Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Nov. 29th, 2007

[The Chair, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

Thanks, Mr. Minister.

Mr. Lemay, you have five minutes.

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

I will try to be brief.

Mr. Minister, I have a specific question about the residential schools.

Can you make sure that none of the money earmarked in the agreement will ever be diverted to other purposes than what it was originally intended for, namely for helping those who have lived in residential schools? This is a specific question, and I expect a specific answer.

[Chuck Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Absolutely.

In fact, I would say you can rest assured that all of the $1.9 billion will be used for the common experience payment. On top of that, the other assurance is that we're working very closely with the Assembly of First Nations and the courts. This is a court-mandated process. Everything that's done, whether it's the forms that are created, the letters of explanation that go out, the way we move forward, is all monitored by the courts. So we're being very careful to make sure that's handled properly.

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

I hope that the authorities in the department will be able to obtain the documentary by Richard Desjardins that just came out. It is called Le peuple invisible. It deals with the Algonkins and what they went through in the Indian residential schools.

I have a question. I do not know whether it is because of you, Mr. Minister, but why were we not ready? Why is it taking so long for these people to receive the cheque to which they are entitled? What is holding things up? What is going on? Why does it take such a long time for them to receive the money to which they are entitled?

[Chuck Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon, BC]

It must seem like forever to these people, I admit, because many of them have been fighting this fight all their lives. So it's a lifetime for them.

In reality, until September 19, when the results of the vote amongst all the residential school students came in, we weren't able to start anything. That was a result of the court system that had been set up; there needed to be approval by the students, who then voted. The courts had said that unless a certain percentage of them approved the deal, it couldn't go ahead. So until September 19, nothing happened. There were no applications, or only a few, in the system, and so on.

After September 19, we announced that the numbers had been approved or that the court had approved the vote. Then we moved. We had forms ready to go, and we had an arrangement with Service Canada so that first nations could apply at any Service Canada outlet, which would help them fill out the forms, and so on. The forms were ready and people got them in their hands, but it didn't start till September 19 or 20. Then the applications started to come in following that. Until then there was really nothing there, or no applications to work on.

After that, we've been flooded with far more applications than we thought: 77,000 applications have come in already. The numbers exceeded everyone's expectation.

That being said, we've been working overtime, doing everything we can, and so far we have—

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

Mr. Minister, I invite you to watch Le peuple invisible. There are five aboriginal communities in my riding. Most of...

[The Chair, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

You have one minute left.

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

Yes, it will be very brief.

Most of them are between 60 and 75 years old.

Here is my question: is there some way of hiring more personnel so that these people can receive their money within the next month or in six weeks at the latest? Their life expectancy is dwindling day by day. That is the problem.

[Chuck Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Of the elderly former students, over 10,000 of them got an advance payment. Even before the settlement was approved, we sent out cheques to over 10,000 elderly residential school students, who now have an advance cheque of, on average, about $8,000. They already have that—or at least they had that available to them.

We're also moving just as quickly as we can, but every application that comes in is a unique application. This is not like employment insurance; this is unique. Each one has to be checked against the computer records we have. We have a good computer system to check against those records. So far we've handled how many?

[A voice]

Thirty thousand.

[Chuck Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon, BC]

We have approved 30,000 so far. You can imagine that they don't all come in on the first day. We have already handled 30,000. We are confident we are going to have the majority of those 77,000 handled before Christmas, but it does take a few weeks to get this done, there's no doubt.

[The Chair, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

Thanks. I wasn't going to interrupt you in the middle of a sentence, but that was a really, really long sentence.

By my watch, we have about five minutes left, so this will be the last round of questioning before the minister leaves.

Mr. Storseth, you have five minutes.

[Brian Storseth, Conservative, Westlock—St. Paul, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Minister, it's a pleasure to have you here. It's a pleasure to have you in front of the committee and to listen to your vision for this department, our first nations communities, and all our aboriginal communities.

I do have to state one thing, though. Listening to my honourable colleagues opposite continually bring up the Kelowna press release has been somewhat disturbing. This is about supplementary estimates. I don't ever recall seeing the Kelowna Accord or the Kelowna press release in the supplementary estimates. The other thing it never addressed was systemic change to the system, which is what our first nations leaders have said they need.

Anyway, Mr. Minister, that is my little rant.

I'd like to talk about something you brought up on education. It has been the silver bullet to get people out of poverty to the next level in society. I believe that if we don't have agreements with the provincial governments, as they are the experts in administering education in our constitutional system, and they are not involved.... We have seen the failures of that system in the past.

I'd like you to talk a bit more about your vision for our education system, the tripartite agreements, and also how you see that fanning out across the country.

[Chuck Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Thank you.

Well, there's no doubt in my mind, especially in the K to 12 system, that the tripartite agreement is the way to go.

The strength of first nations control over the education system is that it is culturally sensitive and it addresses local concerns and needs. In the best-case scenario, it can at least involve parents and communities in local school development and so on.

In many ways the weakness of the current system is that it almost follows the old schoolhouse model, the Little House on the Prairie model. If you think back to that era, it had a school teacher, or a couple of school teachers. That was the old schoolhouse model, and it was in isolation.

We are well into the 21st century now. We're now faced with what the best type of education for the modern world is. It's not isolation; it's more integration.

If we can find a way that these students who frequently.... We all know this. I have 45 bands in my riding, so I've seen this firsthand. They'll spend five or six years at the reserve school, then they move to town. People are mobile, so they move to town. They might spend three or four or five years in town going to a public school. Then they get a job somewhere else and the family moves back to the reserve and they might finish their schooling in three or four years.

The importance of having common standards, and even some common curriculum, with the public system is clear. When a child comes through the system they can say, “When I came out of grade five in that school and went to grade six in another school, there was some continuity. There were always little differences, but we made it work.” You make it work, and the kids have confidence when they know they can make that transference.

More importantly, I think, with respect to mobility of teachers is that you don't end up with two silos of teachers, where first nations teachers aren't part of modern training and updates or whatever

[The Chair, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

You have one minute.

[Chuck Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Worse yet, or just as bad, you have a public school system with no sensitivity to the first nations reality. So by working together in a tripartite way, you can address things like special needs education. You can do things like training for teachers. Most importantly, you can make sure that the students don't only have the best training that one school can provide, they have the best training that we can provide as a society.

That, it seems to me, is going to be key to moving forward. At least it's more likely to succeed. There are always problems, but it's more likely to succeed when kids are comfortable moving from place to place, if they also know that when they graduate they can go to a university or a trade school somewhere else knowing they have the bona fide credentials that will take them with confidence into that next level of their training.

Right now, they often come out of a system with remedial training to get them ready for the next step, and that's no good. Kids need to have confidence, or else we all know the deal; kids break that education cycle. You know, at grade 12 they'll take a couple of years off and they don't go back. You need to have it so they're comfortable to keep on moving. And nowadays, we all know that means lifetime learning.

[The Chair, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

Thank you, Mr. Storseth, and thank you, Mr. Minister.

By my watch, it's quarter after eleven. It's my understanding that you need to leave now. Thanks for your time with us this morning and for your answers.

I'd like to break for about a minute to let the minister leave, and then Ms. Crowder will be--

[Chuck Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Mr. Chairman, I would be delighted, of course, to come back on both specific claims. I'm hoping on Tsawwassen as well, and some other legislation that we hope to have.

Obviously, we appreciate the work that's done at this committee and look forward, both on legislation and on other issues, to work closely with you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

Thank you,

We'll take a one-minute break--

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

Chair, may I intervene?

I would like very much to ask the minister to come back sooner than later. He's raised a number of issues here this morning, particularly related to education. Many of us have a number of questions we would like to follow up on. I appreciate him taking the hour, but it's quite clear that many of us are quite frustrated and would like an opportunity for further--

[The Chair, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

Well, I'm sure we can work something out.

Perhaps I could respond. The minister has expressed a willingness to come back in the near future on some other business, so we will deal with that.

[Chuck Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon, BC]

I would like to say that you had a long list of questions there, and we'll get answers to those in a written form. By all means, I would recommend a severe grilling of the officials that I'm going to leave behind. I think you should leave no stone unturned.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Chuck Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

Thank you.