Human Resources Committee on March 31st, 2010

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Mr. Chair, I guess this is a good place to stop.

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

It is a good place. Thanks.

We will go to Mr. Savage for three minutes.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you very much. You've given us excellent presentations on some very specific ideas.

You presented to the Senate's anti-poverty report. You're quoted in here on a couple of occasions, and I'm sure you had a lot to do with some of the recommendations that were made.

In one recommendation in particular, recommendation 68:

The committee recommends that the federal government require an Aboriginal working group to identify priorities for urban Aboriginal people and designated funding for this purpose within all federal funding to communities to address housing and homelessness.

Another thing the Senate report did that we've been getting into is to look at this issue of the cost of poverty. Some people say we can't afford to address poverty. It has become very clear that we can't afford not to address poverty. There's a quotation here on the homelessness section, from somebody saying:

People should be pushed to do something simply out of humanity, but if you want to talk about money, it costs $48,000 a year to leave someone on the street. It costs $28,000 a year to house them.

You talked about the importance of not just transitional housing but actually building housing. Do you have anything that you want to add along those lines about the cost of actually addressing these issues versus the cost of not addressing them?

[Peter Dinsdale]

We often think there are different economic frameworks as well. Without programs such as friendship centres or drop-ins to help kids keep out of trouble, not get into drinking, not get into crime, not make more babies than they need to...what's the cost of keeping a kid in jail for a year versus having a program that will help provide services to him or her?

I think it is, in part, common sense in terms of the economics. The challenge is that you don't want to run structural deficits--no one does--when we ask folks to invest heavily in any kind of housing problems. Even though there are downstream investments and savings, no one is going to take from Corrections today to fund CMHC today for savings downstream tomorrow.

It's a real challenge; I appreciate that. There's always a political price to be paid for these decisions. I think the prudent thing is to graduate as many children as you can--I keep coming back to that--and to find homes. A housing first approach is certainly valuable, because they can't get a job and have a home; they can't finish school if they don't have a place to stay. I don't think there's anything to add that's new or unique to that, but certainly just to endorse that concept.

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

What if the committee recommended a significant increase in funding for the aboriginal friendship centres to address poverty?

[Peter Dinsdale]

Well, we were going to wait to get to that later. Certainly one of the things you can do is to look at the funding challenges. We've been at the exact same funding level in friendship centres since 1996, the last time there was departmental spending review of any significance. We received a 25% reduction in our funding program, and we've been at the exact same level ever since.

I know there has been a lot of talk about MPs and senators and cabinet ministers having their salaries frozen. These front-line service providers have had their salaries frozen since 1996. It has been a 50% reduction in real terms in today's dollars.

These agencies are really having tremendous challenges, based on those kinds of numbers, to provide long-lasting services that have an impact to prevent poverty, to prevent these kinds of downstream investments that are going to be required in justice and health care and all these other areas.

We'd be happy to provide a brief in terms of the funding challenges and for the committee to consider recommendations based on that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

Thank you.

Mr. Lobb.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Thank you.

Peter, you mentioned the caps at 2%. There's a significant number of young people who would like to go to university; however, due to the caps, they're unable to attend.

Do you have any idea, across the country, or have you done any research on how many people we're talking about here? What are the numbers?

[Peter Dinsdale]

I heard National Chief Atleo talk about the need for 65,000 more graduates to close the achievement gap between aboriginal people and non-aboriginal people in terms of university completion rates. I have no reason not to believe his numbers on that.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

I can see that. That is a “want”, right?

[Peter Dinsdale]

Yes.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

They would like to do that, to close the gap. But in fact speaking specifically to what you mentioned there in the cap, is there any idea of how many have applied that are unable to get the funding? Is that number available or out there?

[Peter Dinsdale]

They apply to their first nations. It's outside our purview. I think our challenge is that we deal with the results of when they're turned down, when they don't go to universities and they're in our communities. It's not the kind of research we do in terms of how many applied and from where they were turned down. So, sorry, no, I don't have that data for you.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

These are obviously intelligent young people who have, in some cases, gone against the odds and have kind of risen to the top.

[Peter Dinsdale]

Yes.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

How is the apprenticeship program working there? Our previous guests talked about the Métis construction industry that they've been able to establish. I'm curious how the partnering is going with corporations and other firms, because often times there are co-ops or apprenticeships in there. How is that relationship?

[Peter Dinsdale]

I think, again, the urban aboriginal focus hasn't been there, so we haven't been able to develop the relationships that others have in order to close some of those gaps. We've recently engaged in a partnership with the Electricity Sector Council, particularly in Goose Bay, Labrador, to work with them to identify 20 apprentices to be trained in some of the new developments they have to work in that industry.

We're beginning conversations with the Aboriginal Human Resource Council to look at a national trades strategy, a partnering with our community agencies to do pre-employment programs and then to match with employers. There are also opportunities even with folks like the Home Depots of the world and others that want to do national aboriginal hiring. They're looking for a partner to identify people and bring them through pre-employment programs.

The challenge is capacity. If you don't have the resources, have people to make those relationships, engage them long term, have the relationship with the local centres, develop the pre-employment programs and see them through, these things don't happen by themselves. But we're trying to engage the number of partners that we can.

That's why programs like ASEP and others are so important, because they provide the ability to do those exact things. What should be a focus is getting people jobs, those who are ready and willing to move on.

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

Thank you.

That's your time. It flies, yes.

Mr. Lessard, please.

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Responding to a question from my colleague, Mr. Martin, you said that there was more frustrations than successes. Allow me to phrase my question this way because I have always been very close to Aboriginal communities and I remain so. I am godfather to eight children as I have worked in health services, and so on. I also know that Ms. Folco has worked with Aboriginal communities as well. We get the impression that problems are never ending and that we shall never see the light at the end of the tunnel. The federal government has a fiduciary responsibility over Aboriginal communities. At the same time, we were apprised of the dramatic and scandalous situations that were described when we visited the regions and the major cities of the country.

I would like to hear you speak briefly on this subject. What is going on? Given all our investments and our efforts, it seems that we have gone nowhere in resolving the problems that you have described earlier.

[Peter Dinsdale]

Well, today I had the privilege of being with the Minister of Indian Affairs at a reception to mark the 50th anniversary of the change in the Elections Act for aboriginal people to vote in this country. Now think about that. When my father was born he couldn't vote in this country.

We're not that far from the Government of Canada, in these buildings, talking about how to kill the Indian in the child. We're not that far from residential school attempts... We're not that far from where people were not able to go to universities, or to hire a lawyer to fight their claims. In all honesty, we have about 50-some years of freedom from direct assimilation attempts.

I'm not much of an activist, but I think after any cursory review of Canada's history you have to come to that conclusion. It wasn't until the Indian Act amendments of 1951, a little bit later in the fifties, where these direct assimilation attempts stopped. Then there was a passive kind of assimilation. There wasn't much of a... You weren't trying to help us succeed, but you also weren't doing much to stop what was occurring in the past. The last residential school didn't close, of course, until the 1980s, I think, although most of the worst of them had been done by then.

But it wasn't until the 1980s that something began to switch. It was a constitutional conversation--of course, you could talk about the white paper of Jean Chrétien and others--which really began to raise a new political consciousness and passive support came. They really didn't want to be helpful, but somehow with the constitutional amendment, subsection 35(1), of course--existing aboriginal treaty rights are hereby recognized and affirmed--with the Penner report, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, there is momentum all of a sudden. There also was the apology and even the alleged endorsement of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

All of this is a shift. Kelowna was a shift. Kelowna couldn't have happened 15 years ago. The mentality wasn't there. So I think this country is making a shift. And it's a very short window we've had. We've had about 10 years of active support. It's going to take more time.

I don't think all Canadians are ready to support aboriginal issues and programs. I think there's a lot of racism, a lack of understanding in this country still.

Chair, I'm answering too long. I apologize.

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

No, that's all right. Go ahead.

[Peter Dinsdale]

It's amazing, though. I think that in historical perspective, it hasn't been that long. I'm 36, so all my life I've seen all these active supports. I haven't gone through the battles that my president has and others have. They've been through all this, but they see where we come from and I see where we're going to go. I think we're going to get there. We have strong leaders. More and more people are getting educated. More people are joining your parties and are being engaged in your political processes to help change from the inside. I think by working together, by focusing on this, we'll get there, but we need to deal with people where they live, we need to deal with the issues they have, and we need to stop following these political principles that we're going to serve nations rather than serve people in cities where they live and help them cope with the day-to-day struggles they have. That's my soapbox speech.

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

That was very good. Thank you.

Go ahead, Mr. Casson.

[Rick Casson, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chairman. I'll make a comment and then ask a question.

You talk about the urban population. I have no official aboriginal populations in my riding, but I do have a huge urban population in the city of Lethbridge. Some say it's as high as 6,000, 7,000, or 8,000. I have always encouraged them, and if they would get together, they could elect the mayor, if they wanted to, and run the place, but we have a little trouble getting them to do that.

I mentioned to you earlier, when I shook your hand, that the friendship centre in Lethbridge is a real model of success. It's brought the community together in a way that I haven't seen very often with other organizations. The business community, the college, the university, the municipal government--everybody's involved.

They came to see me recently, and their issue was student housing. The University of Lethbridge and the college have quite a few aboriginal students. The university, of course, has a Native American studies program that's very highly regarded. They indicated to me that the students will come, whether from the city or from the two large reserves next to the city, start university, and then just quit. They come and then they don't last very long. It doesn't take very long: by Christmastime, sometimes, they're gone. They think that if there were housing for them so that they could use public transit and other things, this dropout rate would improve.

Across Canada, is this a theme that you see or can comment on ?

[Peter Dinsdale]

It's something we see, absolutely.

I should tell you we partnered with Dr. Yale Belanger from the University of Lethbridge on a number of projects, so we work with your community. We're familiar with some of the challenges you have in your own community as well.

Across the country the rate of native dropouts, once they get to university, is a tremendous issue. I think there are two reasons for that dropout rate. I think some students have been pushed along through their academic career, and while they may have a diploma, they become assessed at a quite lower level and they're simply not prepared academically for what awaits them when they go to universities at an academic level. Also at the small-c cultural level of an institution, the game that universities can be makes the need for native student supports all the more important. There is a need for tutors, for after-class programs, for tea and bannock, for someone to speak your language, for somebody to talk with about the powwows and what's going on back home, and there's all the social isolation that occurs. The more of those barriers you can break down, the better.

It's been our experience that these students, when they're provided with the right supports, can take care of themselves, graduate, and be very successful. Our focus has always been putting a blanket of supports around them to resolve all those other issues they're dealing with and help them focus on their studies. Native student support programs are one of those things that help do that successfully.