Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on April 9th, 2019

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs of the Parliament of Canada. We are doing a study on capacity-building and the retention of talent on reserves.

Today we are pleased to have with us the Whitecap Dakota First Nation and Saskatoon Public Schools in that area.

Here in Ottawa, we go through a process of recognizing a piece of truth and reconciliation. The fact is that the Parliament Buildings are actually on the unceded territory of the Algonquin people.

Let me just frame this a bit. You normally would get up to 10 minutes to do your presentation. After that the other presenters will get 10 minutes, and then we'll do rounds of questions from the members of Parliament.

I'll turn it over to Chief Darcy Bear.

[Chief Darcy M. Bear, Whitecap Dakota First Nation]

Good morning.

First of all, when you say 10 minutes, is that 10 minutes for me and 10 minutes for Ray? Or is that five and five?

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

I see that we're negotiating already.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

No.

[Chief Darcy M. Bear]

It's five?

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Yes, it's 10 minutes in total.

[Chief Darcy M. Bear]

Okay. I just wanted to make sure.

First of all, good morning to everyone in Ottawa. We're here to talk about our alliance agreement that we have with the Saskatoon Public Schools division.

To put everything in context, Whitecap is located 20 minutes south of the city of Saskatoon. We've been in that location since 1879. Our chief, Whitecap, is recognized as one of the founding fathers of the City of Saskatoon. He had a meeting with a fellow by the name of John Lake back in 1882. Also, as Dakota people, we are allies of the British Crown and fought in the both the American Revolution and the War of 1812, which was very significant and helped to make our country a nation. I always say that if we had lost that war, we'd have a U.S. flag over the nation and we'd have Donald Trump running around here, but we don't.

We have a proud history, and our ancestors always worked in partnership. Indeed, the word “Dakota” means “ally”. Since the sixties, our community has been engaged with the Saskatoon Public Schools division as far as our students—

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Chief Bear, I'm sorry. I think I misled you. In fact, I didn't realize that the gentleman beside you was from the board of Saskatoon Public Schools. In reality, if you wanted to take the full 20 minutes, that's up to you guys. You have some latitude on that.

[Chief Darcy M. Bear]

Okay. Was I on mute this whole time?

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

No, no. We've heard you. I'm so sorry.

[Chief Darcy M. Bear]

Okay. I thought—

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

We're going to start you over—

[Chief Darcy M. Bear]

—I'd have to start all over again here.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

No. I'm sorry for interrupting. Please go ahead.

[Chief Darcy M. Bear]

Since the 1960s, our community members have attended Saskatoon Public Schools division schools. I was raised in my community in Whitecap and went to school in the community until grade 5. Then from grade 6 to 12 we were bused into Saskatoon, and so I'm a graduate of the Saskatoon Public Schools division.

Back in 1994, I was elected chief, and then I approached the Saskatoon Public Schools division, a gentleman by the name of George Rathwell, who was a vice-principal of one of the schools, about looking at how we could work together to look at our curriculum and make sure the transition from Whitecap to Saskatoon was a smooth one for our students. That in a sense evolved to what we call today an alliance agreement on education.

Now we are part of the Saskatoon Public Schools division. We do still operate a school in our community. I will get into how our partnership works.

With our partnership, we have a joint governance committee, a joint operations committee. All our teaching staff are employees of the Saskatoon Public Schools division, so we get the certified teachers in the community. We have access to all of the resource materials of the Saskatoon Public Schools division, professional development, sector level services, and are part of ward 7 as well. It has been a really good partnership. Ray will probably get into some of the outcomes when he speaks.

Our agreement was considered a pilot project by the federal government. It's now in its sixth year of operation. It was considered a pilot agreement back when we signed the official agreement. It ended the education disparity for us, because in the past our community schools were getting about two-thirds of what provincial schools were getting as far as tuition goes, but we weren't getting a lot of supports. Since we've entered into this partnership, we have addressed a lot of the funding issues and ended the education disparity in Whitecap. It has been very positive for our community and our students.

We also negotiated some capital with the partnership with the federal government. We renovated our existing school, which was built back in 1996, so it met with Saskatoon Public Schools division facility standards. We also added an addition, and held discussions with our community members because our school went from pre K to 6, but our community members, parents and caregivers wanted our children to integrate into the Saskatoon Public Schools division earlier. Now our school currently goes from pre K to 4, and our grade 5 to 12s are bused in.

We looked at our grades 5 to 8 students. They are in three different schools in Saskatoon. They couldn't accommodate all of them. Then a new community just about 20 minutes from us was building a brand new school with Saskatoon Public Schools division, so we wanted to be a part of that. We represented about 10% of the student body. It's about a $27 million build, so we lobbied the federal government to put $2.7 million into that school on our behalf. Now that's the new home school for our grades 5 to 8.

The Saskatoon Public Schools division embraced it. They even named the school Chief Whitecap School, recognizing Chief Whitecap as one of the founding fathers. That's one of the reasons why. Also if you walk into the school, there's a culture room. We have elders there every day. There's smudging every day for our students. This is a public school; it's not a segregated school just for Whitecap students. It's open to everyone.

All the classrooms inside the school are bilingual. They are English and Dakota. They fly the Whitecap flag as well outside the school. It has been a great partnership to date. Our high school students attend Aden Bowman, and Walter Murray in Saskatoon as well.

The other thing we did out of our partnership is that we invested in an early learning centre. We used to operate a 20-seat day care, but we're one of the members that have signed on to the framework agreement on first nation land management and eliminated 25% of the Indian Act, allowing us to self govern our lands. It has enabled us to go through land use planning, zoning, development standards, infrastructure investment and taxation regimes. It opened our doors for business. We have now gone from a 70% unemployment rate down to a 5% unemployment rate.

That said, we have over 600 jobs in our community. We looked at our 20-seat day care and looked at expanding it and then building a brand new facility, a 56-seat early learning centre that's all based on literacy, culture and language. It was a partnership between the federal government, Whitecap and the province, and of course working with the Saskatoon Public Schools and early learning centres they operate. It's now in operation. As of this year, we have another $62 million of projects on the books and another 225 jobs coming to our community next year.

Our whole focus is on retention, as studies have shown that, with learning and literacy at an early age, children stay in school and finish their grade 12. That creates another impact on Whitecap where, because our focus is on retention, we get a lot of grade 12 graduates. They want to get post-secondary education, but once again, the Indigenous Services Canada program is capped. However, because Whitecap generates its own source of revenue, we top that up so that our students don't fall through the cracks, and they do get to attend a post-secondary institution.

The current post-secondary program is a flexible transfer. First nations that don't even have post-secondary students can use it for other expenditures, so it's not fair to those students who actually want to go to school. We're hoping that the federal government will review this and start releasing post-secondary funding based on actuals, on demands. That way the students are not the ones who get left behind. It's not a flexible transfer anymore, but it should be a transfer that is based on actuals and on results.

I'll leave it at that. I'll turn it over to Ray.

[Ray Morrison, Chair of the Board of Trustees, Saskatoon Public Schools]

Thank you, Chief.

Thank you to the committee for the invitation and the opportunity to speak about our alliance with Whitecap. In particular, thank you to the clerk for allowing us to set this up via video conference. Given people's schedules, it's always difficult.

I always appreciate following Chief Bear because he usually says most of what I need to say, so it makes it easier.

As a little bit of history on Saskatoon Public Schools, we've been around since 1864, so we've been around this part of the country for quite a while. We are the largest school division in the province of Saskatchewan. Our first nations, Inuit and Métis student population hovers in the 16% to 22%, depending on the year and the time of year and enrolment. We have a significant indigenous student population, which is a big part of the work we do.

We also have two additional associate schools, a Muslim school and a Christian school, that are both faith-based. They operate inside of Saskatoon Public Schools, but they have some level of independence.

In particular, I'll raise a few points about our partnership with Whitecap. I don't think we need to go into details about how things work. I look forward to questions on some of those things.

Chief Bear talked about the evolution of this partnership. It has evolved over about 24 or 25 years now. The partnership works because of relationships we've built, not necessarily because of the documents that are required. That's been a big part of how we've grown into what we are today.

One key to our success to this point has been staying focused on what's best for students when we're at the table to discuss things. That's always our priority.

Secondly, we respect the jurisdictions of both parties. We operate in different environments, so I've learned much about first nations' funding in education, and I think the chief and his staff have learned a lot about provincial funding. We've built an agreement that has been signed between Whitecap and Saskatoon Public Schools, but the federal and provincial governments were included as part of those negotiations, and it's been an interesting journey along the way.

We continue to hope that as a part of Saskatoon Public Schools' response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission we are building bridges, and that in the long term, as Chief Bear outlined before, some of the programming and what we've done in some of our schools will lead to more success for indigenous students, better graduation rates and stronger success rates in the future.

The one thing the chief didn't mention about Chief Whitecap School is that as you enter the school, it very much reflects the Whitecap Dakota First Nation. The doors on all of the classrooms have the names of the room in English and in Dakota. We're trying to take this to a level that we haven't done in any other facility. We have a Cree immersion program at another school, so we have much going on. But in this case, our relationship with Whitecap has allowed us to really focus on what we think is best for the students in the long term.

I think I will leave it at that, Chief, and we can look for—

The Chief just reminded me to speak to outcomes. I apologize for that.

We've seen a couple of things in the short term. In 2014, about 40% of the students in grades 1 to 4 in Whitecap were meeting the expected reading levels for that age group. In 2017, which is the last year we have numbers for right now, we've moved that bar to 80%. Just by concentrating on what's important to those students and working with Whitecap, we've made a difference already.

As we look forward to high school graduation rates, it's early years for us. As a person who's been involved in K-to-12 education for more than two decades now, I can say that it will be a generational outcome. We'll see the impact of the work we're doing now in 10 or 12 or 13 years, but we will be following the success of those students as they work their way through the education system on to graduation, and hopefully on into society.

Thank you. I'll leave it at that.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

All right. Very good.

We're going to start the questioning, and we begin with MP Yves Robillard.

This is probably going to be in French, so I believe that you'll have translation services.

[Ray Morrison]

Okay.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Yves.

[Yves Robillard, Liberal, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Thank you.

My thanks to our guests for their testimony.

Witnesses at this committee have spoken about the difficulties many northern, remote and isolated communities face in attracting and retaining teachers and health care professionals. The remoteness aside, several factors present challenges to talent retention in First Nations communities, including lower salary grids and the lack of proper housing on reserves.

In your view, what is the main barrier to talent retention in indigenous communities?

[Chief Darcy M. Bear]

I think the biggest challenge would be exactly what you said. It is the salary levels, not having a salary grid, etc., and not paying teachers and giving them job security.

I know that in the past for a Whitecap—and we're not in the north, but we're 20 minutes from an urban centre—when we weren't part of Saskatoon Public Schools division, it was difficult for us to attract the best teachers. It's human nature to look at job security, and when they don't have job security, they're not going to want to come to teach in our communities.

Since we've now partnered with Saskatoon Public Schools division and our teachers are employees of the division through our agreement, we can get some of the best accredited teaching staff coming from the Saskatoon Public Schools division. They have always wanted to come to work in our community, but we didn't have the same pay grid as Saskatoon Public Schools. A lot of times communities, because of the inadequate funding, will try to get first-year and second-year teachers because they're at the lower end of the grid. In this case, we don't have to do that anymore because we have the average...and we can get the best teachers coming out.

Getting back to the question, though, as far as the northern communities, it's definitely going to be funding issues, housing issues. There are going to be infrastructure issues as well.

We lived beside Saskatoon before it was a city. We were there in 1879. The meeting of Chief Whitecap and John Lake was in 1882.

However, even when I was growing up in my community, we didn't have any modern infrastructure. We used to have to haul water to our houses. We used to chop wood to heat our homes. I'm not a pioneer, but this is the way we were raised. There was no modern infrastructure; there were no opportunities. There were no recreation facilities. Our schools never met any of the facility standards that a public school division would have.

You can see the challenges that my community faced, but I can't imagine what the communities in the north are facing in regard to trying to retain and recruit indigenous teachers, especially when there is a shortage of housing. You could imagine that if they did build housing for teachers and yet you have a community that has overcrowding and a housing shortage, it never looks like a popular move inside the community.

A lot of our first nations have no choice. The limited housing they do have, they have to give to their membership. It would be difficult to have any housing for staff, but it's something that should certainly be considered in the future.

Again, you have to look at the infrastructure that goes with it and about having some kind of standard in regard to salaries. You can't have an expectation that every teacher coming into a northern community is going to be a first-year or second-year teacher. If you want to get some of the best, then you have to invest in those resources.

Ray can maybe add on to some of the teaching component of our staff.

[Ray Morrison]

Chief Bear raised some good points.

One of the things we've found is that we now have staff who want to teach on the first nation at Charles Red Hawk School, because they know they have, what I would call, a safety net to go back to in the public school system.

You raised a very interesting and complex question.

About two years ago, I chaired a panel for the Government of Saskatchewan and toured the province studying governance and education. We spent a significant amount of time in the north talking with communities up there about those very issues.

On another front, a little unrelated to Whitecap, as a school division, I speak to my peers across the north on a regular basis. We're starting to explore ways to deal with that very issue: Are there ways we can create exchange programs? Teachers who teach in the city could spend a term or a year in the north learning about the cultures in those communities, know they have a place to come back to, and study the implications of what that means on those communities in the north.

We're starting down a path to explore some of those opportunities. I wish I had the silver-bullet answer that would solve those problems, but, unfortunately, I don't.

[Yves Robillard, Liberal, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Thank you.

What measures should the federal government take to remove the barriers to attracting and retaining professionals in indigenous communities, such as the lack of proper housing on reserves?