Good afternoon.
[Witness spoke in Ojibwe]
[English]
I am from Alderville First Nation, and my name is Amber Crowe. I am the Executive Director of Dnaagdawenmag Binnoojiiyag Child and Family Services, which is the newest mandated agency in Ontario, through the Ontario ministry. We serve eight first nations.
You have our written submissions. I will highlight four key points or concerns from our submissions as the practitioners or deliverers of the services to be provided under the legislation.
As Theresa just mentioned, we receive our mandate from our first nation leadership and other indigenous communities for those agencies that serve a broader population base. As such, we will follow the political decisions and will of the first nations that belong to our agencies, but we also receive a mandate through the provincial legislation.
Because we follow our first nations leadership, we have the potential under this bill to be subject to multiple laws and jurisdictions. We serve multiple first nations who they will all have their own paths and priorities with regard to how to deliver services under this act. If that's the case, we need to ensure that the risks are mitigated in delivering services under possibly multiple pieces of first nation legislation.
We also want to raise the issue of the definition being used in this act. It is the same definition of indigenous aboriginal peoples as in the Constitution. That definition includes only Indians, Métis and Inuit. For many of our agencies, this does not reflect our current service populations. We serve more than just those who are eligible under the Indian Act as Indians. We also find that using that definition would go against the charter itself. It would require us to discriminate against our children, on the basis of status, and perhaps on the basis of where they live.
The principles put forward in this legislation include cultural continuity, best interests and substantive equality. These principles would not be the basis of the bill, if this definition of indigenous peoples is used.
A further issue we want to raise is needs-based funding. We must not have a formulaic way of funding indigenous child welfare. It must not incentivize the taking of indigenous children into care. We need it to be needs-based and flexible. It needs to be able to fund our service models, which are holistic and prevention-based. Finally, it needs to consider remoteness, the complexity of needs and the availability of resources in the area where services are being provided.
The final point we want to bring attention to in our oral submissions is the experience of practitioners delivering services under imposed standards and regulations defined and provided for us, rather than through our indigenous communities from the ground up—from the grassroots. We would be concerned that the provisions of this law would impact our ability to provide services the way our first nations direct us to. That is not to say that we disagree with anything in the bill with regard to these things, but it's not Canada's place to provide them. It's the place of the indigenous communities to provide them.
Thank you.