Evidence of meeting #144 for Indigenous and Northern Affairs in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was community.
A recording is available from Parliament.
9:25 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal MaryAnn Mihychuk
That's interesting.
We now move to MP Mike Bossio.
I understand that we can share the time a little bit, Mike. I appreciate it.
9:25 a.m.
Liberal
Mike Bossio Liberal Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON
Sure, if you like. Yes, absolutely. Do you want to go first? Go ahead.
9:25 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal MaryAnn Mihychuk
Okay. I get to ask you a couple of questions. One of the issues is this. The Government of Canada provides some financial assistance and there is Canada learning bond. Do you find that your community members have accessed that opportunity? It's worth, in total, $2,000 per student.
9:25 a.m.
Whitecap Dakota First Nation
This is the first time I've ever heard of the Canada learning bond, honestly.
9:25 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal MaryAnn Mihychuk
Well, we had better check it out.
Then there's another program called the Canada student grant. Now, in this case it amounts to $3,000 per year per student.
9:25 a.m.
Whitecap Dakota First Nation
It's the same thing; I've never heard of it.
9:25 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal MaryAnn Mihychuk
I think statistically we found that there was poor knowledge and take-up of the existing opportunities. It sounds like you're well ahead of many other communities that we've talked to. That might be of some assistance.
Tell me a little more about the transition. If you do send young people off to school, they go to post-secondary education. What is the retention like? Do they come back home or are they busy with their own careers elsewhere?
9:25 a.m.
Whitecap Dakota First Nation
I think we've been very successful as far as getting our students into post-secondary education is concerned.
Also, I think that Indigenous Services Canada has really focused a lot in the past on teachers and social workers. We've been saying that we have to get beyond that.
For example, I chair the Saskatchewan Indian Institute of Technologies, which has a business administration diploma program. One of the challenges that we had with our business administration program was that if students wanted to transfer to the College of Commerce, there was only an 80% credit transfer. But for a college in Alberta, it would be a 100% credit transfer. So, about six years ago I met with the dean of the College of Commerce at the University of Saskatchewan about how we could ensure that the business administration diploma program that SIIT was delivering could meet the full-credit transfer at the university. Both the university and the SIIT worked on it to make sure that our curriculum had all the prerequisites they required for a full 100% transfer. That has happened.
This is our fifth year now of that partnership. In my small community alone, just on the commerce side, we've had six commerce graduates, with about four going through this pathway. Again, they are pushing their business acumen. All these commerce graduates are women. They are all working in our community because we have all these business opportunities.
We're also now working with the College of Medicine. We have another meeting coming up on April 17 to start promoting the sciences. We also have a partnership with an engineering company called Allnorth. We had some discussion with the University of Waterloo and are hopefully looking at another way to start promoting engineering as well—all of these disciplines.
Of course, there's nothing wrong with the trades. That's the other thing we've been doing as well, promoting the trades. When we were building the casino a number of years ago—it was about a $60-million facility—Saskatoon was booming back in those days. There was a lack of trades. A lot of the business communities said we would never be able to get the construction done on time or on budget. Once again, as chair of SIIT, we created a quick skills program, a construction careers program. If the subcontractors needed drywallers, electricians or plumbers, we would have a quick three-week skills program. They would take them on as apprentices. We ended up with over 45,000 first nation man-hours on the project. As well as being ahead of schedule, we were under budget as well.
We are promoting post-secondary education. When our students get there they are being successful.
The other thing that we've seen with the casino is that a lot of our people will start with dealing cards and all that. Then they'll say this isn't what they want to do for the rest of their lives. They will go back to school and get their grade 12. They are getting their post-secondary education. It's really good to see. A lot of mature students are graduating.
There are definitely needs, though, for student housing in the city. We've had that discussion as well, about student housing in Saskatoon, especially for a lot of single mothers. We talked about creating, at least on a pilot project, a 56-unit facility attached to an early learning centre for single mothers who are going to post-secondary school.
Hopefully we will get some traction with that concept with the federal government.
9:30 a.m.
Liberal
9:30 a.m.
Liberal
Mike Bossio Liberal Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON
I had a whole bunch of them, but they're all gone now.
Going through this experience, what advice would you give to other indigenous communities that might be looking at considering a similar type of partnership?
As you've seen it evolve, what would you do differently if you had to do it again?
9:30 a.m.
Whitecap Dakota First Nation
First of all. I don't advise other first nations. I think they have their own autonomy to make their decisions.
The path we went down is a pathway that we chose as a community, through community consultation. We have a minimum of four community meetings every year to talk with our membership.
Even when we started talking about the partnership with Saskatoon Public Schools there were certainly concerns. How does language and culture fit into this? Are they going to recognize our language and culture? Are they going to work with us? Are we going to have some independence as far as selecting who the principal is, coming out to our school?
There were lots of questions from the community in that regard, but it was an open dialogue. Saskatoon Public Schools came to a lot of our meetings in the community with the parents and caregivers. The model we created is driven by our community. It's the direction they gave their leadership. Even when we were moving from pre-K to grade 6 towards pre-K to grade 4 about five or six years ago, that was another discussion we had to have with the parents. That's the direction they wanted to go with integration. As long as the new grade 5 to grade 8 school was going to be inclusive and have our language and culture, they were very open to it. Our partners were very open to it as well.
Communicating, I think, is very important because if the parents and the caregivers aren't on board, the partnership is not going to work. The partners also have to have respect for one another, and they have to trust one another as well. This whole partnership all began in 1994 over a cup of coffee, and today it's an actual alliance agreement. I think it's a great model, but again, I would never tell any of the first nations how to do their business.
9:30 a.m.
Liberal
Mike Bossio Liberal Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON
The reason I asked is that there are some who are considering it, and of course, it's always good to look at the past experiences of other communities, right? I think anybody would want to take a look at that.
9:30 a.m.
Liberal
Mike Bossio Liberal Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON
We're out of time, okay.
Thank you both very much.
9:30 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal MaryAnn Mihychuk
I'm sorry. MP Bossio was very generous.
Now we'll probably wrap up with MP Cathy McLeod.
9:30 a.m.
Conservative
Cathy McLeod Conservative Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC
There are about three lines of inquiry I was hoping to pursue in my five minutes. Two were around comments you made. You indicated that the money available through CMHC is going to be fall by about 20% to 30%. I know that the current government put billions into general revenue from CMHC, but I hadn't heard that they were reducing the available funding. Could you quickly share with me what's happening there?
9:30 a.m.
Whitecap Dakota First Nation
My community was told late last week that the CMHC budget, for Saskatchewan anyway, will be 20% to 30% less, so for the Saskatoon Tribal Council, which we're a part of, it's going to be a major reduction for housing.
The program itself has to expand. For our community, they're saying we're going to get 1.4 houses. What are those 1.4 houses going to do for a community with a waiting list of about 90 members? You have to remember, we have a unique challenge in Whitecap. We have over 600 jobs and another 225 coming. It's human nature to move towards opportunity, so a lot of our members want to move home.
It's no different from any small town where, if there are no opportunities, people move to the urban centres. The same thing happens with first nations, but when you actually have opportunity, people move to where there's opportunity. It's certainly a real concern for us as far as the CMHC 20% to 30% decrease is concerned. We've certainly been trying to get some meetings with them. I hope that I'll soon get a chance to go to Ottawa to have some discussions about how we can work together.
I did meet with our provincial minister, Paul Merriman, who has responsibility for Saskatchewan Housing Corporation. They look at Whitecap's challenge and think it's a good challenge where you actually have employment and you an opportunity to house people and have a job with that house. We're going to try to partner again on one other project with the province. We have one apartment project with them now. We hope to get a second one, but that's in early discussions.
9:35 a.m.
Conservative
Cathy McLeod Conservative Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC
Thank you.
I know that billions went from CMHC into general revenue, and to hear that they're cutting back without an indication there's going to be something replacing it, or some new program, is a concern.
The next thing I thought was very interesting was that you talked about your community's choosing to go only as high as grade 4 because they thought there was value in communities coming together. This is one thing I struggle with. I completely appreciate the mistrust of indigenous communities across this country in the education system, due to an awful history with residential schools, etc. My children, of course, grew up in a small community and went to school side by side....
I thought there was great value in terms of going to the birthday parties and playing sports together and learning each other's culture and language. Although I understood it when a new school was built on reserve, there was also some regret, because I thought some things were lost in terms of being together, playing together and learning together.
Yours is the first community I've heard from that has made the choice that there is some value in going to school together.
9:35 a.m.
Whitecap Dakota First Nation
I think it stems from the long-standing relationship between the City of Saskatoon and Whitecap, going back to the meeting between John Lake and Chief Whitecap and to Chief Whitecap picking a second location for the City of Saskatoon during the Riel resistance. Chief Whitecap was charged with treason, and one of the local citizens from Saskatoon went to testify on his behalf. His last name was Willoughby. He actually spoke Dakota.
You have to remember that there was a pass-and-permit system. At one time, Whitecap was the only indigenous community that used to go Saskatoon on a regular basis when they got their passes, to go and get supplies, of course. They knew a lot of the locals and had good relationships. That was in the days when—for our community, anyway—there were no vehicles. For them to go to get supplies, they would have to go with a team of horses. It was a full day's trek. Some of the local stores had stables and would put them up for the night, and then they'd head back home with all their supplies. There's just this long-standing relationship.
Also, you talked about sports teams. I think that being part of a larger school division and having bigger classroom sizes gives our children the opportunity to be involved with sports. They've been able to be a part of Saskatoon minor hockey. Again, we've been working with the City of Saskatoon. At one time, we weren't part of Saskatoon minor hockey and had to play in rural Saskatchewan, but there was no actual permanent roadway to get to Dundurn, and we had to drive all the way around. Now, we're part of Saskatoon minor hockey.
I think there has been lots of opportunity, and again, this was driven by parents. Some of them actually started driving their children into Saskatoon to the school division, because there was more faith from the parents in the Saskatoon school division and what they were delivering. They had questions about our own school system. Now that Saskatoon Public Schools is actually managing and operating our school system, the confidence is there from all of our parents, because they want to see their children get a quality education.
The other thing is the transition from, say, grade 4 to grade 5. It's a smooth transition now, because they already know that they'll have kids from Chief Whitecap School coming out to visit in grades 3 and 4, so they're already starting those relationships. When they get to grade 5, it's a smooth transition for our children. We also have a liaison office position, with a student councillor who works with the children from Whitecap, not just in the case of grade 5, but with the high school kids, to make sure that in that transition if there are any challenges they're facing, or if they need any tutoring or anything like that, they're prepared to offer that to them so that it's a successful experience. The experience to date has been awesome.
9:40 a.m.
Conservative
Cathy McLeod Conservative Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC
Last, what would be the next steps for you? You didn't rule out there being some value in doing some legislation. What are the next steps? If there were legislation, would that get rid of this problem you have where the bureaucrats didn't see that the language money should follow...? That would be my question.
9:40 a.m.
Whitecap Dakota First Nation
I think the next step is that we will certainly continue to lobby the bureaucracy, but we also probably hope to get a meeting with Minister O'Regan to talk about our partnership and the fact that, hopefully, he will give his bureaucrats direction to recognize our agreement as a regional education authority.
It's actually a regional educational authority “plus”, and that's the language that is meant for the children of Whitecap, because if they're living in the community, that $1,500 a child should follow them regardless of whether they're going to an off-reserve school that has actual language and cultural programming for our children.
That said, another challenge is the urban first nations, the children who are living in the city How about them? When it comes to their language and culture that was taken away by the residential schools, why is there no investment on their behalf? A lot of our families who live off-reserve are not living off-reserve by choice. It's because there's no housing available on their home reserves, so they're living in the urban centres. Yet there are no culture and language dollars following their children. That's another issue that needs to be addressed.
I think our partnership is going to continue to move forward in a positive way. It's worked to date. I don't see our going in a different direction. I don't see my community members telling me, “Chief, let's pull out of this agreement; it doesn't make any sense.” To date, it's made all kinds of sense. Even the purchasing power of the Saskatoon Public Schools division, whether it be for smart boards or other things—the IT supports, educational psychologists—you name it, all the second-level supports are second to none. Then if our children have any learning disabilities or challenges, if we can't deliver it in Whitecap, because of the large school division we can send our children here. For example, we have one child who has cerebral palsy. She has to go to a school here in Saskatoon that has all the services she needs. It's been a good partnership. But again, we're 20 minutes from a large urban centre.
It works for us. We're not saying this is going to work for anybody else, but certainly, it works for our community. The partnership approach, like I said, stems from a long history between the City of Saskatoon and the Whitecap Dakota nation.
