Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on May 10th, 2006

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

Why is there no Métis line on this slide?

[Eric Guimond]

It's because we have no measures of life expectancy for the non-status or the Métis, and that's one of the components. We can't measure it, but we're working on it. We're putting a lot of effort into it with our Health Canada research colleagues and also with our Statistics Canada research colleagues. So there are ways of dealing with that, but there's no direct data.

Life expectancy is based on vital statistics. Vital statistics are collected for all Canadians, but in the vital statistics there is no aboriginal identifier, so you can't distinguish who is aboriginal—meaning first nation, Métis, or Inuit—and who is not.

For registered Indians, the data come from the Indian registry. For the Inuit, we use a different approach, what we call an “ecological approach”, where we identify the areas where Inuit are 95% of the population, and then we grab the data for all of that area, including the 5% who are non-Inuit. Yes, it's not perfect, but if we didn't do that, we wouldn't have anything to show. We're trying to apply the same technique for the Métis, but it's a lot more difficult because they don't live in dense, concentrated areas like the Inuit.

But based on the other indicators—functional literacy, grade 9 plus or high school plus, and income per capita—I think it's safe to say non-status and Métis are positioned between the registered Indians and the Inuit on one side and other Canadians on the other side. They're somewhere in the middle. So when we get the life expectancy measure and we do calculate the HDI, I expect the HDI for the non-status and Métis to be somewhere in-between.

[Nancy Karetak-Lindell, Liberal, Nunavut, NU]

I just have a very quick question. You don't take the cost of living into account in these figures?

[Eric Guimond]

No.

[Yvon Lévesque, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Can you tell me why the life expectancy of functional illiterates is higher than the life expectancy of persons who have a high school diploma?

[Eric Guimond]

Are you asking that question on the basis of numbers you are seeing?

[Yvon Lévesque, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Yes. For instance, those who have a high school diploma...

I've made a mistake. I've just realized that in fact it refers to the number of people. I'm sorry.

[Eric Guimond]

The number refers to the proportion of people who have a high school diploma. The first line refers to the life expectancy in years, whereas the two following lines refer to the rate of functional literacy and the proportion of people who have a high school diploma. The last line refers to dollars.

Let's move on to the next slide.

These measures can be produced for men and women. What you see here is the gap between the index for men and the index for women for each of the two populations, namely registered Indians and other Canadians.

I will ask you to concentrate on the graph to the right which refers to 2001. The gap is of 0.002 per cent for women in 2001 in the category of other Canadians.

But for first nations registered Indians, the gap is 0.029 per cent. The gap favouring women is therefore 15 times greater within first nations as compared to other Canadians. It seems that this situation is unique in the world.

After studying the data, we did not find anything showing a significant gap between men and women. The gap can be explained by two factors. The first is life expectancy, because the gap is very wide between first nations men and women. The second factor is education.

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

Wait a moment: I want to understand what you are saying. There is a significant gap between men and women, but to whose advantage?

[Eric Guimond]

It is to the advantage of women.

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

Do first nations women live longer than first nations men?

[Eric Guimond]

Much longer.

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

Is this the case on or off-reserve?

[Eric Guimond]

Both. Women are more educated, but this does not translate into higher incomes. Nevertheless, I think that's another issue.

I mentioned earlier that looking at the national picture hides huge disparities. This is the HDI for the registered Indian in 2001 only--for the on-reserve population, the off-reserve population, but also the other Canadians, the other residents in these provinces or territories.

The first observation from this chart is that it varies from coast to coast. The lowest figures in terms of HDI for the registered Indians are in Manitoba and in Saskatchewan--on reserve. It's also in Manitoba and Saskatchewan where there is the largest gap relative to the rest of the population and where we have the largest proportion of the population that is aboriginal. If I had broken it down by gender here, which I did on the previous slide, you would see that the men in Manitoba display a very, very low HDI. Again, it's education and life expectancy.

So this highlights the need to really break down the data geographically, to identify specific disparities, specific issues. The national picture masks important differences.

We also have done it for the Inuit by regions where they live, so in Newfoundland, Labrador, Nunavut, Northwest Territories, and Quebec. Again, we see important variations across regions, and Nunatsiavut and Nunavik show the lowest level of HDI for the Inuit.

[Inky Mark, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB]

Just on the education component, is there a breakdown in terms of where the education actually takes place? Is it on reserve, off reserve, mixed? Do you have data for that?

[Eric Guimond]

We cannot have data from the census about where they get their education. The issue of tracking students is one the department is looking into in terms of better data, because we have the provincial system, which is off reserve, and then on reserve. So there are efforts being made there in terms of bringing the information together so we will have a better sense of the students' progress.

I was just saying it's important to drill down geographically. In our unit, we've used the HDI methodology and expanded it a bit so we can apply it at the community level. That's the community well-being index, which is very similar in terms of methodology--similar, not exactly the same.

Again, it's an index that goes from zero to one. It has components. It has an educational component, exactly the same as the HDI. It has an income per capita component. But we cannot indicate life expectancy at the community level.

We're talking about small communities. In some of these communities, in certain years, there are going to be zero deaths. Zero deaths means infinite life expectancy, and we know that's not the case. It's because we're dealing with small populations, small numbers.

So we've replaced this health indicator with one of housing, which is an important aspect of living conditions in aboriginal communities. This housing component is made up of two elements: one of quality and one of quantity--quantity being crowding. We measure crowding. In terms of quality, there's a question on the census that asks about major repairs. So those aspects were factored into the measure, similar to the HDI, the same kind of methodology.

The last one is labour force participation, and we have four components in this case. This is mostly a socio-economic indicator. The HDI included a health component that we cannot build in here. The community well-being index is a socio-economic well-being index of communities. From the HDI nationally to the provinces, we're now drilling down to the communities.

These yellow bars represent other Canadians. I'm going to build up the complexity of this chart so you'll see. That's why it looks a little empty right now. The yellow bars represent Canadian communities that are not first nation or Inuit, based on their score. The score runs across, and you have a proportion of these communities.

By the way, we've calculated this for all Canadian communities that have a population of at least 65 individuals--not just first nations or Inuit, all communities. These are the other Canadian communities, their distribution. You'll notice that they're mostly towards the top end of the scale. They have high scores.

On the next slide I've added first nations, the red bars. The first observation is that these communities have lower scores. Okay, we knew that from the HDI anyway. What more do we learn here? We learn that there are huge disparities between first nation communities. In other words, the difference between the lowest score and the highest score is bigger than the difference between the average first nation and the average other Canadian community. There are more disparities across first nation communities than between first nations and other Canadians. That's a finding.

If you look at the bottom 100 communities, 92 are first nations. Only one first nation community ranks among the top 100, and that's Burrard in B.C.

On the next slide we add the Inuit. For the Inuit, there are far fewer communities. As indicated on the chart, “N = 51”, meaning the number of communities. They're mostly concentrated towards the middle of the scale. You have some that are towards the upper level, but they're mostly concentrated, more densely grouped, similar to other Canadian communities. There's a little less disparity than we saw with the first nation communities, but also we're dealing with a smaller number of communities: 51.

When I got the invitation, I was told that participants, members, really like maps, so indulge. I'm a demographer; I'm not a geographer. But I do recognize that when people start thinking about why there is such a huge difference between first nations communities, the first answer that most people give is, “It's because of geography, because of where they are." And I say, “And what else?”, and they respond, “Oh, it's because of where they are. "Okay, I get it. And what else?" They respond, “Because of where they are." There is a fixation on location.

This map shows high-moderate level of CWB, community well-being, for first nations. The blue stars indicate a high level of CWB.

Yes, a lot of them are in the south. There are a lot of them in southern B.C. Some of them are around the Great Lakes. Some are between Ottawa and Quebec. The one north of Quebec is not exactly south, by the way. It might look south based on where it is on the screen, but it's not exactly south.

You will also notice blue stars right in the middle of Saskatchewan, Manitoba, northern Alberta, Yukon, northern British Columbia--and I can go on like that.

It's not directly associated with where they are. There are some communities that do fairly well.

Just to illustrate again the disparities that we saw on the previous chart...I was saying that the difference between the lowest and the highest is really big.

There is a tribal council in Alberta. There are two communities, same tribal council, same band. They can see each other from across the river, these two communities. One ranks among the top 10 first nations in the country; one ranks among the bottom 10--same band. They can see each other from across the river.

So these disparities we saw nationally, when we look at all the communities, we even see them at the band level or tribal council level. I just wanted to point that out.

We thought the data was not good. We actually sent one of our researchers there to look and the person came back--yes, the data was good. There are huge differences between these two communities.

[Rod Bruinooge, Conservative, Winnipeg South, MB]

Mr. Chair, I have just a quick question.

I'm sorry to interrupt your presentation.

Is there any economic analysis based on this allocation of the blue stars, I guess you could say? Is there an economic reason--perhaps business occurring--

[Eric Guimond]

Based on standard distribution of the communities--the red bars that we showed earlier--the moderate are those close to the average first nations score. Those considered high are those that have higher scores relative to that average. Those that we categorized as low here are those that are really below the average first nations score.

[Rod Bruinooge, Conservative, Winnipeg South, MB]

My question is more in relation to whether there is a business interest, perhaps, in the area that might be providing additional employment in some of those areas that you've identified as high.

[Eric Guimond]

You mean if we've looked at it actually from an economic perspective, what would be the explanation for higher CWB scores?

[Rod Bruinooge, Conservative, Winnipeg South, MB]

Right.

[Eric Guimond]

The first step of the research agenda--because it's our research agenda--is to actually measure. It took us two years. We had direct access to the microlevel data from the census--special access--but it took us two years.

The second phase is to look at the reasons, the determinants, the correlates--why? And yes, I'm with you with that. That's the direction this research needs to take, but we're not there yet.

[The Chair, Conservative, Colin Mayes]

Mr. Mark.

[Inky Mark, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB]

In my riding, a lot of the reserve communities have adjacent to them a Métis community. Is there much research in terms of a differential between Métis themselves, as well as status and Métis?

[Eric Guimond]

The issue of Métis communities still has to be--