Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on May 4th, 2010

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for coming here to tell us about the problems you are currently facing.

As you know, I represent the riding of Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, and I would really like to know how you managed to find resource people in Nunavik. That is a part of Quebec where appropriate resources are in short supply.

I left from the Matapedia Valley, where Micmacs lived. We used to watch cowboy and Indian movies where the mean Indians would scalp the hair off the white people—I have managed to keep what is left of mine. When I arrived in Abitibi in the fall, children were being taken to a residential school in Saint-Marc-de-Figuery, near Amos, where my colleague was born. When it was time to pick up the children in the spring, they no longer understood their parents or their grandparents, who spoke to them in Anishinabe. Very often, the grandparents spoke neither French nor English. I saw this first-hand in the residential schools because I studied there. I later realized that a child does not feel the effects right away. He is not aware of them. He goes back to live with his parents, and he is happy. It is later in life when he suffers the consequences, around the age of 18 or 20. That is when he realizes just how much he missed his family, his culture and his language.

In the course of my work, I learned of another problem in the communities: they are given a little bit of money and told to be quiet. There is no economic development. I think healing would be easier if first nations and Inuit could integrate.

I was also wondering—and I put these questions to all of you—whether you could tell us today where we could save money in terms of incarceration costs, which are massive. In addition, that depends on what happened before. How much could we save if we could integrate these individuals and monitor them in the community?

I will let you answer.

[Jim Cincotta]

Could I just make two comments on that?

As Elizabeth mentioned, Inuit communities and regions are in different stages of development, and so forth. So in Nunavik, rather than putting the onus on the 14 communities, the Nunavik Regional Board of Health and Social Services took on the onus by applying to the Aboriginal Healing Foundation to get the funding administered through them, because they have the support and infrastructure to do that. They worked with the communities on how they wanted to develop the program. So that's how it worked in Nunavik.

When it comes to sharing resources in the Inuvialuit settlement region in the Northwest Territories and Inuvik, the Inuit and Inuvik work with the Gwich'in community right there and share some of the programming. One of the people I was talking to today from Inuvialuit Regional Corporation works with both the Gwich'in and Inuit. So they do share resources.

[Yvonne Rigsby-Jones]

Thank you.

One of the pieces that disappeared from our report was a statistic from the Law Commission of Canada 2001 report on the cost of child sexual abuse. I had in my report what the judiciary costs were. But their total, taken from 1998-99 Statistics Canada information, was more than $544 million spent as a result of child sexual abuse, and a large part of that was on incarceration, court costs, and policing. That would be much higher now, 12 years later.

I know from personal experience how many people have come through our centre who have never returned to incarceration.

Also, when we were doing sexual offending work in the past, we didn't work with one person who wasn't also a victim. Thank all gods that all victims don't become offenders.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Okay.

Thank you, Mr. Lévesque. Unfortunately, your time is up.

I have a question now. I'm going to take one of the government spots.

I just want to go back to this idea that Mr. Duncan actually broached with his example of the Charlottetown organization, I believe it was, which had actually been successful in obtaining continuing funding for community-based programs.

I guess this would be a more appropriate question for either Ms. Rigsby-Jones or Nakuset or Ms. Martin. Are you aware or have you done any research to consider what kind of Health Canada programs might be there to continue to support community-based programs?

[Yvonne Rigsby-Jones]

I've been away from work for the best part of the last two months, but before I was off, I couldn't get the parameters for that money from Health Canada and what they would and would not fund. I don't know, since I've returned, if that's been made available. I know that the amount of money was announced, which I'm not totally remembering at this moment, but what it was actually going to be used for and what we could apply for was not available.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Ms. Martin.

[Carrie Martin]

When the Aboriginal Healing Foundation money was cut, we lost three positions, as well. Another project finished at the same time. So four staff positions were cut. We haven't had a lot of time to look into what is available through Health Canada.

One of our staff, who couldn't make it here today, said that she did start looking into some of the programs. As I was mentioning before, because our mandate is not specific to what Health Canada was offering, there were some programs we weren't eligible for. I don't know what other research was done on Health Canada.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Okay, and thank you for that.

Now I have a question for Ms. Stout. The commission actually connects and is connected to both federal and provincial mental health issues. And you work with different agencies to improve the degree to which mental health care can be managed and improved at the community level. Would you care to comment a little further, given this change involving the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, on any discussions you have had on what future steps could be taken to continue to make progress on mental health under these new circumstances facing health care providers at the community level?

[Madeleine Dion Stout]

It's a very complex question, as these kinds of things become very complex and fluid.

Let me begin by maybe addressing some of the comments that were made earlier. Ms. Crowder mentioned the “Out of the Shadows” report. We haven't predicated our work at the Mental Health Commission on it, except in using it as a guide. That isn't to say that we've left aboriginal or first nations people and Inuit and Métis behind in our work.

Our mandate is to end stigmatization of mental illness and stigmatization of individuals who are living with mental health problems and mental illness. The other mandate we have, of course, is to generate a knowledge exchange centre. It won't necessarily be mainstream knowledge as we know it, or academic knowledge, that will be funnelled through there, but homegrown knowledge in fact. There are everyday forums of health and healing happening in our communities that are not well explored or defined or captured. For instance, a lot of people in our communities are walking for their mental health. That's a low-cost, low-tech way of managing our mental health problems.

Of course, the third initiative we're working on valiantly is the mental health strategy for Canadians, which I've already referred to. What we've done so far is to try to scope out what has to change in the system. We don't have a mental health system per se, but I'm going to use that language for the sake of expediency here. Of course—

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

We are out of time, unfortunately.

[Madeleine Dion Stout]

Okay, but can I make reference to our last two major initiatives?

The first is the homelessness demonstration project, which tries to get at the heart of why so many of us are homeless and why there is comorbidity with mental health and addiction problems, for instance.

Of course, the last one is that we are trying to generate a partnership among Canadians so that we all take ownership of enhancing mental health in Canada.

I don't know if that answers your question, but I'm trying to get in a word here edgewise.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you very much, Ms. Stout.

Now we'll go to Ms. Crowder.

Members, I don't have any other questioners on the list. If you still want to ask a question, please signify that to the clerk.

Go ahead, Ms. Crowder.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

This will probably be for Ms. Rigsby-Jones or Ms. Martin.

In the document the parliamentary library prepared for us, it was indicated that there are eligibility criteria for service under the Indian residential schools resolution health support program of Health Canada, but that individuals can be denied service and have a right to appeal that decision. There are three levels of appeal, each of which must be initiated by the individual denied the service.

Have you had any experience in working with individuals who have been denied service from Health Canada?

[Yvonne Rigsby-Jones]

Yes, and I'm recalling here some of the circumstances. One of the difficulties in the B.C. region—though I don't know how it has worked across the country—was that there was consistently confusion between the non-insured benefits and the residential school health supports. That created a lot of difficulty.

Then what I personally experienced in dealing with this program is that it often really depends on the interpretation of the person you get on the line at Health Canada who you are asking. I've run into this problem in the past, and then when I've asked for the policies, I don't receive them. It feels as if the person is interpreting or adding something to the criteria that I've never seen documented. So there have been difficulties.

Then, as was mentioned earlier, there is the issue of whether the applicant has status or not. I'm not sure if they are offering the program to Métis people, because the Métis also did attend residential schools. So I can't answer that part of the question.

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

The criteria are fairly clear. It says:

Eligible to receive or who are currently receiving the Common Experience Payment; Resolving a claim through the Independent Assessment Process, Alternative Dispute Resolution or court process; or Participating in Truth and Reconciliation or Commemoration events.

That's what they've outlined as the criteria.

[Yvonne Rigsby-Jones]

But I've run into Health Canada staff that want to narrow it.

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

I know, Ms. Ford, you want to say something about that.

The reason I'm asking that is because it appears there is another layer of complexity for people whose first language may not be English or French, who may or may not have a level of education that allows them to be comfortable with completing forms and all of that stuff.

Ms. Ford, did you have a comment?

[Elizabeth Ford]

It was just a general comment. I think that's one of the other concerns for communities and projects--that it is not always clear. The Aboriginal Healing Foundation provided funds to Inuit communities to be able to do that stuff. It's not always clear who can, and what the services are, and who you call, that kind of thing. The Aboriginal Healing Foundation programs were Inuit programs. It wasn't that you had to try to figure out where you fit and how you get the services and how you apply to provide services and that kind of thing.

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

Nakuset, did you have something?

[Nakuset]

Like I said, there was a client at the shelter, and she is Innu from the Labrador area. I'm not exactly sure the name of her community, but she doesn't have an Indian status card because for whatever reason her community is not recognized by the government. So there's a lot of that. At the shelter, if we want to encourage the clients to use the services by Health Canada, we have to make sure they're status.

So what we're trying to do is have psychologists come down to the shelter and use the non-insured health benefits to get services. But if you don't have a status card or if your status card has expired or if you are not recognized, we can't help you. That's really rough, because when we had the Aboriginal Healing Foundation everyone had access to services. They didn't have to call the numbers, they didn't have to have their status cards ready and this whole deal with the status cards being expired and being renewed. If you're in a crisis you need help now, not when your card gets renewed.

We definitely see problems with that, yes.

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

Do I have time?

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

You have about 45 seconds left.

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

Just quickly to Mrs. Dion Stout, you mentioned the five projects centering on homelessness. Do you know if any of those projects are looking at residential school impacts on homelessness?

[Madeleine Dion Stout]

No, they aren't specifically, because the residential schools are not a part of our mandate.

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

You're not aware of anybody who is looking at that aspect of the number of people who could be homeless as a result of either intergenerational trauma or being a survivor?