada in section 35.

In the view of NTI, the agreement has not been implemented fully in spirit and intent, or even, in some cases, according to the letter of the agreement. This view is supported by reports of the Auditor General of Canada, PricewaterhouseCoopers, a private consulting firm, and the Senate Standing Committee on Aboriginal Peoples.

In our view, a new approach is needed to the implementation of land claims agreements. In this context it would be worthwhile to suggest that you look at the report of the Senate Standing Committee on Aboriginal Peoples that was produced in 2008, which contains a number of recommendations that NTI and other signatories of land claim agreements endorse. Essentially, fundamental changes are needed in the federal approach to implementation of our agreement and other agreements.

To date, no measures have been taken to move in this direction. It really requires consideration at a senior level by the Government of Canada. The recommendations go beyond the powers of Indian and Northern Affairs, but only modest administrative adjustments appear to be contemplated.

I would like to remind you of or point out what is in the land claims agreement in the way of objectives. The preamble to the agreement says, among other things, that the objectives of the agreement are:

to provide Inuit with financial compensation and means of participating in economic opportunities; and to encourage self-reliance and the cultural and social well-being of Inuit.

I'm sure that from some of the information Mr. Obed will give you in a minute or two, you will see that what is being accomplished is short of meeting the objectives set out in the land claims agreement.

The full implementation of the agreement is seen by NTI as crucial to the well-being of Inuit in Nunavut. And its full implementation in spirit and intent is essential if the federal government is going to be serious about ending poverty in Nunavut.

Those are my introductory comments. Mr. Obed will take over at this point.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Raymonde Folco]

Mr. Obed.

[Natan Obed, Director, Department of Social and Cultural Development, Nunavut Tunngavik Inc.]

Thank you.

You did a very good job of pronouncing my name.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Raymonde Folco]

Thank you.

[Natan Obed]

I'll start with a linking statement about the land claim and how it relates to social indicators and federal responsibility.

Article 32 of the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement allows for participation of Inuit in the development, design, and delivery of any social or cultural program, policy, or legislation that affects Inuit in Nunavut, and this obligation extends to the territorial government as well as the federal government. We do not feel that article 32 has been respected or implemented in such a way as to allow full participation of Inuit in the design and the method of delivery of social programs.

If we're talking about reducing poverty and the federal government's role, one of the first parts to play is this open dialogue giving Inuit the ability to participate in the design of programs or services that affect Inuit in Nunavut, because the federal government does do quite a bit when it comes to social or cultural programs and services in Nunavut.

I'll get into a few social indicators. We can talk quite a bit about the discrepancies in health outcomes or social indicators between the population in Nunavut and the population of Canada, but I'm going to focus on just a few issues: health care, education, and housing.

In health care, virtually all the money that is expended on health care in Nunavut for Inuit and for the population as a whole originates with the federal government. Nunavut is not a territory with a tremendous amount of own-source revenue or a large tax base, so virtually all the money spent on essential services is federally funded one way or another.

Outside of the territorial formula financing, a number of programs related to social development are usually run through either Health Canada or the Public Health Agency of Canada. The design of these programs, how they are delivered, and the funding related to their delivery have huge positive consequences for communities in the territory, because often the link is between the federal government and, say, the community that delivers the health program.

Most of these funds that are direct links between communities and the federal government are health promotion programs or prevention programs, but they go a long way in ensuring that people are living productive lives and living healthy lives, which then allows them to pursue economic employment or just ensures that they have a solid foundation upon which to live their lives in a positive and meaningful way.

Something that is related to health is food security. The 2008 Nunavut Inuit children's health survey, which was conducted in conjunction with the broader Inuit health survey that was an IPY-funded project, found that 70% of all households in Nunavut that had children between the ages of three and five were “food insecure”. This means that at some point during the year families did not have enough to eat or did not have enough resources to buy food to eat to satisfy the nutritional requirements of their children.

As you can see, this is a major issue of poverty. And then we see other results of this, like different iron deficiencies, vitamin D deficiencies, or lack of nutrition, which then links to long-term health concerns and also to underperformance in school, or to just the inability of the family to function in a healthy manner if there's always the threat of not having enough food and if a lot of families live in poverty.

Then that links to housing: we at NTI have done quite a bit of work in the past on housing. We have been very complimentary about the federal government for its recent investments in the last four years in housing. That's as a start, because in our estimation there are in excess of 6,000 homes that need to be built in Nunavut to satisfy the emerging and current demand for housing. Right now we have severe overcrowding in a lot of the homes in our territory, which then leads to many other social problems that create barriers for people to reach their full potential.

On the social side, we see housing as a key to a better future. On the economic development side, housing in Canada has often been linked as being one of the foundations to creating and maintaining individual wealth. There really isn't a private housing market beyond just one or two communities in this territory. It has always been the federal government's wish for Nunavut that a larger private housing market would be established, but that just isn't possible at the moment due to poverty and due to the monopoly of social housing in a number of our communities.

The last thing I want to touch on is education. We have done quite a bit of work on education and the link to employment. We still fall well below a representational workforce in government, and that is extrapolated across all the different job opportunities in our society. Without a properly educated society, we will still continue to lose out on the majority of the opportunities that are presented to us through the emerging natural resources sector. We will continue to lose out on opportunities to work in government and in private business. We also will continue to lose out on opportunities to have a well-educated society, which then is a lever into many other different positive things in life.

I am cognizant of the time. I appreciate the opportunity to speak. Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Raymonde Folco]

Thank you very much, Mr. Obed. You were very sensitive to time. Actually, you are exactly one minute over, so you obviously know something about time.

Thank you both so much.

We will now go into the first round. I will explain that the first round is seven minutes for each MP, and those seven minutes include both the question and the answer. We usually start with the Liberal MPs, then we go on to the Bloc Québécois, to the NDP, and finally to the Conservative MPs. Then we'll go into a second round later on.

We'll start with Madam Minna.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

It's a pleasure to be talking to you.

I was up in Nunavut in December and in fact met with some representatives of your organization—two fabulous, aggressive women. One of the things that you've just alluded to and that we discussed when I was there was that the staff of the territorial Government of Nunavut is primarily white, from the south. I got the impression...it was not an impression, actually, but was quite clear from the presentation made to me and my colleagues by the two women at the time that finding work within the government and keeping that work was quite difficult because of the attitude and the culture they found.

Could you expand on that for me a bit? You mentioned jobs in government. To what extent is that still a problem? This was only last December.

[Natan Obed]

At the risk of over-generalizing, we see this as an issue, but if we look at the different tiers of employment within government, we see that a lot of the senior level bureaucrats, the deputy ministers—

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Raymonde Folco]

Excuse me. I'm just going to interrupt for a second.

Since we don't have any idea of who is speaking, when you do speak, could you tell us who you are? We won't recognize your voices easily. Who's speaking right now in answer to Madam Minna?

[Natan Obed]

I apologize. This is Natan Obed.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Raymonde Folco]

Please go ahead, Mr. Obed.

[Natan Obed]

If we look at the different tiers of the bureaucracy in the Government of Nunavut, at the deputy minister level, at the senior bureaucrat level, we see that it's more or less representative now, because of a rather large push by the Government of Nunavut to have Inuit in deputy minister positions.

Once you get down into the middle management level, that's where we see a huge non-Inuit workforce. In large part, the Government of Nunavut's work is powered by the thought process of non-Inuit when it comes to that middle management level.

Also, when it comes down to the policy levels or the program coordinator levels, there is still an under-representation of Inuit.

Then at the secretarial level, or the administrative level, we see a large proportion of Inuit, which is at or just below a representational level.

So if you see the different tiers, you get a better sense of some of the challenges that Inuit come into contact with when trying to work for government.

Often supervisors do not speak Inuktitut. About 80% of the population speak Inuktitut as their mother tongue, so that's a huge barrier, first and foremost.

Then we get into the world view or the common vision of Nunavut and how to do work, and that creates another barrier. A number of people are grounded in a southern-based education and work experience when they arrive, and so I guess in a sense their vision is limited to the experience they've had in the south. They're thinking about a different type of workforce or a different vision for the territory, which is sometimes difficult, if not impossible, to articulate to non-Inuit staff.

We see it as a huge issue. We are trying to do what we can to ensure that there are more educated Inuit who are in positions of power within government.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Thank you.

I have a lot of questions, actually, on things I picked up while I was there. I'll share them with the committee.

You've just said 80% of the population speaks Inuktitut. I know that the region was somewhat ignored by the rest of the country until 30 or 40 years ago, and now things are moving very fast, but there are a lot of people who still speak only Inuktitut and who are not conversing in English or literate in English. They are having difficulty with education, with getting jobs, and also in being trained for potential jobs.

I wonder if you could tell us what kinds of programs would help in that area if that is the case. What could be done to actually assist with providing the kind of transition programming, if you like, for a lot of the people there? Of course, what assistance is there for seniors who probably will never become completely conversant?

[Natan Obed]

Well, it is our hope that in the future the Government of Nunavut will function in Inuktitut, so it isn't necessarily about trying to change the way Inuit interact with government. It's about trying to change the way government interacts with Inuit.

Inuit saw the creation of Nunavut as this expression of self-government through a public government, and there's a very real expectation that Inuktitut, or the Inuit language in general, in all of its dialects, would be the working language of government. We still maintain that it's possible.

It's going to take quite a bit of work and quite a bit of extra funding to ensure that the education system can function in Inuktitut from kindergarten to grade 12, and that there's a change in perception from the territorial and even the federal side as to the expectations of what it means to work in Nunavut and the expectations of working in Inuktitut.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

I just have one final question.

Again, when I was there, one of the things mentioned to me by both the mayor and the premier was the need for major infrastructure dollars to increase and assist the economy of Iqaluit and of Nunavut.

One of these infrastructure programs was the creation of a deep-sea port, the kind of infrastructure that we've built in other parts of the country over decades, over hundreds of years, but which is not there in your region. A deep-sea port would certainly assist you in being able to bring in goods and services and also with potential business. Right now you're limited to flying in things, and the season is very short.

That's one example of infrastructure. You may have others. Can you comment on that?

[Alastair Campbell]

Yes. This is Alastair Campbell speaking to you now.

I'm not a specialist in infrastructure and transportation, but it is certainly the case that there are not deep-sea port facilities here. There's sealift, which is not a very efficient way of providing materials needed for construction and goods for consumers.

When the hospital was being built, for example, a girder that was essential to it fell into the water, which presumably would not have happened if there had been proper docking facilities. The result of that, given the short construction season, was that it actually threw the construction off for a year.

There's a cost associated with these lacks.... A major centre like Iqaluit can certainly justify better port facilities. In fact, port transportation and unloading facilities, as I understand it, have been developed better in northern Quebec than they have in Nunavut.

One of the other things that's been mentioned--and here the contrast would be with Labrador and Newfoundland--is small craft harbour facilities. Every community in Nunavut is maritime—that is, on the sea—except Baker Lake, which is a little way inland on the lake. But they are all otherwise adjacent to the sea. Use of marine resources is an important part of the traditional economy and also the developing economy. There's a lack of small craft harbour facilities, which, for example, would facilitate fishing and that sort of thing.

So even though there is fishing potential and there is some fishing activity being carried out in Nunavut, the facilities are not available for unloading fish stocks, for example. The boats have to go elsewhere to get fuel or elsewhere to unload the fish.