Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Nov. 24th, 2010

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

Very good.

Actually, I was pleased to represent the government at that announcement where Grand Chief Evans was present. For the benefit of the committee, I want to quote exactly what Grand Chief Evans said. He said, and I quote:

This new funding model and Enhancement Framework will assist in decreasing the number of children in care and support families to stay together. It will also assist agencies so they will have the resources available to support children and families they work with in our communities. Prevention is critical to positive change for our people.

That's why I was curious to know how important you felt they were.

I know that there's a process that leads to the signing of these agreements. Could you share with us what the process is in these tripartite agreements?

[John Duncan, Conservative, Vancouver Island North, BC]

Do you mean to get to signature?

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

Yes.

[John Duncan, Conservative, Vancouver Island North, BC]

What is the process? Well, obviously there are negotiations, and the partners have to come together.

I don't know what the entire process is, to be truthful.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

You mentioned the partners. Who are the partners in each of the provinces? Are you including first nations groups?

[John Duncan, Conservative, Vancouver Island North, BC]

Oh, absolutely, yes. In many cases provinces had already delegated authority to first nations child and family service organizations. In some cases they hadn't. But in all cases, we're trying to work with willing partners.

The provinces are seeing the benefits in a very significant way. The figure that is quoted is that there are 27,000 aboriginal children under care, but only one-third of those are from on reserve. So the provinces recognize that they have a significant issue here, and they want success. Success is measured in having a lower caseload, which means fewer children in care and a higher retention of children in the family. All of that reduces the burden on the government, increases the family's success, and is good for society.

I think everyone is sharing the fact that we have a common objective, so let's try to get it done.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

I agree.

I do want to share a bit of my experience. As a police officer, I was involved in a number of apprehensions of children. Monsieur Lemay commented on how difficult it is on reserve to find families who will take the children in under this new program. There are some challenges, absolutely. But apprehending children and taking them out of their communities is not working. And it was heart-wrenching. It was a very difficult thing to have to do, and I assure you that there are many social workers who have had to do it and many police officers who have had to do it, and it is very disturbing to have to do that.

It wasn't working, and I applaud the government for taking some steps towards prevention and for taking the children into consideration first and foremost. So I thank you for that.

How much time do I have left?

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

You have 20 seconds left.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

I'll ask the officials some questions a little bit later. I need longer than 20 seconds.

Thank you very much for your candour. I look forward to speaking with Ms. Johnston shortly.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you, Ms. Glover.

We'll now begin the second round.

Mr. Russell, please go ahead for five minutes.

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon to you, Minister. It's good to see you once again.

I just want to move right to a couple of questions. I know that it's a bit of a different relationship we have now. We usually bantered back and forth this way and had our debates.

In terms of the tripartite agreements that get signed, who sets the standards, or who sets the laws? Is it the province, and then, by incorporation, it's the child welfare agency? Does Indian and Northern Affairs have any say in that whatsoever? Do you say, tick, this is a good approach that is already in this province, or do you just put money right into that system, whatever exists in a particular province?

Do you have any say at all about standards, about how delivery happens, or any of that? Does Indian Affairs do any of that?

[John Duncan, Conservative, Vancouver Island North, BC]

The standards are primarily set by virtue of the provincial legislation that's in place. It's already there. What we're adding to the mix, by moving to a different model, is agreeing to other monitoring and reporting mechanisms, and that's the part of the process. This only really got off the ground in 2007. We have early results from Alberta. It's too early to have a true measure of how well we're doing everywhere. It's mostly ad hoc, so far.

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

When the Auditor General says Indian Affairs should deliver “culturally appropriate” programming, does Indian Affairs have any say in the tripartite negotiations to emphasize that, to enforce that, to say that in Alberta you want to make sure we have culturally appropriate programs?

[John Duncan, Conservative, Vancouver Island North, BC]

We do, and I'll let Christine round that out.

[Christine Cram]

Thank you.

One of the things the Auditor General observed was that we should have a definition of culturally appropriate. Following that recommendation, we felt it wasn't up to the department to specifically define that, but rather we created a principle and we included that principle in our response to the report from the public accounts committee. We'd be glad to share that principle with the committee.

The reason we did a principle, as opposed to a definition, was that we felt that culturally appropriate was very much dependent on the particular community, and that thus there should be flexibility in defining it.

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

How do you measure if a program is being delivered in the culturally appropriate manner?

[Christine Cram]

I'll talk about a couple of things that have been introduced.

First is the notion of kinship care. By increasing kinship care, you are encouraging children to be with relatives and thus have the advantage of cultural language. Second is the introduction of post-adoption subsidies for family members. Previously, family members weren't eligible for post-adoption subsidies, but now they are.

So when you ask how we know if they're culturally appropriate, part of the business plan that the child and family service agencies develop outlines how they intend to provide culturally appropriate services.

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

In the development of these guidelines, does Indian Affairs take an active role in sitting down with the child and taking a collaborative approach with the child and child welfare agencies and the provincial government? Is it a collaborative, cooperative relationship?

[Odette Johnston]

In the development of the business plans we take a step back. We develop tripartite framework documents, and in them are guiding principles around culturally appropriate types of services that will be delivered. They outline the broad goals and objectives for moving forward on prevention, which definitely includes culturally appropriate mechanisms or means of delivering that service. Then from there, once we get resources, the agencies will develop business plans and will include in those business plans how they intend to deliver for their specific community based on their particular needs.

Part of the process we have in place is that INAC and the province and sometimes first nations—for example, in Quebec they have a group that reviews those business plans—will ask questions of the particular agency or community: how are you going to be doing this, and how are you going to measure that?

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you, Mr. Russell.

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

Is that it?

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Yes, it is.

Now we're going to go to Mr. Dreeshen for five minutes.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister, for being here. It's nice to see you.

Being from Alberta, I'd like to touch on some of the experiences that have taken place there and some of the great progress that's also been made through the enhanced prevention approach. As you know, Alberta was one of the first provinces to sign on to this approach, and there are some really positive results that are quantifiable.

I was just wondering if you could expand on why you're implementing this prevention-based approach throughout the country.

[John Duncan, Conservative, Vancouver Island North, BC]

Thanks, Earl.

You're correct that the Alberta model has been there the longest. It's given us some good results. I don't have the specifics of those results. Christine might, though, so maybe we can get into that a bit.

I've talked with Minister Yvonne Fritz. Earlier this month, we discussed the program. Their direction is to go to what I would call a second-generation agreement. They're pleased and they want to move further. This would be mainly in the direction of capacity-building and support for information management systems. So this is all good stuff. The province can be proud of being a market leader in this area. They're not a market leader in all areas, but they are a market leader here.

There are some recommendations that came out. There was a report that came out in June, the final report of the Alberta Child Intervention Review Panel. It was called “Closing the Gap Between Vision and Reality”. The Government of Alberta's response was publicly released on October 15, just last month.

That's enough from me for the moment. Christine will round that out.

[Christine Cram]

Maybe I'll give you some stats on some of the improvements we've seen in Alberta. The first, on the institutional care side, covers from 2007-08 to 2009-10. The number of children in institutional care has had a substantial reduction, from 329 to 68. In kinship care, in which a child is placed in care with a family member, the numbers have dramatically increased. They went from zero in 2007-08 to 375 in 2009-10. And post-adoption subsidies have also gone up enormously, from zero to 130.

What we've seen is a movement of children from higher levels of care to lower levels of care and then out of care. What we are hoping to see over time is a bigger reduction in the percentage of children in care, because they will actually be able to be maintained in their family homes. So those are promising results in Alberta so far.