Am I done?
Evidence of meeting #14 for Indigenous and Northern Affairs in the 40th Parliament, 3rd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was programs.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #14 for Indigenous and Northern Affairs in the 40th Parliament, 3rd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was programs.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bruce Stanton
Unfortunately, we do have to leave it there.
Thank you, Mr. Duncan and Ms. Rigsby-Jones.
Now we'll go to our second round, beginning with Mr. Bagnell. It's five minutes for both questions and responses.
Go ahead, Mr. Bagnell.
Liberal
Larry Bagnell Liberal Yukon, YT
Thank you.
Thank you all for coming.
Ms. Rigsby-Jones, you mentioned that you lost a couple of paragraphs from your brief. If you find them and send them to the clerk as soon as you get back, he'll distribute them to all of us.
Mr. Cincotta, thank you for the point about the telephone. It's true. Who in this room would want to call a 1-800 number and talk about your sexual life and problems with it? As you know, in a lot of aboriginal communities there are either several families or they don't have a phone, as you said, so they'd have to go to someone else's house to talk about their problems.
I have a question for Ms. Ford. As my colleague mentioned, the Nunavut legislature passed a unanimous resolution to reinstate funding for the Aboriginal Healing Foundation. The person who could most likely do something about that is the health minister from that riding. Did you approach the health minister and ask to have this dealt with? She sits at the cabinet table.
Director, Department of Health and Environment, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami
ITK didn't. Which health minister should we approach?
Director, Department of Health and Environment, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami
We met with Minister Strahl and Minister Aglukkaq about the loss of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation. The ITK board of directors passed a resolution last June because there was concern about the date coming up and the loss of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation. We talked to both ministers and expressed the fact that the communities would have a great loss with the loss of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation.
ITK works with Health Canada and will continue to work with Health Canada to try to ensure that the residential health support program, the RHSP, does what it can in Inuit communities. But I want to go back to the last question, because it's related.
They may be able to offer some of those services--not in Nunatsiavut, but in the other regions--but we don't offer the programming. We've heard from communities that the difference is that the RHSP is a program that they now have to try to fit into, and they may or may not.
The Aboriginal Healing Foundation is community-driven, so it has a different feel. It is an aboriginal program, delivered by the community, that recognizes the needs of that community. Now they have to try to fit that into the Health Canada process, which is a different process. To my understanding, it is a yearly process rather than a three-year process for the Aboriginal Healing Foundation.
Liberal
Larry Bagnell Liberal Yukon, YT
Pretty well all the witnesses have said that what Health Canada is doing is complementary to the different services that the Aboriginal Healing Foundation projects are doing, which is good. Health Canada is only getting 40% of the funding that the Healing Foundation gets, so they can only do 40% of the stuff anyway. But they are doing different things.
This is my last question to all the witnesses. Health Canada's been doing this all along, but can you outline what your projects are providing--or projects that you're aware of, because you represent other projects--that Health Canada is not providing?
Executive Director, Native Women's Shelter of Montreal
Health Canada excludes those who don't have status. That's a big issue, because a lot of native people who come are Métis. There's also an Innu community that isn't even recognized as being native. None of them have status, so they can't access these services.
There's also the traditional healing, the ceremonies, the elders, and the whole cultural part.
Executive Director, Tsow-Tun Le Lum Society
We recently participated in a research project called “Making the Intangible Manifest”. I think some of what was addressed in that report addresses the issues of the feelings Elizabeth was talking about--the comfort of coming to an aboriginal organization. If anything over the years comes through in any evaluations we've participated in, it is the comfort of being with mostly aboriginal people. Some of our staff are not.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bruce Stanton
All right, we'll have to leave it at that because we're out of time.
If you have a response to Mr. Bagnell's question, perhaps in one of the other comments you can find an opportunity to get it in.
Let's go to Mr. Dreeshen, for five minutes.
Conservative
Earl Dreeshen Conservative Red Deer, AB
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
And thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for attending here today.
I actually had the opportunity last weekend to participate in the Esquao Awards in Edmonton. There were 21 tremendous female leaders--mothers and grandmothers and daughters--who were there. They showed great commitment and leadership to their communities, and I appreciate the work you are doing as well for your own communities. I just wanted to say that first of all.
There were a couple questions that came up in our discussion. For instance, the 1-800 numbers are in French and English only and not in a native language. Do you have any thoughts on how that particular process could be improved? Has anyone thought of opportunities to include people from your own communities who have that skill?
Director, Department of Health and Environment, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami
Are there ways to improve that? I would say it would be by having the programs in the communities.
But in terms of the telephone line, from my understanding, I know Nunavut has to call Whitehorse. I believe Nunatsiavut would have to call the Atlantic region. I'm not sure if it's still by telephone. That's not, in my opinion, appropriate either.
If they are getting services through that program, if it's professional counselling, there is still an issue there, especially if they have to travel south to get that counselling. Or if somebody is coming up to provide the service then that's still somebody coming in to your community. It's not a community person, and it's not somebody who knows the area or the lifestyle, and that would be the same for a telephone line, a 1-800 number. I don't know how that would work if it were in a community.
Conservative
Earl Dreeshen Conservative Red Deer, AB
I don't know how to say this, but the concept of being left on hold for 20 minutes and so on is also unacceptable.
And actually, Nakuset, you had indicated that making a call for something like contacts and so on--I'm not sure if that would be the number. That wasn't the number you were speaking of, was it, when you mentioned that?
Conservative
Earl Dreeshen Conservative Red Deer, AB
It was?
I don't mean to minimize the need for contacts and that sort of thing, but how does one ensure, then, that these types of requests are for the types of things that Ms. Ford was speaking of?
Executive Director, Native Women's Shelter of Montreal
You know, it's almost like sensitivity training, because I don't think that... For the particular phone call that I had to make, when they heard, “Oh, I have my Indian status, and I'm covered”, they said, “Oh, your Indian status”. They almost equated it to someone on welfare, as if... This is a treaty right. This is not welfare. They look down on us right away. And then they don't want to take the effort to speak to Health Canada. And then Health Canada says, “Well, no. We have our rights and...”. So there needs to be some kind of sensitivity training for Health Canada. And Health Canada needs to make a bigger effort. I'm patient, and I know what I need, and I'll do it, but I don't know about a lot of other people.
Conservative
Earl Dreeshen Conservative Red Deer, AB
Okay, great. Thank you.
The Indian Residential School Survivor Committee serves as an advisory board to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. I was just wondering whether the TRC commissioner or anyone from the commission or the survivor committee provided any direction to your organizations on how to manage the sunset of the healing program.
Has anyone from the Aboriginal Healing Foundation actually sat down and said “We recognize that there's a sunset provision, and this is how you should go about managing it”?
Senior Policy Advisor, Department of Health and Environment, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami
Yes, the Aboriginal Healing Foundation has done that. We knew all along that it was a sunsetting program, and they've always had to build in a wind-down process every time they got renewed funding.
Director, Department of Health and Environment, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami
I was going to say they have provided input.
But also going back to the question of whether people were prepared, people were still hopeful, because we advocated for Inuit-specific programming meant to be delivered in our language, to be delivered by Inuit. And of course this is something that has been working, so there was always hope that it would continue and that it would be recognized as being a beneficial program that was helping communities in many different ways. And as Yvonne had mentioned earlier, we looked at the cost-effectiveness of healing for communities and families.
Conservative
Executive Director, Tsow-Tun Le Lum Society
Thank you.
Part of our reporting process has been to speak to the issue of how are we going to carry on. We're still funded for a couple more years, so it's not a big surprise. But how do we find the money? I agree with what Elizabeth said about the hope being there. It would be good if it could at least be continued until the end of the TRC process.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bruce Stanton
Very well.
Thank you, Mr. Dreeshen.
It is now Mr. Lévesque's turn. You have five minutes.