Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on March 29th, 2007

[Chief Lynda Price]

I just wanted to respond to the question. Thank you.

What I'd like to reflect on is how it would impact us in my own territory. In our territory, we had five longhouses. We're very organized and we had structures in place to look out for our community. We were self-sufficient; we weren't dependent. We didn't have a welfare society; we didn't rely on government hand-outs. We had our own economic base, and that's what we're striving for today.

Our people are tired of just being allocated revenue. We would like to have our own economic base, our own revenue-generating base, so that we could adequately look after our own people. As you know, my mom was sent off to a residential school, and she was taught not to speak our language, let alone hand down the practices that we had in our longhouse system to take care of our families and community, which was what the longhouse was all about.

Today, we're under a government structure, the Indian Act, that doesn't benefit our culture or language or maintain what we practised. Right now we're moving towards implementing our own first nations governance structures, and we're right in the process of developing our framework for how we're going to have a governance structure for our own community, based on the longhouse. It's going to be based on the foundation of the longhouse, and all of our policies and processes will be for education, housing, and all those other important initiatives. And economic development is at the base.

For us to move through that process takes time and effort. To have the federal government impose other legislation on us that won't allow proper processes to be established in our communities first is discrimination to us, because those processes were in place prior to contact.

It was in 1906 that my grandparents were told not to go to the longhouse or they would be incarcerated for up to three months. So they had to totally abandon the longhouse.

All we have today are pictures. What we are doing is re-establishing those, and we're putting back into our culture. And I thank God up above that He's helping us do that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Colin Mayes]

Mr. Bruinooge.

[Rod Bruinooge, Conservative, Winnipeg South, MB]

Mr. Chair, I thank the witnesses for coming today. I extend a special greeting to the national chief, a fellow Manitoban. It's good to see you again.

I would like to start by pointing out to the national chief, on his point about how it is with this most recent government that our human rights are being denied in terms of access to water, that when we came to office, we inherited 193 communities that were at high risk, and the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development just last week reported that we've reduced that number to 97.

I believe this is some progress. Clearly there are still a lot of issues in place on first nations reserves throughout Canada, but when you set a priority to clean up water, you have to make efforts and make things happen, and I believe that cutting that number in half was a good start.

I would like to move on. I see that you've brought forward some recommendations. I'm definitely appreciative of receiving them, because it's only through collaboration with the Assembly of First Nations and other first nations leaders throughout Canada that we're going to be able to come up with the right solution to repealing section 67, which I think everyone agrees is essential.

Perhaps I could talk a bit about the interpretive provision that you've included on schedule B. In point “a” of that, on page 14, you talk about “the entitlement of a First Nation government to provide programs and services whether exclusively or on a preferential basis to its members”. What specifically do you mean by “preferential basis”?

[Chief Phil Fontaine]

First of all, I want to respond to the point you made, Mr. Bruinooge, about the emergency water intervention strategy and the status report that Minister Prentice issued last week.

We question the report and we question Minister Prentice, because what we have in this status report is an internal reporting mechanism of the Department of Indian Affairs. It is not subject to an independent risk assessment. There's no independent engineering assessment of this grading system; a new grading system has been instituted, and it is entirely subjective.

For example, the fact that 40% more operators were trained was marked on the positive side of the ledger; the fact is that we lost 40% more of the operators to municipalities and others because first nations communities didn't have the money to pay these operators, but that negative is not reported anywhere.

You were marked positive if you had SWOP, the safe water operations program, out of Ontario. That's an oversight thing; if you have it, it doesn't necessarily mean you have safer drinking water.

This has been in the works for eight months, and there hasn't been one new water system plant installed or constructed in any first nations community. Do you know why? It's because it takes at least three years to put a plant in place, Mr. Bruinooge. It is at least six months of planning, a year to bring supplies into these remote communities, a year to construct the plant, and a year to commission the operators. Not a single community has these new plants as a result of this emergency intervention plan.

But the more serious deficiency here is that our water systems in first nations communities are underfunded by at least 40% compared with municipal water systems and other such situations.

I'm going to be sitting down with Minister Prentice to talk about this report and to make sure we have a meeting of the minds on this very important issue--

[Rod Bruinooge, Conservative, Winnipeg South, MB]

Mr. Fontaine, clearly you disagree that we've accomplished anything on that front. I accept your opinion on that. So perhaps we could—

[Chief Phil Fontaine]

—that in fact we have what you've suggested, a situation where 40%, or at least half of the communities that were in crisis, are no longer in crisis.

[The Chair, Conservative, Colin Mayes]

Thank you.

Candice.

[Candice Metallic]

I appreciate your question, because what it does, I think, is illustrate the need for this interpretive provision. I think it's a good demonstration of the need for it.

First of all, first nations people are constitutionally recognized as distinct from all Canadians, so when we are talking about providing programs and services exclusively or on a preferential basis to the citizens of our communities, it's on the basis of the section 35 right to do that. Also, if you look at the way first nation governments are funded, we don't have the funding to provide services to people who are not citizens of our first nations.

[Rod Bruinooge, Conservative, Winnipeg South, MB]

As a follow-up to that, perhaps if on-reserve there was a family that had a breakdown in their marriage and the home was going to be allocated on a preferential basis, could the home—I guess still under this interpretive clause—be allocated to either one of the individuals? And on what basis would that allocation occur?

[Candice Metallic]

Chief Price, would you like to take this?

[Chief Lynda Price]

I guess it would depend. Where I am chief, all of our keya areas, the way that we're set up, we call our traditional area. Our traditional area goes north to Naglico Lake, south to Potato Mountain and Tatlayoko Valley, west to Stuie and Kimsquit on the coast, and then it goes east to the Itcha-Ilgachuz mountain range. That is our traditional territory. When I look back at where all of our longhouses were allocated, I see we had specific reasons for those places being where they are, because they were on our keya territory.

What happened is that when our people were taken off the keya territory and put on reserve systems, the people were put on the Squinas traditional territory. Right now, Indian Affairs has set up a residential area on the Squinas traditional territory. Basically, that residential area belongs to the Squinas family. So tell me, how do you divide matrimonial property on that?

[Rod Bruinooge, Conservative, Winnipeg South, MB]

So in theory, if, for instance, the mother and her children weren't the preference of the community, then the home could be allocated to the father, I guess, or whoever else was living in the house.

[Chief Lynda Price]

Yes, but what I'm saying is that the matrimonial property is in question because the land issue is still in question. It will take us a while to get through that, I'm sure, to explain it, but it is an issue we need to address, for sure.

[Chief Phil Fontaine]

In fact, Mr. Bruinooge—if you don't mind, Mr. Chairman, a quick addition to this point—in our community the preference is to provide protection to the children. So to whoever has custody of the children, preferential treatment will be provided and has in fact traditionally been provided. If it's the woman, it's the woman. If it's the husband or the man, it's the man who would be afforded preferential treatment.

In fact, this is the way this has been handled in our communities for a long time. In isolated situations, maybe people haven't been treated fairly, and we admit that we have to do all we can to provide the appropriate protection for the rights and interests of all of our citizens, including women, children, and elders. That's why—the point I made earlier—we support the repeal of section 67 and support Bill C-44, with appropriate provisions for the protection of our interests as distinct governments in the country.

[The Chair, Conservative, Colin Mayes]

Thank you.

Ms. Keeper.

[Tina Keeper, Liberal, Churchill, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to thank National Chief Fontaine, Chief Price, and Ms. Metallic for presenting here today, because we're talking about a very important issue in terms of human rights.

I have 33 first nations in my riding. We have seen, certainly under this current government, a lot of concerns being raised, water being one of them. A community in my riding has been in a public health crisis for the last couple of years, and they are not on that water list.

They have one water truck. In the winter the pipes freeze up, and sometimes they can't even access water. They do not have an all-weather road; they have a winter road. They can't even have supplies brought in. Right now the province has said that they're going to cut down the days of the winter road, and they are trying to move in stuff, everything from fuel to supplies for building in the community. That community is not even on their list.

We have in this last budget, again, private housing. We don't even have adequate housing to begin with. We don't have--

[The Chair, Conservative, Colin Mayes]

Let's have a question on the topic, which is Bill C-44.

[Tina Keeper, Liberal, Churchill, MB]

There has been mention that this bill will put first nations on an equal footing, yet there has not been any suggestion, other than your recommendations, that there are going to be measures and resources to ensure that the equal footing will be met.

Can we talk about what the cost would be? Have you costed out what those resources might be in terms of institutions, development, capacity, and bringing things up to a level in terms of basic human rights being met in communities?

[Chief Phil Fontaine]

I would have to admit that all these measures we are recommending haven't been costed out.

The only point I would make, again, is that we need to ensure there's capacity within our communities to be able to respond fairly and appropriately and promptly to the provision of services to first nations citizens. If those have been denied, either deliberately or by circumstance, our fear is this. The way this particular legislation is being introduced and the suggestion that we don't need to consult with first nations citizens is not a good approach. There has to be appropriate consultation with our communities. We need the same kind of time other governments in the country were given; they had three years to be able to deal with the charter.

We don't want the integrity of our government to be compromised in any way. That's why we've offered a number of recommendations that we believe will strengthen this legislation. We're not here to try to undermine this important process or to try to put the brakes to this legislation. That is not what we're about. We want to see a real improvement that will make it better for everyone--the federal government, first nations, and first nations citizens.

[Chief Lynda Price]

I was going to respond by saying we would hope there would be an operational review, just to ensure that proper measures were taken to identify the costs and so forth.

[Tina Keeper, Liberal, Churchill, MB]

I have a quick question.

In your presentation you say that section 25 of the charter does not apply to the Canadian Human Rights Act. Could you elaborate on that, please?

[Candice Metallic]

Sure. If you read the text of section 25, it says it applies only to the charter. It is right in the text of section 25.

A lot of individuals raise section 15 of the charter in many complaints that are brought to the courts on discrimination, which is fine, and then the Human Rights Tribunal and the courts can consider section 15.

However, there have been cases in which section 15 of the charter has not been raised. Section 25 would not apply if section 15 wasn't raised, so there may be instances within the context of the Canadian Human Rights Act in which someone alleges discrimination just based on the Canadian Human Rights Act alone, and not on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

That is why, for purposes of certainty and clarity, we think the non-derogation clause should also be included within the Canadian Human Rights Act itself.

[Chief Phil Fontaine]

I'll make one more quick intervention, and this is in response to your first question, Tina. It has to do with the costing out of these provisions.

We've recommended an 18-month review process. This would be a joint review process between the federal government and us. Part of the responsibility of this review would be the costing out of the various provisions, to ensure that there is appropriate capacity in our communities and that first nation governments can actually respond in the same way as we expect the federal government to respond to these matters.

[The Chair, Conservative, Colin Mayes]

Thank you.

Mr. Albrecht, please—and we're on the five-minute round now.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair. My questions will be directed to Chief Price.

First of all, Chief Price, let me congratulate you and your family on your son's accomplishments in Sweden a few weeks back. I know all Canadians were proud of those accomplishments, although surely not as proud as you are.

I also want to acknowledge positively your recognition of your spiritual culture and values. I really believe our country is better served when we recognize those foundations. I was particularly pleased, at the launch of the polar year just a few week back, to see the Inuit elders asked to lead in the prayer at the beginning and the end of that service, and I commend you for that.

My questions are related to the interpretive clause and the phrases that have been put forward here. I think there are six of them. My concern would be with the number of different cultures that aboriginal communities reflect. There would be a large variety of issues. Would an interpretive clause be able to cover all of the what-ifs within the different cultures that exist?

Secondly, has this proposal in schedule B been put to the test in terms of putting it past the Canadian Human Rights Commission for comment, in terms of whether this might create problems or not?

Could you address those, please?