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.
Conservative
Kevin Waugh Conservative Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK
You've helped the Yukon first nations. Just take their lens into this bill. You helped them when you were up there for a while.
Conservative
Kevin Waugh Conservative Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK
How do you think they would react to this bill today?
Prof. Peter Hogg
Well, I was thinking about that myself, because in the course of negotiating—and of course I wasn't one of the negotiators, but I was one of the helpers—I don't recall any discussion of these topics in the negotiations. The land claims agreement is a book-sized document. It's a very substantial piece. It covers a lot of stuff—resources and land—but it didn't move into this area at all. Maybe some of the negotiators did think about it, but if they did, they didn't say anything about it.
Conservative
Kevin Waugh Conservative Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK
Thank you for your time.
I'm going to move over to Chief Mark Arcand.
Your testimony has been completely different from what we have heard from indigenous groups in my province, especially groups like the FSIN. Here today, we've heard from the Saskatchewan Aboriginal Women's Circle Corporation. Let's start there.
There have been countless articles on this in the papers in my province, all not supporting the provincial government, and yet today you come out and reverse what has been said in both the Leader-Post and the StarPhoenix and in other papers, and in what we heard here this morning. Maybe you could comment on that.
Tribal Chief, Saskatoon Tribal Council
First of all, thank you for the question. Thank you for raising it, because at the end of the day, this is why our chiefs of the Saskatoon Tribal Council don't allow anybody to speak on their behalf, because they are not the rights holders of the children of those communities.
The rights holders are the nation-to-nation agreement holders, who are the chiefs. In their support, in regard to our regional office, which is FSIN, they don't have the ability to sign agreements on behalf of my nation. I don't have the ability to sign, and I am the tribal chief of those nations. I bring it to them, and they decide if they want to sign agreements with the provincial government.
I said earlier in my testimony that Premier Scott Moe called our agreement a historic agreement, because never in our province have we ever had a signing like we did for reconciliation for child welfare agreements. We're actually partners. They will not dictate to us; we will not dictate to them. We will work together for what's best for the children.
A lot of other first nations and communities, and I can't speak on their behalf, but if they choose not to work with the government, children might fall through the cracks. I guarantee that our children are not going to fall through the cracks. We are going to put every measure in place to make sure those children's safety is first and primary.
We're proud of the fact that we built that relationship. As I said earlier, In June 2016 we didn't have anything, we had no funding for our kids. The province took our agency away. We're okay with that. But we built it back up to hopefully create a model for the rest of Canada to follow, to say that we have to work with everybody in the room, provincial and federal governments, to make sure that we can do this together.
I'm very proud to say, and I'll say it again, publicly, that former minister Jane Philpott and current Minister O'Regan are supporting this bill. In our province, Minister Paul Merriman and Premier Scott Moe have worked with the Saskatoon Tribal Council and our chiefs to make sure that this is done properly.
If other organizations are coming here and stating that they don't have a good working relationship with our province, that's on them. I think, for us, we can lead the way by example, by making sure we're making a difference for different children.
Conservative
Kevin Waugh Conservative Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK
I just want to go to the witness on video conference.
Michelle, you mentioned family healing in your address. How would you amend the bill to add more focus on family healing?
Deputy Minister, Health and Social Development, Nunatsiavut Government
I think I would amend it so that there is an element of preventing children from coming into care, as opposed to just dealing with children once they enter the child welfare system as children in care. I can tell you very simply, the program that we have in place costs about $300,000 a year. That's not a huge amount of money when we look at how placing one child in a therapeutic foster home is almost equivalent to that. We've had a large number of children return home. We've been able to find kinship care arrangements. We've been able to do a whole lot of things with that small amount of money.
I think it provides better care for children. It keeps them in their indigenous communities. It promotes all of the values in the act. Besides that, it's cost effective.
NDP
Georgina Jolibois NDP Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK
Thank you. I want to ask the three leaders a question. Bill C-92 is framework legislation. Funding is not in the legislation. We have heard from many witnesses that although a dollar amount does not make sense in the legislation, there should be clear principles of funding in the legislation.
Can you share your thoughts on what that may look like? The three of you could respond, if you can.
Tribal Chief, Saskatoon Tribal Council
It's a great question. I look at this and say that it should be statutory funding for all first nations. Now, people can take into context what that means, but for me we have a lot of ability. Again I'll say that at the Saskatoon Tribal Council we're looking at repatriating 300 kids to our communities. There's a need to look at housing immediately because if we bring kids back to families, that could turn into overcrowding. How do we deal with that? Well, both governments, provincially and federally, have to really support that change in regard to bringing children home if this is what the bill is meant to do.
As part of the framework, I agree that anybody can put a dollar amount in there, but it's going to be amended to the needs of each community as to what they're doing and how they're doing things. Communities have different paces and some are ahead and some are behind. I feel that at the Saskatoon Tribal Council we're very far ahead with our partnership with the province. I said earlier we've stopped three kids from being adopted and seven are being repatriated back home to that community. There is going to be these funding asks that are not part of the bill that are going to have to meet the needs of these kids to stay in their community.
Statutory funding for me is very key. There might be some differences about what that looks like, but I think we all have to address those needs and put the resources where they're required to make that difference. My goal is to shut down child welfare for the Saskatoon Tribal Council. I don't want any children in care. They shouldn't be in care. How do we do that? We do that by preventing and putting in some policies and procedures to make sure those children and those families get every help they need to make a difference in that child's life.
Hereditary Chief, Office of the Wet'suwet'en
When we look at that, to me, we look at it holistically. We look at the education, as she mentioned, also housing, infrastructure, all that as a whole. Right now as it is there are a lot of cutbacks in our community with the funding that comes in from the federal government. I think that when we look at this child welfare, we see that it affects education and housing. We still have a long list of people waiting for their houses to be built. Right now they're getting funding from the banks to build houses. With education they're getting stricter. More or less all of our kids who graduate are on a waiting list because of the cutbacks. When we talk about our children, we're talking about them all the way to adulthood. Language and culture are important—grounding them. Those are the areas that we need to look at in terms of healing and reconnecting them to who we are as Wet'suwet'en and Gitksan. That's my take on the funding; it's holistically.
Hagwilget Village First Nation, Office of the Wet'suwet'en
It makes me wonder how our ancestors survived for over 15,000 years before the Indian Act came about. A lot of changes have happened in just my lifetime. There have been so many changes. I think a lot of the sharing that used to go on doesn't happen anymore, because of the changes that have been going on in the past 150 years.
With funding, I feel that one of the things we do is.... As I mentioned before, in the case of the grandfather who is raising his two orphaned grandchildren, I think help can be provided, if he doesn't have an extended family who can go in and help. We can at least provide support for the children.
Not only that, it's amazing to me that off-reserve caregivers get three times the amount of funding for each child. How did that come about? How was that amount determined to be the proper amount? There are the same needs on reserve as there are off reserve. You still have to provide all those different things, like a roof over their heads, clothing and food. It makes me wonder how they even existed without these. There used to be a lot of sharing among the people. As you know, that is why there were a lot of people who settled in this country. Our people were so generous in sharing our country.
At one time, we had plenty of wildlife. A lot of our resources have been depleted. For example, in my village, in our canyon, where the people used to come for their salmon, there was plenty, but the Department of Fisheries and Oceans blew up the rock in our river and destroyed the fishery, so that we would have to try to get our salmon elsewhere. Then, of course, the Department of Fisheries had their agents following us around, ready to shoot us, or whatever, if we'd get salmon from another area.
The habitat of the wildlife has also been totally disrupted by all of the resources being ripped off the land. They have done away with the habitat of the animals. This is why you see animals coming closer to town. In Vancouver, the bears are even coming into the houses. You can see why, because you can see the houses going further up that mountain. Who sold them that mountain? It makes me wonder.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal MaryAnn Mihychuk
Thank you very much for your comments. That was very interesting.
We need to wrap up, because there's been a request to go in camera for a few minutes, but maybe we can give you a few minutes, MP Bossio.
Liberal
Mike Bossio Liberal Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON
I just have one quick question for Professor Hogg.
Liberal
Mike Bossio Liberal Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON
In the recent NIL/TU,O case, the Supreme Court ruled on a labour relations dispute within an indigenous child welfare agency. In the case of Natural Parents, the court states that Parliament can legislate on provincial jurisdictions related to indigenous people, as long as the law is limited to indigenous people. Would you like to comment on that, and on how relevant this case is to Bill C-92?
Liberal
Mike Bossio Liberal Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON
The Supreme Court ruled that Parliament can legislate on provincial jurisdiction related to indigenous people, as long as the law is limited to indigenous peoples. That was in the NIL/TU,O case, and another related case. How relevant would you say that case is to Bill C-92, from a jurisdictional standpoint?
