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

[The Chair, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

I would like to reconvene.

I notice, Mr. Quinn, that you leapt into the minister's seat. We'll see 40 minutes from now whether that was a good idea.

We're continuing with our questioning.

Ms. Crowder is next. You have five minutes, and I think you have eight seconds left over from your first round, so we'll add that on.

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

I'll use my eight seconds to complain that I didn't get a second question to the minister.

I want to continue on education. I'm going to ask my questions and then let you answer.

I want to make sure I was understanding what the minister said. When there is an emergency, like a school building being down, they actually divert funds from existing projects into the emergency? I want to make sure I'm clear about that. Please just give a quick yes or no, because I have another question.

[Michael Wernick, Deputy Minister, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development]

I wouldn't use the word “divert”.

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

But it is money allocated under the existing capital plan that could have been used for other schools?

[Michael Wernick]

What you have is a list system of projects, some of which are in early stages, some are almost ready to tender, and some have actually been tendered.

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

So you're taking money out of schools that are already on the list.

[Michael Wernick]

We reorder the list.

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

You reorder the list, right. I just want to be clear. I guess I'm surprised that there isn't some sort of an emergency fund. Schools that have been on the list for a number of years could conceivably get bumped because of an emergency. That's just a comment.

I want to go on to the first nations education authority renewal, which I understand is up in 2008. One of my colleagues already pointed out the anomalies in the funding between provincial and federal governments. Today in the Winnipeg Free Press there's a story that says one provincial school, which has largely aboriginal students, is funded at $9,384 per student. The average in Manitoba is $8,900, and one of the schools under first nations control, the Opaskwayak, is funded at $6,400. With the band-operating funding formula that's under review, I wonder if there's going to be some effort--and I certainly didn't see any of it in the supplementary estimates--to deal with the anomalies across this country in the funding formulas for band-operated schools.

The second piece of that is post-secondary education. According to the researchers of the report, there's actually been a decrease. They said there are reduced requirements for post-secondary educational advancement of first nations, yet we have FNTI, the First Nations Technical Institute, which in October of this year had its budget slashed by an additional 65%. They clearly have a demand for students. They've had over 2,000 graduates. I wonder why we're seeing that so-called reduced requirement when we've actually got an institute that is delivering service and having its funding reduced.

[Michael Wernick]

I'll try a couple of those, but I may have to get back to you on a couple of them.

I'd ask you to indulge me, Mr. Chair, on one answer, because I think it anticipates several questions, and that is on the question of the capital budget.

We have a pot of money for capital. We don't actually run any capital in the sense of owning things like military bases or what not, but we fund first nations to create capital and to do renovations and so on. That one pot has to cover water, waste water, housing, education, and all the community infrastructure needs.

We try to plan and budget it. I don't think we do as great a job as we could, but we keep a whole bunch of waiting lists and priority lists. There are ranking systems that are needs-based to try to put the most urgent at the top of the list and so on.

When things happen, community planning is involved in terms of agreeing on the design of a school, the size, and so on. The ability to get contractors to do the work is increasingly a problem in western Canada. You know how hard it is to get tradespeople in British Columbia, and so on.

We constantly juggle and reorder those lists so that whatever money Parliament gives us, we try to squeeze as much out of it every year as we can. Things will slide back and forth across fiscal years and up and down the provincial lists. I think we should be doing more moving across the country so that we can maximize that.

If there's a fire in a community and the school burns down and kids are going to have nowhere to go, we have to create portables and temporary facilities to make sure the kids are not the innocent bystanders in that kind of problem.

[The Chair, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

You have about 30 second left, Ms. Crowder.

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

On the operating funding formula?

[Michael Wernick]

There's no question that we don't fund every school the same amount per student. I'm not sure we should, because their needs will be different. You know, if you're in the suburbs of Vancouver or if you're in the northeast corner of the province....there is a lot of methodology about comparing apples to apples, oranges to oranges. It is uneven. There is no question it's uneven both within provinces and across the country. Again, it is what it is. That's the money we have, and we try to squeeze as much value out of it as we can.

[The Chair, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Minister.

Mr. Storseth, you're next.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

As we only have five minutes, I'm going to have to ask you gentlemen to be as succinct as possible, and I'll try to do the same.

Who among you, gentlemen, would be responsible for the implementation of the land claim agreements? Mr. Wernick?

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

[Inaudible--Editor]

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

That's actually the next question, Ms. Neville.

Is there money in the supplementary estimates for the Inuvialuit remediation and implementation of that agreement?

[Michael Wernick]

I don't believe it's in this round. I think it would be in the main estimates.

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

Is there money for any of the implementation of federal agreements?

[Michael Wernick]

The biggest one, I believe, is Nunavik, as the minister mentioned. And there are a couple of--

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

We heard recently from the Auditor General's report--and perhaps the opposition wasn't too disturbed by this, but I was very disturbed by this--that there is no detailed timeline for the implementation of this agreement in particular.

Is that the same for the agreement that is within these supplementary estimates?

[Michael Wernick]

No. There are implementation plans associated with all of the agreements, and in some cases there are detailed implementation chapters in the actual agreement. It would depend on how old it is. James Bay is from the 1970s and doesn't have an implementation chapter. The Nunavik agreement does have an implementation chapter in it.

The bulk of the Inuvialuit agreement has been implemented. The money has been transferred, the land has been transferred, and the corporations and institutions have been created. The Auditor General rightly focused on some pieces of the ongoing relationship between the Government of Canada and the Inuvialuit people.

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

But this has been 23 years in the making. Should this not have already been successfully completed? The people of the Inuvialuit--

[Michael Wernick]

I think there's a difference of opinion about when you are done. I think the auditors tend to develop a mentality that there is some end point, whereas what you've done when you've signed a treaty or an agreement is you've moved to a new relationship with those people. You have a government-to-government relationship with those people, and that's the whole point of reaching a land claim settlement.

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

So then with the agreements we have within this, as well as that agreement, we now have detailed plans for implementation; we have detailed timelines; and we have some form of measurement so that the individuals in the department who are responsible for this are being held to these timelines?

[Michael Wernick]

It would vary from treaty to treaty depending on the issues. We have an implementation group that does nothing but track the existing treaties and the implementation plans that are associated with them.