Evidence of meeting #19 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 million.
A recording is available from Parliament.
NDP
Jean Crowder NDP Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC
Yes, absolutely.
Just quickly on post-secondary education, I know that over the last year or two there's been lots of talk about reforming PSSSP, the post-secondary student support program. I don't see anything in either the plans and priorities or in the estimates that reflects that, other than a reiteration of the statement that post-secondary is policy rather than legislation.
Conservative
Chuck Strahl Conservative Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon, BC
Right, and of course we've made it clear that it does need to be renovated. For example, the Assembly of First Nations is working on some research right now. I expect their recommendations to come forward within some short months on how it may be improved. We're also doing some internal work and some work with HRSDC to see how we can get even more first nations to get more access to more resources and programming that a lot of Canadians take for granted. I think a lot of that should also be available to first nations. So there's work being done both interdepartmentally and by AFN and others, I'm sure, who are all interested in making post-secondary education work more effectively.
I think there's some good work, and everybody obviously has a common objective. What's not clear yet is whether there is a common strategy on moving forward. I'm not sure what that will be. I don't have one yet, but I'm pleased to see this serious work is being done.
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Todd Russell
Well, thank you very much, Mr. Minister.
I think this concludes our time with you. I thank you for your liberalness in being with us this afternoon. We appreciate the time.
Conservative
Chuck Strahl Conservative Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon, BC
I was conservative with my answers, Mr. Chairman.
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Todd Russell
But we do appreciate your time here.
We're just going to take a couple of minutes' recess to allow the minister to depart from us, and we'll resume in about three to four minutes.
Thank you.
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Todd Russell
I'll call the committee back to order, if members could take their seats, please. We are resuming.
Would somebody else like to take a question, and then we'll go to Mr. Duncan?
Mr. Payne.
Conservative
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Todd Russell
It's a Conservative opportunity, so do you want to ask a question?
Conservative
LaVar Payne Conservative Medicine Hat, AB
Well, I can maybe just take his five minutes; then he can come back and do it.
Conservative
LaVar Payne Conservative Medicine Hat, AB
Well, thank you.
And now are you going to start the clock, Mr. Chair?
Conservative
LaVar Payne Conservative Medicine Hat, AB
Somehow I knew that would happen.
Anyway, I want to thank the officials here for coming today. It's an important opportunity for us to ask some relatively pertinent questions of the department, and I'm glad to hear of some of the activities coming out of Canada's economic action plan.
I was wondering if you could fill us in a little bit more around Bill S-11, and in particular on what's happening with the remaining communities. I think there were something like 46. What's the outlook or the plan in terms of ensuring that they have safe, potable drinking water?
Deputy Minister, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
Thank you for the question.
If I don't get all of this right, I'm sure we can provide some written follow-up.
Deputy Minister, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
We've been pursuing a strategy since 2006 that basically has three parts to it. One is the actual facility. As the minister said, a lot of money has gone into building treatment plants and waste water facilities. You need the actual facilities, and there was a lot of catching up to do in first nations communities.
The second part relates to the issues around capacity to run, operate, train, inspect, and do all those kinds of things. A fair bit of money has gone into those.
The third--the missing piece, which was tabled in Bill S-11--is to have clear rules of the game. It's to have standards so that the engineers know what to build to, the inspectors know what to inspect to, and people can be trained to operate the systems. There needs to be a pretty clear sense of the rules. What's acceptable for water and waste water on a reserve would be very similar to what's acceptable down the road. The three-part strategy is now complete, we hope, with the introduction of standards.
We've used a methodology and we've already tabled four reports, I believe, on the parliamentary website. We track what we call “high-risk systems”, meaning a combination of the conditions and the capacity. That number has come down steadily. We were at about 193; we're down to about 49, and we have an action plan for every one of them. I could give you the milestones on specific communities if you gave me a little bit of time to pursue them.
Sometimes it's not going to be easy. There are tough engineering issues. There's a source-water issue. You've got uranium contamination in one place, and it's going to be very difficult to deal with it. We actually have one community in which there's a disagreement between two neighbouring first nations about where to locate stuff, and we're trying to work our way through that and so on.
We expect to bring that number steadily down. We identified 21 communities at the very outset as being really high priority; we're down to 3, and we're hoping that we'll make a breakthrough on those. Work is under way on all of those, and we'd be happy to give you specifics on particular communities.
The number that gets thrown around in the media a lot is boil-water advisories. That's not actually a useful indicator, because you can have a temporary event. The city of Vancouver had a boil-water advisory. If something gets flushed into the system or you get spring runoff, it certainly indicates a temporary problem, but it's not something you can design a long-term program around. We use a risk methodology with Health Canada that I think is widely understood by the people who run and operate the plants.
Conservative
LaVar Payne Conservative Medicine Hat, AB
That's a good point. In my own riding of Medicine Hat, we have communities that have had boil-water advisories for many years.
Anyway, I would also like to get an indication of what the department is doing in terms of the number of housing units and schools being built for first nations, and the projected timelines on having those units completed.
Deputy Minister, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
Do you mean in general, or do you mean specifically under Canada's economic action plan?
Conservative
LaVar Payne Conservative Medicine Hat, AB
In general would be fine. Would it be better under the action plan?
Deputy Minister, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
I think I'm going to have pursue that in writing.
What I can tell you is that we do all the schools on-reserve. As the minister said, between new field construction and renovations, we have about 100 projects under way. We could provide you with updated lists of what's being done community by community. I have those lists available; I just don't have them at my fingertips.
Deputy Minister, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
We generate a fair number of projects. Canada's economic action plan was a welcome injection of resources for us and allowed us to take on some of the big projects that would have had difficulty getting to the top of the list.
Specifically, there were 13 projects related to schools under Canada's economic action plan. They've all been launched. One has been moved out of the action plan into the regular programming of the department because it was just going to be too difficult to get it all done within the two-year timeframe--this was a two-year stimulus package--but otherwise they're all under way. They've reached various milestones. We have funding agreements, tendering, engineering, and so on. We could give you a... We had plans to table another update before the end of June in any case.
Conservative