Evidence of meeting #28 for Indigenous and Northern Affairs in the 39th Parliament, 2nd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was chairman.
A recording is available from Parliament.
NDP
Jean Crowder NDP Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC
Okay. That's probably a better question for the department then.
Principal, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
Yes. You may want to ask the department. But I would note that the prevention and family enhancement work is about trying to return the child to the family and provide the family with the supports it needs to be able to successfully raise their children within the context in which they live.
So it does try to address part of the root cause, but as you say, it's a question you will probably want to explore in more detail with Indian and Northern Affairs.
NDP
Jean Crowder NDP Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC
In paragraph 4.50—which perhaps I'm just not understanding—it says at the bottom, “At the time of the audit, INAC provided First Nations agencies $787 annually for each child ordinarily resident on reserves”. It's not clear to me how to interpret that number.
Principal, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
Mr. Chairman, that's the number that arises from the application of the formula for operations on a child-by-child basis.
NDP
Jean Crowder NDP Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC
Okay, so $787 annually per child--then that money would be rolled in for just the children who needed it.
Principal, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
That funding is used to provide the agency with the operations and administration moneys. It needs to hire staff, to buy hardware and software, to pay legal costs, to pay for all the administration that goes with operating a first nations agency.
NDP
Jean Crowder NDP Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC
Did you look at what a reasonable figure would be to fund, or was that just reporting on the actual figure?
Assistant Auditor General, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
That's just reporting on the actual figure. I think the Alberta model begins to show the consequences of what happens when you put a more responsive model in place, imperfect as it is.
NDP
Jean Crowder NDP Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC
Can you tell me what the comparative Alberta figure is per child?
Assistant Auditor General, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
No.
Jerome.
Principal, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
We didn't do the mathematics.
NDP
Jean Crowder NDP Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC
We can probably ask the department that one too. It sounds as if we're getting a few questions for the department.
In 4.53 you say program funding is not tied to needs, but a group of first nations has accumulated about $4.7 million in unpaid bills owed to a provincial agency for services it provided to them. Was this because they were mandated to meet the provincial standards but didn't get the dollars?
I'm speaking too quickly, sorry.
Principal, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
Mr. Chairman, in essence that was the situation here. This provincial agency provided services to a number of first nations communities that the agency served and the agency charged the first nations for providing those services. The first nations didn't have sufficient funding to pay for them because the first nations are funded according to the formula.
Conservative
Liberal
Tina Keeper Liberal Churchill, MB
Thank you.
I'm so glad I have the opportunity to do another round of questioning because we didn't get to my other questions.
Thank you for your answers and for all the information, because it is really important.
I'd like to ask you the other two questions I had.
Did you find a burden on the child and family services programs, an unacceptable burden really, because of the fact that many children have to go into care to access health care services that other Canadian children are entitled to, particularly in dealing with complex medical needs?
The other question I have is about the Children's Special Allowances Act. Treasury Board recommended that funding be cut as of April 1, 2008, and I wondered if you had any more information on that.
Principal, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
Mr. Chairman, we have no other information with respect to the children's special allowances, and I believe it should be an issue that committee members may want to follow up on with the department to find out what they're going to do about the children's special allowances.
Liberal
Tina Keeper Liberal Churchill, MB
Are you aware whether first nations agencies or any agencies that deliver services for first nations children are aware of this cut?
Principal, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
When we did this audit they had not been formally advised of the fact that the Department of Indian Affairs is required to take the children's special allowances into account. They may have heard about it through the grapevine, so to speak, but they had not been formally told.
With respect to the burden on child and family services, this is a difficult issue. When you talk about children with complex medical needs, it is important, Mr. Chairman, that the committee understand that both on and off reserve there are times when children will be brought into care because the family is not able to provide the support the child needs. That is both on reserve in the first nations situation and off reserve in the non-aboriginal context. That can happen in both contexts.
The issue we have here, particularly with respect to the first nations situation, is that because there are no other social services and an insufficient number of other health services on reserve, and because of the jurisdictional dispute between the way Health Canada looks at its responsibilities and the way the Department of Indian Affairs looks at its responsibilities, children on reserve often have to be brought into care to access the services because we can't get an agreement in place that would be able to support those children who are supportable within their homes through services that can be provided by the community.
Liberal
Tina Keeper Liberal Churchill, MB
Right, and that's the point exactly.
Has there been any auditing of those costs to the child and family services program?
Principal, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
We didn't look at those costs. Children with complex medical needs were a bit peripheral to what we were looking at. Those children would be brought into care in order to access services, and that's why we have a paragraph about them, but it was a bit tangential to our overall focus.
Mr. Chair, it's something you will probably want to discuss in more detail with Indian Affairs.
Liberal
Tina Keeper Liberal Churchill, MB
Can I go back to the cut in this special allowance? In your report you note that the resources for this agency's operations will be reduced by approximately 30%—this particular agency that you note. Do you think this will have that type of impact across the board?
Principal, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
Mr. Chairman, the impact this cut will have on agencies will depend on the number of children they actually have in care, because the children's special allowance is tied to each particular child that is brought into care. If, in a particular instance, a community or an agency has 14% of children in care, the impact of the cut on that particular agency would be higher than on an agency with, say, 5% children in care. It's really a matter of the number of children in care: the more children in care, the greater the impact.
Liberal
Tina Keeper Liberal Churchill, MB
But those children, for instance, who come from a home where they would be supportable in their home now have to go into care to access health care services, which puts an undue burden on the Child and Family Services Agency, because they're not health care providers. That becomes a very difficult issue as well for the agency. Now they're going to have a cut to that special allowance funding as well, in addition to all those....
