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

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer, AB]

Thank you.

Madam Fraser, you noted in 2008 that INAC needed to work with other departments to facilitate access to the programs for first nations children in care. Do you know whether INAC has been doing anything to facilitate access to Health Canada's programs?

[Sheila Fraser]

We haven't followed up on this. As I mentioned, we are doing a follow-up audit that we will be tabling in the spring, but we haven't looked specifically at that issue.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer, AB]

Okay.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you, Mr. Dreeshen.

Mr. Russell, go ahead.

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I've been listening very carefully, and going from the testimony we heard from officials to some of the testimony we're hearing now, it seems like a whole different picture is being painted about child and family services.

I hear difficulty around what is “culturally appropriate”. For three years we haven't arrived at a definition of “comparable services”. I was shocked to hear as well that the provinces won't share information on what types of services they provide, even though they send the bill up and the federal government sends a cheque down. That doesn't seem to counter very well, seeing that they're ultimately responsible for the delivery of child and family services.

I hear about a funding formula where the 6%, the number of children who are in care or are affected, is still a principle.

I hear that we're robbing Peter to pay Paul when it comes to the reallocation of resources within INAC. The case was used by my colleague around housing, but if they're taking money from education and putting it into child and family services, this cannot work. This approach just cannot work.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I hear in B.C. what sounds like some jurisdictional issues with the matter of dollars that are at play. That almost goes back to Jordan's Principle, when people were fighting over who the hell was going to pay the bill for a sick child.

So I think as a committee we're really going to have to wrestle and ask if this is the true picture. If this is the true picture we've got to see a hell of a lot more movement than what we've seen in the last three years.

But I also have a question. What about those first nations, Métis, Inuit kids who are...? Do we have any data on first nations off-reserve children, Inuit children, Métis children who are in the provincial systems, or in some kind of a system? How are they being treated? What kind of care are they getting?

I know we're concentrating on one group, but there's a whole number of other aboriginal children out there.

National Chief Lavallée, do we have any data on that whatsoever, either in B.C. or from, let's say, a national perspective?

[National Chief Betty Ann Lavallée]

Not that I'm aware of at this point. In preparation for this presentation, I looked to see if there in fact had been some work done on that particular issue. It seems that when children are apprehended off reserve, the ethnic background of the child is really not noted in some provinces. It's only lately that we're starting to see some interaction between provincial governments and the off-reserve communities.

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

Mr. Doyle, what's the situation in B.C.? Are those numbers captured in your work?

[John Doyle]

It's my understanding that they're not captured in the way that you describe. However, I do notice that off reservation there is a referral process so that aboriginal children will be transferred over so that they're given access to culturally appropriate assistance and help.

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

Is there any information that Ms. Fraser, or Mr. Campbell, or Mr. Berthelette can provide on that?

[Sheila Fraser]

Mr. Chair, we would only look at the issues of children on reserve because of the federal responsibility there. We did not look beyond that.

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you, Mr. Russell.

I'm going to take one of the slots for the government.

It occurs to me that at issue here is the question of funding. We've heard from witnesses that the focus of this—from the standpoint of what this committee considers, which is the Government of Canada and its role through the department—is principally with funding. What's at issue here is whether the funding is sufficient, and in comparable terms to what is required at the provincial level because it is essentially the provincial and aboriginal agencies that actually deliver the programs and services that support families in their communities.

We received some information, and I believe this was from the department in July 2010. They essentially told us that over a ten-year period, the funding has in fact doubled in that time. They do cite some reasons around the necessity, the extra costs of maintenance and care, special needs families, and so on. There were some legitimate reasons there, but over that ten-year period the number of children in care did not decline, despite a complete doubling of the dollars going to that.

As I sit and listen to the testimony, I'm thinking that clearly it's not just about money here. I wonder if I could direct a question to each of the auditors general. Could you comment on anything you came across in your investigations that would suggest that this direction—taken up by the Province of Alberta since 2007—to direct more of that funding into the preventative side to, in fact, get kids out of care and get them streamed into something else will alleviate that cost and frankly bring a better outcome for the kids? This is really what we're after here. Is there anything you came across that would indicate that direction was correct?

Ms. Fraser, and then Mr. Doyle.

[Sheila Fraser]

At the time we did the audit, Chair, this agreement with Alberta was very recent. It was just beginning--it would only be fully implemented, actually, this year--so at that point it was very difficult to have any kind of information about the results of it.

I think most people could understand, though, that the fact that preventative services had not been funded previously could certainly be one of the factors why so many children were taken into care, because that was the only way to get them services. In many of these problems, as you say--I mean, funding isn't the ultimate solution to all of this--it really is working with the whole family, working with the community. Obviously protecting a child is crucial in this, but in the longer term it involves those preventative kinds of services.

One would hope that by providing these services now—services that were not funded previously—we will see a decline in the number of children being taken into care, and hopefully an improvement in these communities over time as social workers are working with them.

So I think we should be hopeful in that respect, but we still have to remember that there are many provinces still on the old funding formula. So they are not being funded for those services. It's going to take quite a long time, I think, to see concrete results.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you.

Mr. Doyle, do you have any comment on that general trend?

[John Doyle]

I'll invite my colleague Morris Sydor to respond to that one.

[Morris Sydor, Assistant Auditor General, Office of the Auditor General of British Columbia]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

In B.C. we also don't have good information on the impact of preventive services. I think one of the matters we called for was a better understanding on the ministry's part as to what outcomes actually occur and the cause of those particular outcomes.

On the provincial level we have preventive services, but in B.C. on reserve those preventive services are not yet being funded. I think that's part of the funding framework that the ministry sent forward to the federal government. As was indicated earlier, the province is still awaiting a formal response on that request.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Did they begin to fund at the provincial level those...or put in place those preventative services, and has there been any noticeable change in the number of kids in care?

[Morris Sydor]

The only thing, as was alluded to earlier, is that the number of aboriginal children in care in B.C. has increased as a percentage. I'm not aware as to whether the numbers have dropped. I think one of the things we have asked the ministry to do is get a better understanding of what outcomes occur as a result of children being in care, and what services in particular are responsible for those particular outcomes.

So that information, as the federal Auditor General has indicated, will probably be available in the future, but isn't there just yet.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Okay.

Monsieur Lemay, cinq minutes, and then we have Mrs. Glover and Ms. Crowder.

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Fraser, I know that you will do the follow-up, and so forth. I do not know whether it is a case of violating the secrecy of confession, but I would like to know whether, within the framework of your coming report, you will be verifying the implementation stage of the tripartite agreements. In fact, the government boasted that it had tripartite agreements with five provinces. I do not know whether you are going to look closely at this issue, but the amount of money involved is enormous.

[Sheila Fraser]

Absolutely. We will audit the progress that will be made, as well as the timeline. Even the Alberta agreement, which was signed in 2007, was only fully implemented this year. It took three years. Therefore, if an agreement was signed this year, it might not have been totally implemented. We will deal with all these issues.

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Besides, I must admit that I was somewhat surprised by your earlier answer to one of my colleagues. You are concerned with children living on reserve, in communities, but what about the children living off reserve because there is no room left in their community? They are affiliated with a band because pursuant to the legislation, there is an identification number, and so forth. Some of them are really members of the Kitigan Zibi community, for example, but they live in Maniwaki. Do you follow me? There is no room left because the communities were not expanded. They are in the process of exploding. Not a single house has been built. You said so yourself.

Regarding the follow-up, we do not know the exact situation of a large number of aboriginal people. This is the case in Quebec, among others. Aboriginals from the Lac-Simon municipality, which is in my colleague's region, as well as the Winneway reserve, and quite a few other places, do receive services, but they are not physically in the community. I have a problem with that. Several million dollars are at stake.

[Sheila Fraser]

We are interested in the services for which the federal government is responsible.

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Yes.

[Sheila Fraser]

This is a good question, we should know whether they belong—