Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on May 26th, 2009

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

Minister, you also mentioned in your remarks the $165 million over two years to accelerate water and waste water infrastructure projects—and on March 19 you announced the 14 new projects. I'm just wondering if you could give us a bit of an idea as to the criteria on which those projects were selected and if some of the high-priority needs are being addressed. I think we've often looked at the percentage of low- and medium-risk communities. If you could give us a little bit of input on that, it would be welcome. Thank you.

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

If I need some more time, I'll get an answer to you in writing.

Obviously, safe drinking water is very important for any community. We were able to announce those 18 new water systems. We did that by working off a priority infrastructure list. That list moves projects up, with both schools and waste water and water projects coming up to the top of the list based on health and safety concerns, and so on. We worked with first nations to develop that list in each region. Then I was given that list based on the priorities that had been set out objectively, and I approved every school and every water system on the list. I didn't change one of them, because I think it's important for first nations to know that if they do the work to evaluate these systems, the list is not going to be politically gerrymandered at the last minute. So I just approved every single one as they came to me.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you, Mr. Albrecht.

The next question will be asked by Mr. Lévesque, who has five minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good morning, Minister. I also wish to acknowledge the presence of the very studious lady seated in the corner and surrounded by all these men.

Minister, I tried to get as much time as my colleague, Mr. Bélanger, had. But since I will never become a minister, I will have to settle for the five minutes that I have been allotted.

I have a very important question to ask you. As we speak, the Governor General is in Nunavut. Before she left, she talked about a university for the Inuit. Construction of a university pavilion for the first nations has just been completed. Since the Inuit do not consider themselves a first nation, the university changed its name to accommodate the Inuit. Therefore, the “First Nations Pavilion” has become the “First Peoples Pavilion” so that the Inuit will understand that this pavilion is also for them. The Governor General made this statement.

Does the government have the intention of building or creating a university specifically for the Inuit?

Gentlemen, please pardon me as I must leave to go to the House of Commons immediately.

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

Thank you, Mr. Lévesque.

There is currently the University of the Arctic. It is supported not only by the Canadian government but by other governments around the world. It is an important part of the education system, including education for northerners and for others about northerners.

Just a short while ago we signed the education protocol with Inuit leaders dealing with education for Inuit people across all of the Inuit regions. That education protocol allows us for the first time ever to deal with issues that are pan-Inuit. They deal with everything from cultural issues to special northern issues in a way that crosses other boundaries. Those boundaries might be territorial, other land claims agreements, or whatever. The Inuit education accord for the first time ever allowed us to work together across all of the regions, both provincially and territorially. It will allow us to use best practices to codify how we're going to address education requirements for Inuit, the special requirements that might be there, and the obligations of different levels of government and land claims signatories.

So I think it's a very important step. It was very important to Mary Simon that it be signed. It's going to be a great step forward on education generally in the north, but especially for Inuit people.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you, Minister.

We have time for another question. Mr. Lemay, you have the floor.

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

Minister, approximately 14 minutes ago, I asked you what was going on with respect to support funding for aboriginal bands, communities and tribal councils. Since you did not have enough time to answer me, I will give you the time to do so now. I presume that the first nations also wish to know your answer. What is going on, and what is in the making, regarding this issue?

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

The support for Indian governance and tribal council purposes comes up periodically for review, every five years. There are hundreds of millions of dollars involved in this. That is a significant amount of money, so it comes up for review, as all major programs do.

A series of meetings takes place about this with all first nations. Letters go out, talking about what is working and asking them for input on how things could be improved. We deal with the national organizations as well to talk about what, in their opinion, is working. We've had an advisory panel set up, working with first nations. That has met several times, again to advise us.

The fear is always that “review” means we're going to cut something back. But in my opinion, a review means we're going to try to make the services better. You'll find there are an awful lot of issues at stake here--everything from benefit packages for employees who work on reserve to the allocations between tribal councils and first nations governments on how much core support they need to deliver what services and what we can do to build capacity.

All those things are part of the review. Always, when there are hundreds of millions of dollars involved, my hope is that by working with aboriginal organizations and governments, we will find better, more effective ways to deliver that money. We don't just say, the way we used to do, it's the only way. In modern governance, I think you find that, as you would in any government, there are better ways going forward. We want to work with first nations and other aboriginal people to find the best ways to make sure they have the best governance possible.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Okay, Minister, that's it. We thank you for your presentation this morning.

Members, we're going to suspend briefly. We'll be resuming with the officials who are here for the next hour.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you. We're going to proceed here again in the next hour as much as we can.

Before we begin, though, members, if I can just ask for your indulgence because we're short on time today, there is one piece of business concerning our agenda for the remainder of this week and for next week. Instead of taking time during this morning's proceedings.... This is flowing out of the subcommittee meeting we had just prior to the constituency week. On May 14 we developed a draft agenda for the approval of the committee. I'm going to circulate that, and we'll treat it as a consent agenda, if that's okay with you. If there are any objections to it, perhaps you could let me know in the course of the next 40 minutes or so, and we will then take some time at the end of the meeting to discuss that issue. It will have to be a discussion in camera, so that's why I'm suggesting if there's consensus among the committee we'll just proceed. It's a printed agenda, and it will be up. If you have questions, we'll deal with them at the end, or I could also deal with you one on one at the end of the meeting. I'm just trying not to interrupt this morning's proceedings, if it's okay with you.

Now we welcome officials from the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, principally, Michael Wernick, the deputy minister; Neil Yeates, the associate deputy; Jim Quinn, the CFO; and we also have with us Christine Cram, who is the assistant deputy minister under the rubric of education, social development, and partnership. Also, we welcome back Patrick Borbey, who is the assistant deputy concerning issues of northern affairs in particular.

Members, we're going to continue with the five-minute rounds, where we left off, more or less, and we'll get in as many questions as we can in the coming minutes. We're going to start off with Mr. Rickford for five minutes.

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you to the witnesses for returning to this committee.

I want to talk about reformed leadership selection, the redesign of band support programs. The department's 2009-10 report on plans and priorities indicates that one of its key priorities for the upcoming planning period are reforms to leadership selection. The report goes on to state that the department will work with first nations communities to achieve program and legislative reform in these regards, and I believe it identified that a lack of stakeholder participation, obviously, consultation, is a key strategic risk in this regard.

Obviously this government has a strong record of consultation, as the minister pointed out today. We have spent considerable resources in consulting stakeholders on various pieces of legislation like Bill C-8. I just want to be sure. I have a lot of experience living in first nations communities, and this is a key issue on the ground. I want to know what specific reforms to leadership selection the department is currently contemplating and what the expected results of these reforms are.

Michael?

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

Thank you for the question, and thank you, Mr. Chair, for the opportunity to come here.

I'll put in a little plug. This is the twenty-third appearance by my department's officials before a parliamentary committee since Parliament resumed in January. We're happy to have this ongoing engagement with parliamentarians to make the department a better place, and I think we'll be back on Thursday to pursue some further issues, unless you've changed your schedule.

Taking Mr. Rickford's question, I do want to get on the record one very clear distinction, that the Indian government support programs, which were the subject of earlier questions, are the basic funding support for band governments, their employees, and tribal councils. That has nothing to do with elections and leadership selection. Some media reports have squished the two together.

We're reviewing the Indian government support programs because they sunset. Knowing they would sunset in March 2010, we've started the process of consultation and engagement with people. It has made people nervous. They are worried about what will happen to the programs, and I think the minister answered those questions. We have taken no decisions and taken nothing to cabinet on the future of the Indian government support programs. We obviously would not do that until we'd gone much deeper into a consultation and engagement with the people affected.

On the leadership selection issues, we have no plans or intentions to pursue leadership selection aggressively over the next little while. It would take legislation, and one of the most difficult and controversial issues this committee would ever deal with would be Indian band elections. What we're trying to do is open a dialogue wherever possible, because people are coming to us and saying the status quo doesn't really work very well. There are communities like Barrier Lake, where there's a dispute about who's in charge, and there are a couple of communities in Manitoba and so on. So we're basically working with those who are willing to talk to us and engage in research and outreach.

The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs pursued this very vigorously last year. The Atlantic Policy Congress pursued this and have a different take on it. For some people, the priority is a longer term of office, so that you're not running for election every two years, although members of this committee are perhaps used to that. First nations community leaders would like to have a three-year or four-year cycle and be able to push through reforms. For other people, it's having appeals and mechanisms and a kind of elections commission, instead of running to the minister as the sort of appeal body, and there are some interesting ideas about having an elections commission for first nations elections. What do you do to resolve disputes, particularly when communities are using custom code elections, which are not particularly transparent to their members in some cases?

We don't intend to pursue that until there's a willingness and a readiness in first nations communities to take that on. If there's support, people who will come and support a particular initiative, our advice would be to take whatever reforms are available--don't go for some big bang kind of election reform legislation--but we're not ruling anything out.

If I can talk about the other place very briefly, the Senate Standing Committee on Aboriginal Peoples is seized with this very issue and is having hearings on this subject and probably will be giving us advice.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Mr. Rickford.

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

A very short question, Mr. Chair.

Is it safe to say that the manner in which you're working with the nations to advance these reforms is basically as a community might approach the department with some specific questions about how they might make changes?

[Michael Wernick]

Probably I'd characterize it at the regional level. I'll take the Manitoba example. Chief Evans has an organization that tries to represent the interests of about 42 first nations. At any given time, about a third of them are going into election, coming out of election, and whatnot. He would like to, or at one time he wanted to, have a more harmonized schedule, kind of like municipal governments. I know that's not an easy analogy. All first nations would have elections in or around the same time. That would be a relatively easy thing to pursue, but we're not going to push anything in first nations governance that doesn't have substantial support from the grassroots in the communities.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you. We'll have to leave it at that.

Now we'll go to Ms. Crowder.

I don't have another person on the list from the government side, if you want to think about that.

I'll go to Ms. Crowder for five minutes.

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

Thank you.

I have three questions to ask. I wonder if you could confirm the length of time SchoolNet was active, because I think it didn't get on the record.

The second question is, the Office of the Federal Interlocutor had a substantial increase in its budget. I wonder if you could explain why.

The third question is this. Under your government expense plan, on 1-12, it talks about reflecting a 2% allowance for inflation. Of course, we have often had conversations here about the 2% funding cap. But in the Parliamentary Budget Officer's report he indicated there's been some confusion regarding a funding cap that was imposed on funding for INAC, and he went on to say he couldn't find any policy or program that talked about the 2% funding cap. That's on page 18 of his report.

I wonder if you could speak to those three issues.

[Michael Wernick]

Very quickly, SchoolNet was extended for two years.

On OFI, it's additional money that was extended for the Métis rights initiative, which is basically dealing with the consequences of the Powley decision. We have work going on in communities, identifying registries and that sort of thing. It was just an extension of that Powley initiative.

The 2% is one of the areas where I think we have to get back to the Parliamentary Budget Officer. Just because he didn't find the right document doesn't mean there isn't a 2% cap. In fact, it's quite transparent in the estimates this year. Every year we go through a fall update of our reference levels. They're reflected in the main estimates the following year. Page I-12, the $93 million, if memory serves, is precisely the 2% adjustment to a bundle of services to first nations. The bundle is all our core social programs that Christine is responsible for: education, income assistance, social services, child protection, housing, and community infrastructure. That envelope is allocated a 2% growth factor, plus whatever special funding comes around, as there was in Budget 2005, Budget 2008, and Budget 2009.

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

In his report on page 67 he does an analysis of the planned expenditures and reflects that in many years much more than the 2% funding cap was spent. I wonder if you could get back to the committee and confirm that written policy was in place around the 2% funding cap, because the issue then becomes this: if there was no policy around a 2% funding cap, why aren't core services funded at the rate they're required?

[Michael Wernick]

The 2% growth cap dates from the 1996 budget and it's been in place ever since. It just simply has not been changed. So every year we go through the process with Treasury Board of updating our reference levels, and they add 2% to that base.

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

He talks about how the rate of growth for Indian and Inuit programming between 1995 and 1997 was 3.68%, indicating that often the noted 2% funding cap was not instituted.

[Michael Wernick]

Yes, I think they are confused about what the 2% applies to. My understanding of it is, and we'll correct the record on this if necessary, they've thrown in all the money for negotiation and settlement of claims, when in fact we cannot move money from services into claims or claims into services. Those are two very separate funding streams.

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

So you'll get back and confirm that for us in terms of responding to--

[Michael Wernick]

Yes, we intend to write to Mr. Page and clarify some of these things. We just saw the report. I think he's interpreted the data, or his staff has interpreted the data, in some ways that I think are not quite right, and we will get back to that. Of course, we'll table our response to Mr. Page with the committee.

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

Great. Thank you.

Do I have time?