Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Feb. 8th, 2011

[Mary Polak]

There certainly have been large investments made over many decades. I think we can all agree that the situation we find when we look at reserves and see the grinding poverty, in many cases—poor housing, poor access to drinking water, and all those kinds of things. We all want to solve those challenges. Over many decades, people have invested, governments have invested, large sums of money to do that.

I agree that it's not all about resources. However, in some cases the manner of the distribution of those resources can incent certain behaviours. With respect to 20-1, the resulting behaviour has been a disproportionate number of aboriginal children being taken into care. It can happen that a social worker, being faced with a child with huge needs on reserve, is unable to access the amount of support that this child needs to stay in the home. Thus the social worker is faced with the decision to remove the child from the home in order to be able to access services for the child.

Yes, it's important to have resources and to have a well-resourced set of programs and initiatives, but it is equally important to consider in what way the provision of those resources might affect the behaviour we are seeing out in the field.

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

So in your tripartite discussions, with the enhanced prevention-focused approach, perhaps you developed a plan similar to what we did at Health, with the provision of services in the community. We developed a cluster model. In this case, it would be operations, maintenance, and prevention. The agency has more flexibility in focusing on those things.

Has that been a substantial part of the discussion? Minister, perhaps you could speak to it.

[Mary Polak]

That has been a significant part of our discussions with the federal government. We recognize that in British Columbia, because of the number of first nations, it becomes more challenging. Their relative size becomes more challenging when compared with the agreements the federal government has made with other provinces. They can implement those in different ways.

Our challenge in British Columbia is to ensure that, as we come to a final agreement we can sign off with the federal government, there is recognition that small communities require at least a base level of funding for general operations, as opposed to merely making calculations based on the size of the population.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you, Mr. Rickford.

Mr. Russell.

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good morning to each of you, and thank you for taking the time to be with us.

Ms. Polak, my question is somewhat similar to the one the parliamentary secretary has raised. With respect to the framework agreement you say you brought to Ottawa in September 2008, can you give us an idea of its present status? Has it led to negotiations, and can you give us a sense of how these negotiations might be progressing? As I understand it, you're still operating under this 20-1 model.

The government is saying they want to move to a prevention-based approach. But testimony here at committee has indicated that there may be some problems even with that approach, given the preliminary evidence coming out of Alberta, where the first agreement was signed. With the aboriginal population growing three times faster than the non-aboriginal population in B.C., there's still some urgency here.

As Mr. Rickford says, there might be cold comfort in the fact that we remain status quo at 5.3% of kids in care, which is still eight times higher than the Canadian non-aboriginal population. Can you give us a sense of where those negotiations are? It's been two years since this has come forward. Are we anywhere near some kind of an agreement?

[Mary Polak]

I first want to just acknowledge what you said about cold comfort. For British Columbians to know that between 53% and 54% of our children in care are aboriginal tells us all that what we're doing is not good enough. That's a shame, and it shouldn't be that way.

When it comes to where we are in negotiations, we actually had the opportunity to meet with Minister Duncan yesterday. I believe we are very close to signing the final arrangement. I know there is a commitment on the part of INAC to continue to work with us to finalize that agreement. I agree with you that there is urgency. You look into the faces of these folks who want to do something better for their communities and you know there is urgency.

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

Would it be fair to say that your negotiations—of course, maybe you can't get into all the details, government to government—are based right now on the Alberta approach, a prevention-based approach?

[Mary Polak]

There are some variations, and I've mentioned some of the unique attributes of our first nations communities, in particular, the vast array of them, but there is also the relative size. Ours are much smaller, or I should say we have very many that are much smaller, and the average size of them tends to be smaller. That presents a challenge if we were to adopt an identical model to Alberta. We would see very many communities that would not receive sufficient funding through that arrangement even to have a base of operations. So there are some variations.

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

On your statement that you fully support Jordan's Principle and are committed to its implementation, can you just expand on that? It's no use to be supportive of a principle and committed to its implementation without a sense of what that implementation looks like. Is there agreement with the federal government on this particular matter?

[Mary Polak]

We were in fact the first province in Canada to adopt Jordan's Principle. We do have agreements with the federal government. There is right now, though, a very narrow definition, and I know these things are up for dialogue and discussion as we all grow and learn about them. But it's our feeling that the definition currently utilized is too narrow to really respond to the overall intent of Jordan's Principle. I think we also believe and have the confidence that it is the desire of the federal government, and it's certainly ours, to work together to effectively broaden that definition.

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

So right now it's just basically on the complex, multiple needs. Is that the definition you're using?

[Mary Polak]

Not from our perspective, but of course we have to work in agreement with the federal government, and the definition utilized by the federal government is, in our view, somewhat narrow.

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

So it's still possible to have a jurisdictional debate over who pays the bill if an aboriginal child deserves a certain amount of care. Is that the way it exists?

[Mary Polak]

It is possible that the debate will ensue, but I can tell you that in British Columbia the child will receive the service.

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you, Mr. Russell.

I now give the floor to Mr. Dreeshen.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. And welcome to the witnesses.

With my five minutes, I think what I'll do is shift gears a little and move in a different direction and speak to the training that is provided to your case workers. Like Mr. Nadeau, I was also a teacher, and I know there's been a lot of change, and it's very difficult to keep up with some of the new training methodologies that are there. I know in the past two and a half years since I left the profession, there have been amazing new developments and new delivery systems, not just for students but also for educators.

When we speak to culturally appropriate child and family services that take place throughout the country, I'm curious whether you could talk about some of the modifications that have taken place in training caseworkers so that you can ensure they're actually achieving that goal.

[Mary Polak]

One of the most positive examples of success in this regard is the Touchstones of Hope curriculum that we began using in our northern region, and now we are expanding that. It takes a culturally appropriate model of healing involving our workers in understanding what it is that first nations have dealt with in terms of intergenerational trauma. And it really is a matter of having our front-line workers understand the experience of the people with whom they are going to be dealing.

Certainly we have had great success when we allow aboriginal people--I shouldn't say “allow”. I apologize. That's actually very inappropriate to say that. Together with first nations...they are the ones leading the development of various curricula that we use, but also the kinds of dialogue that need to take place to build trust. Certainly, though, you are correct in that the world is changing rapidly, has changed rapidly, and if there is an area of concern, it's that in some cases our universities have not kept pace in terms of changing their training practices.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer, AB]

Thank you.

Perhaps to go to the universities, Mr. Richard, you do have the opportunities then to address university students, and I'm just curious if in your discussions you're able to cite some instances where you've been able to help new recruits so that they understand just what the problems are and perhaps some new types of solutions to those problems.

[Kenn Richard]

I would agree that the Touchstones of Hope approach is promising in terms of affecting relationships between aboriginal and non-aboriginal people around the problems in child welfare. They do not necessarily promote cultural competencies. The best practices that come out of working in the aboriginal context are not being taught at the universities. I don't think the universities really know how to do it. So what we're faced with are new graduates, and we have standards at our agency that require us to hire BSWs—with the minimum child and youth work—from colleges, and they are ill-prepared, aboriginal or not, for the realities of what they see in their caseload on day one.

The schools have a tendency to go where the flavour of the month is, to some extent, and have spent an inordinate amount of time working on middle-class best practices associated with therapy and healing for people with everyday problems.

Drilling down to the complexities and issues that we confront on an aboriginal caseload has been elusive to them. The students don't necessarily want to do it, so you have those who are educated in this world tending to find their educations through serendipitous kinds of ways. They go through some training at our agency, which we do. They find their own path.

In my world, the only ones who are actually doing anything to increase cultural competency are some of the native-based BSW programs. Laurentian University, for example, has one. The Saskatchewan federated college had one at some point. I'm not sure about the status of that. There is the northern program at the University of Manitoba, and I think there are some efforts at the University of Calgary. But these are beginning efforts, and the capacity of the helpers.... I am glad you raised that because it is a huge issue.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer, AB]

So if you had a prescriptive lesson plan, then, the next time you're going to the university to talk or talking to other universities, where would you focus the attention?

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Just give a brief response, if you can, Mr. Richard.

[Kenn Richard]

My brief response would be to “conscientize” the students such that they understand what they're getting into from a broad historical perspective, so they can meet that client in a way where there's a kind of mutual understanding of what's in front of them--that level of thinking.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you, Mr. Dreeshen.

Mr. Lévesque, you have five minutes.

[Yvon Lévesque, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Forgive me for being late. We should go on strike, on Parliament Hill, in order to obtain adequate transportation services.

I live in an area where First Nations account for a third of the population. We have a vision in Quebec. I represent the riding of Abitibi— Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, that extends all the way to Labrador. My riding neighbours on that of my colleague, Todd. We have aboriginal populations that are rich. However, there is something of a vicious circle. We invest money and we see the department realize that the fact that it put money in did not make things move forward. The situation remained the same and the provinces are practically accused of having intervened in such a way that the money served to increase costs rather than direct services to children.

In our neck of the woods, in rich communities, at 4:30 or 5 o'clock, we see young people with a beer bottle in their hand and a joint between their lips. We ask them what they are doing there, we tell them that they will not be able to go to school like that, and their response is to ask us why they would bother going there.

I am talking about a vicious circle. It is fine to hand out money, but are we creating a vision for the future for these children? We have to begin with the parents. We have to give them a job, create industries in their communities. They need a model, because they have none. In Quebec, it is difficult to talk on behalf of the other provinces, because our model is that of integration, compared with the model in the rest of Canada, which is one of multiculturalism. To my mind, that makes a difference.

For example, we have native friendship centres. There are day-care centres and we decided to integrate First Nations children with non-Aboriginal children, and the result is unbelievable. However, there still remains the problem of a vision for the future for young people.

Ms. Polak, I would like you to explain to me the cost increase for your province. You probably encountered that as well. Mr. Richard, you mentioned the follow-up to funding for children. I would invite you to explain that, afterwards.