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

[Cathy Connors]

Exactly.

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

Okay, fair enough.

That's all?

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Yes, that's it.

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

I knew health would just take over and I wouldn't get a chance. I apologize.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you very much.

Let us start the second round with Mr. Bélanger. You have five minutes.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for being here, first of all. I'll go straight to questions to help me understand. On slide 14, what's the difference between good and fair?

[Cathy Connors]

Really, what we did was we gave the respondents a five-point scale and we asked them whether it was excellent, very good, good, fair, or poor. So when we analyzed the data we grouped some of them together. We grouped excellent or very good as one, good, and then fair or poor as one.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

I still fail to understand. It's a matter of nuances, but it's when you group fair and poor together that I have a problem, because they're fairly contradictory concepts, and no pun intended here, but you've put them together.

To me, for something that is poor, I would think for most people it's fairly clear that we're not happy, we're not satisfied and so forth. If it's fair, you can be okay with it. But to lump them together doesn't provide me at least with a fair assessment of what they may be thinking. That's just for future use perhaps.

[Cathy Connors]

And it is possible to look at them separately as well.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Thank you.

On slide 15 you have an appreciation of within the community and outside the community. Correct? What is “outside” the community?

[Cathy Connors]

Basically when we're looking at Inuit Nunaat, we're looking at the Inuit land claim regions.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

I understand that. That's not my question. What's outside? The rest?

[Cathy Connors]

Outside are all of the other Inuit living in Canada outside of the Inuit land claim region.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Do you have that a little more defined? That's a pretty vast territory.

For instance, I happen to represent the riding that I believe has the largest concentration of Inuit people outside Nunavut. Is that so? Could you isolate this a little more so that I could get some statistics on how the Inuit population in, say, large urban centres feels?

[Cathy Connors]

Likely not, because of population sizes and the fact that this was a sample survey. We likely don't have sufficient numbers to be able to produce anything smaller.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Can you identify outside urban and outside rural?

[Cathy Connors]

I don't think we can do that. We'd have to look at it.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Okay. Would you?

[Cathy Connors]

Yes.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Dockstator, the estimates for 2007 and 2008, if my information is correct--and I'm going to ask you if it is correct--would have attributed respectively $4.8 million and $4.3 million to your organization. Is that information accurate?

[Dr. Mark Dockstator]

In order to access our budget, which is already allocated, as an organization we had to go through a number of steps. The first step was to get a full board constituted and to pass our bylaw so that we became a legal entity. Then we developed our corporate plan and Treasury Board submission and went in front of Treasury Board.

As I said, last year at this time we didn't have a board, so those estimates were correct, but we weren't able to access it until this year. Even then, it was just for some interim funding to get us up and operating as an organization.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

You're the president.

[Dr. Mark Dockstator]

The chair.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Is that a volunteer position?

[Dr. Mark Dockstator]

It's a part-time position, a Governor in Council appointment.