Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Feb. 24th, 2009

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

You have two minutes.

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

I just want to point out as well one of the off-reserve pages on the website, which talks about the factors associated with relatively higher perceived school achievement. One statistic sort of jumped out at me. It points out that 81% of those off-reserve first nations children, as reported by their parents, get along well with teachers and peers. I would think that this is a very high rate. I'm wondering if the average school in Canada would score that high in terms of parental support of what their kids are getting.

[Cathy Connors]

This looked at children aged six to 14, and what we found was that for both first nations children living off reserve and the non-aboriginal population, parents rated their children just about equally in terms of how well they were doing at school.

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

From my perspective as a committee member, I think that is something we should celebrate. It says to me that first nations people off reserve are being accepted and are part of the community. And to have their parents reflect that I think is really healthy.

Do I have any more time left?

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

You have 40 seconds.

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

I just wanted to point out as well some of the initiatives. Mr. Lemay referred earlier to economic development and the difficulty many aboriginal groups have in getting access to those economic development opportunities. And I think that's key.

I just want to point out that we are continuing to work on those areas in terms of aboriginal skills and training and in terms of continued investment in the SINED, the strategic investments in northern economic development. These are things we need to keep working at.

Those of us who were privileged to travel to Iqaluit last year certainly saw the benefit of that. Again, I just want to encourage us, as a committee, to keep that front and centre in terms of the opportunities we put in front of all aboriginal people to give them equal opportunity to benefit from the same economic opportunities as the rest of Canada.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you, Mr. Albrecht.

Mr. Lévesque, you have five minutes.

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

Good morning, ladies; good morning, sir.

Your efficiency overwhelms me. First, you give us percentages of Métis. I am looking at page 7 of the document, for example. I am wondering what basis you use to define who is a Métis and who is an unregistered Indian. Generally, an unregistered Indian is registered by a band council. He can register, whether he lives on-reserve or off-reserve.

We hear that there is such and such a number of unregistered Indians. Look, I am Québécois. If I am not registered in Quebec, I will not be considered Québécois. I would like to suggest another way of looking at it.

There is another. I am going to ask my questions all at once; you go ahead and answer.

Mr. Dockstator, we have the First Nations Statistical Institute and, at Statistics Canada, we have the Social and Aboriginal Statistics Division. When you are operational, will the Social and Aboriginal Statistics Division go strictly by your reporting? Will you be in charge of finding all the Aboriginals and Inuit outside the villages or off-reserve? Most of the Inuit in Nunavik, for example, live in villages, not on reserves. Are you going to deal with those on reserves too? Either Statistics Canada will be presenting your report or you will be sending yours to them. Would you explain how the two responsibilities are to be separated?

[Jane Badets]

I think your first question, again, was about who's identifying themselves as aboriginal in the census. Again, we have the four questions: aboriginal ancestry, aboriginal identity, and people can say that they're a treaty or registered Indian. And there are separate questions on whether they're a member of an Indian band or first nation. So, again, it's self-reported or self-enumerated. It's up to the individuals on the census questionnaire to self-identify themselves.

We know that “Métis” can be somewhat vague for some people, and we have been asking these questions in a number of censuses. But, again, for the Métis, we don't have a clear definition to put on a census questionnaire, nor do we have one for first nations or North American Indian. Registered Indian is probably a little bit clearer, because we say “according to the Indian Act”. People can use these in different combinations, which we've done, I think, on slide 5.

The two concepts are mixed up: registered Indian and identity.

[Dr. Mark Dockstator]

To respond, I think your question was that, looking into the future, there could be the possibility of different organizations doing the same thing. We as a board looked at that issue when we first got together. Obviously, having a First Nations Statistical Institute means there is a lot of interest in first nations data; and if there is a large interest, then there are other people who are interested in doing the same thing. So there are, across the country, a lot of data sources, a lot of statistics, a lot of information dealing with first nations.

As an organization focused specifically on first nations, we interpreted our role as that of bringing a higher level of precision and certainty to the information that exists out there.

As we go forward, we are very cognizant of the fact that others have activities in the same area, and we will work with them to ensure that we're not stepping on each other's toes, but work as best we can in conjunction or coordination with them.

So the direction from the board to me, initially, was to ensure that we have good relations with those who are in the area already, such as Statistics Canada. And we are starting to do that. As I mentioned, we have a very regular meeting—

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

I am sorry to interrupt you, but I would like to know which report...

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

You can ask a quick question.

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

Which report are we going have to rely on? Who is invited to be on the Institute's Board of Directors? Where do these invited people come from?

[Dr. Mark Dockstator]

Is your question about the actual board membership itself? Okay. The board are all Governor-in-Council appointments, and they are selected by me in conjunction with the minister. We try to represent the regions across Canada and we try to have as many aboriginal, first nations people as possible. For example, our vice-chair, Judy White, is from Conne River. We have another from New Brunswick, two from Quebec, two from Ontario, and two from British Columbia right now, so it's a wide, diverse board.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

We're really over time now.

[Dr. Mark Dockstator]

Sorry.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

No, not a problem. Thank you very much.

Now we'll go to Mr. Clarke. Are you going to split your time with Mr. Payne or will he take the next spot?

[Rob Clarke, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

Yes, I will split my time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Go ahead. Five minutes.

[Rob Clarke, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much for coming today.

My questions basically are for both Statistics Canada and the First Nations Statistical Institute. With gathering information, especially numbers, they can be very misleading or very beneficial for however anyone wants to use them.

Now, about my first question. I know some first nations did not participate in providing information to Statistics Canada, but I'm not sure about the first nations portion of the information gathering. I'm just kind of curious: how many first nations did not participate in this study?

[Jane Badets]

In the 2006 census, 22 Indian reserves or Indian settlements did not participate. In that sense we call them incompletely enumerated reserves. It may be that we couldn't get onto the reserve or that we were on and we were asked to leave. That's down, though, quite a bit. It was about 77 in the 1996 census, then it went down to about 30 in the 2001 census, so we're seeing quite a bit of progress on that front.

[Rob Clarke, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

Now we know the number that did not participate. With the numbers of individuals, will this affect their core funding in any way down the line for programs or any future programs?

[Jane Badets]

That we can't answer because our mandate is not to deal with funding issues. What we can say, again, as I said, is that the number of incompletely enumerated reserves is going down. They represented about 40,000 people in 2006. That's quite a small proportion overall for the total population, even the total aboriginal population at the national level and the provincial, though it does have an effect at local levels. So we've been making quite a bit of progress in this area.

[Rob Clarke, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

What was the rationale for them to not participate in this?

[Jane Badets]

I get this question asked all the time, especially when we were doing the census. You have to ask the first nations leaders, the communities themselves, why they do not participate. There could be a number of reasons. Sometimes we hear, “Well, you already have this information.” It may be that they don't feel trustful of the situation. Maybe they don't understand the benefits. Often it is that they don't understand the benefits of the census information for their community.

We don't just arrive on their doorsteps at the time of the census. We have quite an extensive outreach program. We have aboriginal liaison officers who work in between censuses and at the time of the census with communities to understand their data needs and try to get the information back to them, because that's why we're collecting the information, for their benefit, how they can use it. We also have a training program where we build statistical training so that first nations communities can use the information and understand why information is important.

So we do a lot of outreach, and we've been doing it for a number of years now and we're seeing quite a bit of progress from it.