Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on April 22nd, 2010

[Jennifer Lynch]

Obviously we're doing our best, sir. When we took on this project.... When the law was changed and we received this mandate, we had funding given to us over a five-fiscal-year period. That's temporary. I think we've added something like five full-time equivalents to our staff for these 600 communities and 700,000 individuals.

This has also included the expertise you see at this table, which is obviously part of our quest to give the best advice we can and to handle complaints in the most effective way. To do this, we've taken a good look at all of our service delivery, and we have instituted processes that are commission wide, to attempt to be as efficient as possible with our complaints.

But I want to park the generic processing of complaints for a minute and talk about the specificity of receiving complaints from aboriginal people. The reality is that we need to look at and are looking at our own processes to ensure that they will be culturally sensitive and accessible.

To that end, we also believe that we can provide a better service by helping communities handle their own complaints. We're doing two things in this regard.

The first one we're working on is to help communities develop their own internal dispute resolution processes that will satisfy people in the community so they won't have to go to the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

The second one is that we are developing tools so we can educate communities to create environments where they can remove systemic discrimination from their practices. This is an enormous job and we work hard at it.

We have brilliant people working with us, and we'll be as prepared as we can be, but resources are definitely an issue.

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

Have you already received complaints that you cannot process yet because the provision does not come into force until June 2011?

[Jennifer Lynch]

I guess we have.

Do we have specifics on that?

Valerie Phillips?

[Valerie Phillips]

We've received complaints in relation to housing on reserve that we have not been able to accept because of the transition period. I believe there may have been one or two more. There's just been a handful, but we've had to reject them because of the transition period.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Merci, Monsieur Lemay.

I have a final question here, which is a point of clarification, actually, relating to Mr. Russell's question. It also picks up a bit on what Mr. Lemay was asking.

Have there been any complaints thus far that you can't or don't have to put off to 2011? Did I hear you say earlier that for those that you have received, they have all been sent to the tribunal? Did I hear that correctly?

[Jennifer Lynch]

Right. Well, I'll begin, but the Deputy Chief Commissioner actually has that file and he'll have the statistics.

We've had a part of and a whole year of two fiscal years. During that period of time, we have received in the neighbourhood of over 30 complaints since the repeal.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Okay. Can you consider these complaints prior to the 2011 transition?

[Jennifer Lynch]

Yes, absolutely. They are in various stages of being processed. I don't know how many we've actually sent to the tribunal.

[David Langtry]

Three have been sent to the tribunal, all of those cases because they're against the federal government, which did not have the three-year time period applying. The three-year time period was only as against a first nations government.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Okay. To your knowledge, then, are all three of those cases at the tribunal being challenged on the basis of this service issue that Mr. Russell referred to?

[David Langtry]

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Okay. That's what I just wanted to be clear for the record. You just referred to all of them and I wanted to be sure that we were talking about those in front of the tribunal as opposed to those you have in-house.

[Jennifer Lynch]

Right, and we have a couple of issues. One is whether funding is a service. The other is whether registration is a service. Then there's another argument about comparator groups, but that's--

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Okay. Could you give us an idea of the other 27-odd cases that you have been able to deal with? What sort of subject matter would those pertain to if they're not specifically complaints against the Government of Canada?

[David Langtry]

There are several before us that deal with the funding of education. As well, the status ones are ones that we would still be processing.

Just to clarify, the respondents are able to raise the jurisdiction issue before the commission as well, and we could reject them under section 41 and not deal with them. All of the jurisdiction issues have been and are continuing to be raised before us. Our approach to it is that unless it's plain and obvious that we do not have jurisdiction, the law is that we are to send it on, so the tribunal will make the determination. We're not finding that there is jurisdiction; we're saying that it's not plain and obvious that we do not have jurisdiction.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Okay. Thank you very much. I just wanted to make sure that we had that correctly on the record.

I think that will finish our first hour, members and witnesses.

Thanks to all of you for joining us in this important consideration of a bill that, as you can imagine, is very important to the stakeholders, particularly first nations people right across the country.

We'll have a brief suspension, members, for about three minutes, and then we are going to get going. We will be in camera, members, for this next section. If there are other visitors present, we will have to scale it back as per the rules for in camera meetings. We'll suspend for three minutes.

[Proceedings continue in camera]