Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Feb. 15th, 2011

[Howard Cameron]

One of the things that needs to happen in the province of Saskatchewan is that the whole fundamental way we look at the system has to be fixed. It was a recurring theme we saw in all our travels. Even the ministry admitted to themselves that the system had to be changed.

In the Cree language,awâsis is a child. Awâsisak is children, and the literal translation of awâsisak is the shining ones. That's how powerful our children are, and we're losing them. They're being adopted out of our communities into non-first-nations homes. They're losing contact. They're losing their language and their culture. So we need to develop a strategy that is culturally appropriate, but we also need to be able to utilize the services in the existing system as we speak right now.

[Rob Clarke, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

Which leaves me with the province of Alberta. You mention “culturally appropriate”. Can you explain that further and the endeavours that the province is undertaking to make it culturally appropriate?

[Carolyn Loeppky]

One of the things we recognize is that your workforce should be reflective of the population it is serving. In looking at who works in child welfare in Manitoba, there were definite efforts to ensure that we were on a path to try to change who was working in our system.

I'm going to let Elsie talk a bit about some of the efforts in the Southern Authority.

[Elsie Flette]

I think who's providing the service is a big thing. We have a number of initiatives to do with training. We think a paradigm shift is needed even for how our aboriginal workers approach their work. They are trained in the mainstream social work faculties. They have a protection focus in how they are trained. So we're working hard to revamp some of the training from an indigenous knowledge perspective that looks at indigenous ways of caring for children and communities supporting those children.

I think the other big piece is that those communities can define some of their own services. In the south we have Dakota, Cree, and Ojibway communities, and they are different nations and different cultures.

One of the big barriers is not so much legislation or standards as funding rules. The funding rules hamper you from moving ahead. Things that are done in the first nations communities, when you try to do them or pay for them, everybody raises their eyebrows, but there are things that mainstream western society accepts as ways of doing business that no one raises an eyebrow at.

I think flexible funding to the agencies would be helpful. I don't mean open chequebooks. I mean flexible funding rules that allow for some of those measures to be built in, defined by those communities, and implemented by experts and professionals who know the business.

[Rob Clarke, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

Mr. Cameron, knowing your background and having worked with various first nations myself, I know your involvement in the school system as an elder.

There is a correlation between poverty and education. What is the school trying to do to bridge that gap, to keep the students in school to educate them? Because the underlying issue is poverty.

[Howard Cameron]

In our teachings, the buffalo was our main caregiver. Now we fast-forward to the year 2011, and the school is our buffalo. In order for us to empower our youth to take responsibility and ownership for the decisions they make, they need education. It's a struggle when we're teaching positive skills in a school environment and the home structure is unhealthy.

We're trying to build that bridge by giving them a good healthy experience in school. We provide them with a hot meal. We provide them with sports, culture, and recreation. We hope that when that little bulb clicks in their mind, they will choose the education, the healthiness, rather than the unhealthiness that faces our community today.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you, Mr. Clarke.

Let's go to Ms. Crowder.

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

I want to talk about comparability. In the Auditor General's report, she indicated that INAC needs to define what is meant by reasonably comparable services and find ways to know whether those services that the program supports are in fact reasonably comparable. In some back-and-forth that happened at the public accounts committee, INAC seemed to be saying that they haven't done the work on comparability. Yet we have a variety of reports—Wen:de and other work—and we've heard from Yukon first nations that they've done work on comparability.

I'd like to hear from Ms. Johnson, Ms. Flette, Mr. Cameron, and Mr. Gaudry. Could you comment on what work has been done on providing comparable services and funding? This enhanced provincial model has continued to perpetuate the inequity, even though it's an increase in funding.

[Arlene Johnson]

I'm going to have to refer that question to Brenda. I'm acting in this position, and I'm not fully briefed on all of the programs.

[Brenda Cope]

And unfortunately I'm in finance, not social services, so it's a bit difficult.

It's hard sometimes to compare apples and oranges, and on the provincial system they would have programs that we just do not have access to. They have family resource centres in communities. They have food banks. They have boys' and girls' clubs. All of these things are not available on reserves.

On child welfare, we get funded, and even if we received exactly the same amount as the Department of Community Services in Nova Scotia, it still wouldn't be a comparative service, because they're getting funding from a variety of other sources, including foundations. Again, an agency in Nova Scotia would deal with a small geographical area, whereas we deal with the whole province.

Socio-economic conditions are different on reserve from what they are off, so sometimes it's hard, as I say, to compare. It's kind of like apples and oranges.

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

That's an important point, though: that you have to recognize the socio-economic conditions and all the other factors in terms of delivery of services.

Ms. Flette.

[Elsie Flette]

Similarly, I think if we were all on a level playing field to start with, then the comparability question might be a bit easier to do, but we're not. We did the same when we were doing the AJI transfer stuff and looking at what services are going to the agencies and what services the province provides to its agencies.

When we looked at the provincial agencies that have civil service commissions and all kinds of other people who do their purchasing for them, who lease their buildings for them, and so on and so forth, there is a whole list of things we identified, and when you cost it out, none of that goes to the child welfare agency.

Just from services alone, I think what we would really be looking for is an equality in service benefit. When we look at the first nations agencies, we see that their primary caseload is children in care--permanent wards, mostly--so all our money goes to support that work. When we look at the non-aboriginal agencies, it's the reverse picture. They have way higher numbers of family cases and fewer numbers of children in care, so they are able to work with families and prevent children from coming into care.

Even if you give me the same dollars that you're giving them, their dollar can go to families to prevent kids from coming into care. My dollar has to go to sustaining these children in foster homes and in placements and not stopping the intake of new kids coming in.

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

Thanks.

Mr. Cameron or Mr. Gaudry.

[Dwayne Gaudry]

You talk about comparability. Just take the words “off reserve” and “on reserve” off, which is an assimilation policy from INAC. We as Indian people even use it against our own people. We say “We can't help you because you're off reserve”. Or we say “We can't help you because you're on reserve”. Indian agents used to do that to us in the 1800s and the 1900s, and again I'm hearing it today, right at this table.

We sat there with Jordan's Principle, and we had the Ministry of Health, Saskatchewan Health, and they all knew what Jordan's Principle was. They all had a definition, but each one of them interpreted it totally differently. I don't understand.

If you take the words “off reserve” and “on reserve” off, and say “child”, it's applicable across.... Yet at INAC, it's the same thing: “We won't help anyone off reserve”. The Province of Saskatchewan: “We won't help anyone off reserve”. But they're trying to put everybody on the reserve.

We just don't have the resources. It's a 22% difference in funding from Saskatchewan to a first nation. It's way different funding, and yet we live under the same jurisdiction of the Province of Saskatchewan. We have to answer to INAC. We have to answer to the province. I have to answer to my board and my chief. I have to answer to membership. So yes, I have to read a lot of policy manuals, and it's not fun any more.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you very much, Ms. Crowder.

We'll go to Mr. Weston, and then back to Mr. Russell.

Go ahead, Mr. Weston, for five minutes.

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you for being here today.

My mother worked in the adoption field in British Columbia. Like her, I am sure that, even though we talk about policies, as we have just done, we are all dedicated to the welfare of children.

I like Howard's description of children as the shining ones.

I think that's beautiful.

What if we asked ourselves, “What if you're a shining one to be born in the year 2050?” How will we have gotten beyond some of these frustrating things that my colleague Marc described? I think we all share that sense. You can think of children. You can probably put names to the kids you're talking about as we talk about these policies.

Anyway, to bring it down to something concrete.... I only have three minutes, so with forgiveness from the others, I'm just going to ask you, Elsie. You talked about best practices. Maybe that's the most optimistic theme that we could pull out of all the discussion this morning. What are some of the best practices you could elaborate on that could get us to the year 2050, where we're talking about not 7% of kids being in care and not 20% of families needing care, but 1% or less?

Maybe you can talk about some of those best practices.

[Elsie Flette]

Well, if I used the words “best practice”, I apologize, because I don't like that term. It seems to imply that there are some practices that are better than others, and when we're looking at culturally appropriate services, we want good practice. There can be many different practices that are good, and for their communities those are the best practices.

I think fundamentally what's important is that we quit seeing the child as somehow standing alone. I know the child welfare system talks a lot about the best interests of the child and really focuses on that idea. I personally think that's a mistake. Children don't live in a vacuum; they're part of a family and part of a community, and especially for the first nations that is critical. We often hear it asked, as long as the child has a loving home, why are you so worried about the children being in their culture? It is because a child grows up; the child is not a child forever. It is wrong to think of them as somehow isolated.

I think that what we often see with child welfare in the mainstream becomes bogged down around that piece. We will do all kinds of things and spend all kinds of money to support a child, for example, in care. We'll put the child in a foster home, and without question there's daycare, there's respite, there are camps, there's hockey—there are all kinds of things that are paid for. But when we lobby to have even an hour's worth of respite put into the family, everybody says you can't be paying people to look after their own children.

Fundamentally we have to get away from the notion that the child is isolated. If we're going to help the child, it means helping the family and helping the community. “Good practice” is a model that really gets this, that really works with families and communities to build a circle of care around the kids.

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

To tie this in a little to past testimony, we heard last week from British Columbia's deputy minister and minister about education and vocational directions. Do you want to focus a little bit on education as a way to pull us out of some of the bad numbers we're hearing?

[Elsie Flette]

There is considerable research out there, specifically around children in care, that says the one variable that makes a difference to reaching good outcomes for kids in care is education, much more than where they're placed, much more than how many therapists see them or how many counselling sessions they have. If they have good outcomes in school, they are likely to have better outcomes growing up.

So I think the child welfare system and the education sector—and maybe this is a Jordan's Principle issue as well—need to work much much better together. We have some evidence saying that if we invest our money in that, those kids are going to do better.

There are some real challenges for us in child welfare. We're not good at working with education, and education likewise is not good at working with us, because our kids come to the school with issues and with needs and with problems. And yet, if we want to focus somewhere in order to have something better for the child welfare kids than jail and prison down the road and have them be productive and raise families and be proud of who they are and contribute to their communities, that would probably be a very good place for us to focus.

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Well, thank you on behalf of the shining ones.

[Elsie Flette]

Meegwetch.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you very much, Mr. Weston.

Now we'll go to Mr. Russell for five minutes. Then I have a very brief question; I'll take one of the slots afterwards.

Go ahead, Mr. Russell.

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I appreciate the opportunity to ask a couple of questions. I'm getting a bit of a different impression from the Government of Manitoba from what I'm hearing from the agency, in terms of collaboration, in terms of whether there's adequate funding, whether there is flexibility, and those types of things.

I hear people saying that the enhanced model was imposed, that it doesn't meet the needs rather than meet some formulas that were introduced and some ratios and percentages that were introduced.

That being said, I'm going to make a request of our analysts. One is that we need to get a comparison between what happened in Manitoba in terms of negotiations between INAC and Manitoba and what happened in Alberta. Is there that much of a difference? Is there that much more flexibility in Manitoba? And we could probably even include Nova Scotia in this, to see. This seems to be the impression that we're getting.

But there are problems. I think all of our committee members would say there are problems with the enhanced prevention approach. What are the consequences to the children and families if we do not fix it? I think that's what we're ultimately trying to get at. What happens to the children and what happens to the families if we do not fix this enhanced prevention approach, which is now the direction the federal government wants to go in?

Turning to the Government of Manitoba—everybody else made a recommendation or two—I'm just wondering, Ms. Loeppky, whether you could make a recommendation to us as a committee. What would you like to see us as a committee recommend to the federal government?

This is to each of you.

[Carolyn Loeppky]

Thank you.

As I said earlier, this is something fairly new for us, an initiative we've worked on with INAC that we're just beginning to implement. Our hope is that we would be looking at the implementation and its impact on a very regular basis. We would want to see what the outcomes of it are and have the ability to come back to the table to look at areas that we feel that problems and/or in which we need to change direction, if any kind of evaluation we do so indicates. We have agreement that we will be looking at an evaluation framework for this, and that's something we would want to see built jointly with our authorities, agencies, and ourselves.

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

And what are the consequences for children and families if this model is not fixed? There seem to be problems from the outset--at least that's what I'm hearing.