Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Feb. 12th, 2009

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

So by June.... I mean, nothing will happen until June, or later.

[Aideen Nabigon]

Well, we're doing limited outreach to the extent that we can. I think it's extremely important that we hear from survivors when we can.

We won't be making final decisions on the mandate activities. For example, we are anxious to get moving on our first national event. We won't do that until we have a chair in place to approve the date and location.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

So for the total up to June, your estimate would be how much of the $60 million?

[Aideen Nabigon]

Up until June, we're about $3.4 million.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

And that includes the salaries for the commissioners who are serving until June.

[Aideen Nabigon]

Yes.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

That's it, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

That's it, Mr. Murphy.

Now we'll proceed to Monsieur Lemay.

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

Ms. Nabigon, please rest assured that I am not angry with you on a personal level and the remarks I'm about to make do not take away from your work in any manner. Since September, I would not have wanted to be in your shoes. I don't know what has happened within this commission and I don't know what is going on right now, but you have a big problem.

I'm going to read out the most important sentence in your opening remarks, and I hope that the people on both sides of this room will listen: “We need to gain back the trust of survivors and restore confidence in the process.” That's certainly a safe statement to make. So far the commission has been shooting from behind and the score is 2-0. You won't get a third chance. I hope that someone somewhere will understand this.

In my riding alone, four survivors died over the past year. So those are four survivors who will not be able to testify. There were 132 boarding schools.

The commission is starting to be very centralized. Sometimes I am in favour of centralization. But to my mind, when I read: “Over the course of the next few months[...] Conclude the selection process[...] Hire regional liaisons[...]” All I see is red tape. The commission absolutely has to get down to work.

Since I knew that the commission would be coming to give testimony before us, I went around my riding and talked to some people. No one understands why seven national events will be held and no one is in favour of that. All the aboriginal people and the Algonquians in my riding are asking me why people are not going to come and see them in their region. Mrs. McDougall is 78 years old, and so she will never go to Quebec City or Gatineau. On the other hand, if you come to Senneterre or to Amos, she will be there. All the Indians from Obedjiwan who were taken to Amos by force will never come to Gatineau. I strongly suggest that you review these seven national events.

The aboriginal people want to give their testimony in the place that they come from, the place where they belong. I would suggest that you choose some of the 132 places where there were boarding schools and that you go visit them. Go out to the regions, don't just go to Montreal, Gatineau and Vancouver. In Quebec, nearly all the Indians who went to the boarding schools live in the North; they do not live in Montreal. A few live in Quebec City, but not many. Will you follow up on our recommendations?

Why were the mandates of the commissioners misinterpreted? I've read all the articles on the resignation of the commissioners. Up until now, your commission has been operating really badly. I'm sorry to be mean.

You talked about June. Do you think that you will be able to turn things around and make progress in a short period of time?

[Aideen Nabigon]

Thank you for those comments.

I certainly understand the frustration coming from communities and survivors. I mentioned briefly an addition to the seven national events that will be held across the country. It's our intention to have them where we're advised to have them. We will be having a 10-member survivors' group, which will advise us on that. The commission will go where survivors want them to go.

But in addition to that, we will also be funding community events. We're developing the criteria for those events. It will be available shortly. It will be posted on our website and will be made widely available so that communities know how to apply for it.

The other thing we'll be doing, which we're working on finalizing very, very soon, hopefully, and certainly as soon as we have a new commission in place, is statement gathering. Again, we'll be going wherever we can, to communities across the country, starting, hopefully, with vulnerable elders, the survivors. We know that survivors are elderly and dying. We want to get their statements before they die. We'll be out there in the community as soon as we possibly can, talking with survivors. If I could, I will just mention that we've also been working with the Legacy of Hope Foundation, which is also helping us gather those statements.

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

Has your commission obtained the documents from each one of these boarding schools?

Actually, the school that I am very concerned about is the boarding school in Saint-Marc in the Abitibi region, where nearly all the aboriginal people from northern Quebec went. In their community, whether it be Obedjiwan north of La Tuque, where the Attikameks were, or anywhere else, one finds what they call the walls of shame or the registries of aboriginal people who went to these boarding schools. There even are photos.

Has anyone contacted these communities? They are very small communities, and I must admit that I agree with Ms. Crowder somewhat, when she said that some communities don't even have telephones. Don't talk to them about computers or Internet sites, because they don't know about such things. So, how are you going to reach these communities? In fact, the events that occurred were always in the remote communities.

[Aideen Nabigon]

To answer your question about the files, the photos and the records of students, yes, Indian Affairs has extensive files on residential schools. According to the settlement agreement, they'll help us with those; we'll have access to those. We're working with the churches as well to provide us with their records.

Again, as far as getting out, we know that people are living in remote communities and that they can't come to the central location, so we will go out to where the survivors are.

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

I see.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Ms. Crowder, you have seven minutes.

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

Thank you for coming today. This is a very important issue, and you can tell there's a lot of passion around it.

I don't need a response, but I want to echo Monsieur Lemay's comments around the seven national events. This has to be more than a PR exercise. I live on Vancouver Island, and I can tell you that if you hold an event in Vancouver, many of the elders will not be willing to go there; some will, some won't. There has to be some recognition that many of these survivors were taken from their communities and sent somewhere else, and they don't want to be told once again that they are being sent somewhere else. It's very important that there be a recognition of that.

I understand that a benchmark survey on public awareness of the Indian residential school legacy was done and that it was reported in July 2008. I wonder how that information is going to be used, since it is a benchmark survey, to inform the activities of the commission.

I'm going to ask you a couple of questions to which I'd like answers, and that's one.

Has there been any consideration given to appointing an Inuit commissioner to the truth and reconciliation process? We've heard fairly consistently that the Inuit have been left out of this conversation.

With regard to the issue around restoring confidence in the process, I think the trust and confidence in this process has been badly damaged by what happened. Of course, it's outside of your control. I'm sure that you would have preferred to have the commissioners stay in place and work together, but the reality is that many people believe it's going to be difficult to get this process back on the rails. A Treasury Board submission has been done, but do you know what work went into ensuring that the truth and reconciliation process will remain independent of the government and how that's going to be set up?

In the absence of having a functioning group of commissioners, to whom does your secretariat report? Where is your accountability line around this? You really don't have functioning commissioners. Will survivors actually have input into the selection of those new commissioners?

If you get through those questions in my time, I want to ask you about the selection process for the Indian residential schools survivor committee.

[Aideen Nabigon]

With regard to the benchmark survey, can I get back to you on that? We'll provide information on the benchmarks--

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

Will you provide that in writing to the committee?

[Aideen Nabigon]

We will.

Unfortunately, I cannot answer your second question, the one with regard to the appointment of the Inuit commissioner. We weren't involved in the previous process leading up to the development of the current process, which is the new table that Justice Iacobucci is chairing to find a new chair and commissioner.

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

So really people have to contact Justice Iacobucci.

[Aideen Nabigon]

I would suggest that, yes.

With regard to the work that went into ensuring that the commission is independent, the TRC secretariat is set up as a government department, so it reports to Parliament through the Minister of Indian Affairs, but the relationship is very much for the sake of reporting to Parliament. We don't have a relationship directly with the minister.

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

Sorry--I just want to clarify this. So for the secretariat, the reporting relationship is with INAC?

[Aideen Nabigon]

That's only for the sake of reporting to Parliament.

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

So outside of that parliamentary reporting process, who do you report to?

[Aideen Nabigon]

We report to the commission.

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

Okay. So just out of curiosity, since there is this relationship with INAC for reporting, did INAC staff roll over into the commission--