Human Resources Committee on Oct. 3rd, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Southwell.

We now go to Mr. Long for five minutes.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon, colleagues.

Good afternoon to our witnesses. Thank you very much for your presentations.

My question will be for Mr. Southwell in Halifax.

First and foremost, I hope Fiona wasn't too bad for you, Mr. Southwell. Did you make it through okay?

[Rustum Southwell]

Yes, I did actually.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

I'm glad to hear that.

Mr. Southwell, can you comment on how significant today's announcement of $200 million for the Black-led philanthropic endowment fund would be for your organization?

[Rustum Southwell]

Yes. When, in our history, we reflect on this day, we'll realize how visionary and how massively that investment was going to play out. It doesn't only create a platform of sustainability. If it is managed well, continuous funds can be endowed to the community into perpetuity. I think it's going to lift the standard of Black communities for generations to come, which is something we were asking for. Several folks in the community, for many years, have actually placed that as a key area.

I think, as the word gets out about what is being suggested here, the size and vision.... In doing that, it's a major and historic step today.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Thank you for that.

For full transparency, I didn't know what BBI was until I had a coffee, about three weeks ago, with Jocelyn Eatmon-Stevens. Jocelyn is a good friend of mine. Jocelyn is the BBI coordinator for New Brunswick. She was telling me that there are 16 organizations or entrepreneurs that BBI is now supporting in New Brunswick. I think the work you are doing is absolutely fantastic. The work that she does in New Brunswick is fantastic.

I want to drill down a bit.

How does the SBCCI function differently now that the funding flows through intermediary organizations, rather than directly from ESDC? What's the difference?

[Rustum Southwell]

I would like to believe we are a lot quicker in getting the funds out.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

I bet you're quicker.

[Rustum Southwell]

That's a major question. I was speaking to one of my team, who is no longer with us. We were saying, “What are the benefits?” One thing we thought is that the community having a perspective of transactional versus transformational approach has made a huge difference.

Where the challenges came in was with who does what, as you would have heard, for example, whether was co-funded or how flexible the funds were to be used. We were doing the specific track areas, rather than general funding. That has been an issue, as I think you heard last week, in some of the areas we've seen as well.

What I know is that, working together, ESDC has listened to the suggestions and helped us where they can. We know they couldn't do everything, but they are doing their best to deliver the pieces that we are hearing...and that we, as the intermediaries, have helped to organize and put back.

Where we saw changes was, for example, charitable status, digital. Those areas were brought on to adjust to the immense needs in those areas. If you can understand, this was designed in 2018, before COVID and certainly before George Floyd. The world has changed tremendously in that period of time. We've seen that. We've managed to have a conversation to support that as well.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Thanks for that.

Can you talk about the SBCCI grants? What role does BBI play after they've been awarded?

[Rustum Southwell]

Like Groupe 3737, Tropicana and the Africa Centre, we are an intermediary. Not only do we distribute the funds and adjudicate the organizations that get the funding, and we do that with community folks, by the way. The BBI team manages the process, but it is our own community that is making those investment decisions.

We also provide ongoing monitoring. We have a base camp that's set up for the subagreement holders to network. We've actually just invested in our own platform. I know Louis-Edgar spoke about SM Apply. Because of that we have designed our own system that will be able to do a lot of the monitoring as well. We also do evaluations.

There was one point made last week in the conversation. I think someone else mentioned it earlier on. The reporting burden for the amount of funds is a lot for some of the centres, so whether it's BBI group, Groupe 3737, Africa Centre or Tropicana, we do follow up with our staff teams and with the organizations getting their reports and we're monitoring those. Sometimes the field officers go out.

I'll just add that we do everywhere except Quebec on our side, in Canada.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Southwell and Mr. Long.

That concludes the first hour. We're a bit over. We started at 3:40. That will conclude the first group of witnesses. We will suspend for a moment while we transfer to the second witnesses.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

We will resume the committee hearing on the Black communities study.

For witnesses, we have Mr. Haji from the Africa Centre, and Mr. Salmon from the Ontario Alliance of Black School Educators.

Gentlemen, you each have five minutes to give your opening presentation, which will be followed by a question round from the committee members. You have the option of speaking in the official language of your choice. If translation stops, please let me know by using the “raise hand” icon.

We'll now begin with Mr. Haji for five minutes.

[Sharif Haji, Executive Director, Africa Centre]

Good afternoon, everyone.

I would like to start by thanking the committee for the opportunity today. I would like to acknowledge that I am joining you from Treaty 6, the traditional and ancestral territory of Cree, Dene, Blackfoot, Saulteaux and Nakota Sioux.

I also want to underscore that we are in the decade of people of African descent—a decade dedicated to cognition, justice and development.

My name is Sharif Haji. I have the privilege to serve as the executive director of the Council for the Advancement of African Canadians in Alberta. We are known as the Africa Centre. We are a non-profit, charitable organization that has been in existence for the past 16 years with a strong relationship and partnership with the City of Edmonton.

We also have offices in Calgary. We consider ourselves as the largest Black-led non-profit organization in the western provinces of Canada. The Africa Centre is one of the SBCCI intermediary organizations. Also, we are a former recipient of the funding prior to becoming an intermediary based out of western Canada. I have the opportunity to speak from both sides: what it's like as a recipient and my experience as an intermediary organization.

We became an intermediary just a year ago in September 2021 through an RFP run by ESDC—a western Canada-based intermediary. We have not been part of the first call for proposals, but we joined the other three intermediaries in the second call for proposals. Even as a latecomer to the intermediary role, thanks to the other intermediaries—my colleagues, who were just on the call a few minutes ago—the Africa Centre was able to hit the ground running and execute its initiative at the same base as other intermediary organizations. It's a lesson of showing that walking together and learning from each other is what rose us to a level that we could be on the same base as the rest.

We also brought a network and access, as well as local lenses from the community, to reach and support a higher number of organizations based out in the western provinces of Canada that had been missed during the first call for proposals. That highlights the fact that engaging a western intermediary organization was an overdue step to ensure regional equity and representation across the country for Black organizations seeking SBCCI funding.

The process is uniform for all intermediaries, and this has been helpful so that we can walk together in our alignment, whether it is a call for proposal dates, announcements or disbursement dates so that we don't bring confusion within the Black grassroots organizations. We also coordinate on processes, such as information sessions, grant reviews, etc.

As far as selection is concerned, we had to put an independent committee in place, and that independent committee was identified through a call for expression of interest. We had 47 members of a committee that applied, and we ended up identifying nine committee members across the country as members of a grant review committee that provides recommendations, ranks applications, looks into an alignment with the purpose of a call, and then provides recommendations for funding. Each committee member independently reviewed the processes and the applications, provided ratings and then came together to discuss and create a consensus in terms of the way moving forward.

With regard to the organizations we supported following the call for proposals, in response the Africa Centre received a total of 147 applications of which 130 of them met our criteria for funding. Out of the 130 applications, we have prioritized funding 68 grassroots organizations with an investment of $2.6 million. About 70% of these were based in the western regions of Canada, with Alberta representing the highest number, followed by B.C. in the west. However, in terms of overall ranking, Alberta had the highest number that we've funded, and Ontario was the second. The least was Manitoba as far as funding is concerned, as well as the number of applications that were received.

Areas that we focused on were governance, as well as operational excellence. Out of the 68 that we funded, there were 54 organizations that were not funded and were deferred for subsequent calls for proposals.

I quickly will highlight now—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Mr. Haji, your time has gone well over.

You will have to give whatever information you want to give to the committee during the questioning period. Thank you.

Now we have Mr. Salmon for five minutes, please.

[Warren Salmon, President, Ontario Alliance of Black School Educators]

Thank you so much.

Good afternoon, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here. I want to thank you for the invitation and for facilitating this.

I'm Warren Salmon. I am the founding president of the Ontario Alliance of Black School Educators that was founded in 2013. The purpose of ONABSE is to promote and facilitate the education of all students, African Canadian students in particular. It's also to establish a network of African Canadian educators and others involved in the educational process to create a forum for the exchange of ideas and strategies to improve educational outcomes. We do this through an annual conference and other activities. It's also to identify and develop African Canadian professionals who will assume leadership roles and positions in education and to influence public policy concerning the education of African Canadian people.

Some of the functions include work to eliminate and rectify the effects of racism, harassment and sexism in education, to significantly raise the academic achievement level of students and to place particular emphasis on the type of learning that builds positive and realistic self-concepts among African Canadian students. It's also to establish and promote the degree of awareness, professional expertise and commitment among African Canadian educators necessary to enhance and contribute to the efforts of other educators and community persons. It provides financial and human resources for recruiting African Canadian school personnel, certified and support personnel. It supports training for all personnel to impact the education and socialization of African Canadian students; to meet and share ideas, proven programs and effective techniques for demonstrating that African Canadian students can learn; and to support and research positions on key educational issues that affect all children and students of African descent as they relate to public policies. It's also to address the economic gap experienced by the African Canadian community.

Our membership includes educators, administrators, students, parents, communities, member school districts, institutions and businesses. We are, as I said, Ontario focused.

Before we were founded, there were a number of Black educator networks in numerous districts, and we've given them a seat on our board. That includes districts in Windsor, Toronto, Peel, Durham, York Region and Ottawa right now. We're a provincial affiliate of the National Alliance of Black School Educators, which is based in Washington, D.C., and we also have a sister organization, the Nova Scotia Alliance of Black School Educators.

We're the recipient of two SBCCI grants, one for charity readiness and one for grant writing capacity support. Right now, we're a non-profit, but we are looking at becoming a charity, and that will help us to increase our capacity and growth to do it in a more timely manner.

That's my introduction, and I look forward to answering further questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Salmon. You're under the time allocation, which is great.

We will now proceed with one round of questioning of six minutes each.

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

Thank you, Chair.

I want to thank the witnesses for appearing today.

We have heard some testimony so far that talked about the importance of specific funding aimed at Black entrepreneurship, because there are so many difficulties with applying to the general fund. We heard about the importance of education.

My first question will be for Mr. Haji.

I know it's important to have this kind of funding for Black entrepreneurs. In my riding, we had a recipient who was a pharmacist from Nigeria who ended up starting a medical facility, brought in three doctors and has a pharmacy that supports our palliative care system in Sarnia. Amazing things can happen.

You were a recipient, and now you're an intermediary. Why is it important to have that intermediary organization?

[Sharif Haji]

It's important to have the intermediary organizations.

I will put my hat on as a recipient. It was easy for us to work with Tropicana, which was the intermediary that funded us, and receive funding that supported our operational excellence in the area of HR, systems management, data management and related to staff. That was significant for us to be able to build capacity.

As far as an intermediary is concerned, that is the element, because it is quicker for us to be able to get the funding. It is easier for us to be able to reach the funder, and it is easier to discuss in terms of the eventualities we face, based on the agreement that we signed with our intermediary organization. That nimbleness, flexibility and understanding of local nuances is quite helpful in terms of making the changes that are needed for us to be able to achieve the objectives we need to achieve through the funding.

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

Mr. Salmon, you talked about the need for Black school educators.

Can you share with the committee some of the best practices you have encountered that you think the federal government could help support?

[Warren Salmon]

Sure. One of our main activities is hosting an annual conference that brings educators from across Ontario, and actually across Canada, the U.S. and other parts of the world, together to share the best practices that are going on in education. School districts within Ontario, and districts across the country and other countries, face a lot of the same challenges. We're sharing ideas to help us address these issues and concerns.

It's really one of the best practices, and something that we could definitely use support for. I've actually been contacted by educators from across the country, in B.C., Alberta. They're looking for how they can better organize and put together organizations to really help support students and educators. That's one thing that comes to mind.

One thing we've also been looking at is support for supplemental education and other forms of education. Looking at some of the stats in terms of student achievement, in a lot of the public schools, there's definitely room for improvement.

There are also some examples of other initiatives that are getting great results. I think that's something else that could definitely use some support.

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

That's very good.

If I run out of time on this next question—this next question is a hard one—I invite both of you to submit any of your comments in writing.

When we're trying to change a culture and we're trying to get to a position of equity among people in Canada, normally culture change involves what they call “antecedents of behaviour”, where you have positive incentives to try to drive right behaviours or right attitudes. We have funding for resources and education and things like that, which are positive things. However, you should also have some negative consequences that discourage wrong behaviours or wrong attitudes, and we don't really have much of that here.

It's very important how you measure your progress. Today we're measuring things like the amount of dollars of funding and the number of training courses and things like that.

What should we be measuring? Are there carrots and sticks, positive and negative things, that we should be putting into place to help accelerate our path to equity?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Please be brief. As Madam Gladu pointed out, you could follow up in detail to the committee with a written response to her question.

Go ahead, Mr. Haji.

[Sharif Haji]

I think government sets the tone, and then with the systems we have, there are quite a number of puzzles that need to be linked together.

In this case, from my perspective, this was a setting of tone by the government. There are other players in the field. The Calgary Foundation is reaching out to work with us in terms of supporting Black leader organizations on the operational side of dollars. The Edmonton Community Foundation is doing the same. As we speak, we now have 15 other organizations that we are serving as an intermediary outside of the federal government, and these are dollars from the provincial government or from foundations in Edmonton and Calgary.

These are some of the things that will shift entirely. The tone will shift how we deliver and create equity collectively. One system of the orders of government alone cannot do it, and as an organization, we cannot do it alone. Creating that ecosystem is what will influence the system and create an equity in all systems.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Mr. Haji and Mr. Salmon, you could follow up, if you choose, in writing to the committee.