Human Resources Committee on March 31st, 2010

[Maurice Vellacott, Conservative, Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, SK]

I'll go to that right away.

Wenda, do you have an answer to that? Métis people can get the child tax benefit, I assume.

[David Chartrand]

Explain the child tax benefit. Is that the one where if you have children...the allowance, as they used to call it?

[Maurice Vellacott, Conservative, Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, SK]

Yes.

[David Chartrand]

In fact I think that's a great program.

[Maurice Vellacott, Conservative, Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, SK]

Okay, good.

You had some comments about child care programs and so on, and I heard some of your remarks in respect of that. So my next question is in respect to the UCCB, the universal child care benefit--the $100 per month. That's lifted a lot of families--some 28,000 in total, about 56,000 people--out of low income. What are your people telling you with respect to that?

[David Chartrand]

On that particular one, given the fact that it's there to assist the family and help them to pay for their own child care, we can't say that... You have to be so careful; I don't want you to take my words out of context here. I think anything that gives to citizens and families is helpful. How you measure it is a secondary issue, and I think how we can transport that into a proper reflection... All Canadians are entitled to health care in this country, for example, but if you look at our Métis communities, we don't have health programs in our communities. We have to travel 100 miles, and if you base it on an income status, a lot of people...

In fact, I know of one person who just passed on because he didn't want to pay to go to see a doctor. He was a pensioner, and he died at a fishing lake, because he didn't want to buy his medicine. He was being cheap. I use that phrase because he was being very frugal with his money as a pensioner, and he didn't buy the medicine. He ended up dying.

So, yes, we're all entitled to health care in this country, but if we can't get to it, or its impact is not as beneficial, then I can't praise it in an open-ended way. But I do agree it helps.

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

Mr. Vellacott, that's all the time you have.

Thank you, Mr. Chartrand.

Madam Faille.

[Meili Faille, Bloc, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Congratulations, Madam Chair. You are the first chair to pronounce my name correctly. Thank you very much.

I would like to ask a question of the witnesses. I sit on the Public Accounts Committee. I don't know if you are aware of this, but the Auditor General was very critical in regards to the performance of Indian and Northern Affairs in chapter 4 of her May 2008 report. A number of the issues you presented here in this Committee were raised, including coordination between departments, the various ministerial perspectives, the timeframes for delivery of services, the absence of program availability in some communities—here, in specific reference to the violence reduction program which is only available in half of the communities—, Treasury Board regulations that are very restrictive and which complicate the coordination and the implementation of programs, as well as a funding formula based on socio-economic criteria which are now outdated. This report is quite recent and is dated 2008.

Moreover, the Auditor General noted that spending on government programs is increasing significantly, but that the department's budget is not adequate and is not following the increase in expenditures.

Are you aware of this report? What is the view of the Metis Nation regarding this situation?

[David Chartrand]

Again on that note, most of the remarks of the Auditor General are a reflection of the Department of Indian Affairs, which has little impact on us. Indian Affairs makes their position very clear: their responsibility is first nations and Inuit.

As I said, the Métis are still floundering. Where do we fit into society, and who do we actually work with? But there are segments now, where one of our small departments has been put under Indian Affairs. The challenge is that the policies and the design of services coming out of Indian Affairs are just being blanketed over our little... What we call the office of the federal interlocutor is being forced to follow those policies, which have a completely opposite view of everything, because we're not struck like first nations. Our governments are not the same—our entire method of operations is completely different—but we're being blanketed with a policy.

I do know we've raised issues with the Auditor General with regard to the Métis, and we're trying to push a study to be done on our financial affairs. As I said, we do not fear accountability. The issue at the end of the day is that we believe clearly there's a great missed opportunity in this country--that Métis are being left out.

[Meili Faille, Bloc, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

Thank you, very much.

We want to thank you again for being here, for taking the time to give us your thoughts and your presentation, and answering some of our questions.

We will now hear from another group, the National Association of Friendship Centres. I'll ask them to take their place, and then we'll continue with their presentation.

Thank you both for being here.

[David Chartrand]

If I can say on behalf of the Métis people, I'm very pleased and honoured to be here and to have a chance to reflect on some of these questions. If there are any further questions, please get a hold of us and we'll respond.

Mr. Vellacott, if you want to write me a letter, I can clearly reflect back my positions on those. I'd be most appreciative...to answer as best I can.

Again, thank you, Madam Chair, for having us here. I hope what I've been able to share will shed some light on the very important job you have here.

I'll leave these here for you to pass around, please. Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

Great. We can all take a copy.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

Could I have everyone's attention, please, so we can begin the rest of our meeting?

We're very pleased to have the National Association of Friendship Centres with us today. We have Peter Dinsdale and Conrad Saulis with us. It's good to have you here.

You'll have an opportunity to give us a 10-minute presentation, and then, as we did with the previous presenters, we'll ask you some questions.

Who will be presenting? Mr. Dinsdale, you will?

If you could go ahead, you have 10 minutes, please.

[Peter Dinsdale, Executive Director, National Association of Friendship Centres]

Thank you very much.

I'd like to thank the committee for the invitation to come and speak on this very important issue of poverty in Canada and what the federal response can and maybe should be. It's part of the work that we do every day, so it's a great honour to come and share some of those perspectives that we may have on it.

I'd like to begin by acknowledging that we meet here today on the Algonquin territories, and I thank them for allowing us to gather on their territories. I'm an Ojibway from Curve Lake First Nation in central Ontario, but in my day job I'm the executive director of the National Association of Friendship Centres. I'm joined by our policy director, Conrad Saulis, who will help me answer all your difficult questions when they arise.

The National Association of Friendship Centres is the national organization representing the concerns and interests of 120 local friendship centres across the country. We're the national office, and we deliver programs to those local centres through our office, and in addition, we support the work they do on the ground.

I think I said today that there are 120 friendship centres across Canada from coast to coast to coast, and last year they provided over $114 million in programs and services directly on the ground to urban aboriginal people. Friendship centres have long been engaged in the issue of poverty reduction, and in fact some may argue that our original purpose was around poverty reduction.

Our provincial office in Ontario in the year 2000 actually conducted a study on urban aboriginal child poverty in Ontario, and I think they found things that would not be surprising to this committee; for instance, child and family poverty in Canada is rooted in cultural fragmentation and the multi-generational effects of things such as residential schools, wardship to the child welfare system, and broader socio-economic marginalization. Recent studies have indicated that aboriginal people are four times more likely to report experiencing hunger than any other group in Canada.

If there is one thing to take away from my presentation today, I hope it is this, that Canada's aboriginal population is urban.

In the 2006 census, 54% of all aboriginal peoples lived in cities and towns across Canada. That offers an incredible policy challenge, and when we're asking what should the federal government's response be to poverty--in this instance, aboriginal poverty--I think we need to look in the cities and towns where these people are living.

This is a growth from 1996, when 47% lived in urban areas, all the way to 54% ten years later in 2006. The other important issue is that half of our population is under the age of 25. If you think about it, we're a very young and urban population struggling to cope in cities all across this country.

There are a number of tremendous challenges. Our people are not graduating high school at the same rates as the rest of Canadian society. I often wonder if half of the students in Rosedale in Toronto, or in the Glebe here in Ottawa, or Westmount in Montreal weren't graduating from high school, what would be the outcry? What would be the study that's happening here today? Where are the royal commissions that would be championing...? Which provinces would be clamouring at the doors? Which political parties would be championing these issues?

It's the exact same issue that exists in the aboriginal community, with half of our kids not graduating from high school, and frankly, it's a national disgrace. There's a bit of irony, though. Despite the fact that our people are not graduating high school, our people are participating in labour market activities at a higher rate than general Canadian society. In urban communities across Canada, 68% of aboriginal people participate in the labour force. The non-aboriginal rate is 67%. Despite the barriers in education and cultural reintegration in societies, our people are trying to be engaged in the economy; they're trying to work. They are becoming more and more disenfranchised, however, because they're not finding success.

We have twice the unemployment rate as our brothers and sisters in the exact same neighbourhoods who aren't aboriginal. Our incomes are way lower. In fact, 29% of aboriginal families in cities and towns across this country live in poverty, as articulated by the low-income cut-off, versus 13% of their neighbours. It's a tremendous disparity that exists. Of single people, 53% of aboriginal people who are single in cities and towns across this country live in poverty, below the low-income cut-off, versus 38% for the non-aboriginal population. When we look to more marginalized groups, we're seeing the greater kind of stratification occur in areas of poverty.

The National Council on Welfare reported in 2007 that there were 637,000 children under the age of 18 living in poverty in Canada, and at that time it was an all-time low. When we cut into the data, 28% of aboriginal children living in urban areas grow up in poverty versus 13% in mainstream society.

A lot of times, people will say there are no opportunities in first nations communities, or, as you heard from our previous speaker, in Métis hamlets, so come to the cities and you'll have a better quality of life and better chances. In fact, urban aboriginal residents are not finding that. They're finding the same barriers and the same challenges, while they are surrounded by prosperity.

In part, frustrated by the lack of information and the lack of real data on urban aboriginal people, we commissioned our own research on the 2006 and 2001 census surveys. We looked at every community across Canada that had more than 400 aboriginal people and was not a reserve. We wanted to run a host of socio-demographic statistics to find out what was happening in cities and towns across Canada. If you ask Statistics Canada for the latest reports on aboriginal people, you're going to get 13 CMAs at best, if you're lucky. You'll probably get six. You won't get what's happening up north. You won't get what's happening in the rural hinterlands. We wanted to find out what was happening all across Canada.

In fact, if you're curious, there are 304 communities across Canada that have more than 400 aboriginal people and are not reserves.

We have a whole host of data. One of the really interesting things we did was to utilize the community well-being index, which was generated by Indian and Northern Affairs to understand what was happening on reserves and what their development was like. It's a proxy for the human development index. The problem in Canada is that we don't capture life expectancy for aboriginal people, so we can't actually apply the HDI measure, which is used internationally, to aboriginal people in Canada.

Statistics Canada applied this new measure, called the community well-being Index, and we applied it to cities and towns across Canada. Over half of all the aboriginal people in these cities and towns lived at what's called very low or low levels of community well-being. Their total combination of housing, education, labour force, and income resulted in their having either low or very low levels of community well-being. No non-aboriginal communities--zero--had low or very low levels of community well-being. And there were no aboriginal communities in cities and towns across this country that had very high levels of community well-being.

The vast majority of non-aboriginal communities--82.2%--were in the high category, meaning they had very high levels of community well-being. You can think of Toronto and Sault Ste. Marie and other areas that have wonderful development. Aboriginal people living in the exact same communities beside all that prosperity have low levels of community well-being.

It's a real challenge we have, and it's something that, as a service provider to aboriginal people in this country, we're challenged with. How do we provide services to these people, and frankly, how do we deal with poverty reduction strategies day to day?

The National Council of Welfare, in its recent pre-budget submission, was very clear as to what needs to be done to have poverty reduction in this country. They said there are five areas we need to focus on: child care, affordable housing, education, health care, and employment. Maybe we'll get into some of these interventions as there is the opportunity to talk.

Across the board, aboriginal access to these programs and services is diminished. Child care is a great example. We have some programs across the country. But there is very little happening in a systemic way that is going to help a single aboriginal woman in downtown Winnipeg put her kid in child care--safe, effective, affordable child care--so that she can finish school, go to work, and have a higher quality of life. It doesn't exist today, and it's a challenge we have day to day.

With respect to affordable housing programs, there was $300 illion in off-reserve housing programs not too long ago. It went to the provinces. That rollout has stalled dramatically and is not having an impact in the communities where it needs to.

Education, I submit, is clearly a provincial responsibility, but the federal government can lead. It can lead in post-secondary institutions or it can lead by piloting exciting initiatives to help aboriginal people finish high school, which is the single greatest thing we can do to alleviate poverty among people living in these communities.

Health care interventions in areas like diabetes, HIV/AIDS, and alcohol-related birth defects and related syndromes are critical to having urban-specific interventions for aboriginal people that will have a long-term impact.

Finally, employment. The federal government's flagship aboriginal employment program, the aboriginal human resources development strategy, has only a toehold in urban areas. The policy focus is on and the vast majority of the agreement holders have a first nation or Métis or Inuit perspective, as opposed to serving people where they live in cities and towns across the country.

I know I'm running out of time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

You have 30 seconds.

[Peter Dinsdale]

We have done research ourselves this year on what's happening across Canada on poverty through our friendship centres. One hundred percent of the centres reported to us that the federal, provincial, and municipal governments have not properly addressed poverty for aboriginal people in cities and towns.

It requires many of the interventions we discussed today. But I think we need to work together.

I'm going to leave you with this quote from Jim Silver, from a book called Solutions That Work: Fighting Poverty in Winnipeg. He wrote:

While it is true that poverty is a complex and multi-faceted phenomenon for which there is no single solution, it is nevertheless the case that community-based initiatives are a necessary feature of any real and lasting attempt to eradicate poverty in Canada.

The friendship centres across Canada are ready to be a partner in that process.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

Thank you very much, Mr. Dinsdale. You were right on time. Thank you for that.

We're going to begin our first round. I think, committee members, we'll do a five-minute round and then a three-minute round, and hopefully we'll give everyone a chance to ask questions. The first round will be five minutes.

Madame Folco.

[Raymonde Folco, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Thank you, Chair.

Mr. Dinsdale, it's a mouthful, everything you've described in terms of statistics and in terms of the very tragic conditions of, generally, first nations, Inuit, and Métis people throughout Canada.

I'm going to ask a question on women's health. That's not because the others—housing, education, and so on—aren't important, but I'm very involved right now in women's health, particularly touching on first nations, Métis, and Inuit in Canada. My question is in terms of nutrition for pregnant women, in terms of while they're pregnant, deliveries, when the baby is born, and nutrition for the young baby. Can you describe (a) what the conditions are, generally speaking; and (b) what has been done or what the federal government could do? Keep in mind, of course, that there is some provincial jurisdiction in all this. I think it's really important.

[Peter Dinsdale]

Thank you for the question. It's critical.

One of my first jobs out of university was working at a drop-in centre in downtown Toronto called Native Child and Family Services. We would often see young street women or young mothers coming in who were pregnant. We would help them with parenting programs, bring them through their pregnancy until the child was born, and make sure they had proper nutrition. And as those children grew, we would make sure the mother and the child had access to programs, which in part probably seeded some of my passion, which you heard with respect to the single aboriginal woman in downtown Winnipeg.

The federal government is leading in three important ways right now. I think they're successful interventions, and I think they need to be grown. The first is a community action plan for children. It's been very successful in communities all across the country in providing services. I believe it's up for renewal, if it hasn't been renewed already. And it's one of those projects that really impacts people where they live and assures that there's access to programs. The related one is the Canada prenatal nutrition program, which clearly speaks specifically to what you're speaking about. And I think there's a mixed bag of other interventions across the country, which may be municipally funded, may have their own source of revenue, or may be provincially funded as well, that groups have been engaged in.

The other really important project is the aboriginal head start program, for ensuring that when these families who are disenfranchised have an opportunity to actually move forward, they have successfully integrated programs in place.

Maybe I'll give my colleague Conrad Saulis an opportunity to talk about the importance of that particular program and what can or should be done.

[Conrad Saulis, Policy Director, National Association of Friendship Centres]

Thank you, Peter.

The head start program provides opportunities for children zero to six years of age to be able to start off on their lifelong learning at very formative ages. The people, who are predominantly aboriginal women, working in these head start programs provide culturally based and oriented education to young children.

It's remarkable to visit head start programs. The aboriginal women who are there are full of life, full of happiness, because this is what they've been wanting to do for a long time. They've been wanting to teach the children their culture, their language, and have the pride and self-esteem reborn in these children to give them that really strong footing so that they can be successful in school. The numbers Peter mentioned a while ago, in terms of the number of dropouts, our children not completing high school, can be reversed and undone. It's going to take a few generations, but I think the head start program is definitely one of those key programs.

There's also another early childhood program, which doesn't necessarily get—

[Raymonde Folco, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

I have to interrupt you, Mr. Saulis. Excuse me for not being very polite.

[Conrad Saulis]

No, that's fine.

[Raymonde Folco, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

I want to ask a specific question. I have an idea in the back of my mind.

What about the distance between where people live? A lot of aboriginals, generally speaking, except for those who live in urban centres, live quite far away from centres such as clinics, hospitals, and so on, and I just wondered about the conditions in which women give birth. Can you speak to that?

I want to move away from education just for the time being. That's why I interrupted you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

Very quickly, if you could, Mr. Dinsdale.