Evidence of meeting #148 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 families.
A video is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Dan Vandal Liberal Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB
I also appreciate the fact that you mentioned that this is the beginning process. The engagement needs to continue. From our perspective, we're committed to that co-development process as this unfolds.
Billie Schibler, welcome. Obviously, you've read this bill.
Chief Executive Officer, Metis Child & Family Services Authority
Correct.
Liberal
Dan Vandal Liberal Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB
The whole crux of the bill is to put more focus on prevention and less on the removal of children. Is it possible to redirect dollars that are being used for the removal of children toward prevention, without compromising that role of child protection and making sure kids are not abused?
Chief Executive Officer, Metis Child & Family Services Authority
I think that it's critical. Thank you very much for that question.
As my colleague, Greg Besant, has noted, we currently have other services within and attached to our child welfare system that we aren't mandated to provide any other means of support to our children without having to utilize those services. Those services are taking a great portion of our finances. This is where we're supporting a lot of our group two resources that provide foster care to our children that are not culturally appropriate.
With all the dollars that are being eaten up in those ways and in the separation of children and their parents, diverting dollars back and doing some of the innovative things.... We're stealing from Peter to pay Paul, is what it basically comes down to, in order to do some very creative things to keep families together. That's where everything needs to move. Everything needs to move toward that.
Liberal
Dan Vandal Liberal Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB
Okay, thank you.
Greg, you mentioned a couple of programs that Métis Child, Family and Community Services runs that really are not.... Could you explain more on the dilemma you're in?
Executive Director, Metis Child, Family and Community Services
Yes. We run the kinship care program, which involves supporting our related caregivers. We have a very large kinship care program. We're very proud of it. We receive no funding from the province to support those homes. Third party providers are funded to the point of one social worker for every eight beds to support their foster homes, and yet we receive zero child care workers. Kinship care is to make sure that children are in a related caregiver home, that related caregiver is supported and problems that result are cleared up.
Our Métis connect program is our family conferencing program. We have two family conference facilitators who help arrange a family conference for any child who is in care or when children are at risk of coming into care. We help families find alternative solutions to children coming into care. Those families generally do find other methods of support for that. Once again, that's an unfunded program.
Liberal
Dan Vandal Liberal Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB
Sure.
I have another question for Billie. You made the comment that the Province of Manitoba did devolve child and family services, I think in the early turn of the century. Yet you say they've never fully devolved. The whole point of that devolution was to better serve children, yet child welfare removals are at an all-time high. Can you talk about the reason for that?
Chief Executive Officer, Metis Child & Family Services Authority
Thank you.
Let's just go back to what Greg was saying. Right now, we spend about $10 million annually on group two resources and other services that are not culturally appropriate and that are not part of supporting families in their healing journey and keeping children and families together. We were brought to the table 15 years ago through devolution as an active partner in the planning, but we haven't been given the opportunity to determine how those dollars can be used to help our families with their healing and to keep them together.
Executive Director, Metis Child, Family and Community Services
If I may add, with the ancillary parts of the system, such as justice, we're still bringing families before European-based court processes rather than a reconciliation-type process. Judges are the ones who make decisions to have children stay in care.
Chief Executive Officer, Metis Child & Family Services Authority
That's with legislation that confines the amount of time that you can work to help a family to heal. If you run out of time, the child is subject to a permanent order.
Conservative
Conservative
Arnold Viersen Conservative Peace River—Westlock, AB
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you to our witnesses for being here today.
Billie, you've talked a little about fragmented family units. You seemed to insinuate that that was an issue. Could you expand on that a little?
Chief Executive Officer, Metis Child & Family Services Authority
What we are referring to is basically what Mr. Besant was speaking about, and that was about looking at the difficulty that we have as a system when our funding hasn't been allotted to us to support families. When you have a generation....
Let's go back even as far as residential schools. If you go back that far, you see the separation of children from their families. Who do we learn our parenting skills from? We learn them from our parents. Who do we see as the centre of our universe and our purpose for being? Our children.
When you remove the children from the family, who do the children learn from? Then, what does that mean when they become parents? That is our fragment.
Conservative
Arnold Viersen Conservative Peace River—Westlock, AB
How would we address that particular issue in this bill? Would you say that it would be a preamble thing or would that be in the preventive care part?
Chief Executive Officer, Metis Child & Family Services Authority
In my mind, that definitely has to be embedded right in the legislation where we look at how this is reflected as part of truth and reconciliation. How is this reflected, as I had indicated in my presentation, around the healing journey? If there are families that are on their healing journey, and we try to keep them together, as we have with our agency program, they can still be supported together in many of those instances without a fragmentation of the family.
That has to be provided through funding, and it has to be clear in the legislation that everything is focused on prevention and support rather than the other way around.
Conservative
Arnold Viersen Conservative Peace River—Westlock, AB
Clause 14 of the bill talks about priority and preventive care, and it's a fairly short piece. Would you recommend that there be help to parents, essentially, at that point?
Chief Executive Officer, Metis Child & Family Services Authority
Absolutely. When we look at the bill, we look at this as being the starting point of any of the changes in legislation because, as the president of the Métis National Council indicated, there has to be ongoing collaboration around the wording and how this affects all our indigenous people. We don't need legislation given to us again. We need to be part of the development of that legislation, and it needs to reflect our realities.
Conservative
Arnold Viersen Conservative Peace River—Westlock, AB
Mr. Chartier, one of the things that's going to be a little interesting with this legislation is how we address first nations versus Métis distinctions. We've talked about it with a number of other folks as well. Given the fine line between Métis and first nations, is this bill going to clear up jurisdictional issues or will it exacerbate them?
President, Métis National Council
My view is that this bill is based on the right of self-determination based on section 35, based on the inherent right of self-government. For the Métis nation, as I stated earlier, it's going to be simple. We know who our citizens are. We have our own registries. We are registering our own people.
For us to move forward, we'll simply be dealing with the citizens of the Métis nation as our registration process continues. I can't speak on behalf of first nations as to how they are going to approach their forms of government and how they're going to deal with child and family services.
For the Métis nation, we have a distinct geographic homeland. Some of our citizens live outside the homeland. We will have to look at ways and means of serving those people who have moved to other parts of Canada, but it won't be insurmountable. For us, it will be relatively easy to do.
Conservative
Arnold Viersen Conservative Peace River—Westlock, AB
There's a question that comes in here, then. For people who are registered as your members, that's simple, but what happens when in the real world one of your members marries a first nation status person and they have a child? Where does the claim go with that child?
President, Métis National Council
First of all, we don't have members. We have citizens of the Métis nation who are represented by their governments. I'm the head of the national government in the same way that you have a prime minister. Our government has the same legitimacy under Canada's Constitution that the federal and provincial governments do. We're one of three orders of government in this country, and we will be dealing with our citizens as such.
We leave it to the individual to make a choice. If they want to identify with the first nation people, then they're free to do that. If they want to retain their citizenship.... Unfortunately, our good friend Georgina Jolibois is out of the room. She is quite familiar with this whole aspect of things. For example, she comes from the Métis village of La Loche, which is side by side with a first nation, the Clearwater River Dene Nation.
In fact, my son is the chief of the Clearwater River Dene Nation through his mom, who is a status treaty Dene woman, so all my grandchildren and great-grandchildren are status Indians of the Dene people. If one of them decided that they wanted to leave their Indian status and join the Métis community, they would be free to do that, because they will have historic Métis nation ancestry. Again, it's a matter of choice.
Conservative
Arnold Viersen Conservative Peace River—Westlock, AB
Yes. I don't have an issue with that. It's just that a lot of times a child who is in care might be three months old. It's fairly difficult for that particular person to identify which nation they want to belong to.
President, Métis National Council
Yes, I agree with that. We'll have to put in place measures to ensure that there are guardians or someone in charge of that child who will preserve that child's right to make a determination when that child reaches the ability to make that determination.
Conservative
