Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on May 10th, 2006

[Eric Guimond]

That's right. It only comes from migration, from migrants. These are only people who have moved.

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

They moved between 1996 and 2001?

[Eric Guimond]

Yes.

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Aren't you going to have fun a few weeks from now.

[The Chair, Conservative, Colin Mayes]

Mrs. Neville.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

I'm interested to see reference to the myth, and the myth has some currency right now.

Are there figures that substantiate those who indicate that the migration is from reserves to the urban areas? I guess I'm asking you how this myth came to be.

[Eric Guimond]

That's a personal opinion. The myth is based on living conditions. A non-aboriginal person living in the city, watching TV, watching a documentary or story in the news about living conditions in first nations, can obviously notice the differences. Their thinking is that when folks have an opportunity, they will move. That type of thinking then evolves into, “Well, if I see huge population gains in the city, that's probably because of the idea I had about an exodus”. They associate the two.

I will come to exactly what is the source of this population explosion.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

I have another quick question.

When one does the self-identification in the urban setting, I'm assuming it is self-identification and that's it.

[Eric Guimond]

We're coming to that. That's good.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

I would like clarification, Mr. Chair. I've heard a number of times 1996, but this document says 1986. Which is it?

[Eric Guimond]

Since 1986 the urban areas have displayed a net loss. When we look at different census periods, I can go back to 1986. Over the last 15 years, their net migration for the cities is negative.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

I heard 1996.

[Eric Guimond]

The bubbles refer to 1996-2001. That's my mistake. I forgot to add that.

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

1996 is five years.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

So on there it says 1986, but it should be 1996? No? Forget it; I'll get it somewhere else.

[Eric Guimond]

So migration is not a big component of the growth overall, obviously, but neither is it in cities.

The third component is Bill C-31. In 1985 there was an amendment to the Indian Act to eliminate the discriminatory clauses that had resulted in the loss of status and entitlement for the majority of first nations women and their children. When 1985 came along, changes were made to the Indian Act, and these women and their children were allowed to be reinstated.

So we can look at these numbers. This amendment, Bill C-31, had an impact on the registered Indian population. There are three impacts it had: the registrations, the births associated with individuals who registered, and the reinstatement of the women who could have had children after that, some of whom would have status. So that's also an impact of Bill C-31, as displayed by the green section here on the pie chart.

Yes?

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Have you done any projections on the potential impact of 6(2) of section 31?

[Eric Guimond]

We've done a lot of work on Bill C-31.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Have you done work on projections?

[Eric Guimond]

We have many documents, and all of them are available on our website. The only ones that are not available are the ones that are still in editing or translation.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

So the potential impact of subsection 6(2) you've examined from a demographic perspective? You've got those documents, and we can have access to them?

[Eric Guimond]

Yes, they're on our website.

[The Chair, Conservative, Colin Mayes]

I missed Mr. Russell, so if he wishes to he may speak now.

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

I'm just wondering. You collect your data based on the census, right? The questions on the census have changed over time, as I understand it, in terms of capturing the aboriginal population. Would that not also account for an explosion in certain areas? I'll come back to that. There are still aboriginal people there, but that accounts for, I think, the high spike.

My point is that if the department is basing programs on population and need and that type of thing, and they had these erroneous numbers in 1986 or 1991 or whatever, and then we're getting real numbers, then our data is getting better but the programs don't seem to be adjusting for this more accurate data. So we have a real problem with program design, for instance, on the Métis. Would you say that's a fair statement?

[Eric Guimond]

You touch on a few aspects here. The first one is the consistency in the definitions.

Yes, I agree with you, there have been changes from 1871, the first census, to right now, 2006, but since 1986 there has been relative consistency in the way that data has been captured by Statistics Canada in their censuses. There are improvements, and these make the numbers fluctuate, but for these improvements to make a really strong impact they would have to be spectacular. There's no indication, from the work done at Statistics Canada on the quality of data, that shows either spectacular improvement or deterioration in the quality of data. In my own studies at the university, I've done some simulations with regard to this. You would have to have spectacular improvement or real deterioration of data for there to be a big rejigging of the counts.

In the last point you made, you were referring to the Métis and to the fact that now the data's better. We have more people declaring that they're Métis. However, just looking at the next slide in your deck, you can see the fourth component of the demographic growth, of the explosion, a phenomenon that has been called “ethnic mobility”. Basically it refers to changes in self-reporting for those periods that we're looking at. It also refers to children born in multicultural families. The father could be first nation, the mother could be European, and perhaps the child could be declared Métis. It could be.

So ethnic mobility refers to changes for an individual through time. If an individual has multiple ancestries, for whatever circumstance he'll change his declaration of identity. It could be through intermarriage, with people of different cultural backgrounds having kids. That will have an impact. Ethnic mobility is the big component for first nations and Métis, especially in urban areas.

There's another way to illustrate the impact of ethnic mobility. If I'm a first nations child in a closed first nations community, obviously I need two first nations parents. Outside the reserve, a first nations woman might be with a non-first nations man, but the child might be first nations. This first nations man might be with a non-first nations woman, and they can have a first nations child. In communities, people will not intermarry but “in-marry”, so two first nations individuals for one child. Outside, you can create two families with the same two individuals, and then two kids. So intermarriage can potentially double the growth.

In cities you have a lot more intermarriage, as illustrated by a lot of the reports on Bill C-31 that we were referring to earlier. There's a lot more intermarriage, hence rapid growth. Then on top of that you have people who have multiple identities who, for one reason or the next, will change how they report themselves. That's a very big contributor behind the growth. If ethnic mobility didn't exist through the generations, could we be talking about Métis today? No.

There are no definitive answers. I'm sure some of you, maybe even all of you, are already thinking, how can that happen? What's the explanation behind ethnic mobility? There's no definitive answer. There's no data. I cannot ask people who've changed their reporting through the census: why did you do that? But there's work that has been done in the U.S. and Australia. These phenomena have also been observed for the aboriginal populations there.

There are three factors, predisposing demographic factors. First, there is age. Until I'm about 18, it's my mom or my dad who's going to fill out the census, so they'll report me in a certain way. When I start filling out my own census form, I might change the way I report. So that's age.

There is multiple ancestry. There are also social factors. When there are events, there's media, which increases awareness. That also increases pride, very often, and will push people to--pardon the expression--come out of the closet about their aboriginality.

And then there are legal factors. There are different pushes to define who has access to certain programs and benefits. These pushes will trigger movements of individuals, who will try to position themselves relative to what's there or what's not. Bill C-31 was a good example. I don't know if anyone noticed, but there was a bar going in a negative direction for non-status Indians. That was most likely because of Bill C-31. Some individuals tried to reposition themselves. They were non-status and then they became status, so there was movement. For those who were non-status before, there was a suspicion that they might be Métis now, because they were non-status because of their mixed ancestry, and some interpret mixed ancestry as a direct connection to Métis. So you see, that's a legal factor at play here in terms of how people report themselves.

So that's a big one, ethnic mobility. It's not often studied in demography courses. It's a little on the margins, on the fringe. Sometimes people have thought I was a bit on the lunatic fringe in talking about it.

Okay, the third topic is well-being. This chart presents the human development index. What is this index? It's an index developed by the United Nations Development Program to measure the quality of life of countries and compare them. We've heard through the years that Canada ranks among the top countries in the world. And it still ranks really high. In fact, for a few years, Canada ranked number one.

The methodology is relatively simple and allows for calculations for the registered Indian population and Inuit, which we've done. The HDI is made up of three elements. It's simple. One element is health, which is measured as life expectancy. The second element is education. We want to have an idea of knowledge. This has two subcomponents: one is functional literacy, and one is higher levels of education, which is measured as graduation from high school or higher. The third component is the measure of access to goods and services, and here we use income per capita. The index goes from zero to one. So the blue line on your chart represents the HDI for other Canadians, the red one is registered Indians, and the green one is the Inuit.

The first observation--it's obvious--is that well-being for registered Indians and Inuit is significantly lower than for other Canadians. But there are two other messages that this graph conveys. First, well-being of registered Indians and Inuit is not stable or going down, and this is another persistent myth. Second, over the entire period, the gap relative to other Canadians has been closing, but not as much in the last five years, the 1996 to 2001 period. In fact, for the Inuit, it seems to have widened a little bit. We're at the third decimal place, so we might just be within the margins of error there, but it's safe to say that there haven't been huge improvements over the last five years.

So there are three messages. The gap, relative to other Canadians, is improving, and it's improving faster than for the rest of the Canadian population. Therefore, the gap is closing.

What's the driver behind these improvements? It's education--not health, or life expectancy, or income, but education—albeit education at the lower end of the spectrum. You have more and more people who have grade 9 education, which is a measure of functional literacy.

That's about it. So that's the national picture for the HDI.