Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Dec. 6th, 2010

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

I appreciate your mandate, sir, but I was asking your opinion as to whether or not the service and care provided to children might be improved.

[John Doyle]

When I express my views as the Auditor General, my opinion is based on work that I've undertaken. I don't have a personal opinion.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

Okay. Very good.

Ms. Lavallée, does CAP actually do some work on reserve with regard to child and family services provided to children?

[National Chief Betty Ann Lavallée]

Some of our provincial and territorial organizations will partner with some of the communities in their provinces, or they sit on various committees within the provinces to deal with those issues.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

Can you give me some examples of which provinces you've partnered with?

[National Chief Betty Ann Lavallée]

In Nova Scotia, they have what they call a family social worker who works with families that are off reserve. If a child is removed from a reserve, they're able to facilitate and help place the child with an aboriginal family. They have safe houses for families.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

That's children from one reserve who go off reserve. Do you think it's better to try to keep those kids in their communities? Do you think that's the final goal we should be looking towards?

[National Chief Betty Ann Lavallée]

If it's safe.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

Very good.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you, Ms. Glover.

Ms. Crowder.

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

I want to go back to a comment that you made, Mr. Berthelette. Did I understand you to say that per capita housing has declined 40% over a decade?

[Jerome Berthelette]

Yes, that's true. In constant dollars, per capita housing expenditures--at the time we had conducted this audit--had declined by 40% over a decade.

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

That's a pretty shocking number. Poverty is part of the reason children are apprehended. Often they're living in housing that is unsafe.

There was a case on North Island where children were temporarily taken into care because of the amount of mould in the houses. It seems like a vicious circle. If you decrease the amount of money that's going into housing, you continue to create unsafe conditions for children to live in, and then they are removed from their homes.

[Jerome Berthelette]

Just in response to that, I agree, as the Auditor General has said, that when we talk about sustainability, we aren't just talking about the sustainability of the programs within Indian Affairs; it's also the sustainability of the very programs themselves and how decisions like this actually are at cross-purposes with each other.

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

There are rumours running around the communities right now that there's a capital freeze in place until 2016. The department has said that's not the case, but when we hear numbers like that, even if there's not a capital freeze in place, there's still less money going into infrastructure.

I just want to come back to comparability for a second. There was a national policy review in 2000, which estimated federal child welfare funding was 22% below provincial funding levels. And then there was the Wen:de report in 2005 that found a minimum of $109 million per year in additional funding was needed to account for the shortfall. INAC actually participated in those two joint policy reviews, so there was some work done on comparability.

Then, back on March 19, 2009, the deputy minister wrote to the chair of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts in response to a question around comparability, and in that response acknowledged that funding varies from province to province and so on, but went on to say that with the move to an enhanced prevention-focused approach, INAC has been working with participating provinces and first nations to develop child and family service models that provide comparable INAC standards across the provinces.

So it seems that despite what the department told us last week, in fact the deputy minister, in this letter, has indicated that there was work being done around the standards.

Ms. Fraser, in your report in section 4.49, you indicate that where provinces deliver their service, “in these provinces, INAC reimburses all or an agreed-on share of their operating and administrative costs of delivering child welfare services directly to First Nations and of the costs of children placed in care”. So it seems that in some cases there's an agreement that they'll pay the provincial rates.

Given that there has been work done, by the department's own admission—the department participated in a joint review process where there was some comparability done—can you suggest some next steps that should be taken, in terms of the comparability? It seems to be the crux of the matter in terms of delivering adequate services.

[Sheila Fraser]

Well, clearly, I think, the federal government has to work with the provinces to understand what are the types and the extent of services being provided.

I must admit I'm a little surprised if provincial agencies wouldn't be willing to share that, because they are sending invoices to the federal government for those types of services. You would think that it would be to their advantage, as well, to have the federal government agree to comparable services. The consequence of that would be to provide more funding for that, when the provinces have the responsibility for these services to these children.

So it sort of astounds me that the provinces wouldn't want to discuss with the federal government what types of services there are and help them to develop that.

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

In fact, arguably, if they're billing the federal government, the federal government should actually understand what they're delivering for that invoice, which would be a good basis to look at comparability.

[Sheila Fraser]

[Inaudible--Editor]...you could start right there.

And I would presume, when they did the agreements with Alberta and the other provinces, that there must have been some discussion around the kinds of services, because they expanded it, then, to the preventative services, which hadn't been in the funding formula before.

So I think it's just, you know, getting on with it.

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

Yes, I would agree.

Am I done?

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you, Ms. Crowder.

Let's go to Mr. Dreeshen, for five minutes.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses.

Madam Fraser, it's nice to see you here.

First of all, Madam Fraser, was there collaboration with the AG office in B.C. on this particular file as well? Perhaps you could update us somewhat on what types of discussions you had and the things you learned in those.

[Sheila Fraser]

We were very pleased, actually, to collaborate with our colleagues in British Columbia.

We would have shared, I presume, plans, and looked at what we call lines of inquiry, or at any similar issues. I mentioned the foreword at the beginning; we would have looked at some of the common issues to be able to give parliamentarians a better perspective, not only of the federal role but also the provincial role.

Perhaps Mr. Campbell could elaborate a little bit on this as well.

[Ronnie Campbell]

Certainly.

Yes, we worked closely with our colleagues in British Columbia. Part of the audit planning process we worked together on. We had meetings with them, advisory committee meetings. Whenever we met with first nations organizations in the province of British Columbia, we did it together. We discussed each other's reports as they were being drafted.

So we worked closely from beginning to end.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer, AB]

Perhaps then to Mr. Doyle, the provincial ministry of British Columbia had recently indicated that the provincial government was now opening the door for first nations and Métis groups in B.C. to create their own legislation to replace the Child and Family Services Act and to enable indigenous child and family service systems to be established and supported, designed and delivered by the nations themselves.

Given that only eight out of 24 delegated aboriginal agencies qualified to deliver the full child protection services in 2008, and that the provincial ministry was providing the services elsewhere, what will the move to creating separate legislation on child and family systems for first nations and Métis groups actually mean?

[John Doyle]

Thank you for the question.

It will probably mean some fundamental challenges in regard to the delivery of services to children. When the different agencies were assessed, we assessed them in terms of their status and capability--a maturity model, if you like--on what they could deliver and how they could deliver that.

Now, some have progressed since then, and there has been a lot of recruitment of aboriginal staff within both the ministry itself and the different agencies. We haven't gone back to assess their capability at the moment. I think only the ministry would be able to provide us with an assessment on that.

My take on what the ministry has said to me is that they wouldn't be handing over responsibilities unless they were satisfied that the work could be done appropriately.