Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Oct. 22nd, 2012

[John Graham]

I think terminating the funding agreement would likely be the absolute last resort.

By the way, I've had an opportunity to look at what was then called the “intervention policy”. I'm sure you're familiar with the intervention policy. It's sort of a three-step process. This is when a first nation gets into financial difficulty; there's a plan that's asked for by the federal government. The next step is some sort of co-management notion, and then a final step is some sort of third management. So there's kind of a layering up of intervention as the problem is looked at and maybe not addressed.

In some sense, this is somewhat similar, and I would think that almost all of these issues would be likely resolved at the first level, which is the federal government saying we'd like a plan for how you're going to redress this. As in the intervention policy, that seems to be the bulk of the ways in which any remedy is reached.

I would guess that obviously there would be no funding cut for any kind of essential services like education, social assistance, or any of those programs that are absolutely essential. I can't imagine the federal government cutting those programs. What it might cut is band support funding. Again, I would see that as a very small minority of cases, but that would be one lever they could use, which is essentially supporting the salaries of chief and council. I would see that likely being the area where funds would be withheld. It would be unimaginable if they were to withhold funds for education, social assistance, and the like.

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

My next question is also for you.

First nations communities in my riding and across Canada are often short on resources, and there's no secret about that. One of the main themes of Bill C-27 has been to reduce the reporting burden. In your view, how does Bill C-27 reduce the reporting burden for first nations communities? Among the first nations communities that I speak to and that are in my riding, I don't think I've had one of them say they have an easy ride when it comes to reporting. If anything, they say there's a lot of red tape they have to go through and a lot of hoops they have to go through to try to get funding, and their accountability for that to the department is quite high. I'm just wondering if you could respond to that.

[John Graham]

With the magic number, the 168 reports that the Auditor General noted in 2002, I think, and in coming back several times, noting that the reporting burden hadn't been lessened...I don't see this type of initiative as having a huge impact on that. I think you should perhaps address that to a departmental official who may have better information and a sense of exactly what these reports are. But I would not be touting that, reducing the reporting burden, as one of the major reasons for supporting this bill.

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

We know there are many chronic problems in many first nations communities, and in your paper entitled, “First Nation Communities in Distress: Dealing with Causes, not Symptoms”, you discussed distressed communities on the extreme end of the well-being continuum. These communities exhibit characteristics such as high levels of social pathologies, high levels of dependency on social assistance, poorly functioning government services, poor housing, rundown public infrastructure. It goes on to note problems relating to governance, little in the way of cultural activities.

My question to you again is, does Bill C-27 address these problems?

[John Graham]

No, of course, it doesn't.

That's why I'm saying in my introductory remarks that this is a fairly modest initiative. Don't get your hopes up that suddenly by passing Bill C-27 there's going to be light at the end of the tunnel. Of course, there won't be light at the end of the tunnel. These are monumental social policy issues, perhaps the most important that Canada faces, and they are very difficult. No committee, no Parliament of Canada, is going to resolve them.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Thank you so much.

We'll now turn to Mr. Boughen, for five minutes.

[Ray Boughen, Conservative, Palliser, SK]

Thanks, Chair, and let me add my voice of welcome to our panellists. Thank you for appearing with us this afternoon.

My questions are slated to you, John, and they look at governance and the link to transparency, so I've got two questions to ask you.

We'll start with number one. Based on your experience as a researcher and a consultant in aboriginal governance, how important would you say it is to promote the financial accountability and transparency of first nations governments?

[John Graham]

How could you answer that question other than in the affirmative? Of course, good accountability, as I said, is a universal norm. Transparency is absolutely fundamental to accountability. It's not the be-all and end-all to accountability. Accountability is a very difficult thing to realize in practice. Transparency surely is an underlying platform for trying to provide a good accountability story for your constituents and indeed for your funding partners.

[Ray Boughen, Conservative, Palliser, SK]

We've heard there are a number of reserves that have accountability and transparency in place right now. Do you see that move will continue, or do you see resistance to that? What are your views on that?

[John Graham]

A lot of things could certainly improve the situation. I really like certification systems. They are a tool that is being used more and more in public administration and indeed in administration in the non-profit sector. You even see them in the private sector. By certification systems, I am talking about ISO certification—the International Organization for Standardization. I am talking about Accreditation Canada, which is making inroads in some cases in health governance in first nations. They are providing positive incentives to performing good governance practices such as transparency.

If you had a certification system, for example, and one of the demands of that certification system was high levels of transparency—in areas such as salaries of your senior people—and there were useful incentives for getting accredited, then you would have people demanding that first nations get certified, and that all these good governance practices that are required for certification actually happen. Certification is a very good instrument to look at.

[Ray Boughen, Conservative, Palliser, SK]

You would see that demand coming from within or from without?

[John Graham]

One of the notions about good governance is if you want it to be sustainable, it really has to come from the grassroots. It has to come from the folks themselves. I put this teaser out that there was one example of an amazing transformation in terms of governance—one of the very few examples over the last decade. Where was that? Can anybody tell me in this learned committee? What continent had a number of countries transform themselves really quite rapidly in governance terms? The answer is Europe. It's the European Union. The reason was that citizens looked across their borders in Bulgaria, Romania, Lithuania, and Estonia and said, “We want to be part of the European Union. Look what life is like there. That's what we want.” The European Union said, “Fine. You are welcome into our club, but here are the conditions.” The conditions were a lot of good governance and market economies. “If you want to come into the European Union, this is what has to happen.” By God, all of the politicians in these countries, pushed by their citizens, said, “Yes, we're going to get into the European Union. We're going to do these good governance reforms because that is what is going to give us a much better life. We can see it across the border.”

The question is, could we imagine a kind of club that would be equivalent to the European Union that the first nations would want to belong to? To get into the club, you would have to have good governance. The judge of whether you got into the club would not be the federal government; it would be some sort of neutral agency out there, like the ISO or something else.

[Ray Boughen, Conservative, Palliser, SK]

Let's leave that for a minute, gentlemen.

[John Graham]

That's my thought for the day.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Thank you, Mr. Boughen. Your time has expired.

[John Graham]

I'm sorry, I apologize for that long answer. I should have been much more succinct.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Let's turn to Mr. Genest-Jourdain for five minutes.

[Jonathan Genest-Jourdain, NDP, Manicouagan, QC]

Mr. Graham, I am going to address you in French.

[John Graham]

I can get by.

[Jonathan Genest-Jourdain, NDP, Manicouagan, QC]

In your presentation, Mr. Graham, you focused a lot on the dysfunctional side of things. I believe you mentioned those elements again, just recently, and you even encouraged us to ask you about them.

I would like to hear your take. What do these limitations and dysfunctional aspects mean, tangibly speaking, for the planned financial transparency initiatives?

[John Graham]

I have written on several occasions...and I'd be happy to provide you with the publications, but first nations have an extremely dysfunctional governance system. It's hard to imagine anything more dysfunctional than what we have in Canada vis-à-vis this first nations governance system. It is highly dysfunctional.

When you look at this initiative in light of the masses of dysfunction, this is pretty modest. That's what I would say.

As one example, I don't know of any governance system that is highly performing that doesn't have some sort of tax relationship with its citizens. We do not have a tax relationship with our citizens in first nations country, with some exceptions. Some self-governments in the Yukon, for example, are moving into a tax relationship.

Unless you have a tax relationship between citizens and government, you're likely not to get very good accountability. It doesn't matter what you do. You can have all the transparency in the world, but I have never seen any state that has good accountability without that tax relationship.

When you look at countries that are dependent upon oil revenues or natural resource revenues, or even fiscal transfers from another country—from the central state—you're likely to get lousy governance from a whole series of dynamics that happen when you do not have a tax relationship.

That's why I say that this is modest. It's a step forward. I would support it. But when you look at the level of dysfunction in this governance system, this is small potatoes. It's what is called in English, “small beer”.

[Jonathan Genest-Jourdain, NDP, Manicouagan, QC]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Quesnel, in your presentation, you talked about other ways of resolving disputes. In fact, you talked about

alternate measures for dispute resolution.

Could you elaborate on those alternate measures for dispute resolution?

[Joseph Richard Quesnel]

The whole idea of first nations independent dispute resolution mechanisms is usually used in the context of elections and governance. The argument is that if a first nation removes itself from the Indian Act, as far as elections go, and adopts its own custom code, it can adopt its own constitution. It can actually enact accountability measures. The problem with that is that in order to enforce when there is a conflict, often one of the parties has to go to Federal Court.

Look at the Roseau River First Nation in Manitoba, where there were two elected chiefs at one point. There was a problem, and the custom council wasn't empowered to actually remove the chief who was elected under the Indian Act. That wasn't in their constitution. The Federal Court said that if they were following their own procedures, this should happen. He validated the decision of that body to remove the chief and council.

The problem is they would have to go through court in all of this. The idea is that if there is some kind of independent body before you have to go to court, then it comes from the first nation community. It's independent from that community. It's given funds to do that job.

The idea I was thinking of is that instead of...looking at this, Bill C-27, if you're trying to get a disclosure, there would be some kind of body, a regional or a national dispute resolution mechanism, first nations-led, where members could go, kind of quick and easy, to find out the information.

What might be more feasible would be an ombudsperson at the local level. There are first nations now that are setting up ombudsperson offices. Siksika Nation in southern Alberta, close to where I live, worked with the University of Lethbridge, and they set up an ombudsperson office—the independent appeal process. If there were housing disputes, hiring disputes, all these kinds of things, you could go to that.

It's independent, and it avoids all this kind of litigation and costliness.

Hopefully that answers your question. I hope the committee would be able to look into that as an alternative.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Thank you so much.

We'll turn to Mr. Rickford now for five minutes.

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you to the witnesses for coming today.

Joseph, I'm just going to raise one quick point with you before I ask Phyllis some questions. I agree completely with you about the need to have services depoliticized, if you will, programs and services taken out of the business of politics, because they're far more effective. I spent a professional lifetime working on just that prior to getting elected. We've had tremendous success. It's actually been very well received by first nations governments. It would be interesting to talk to you about that.

Phyllis, first of all, welcome from Peguis First Nations. We share a common journey to Winnipeg—Mantario. I'm coming from Kenora, you're coming from Peguis. It's about the same distance, but we have an appreciation for the airport there and the drive, just to let you know. It's a beautiful community. At 7,200, it's the largest first nations community in Manitoba. I wish you and your community all the best on the new arena, which I understand is going to be the Cadillac of arenas for the community.

Phyllis, since you started the Peguis Accountability Coalition, how have you been received by chief and council?