[Witness spoke in Ktunaxa]
[English]
Good morning, everyone. Thank you for providing me an opportunity to share some thoughts on the bill with you. I'd like to start off by acknowledging the unceded territory of the Algonquin peoples and thanking them for allowing us to do this important work.
I'm a member of the political executive with the First Nations Summit in British Columbia. We represent those first nations involved in and supportive of treaty negotiations with Canada and British Columbia. I'm also a member of the First Nations Leadership Council, which is a political collaboration among the First Nations Summit, the Union of BC Indian Chiefs, and the BC Assembly of First Nations.
The bill before you for study is one of the most single important pieces of legislation for first nations people in a generation.
For the 204 first nations communities and tribal councils in British Columbia, and for our nations that are actively working to put in place our child and family laws and policies within our systems of government, this legislation is long overdue.
We have been working with Canada and British Columbia to prepare for implementation of first nations jurisdiction. We confirmed in 2015 that we would pursue legislative, policy and practice reform to achieve this objective. We know that the task of reform is daunting, but it is one of the most important tasks we will have.
Bill C-92 must be understood within the context of the status quo for first nations children. The reality is that there are approximately 5,000 first nations children in care in British Columbia and approximately 40,000 in Canada. This is more children than there were in the residential schools at the height of their operations.
We collectively face a humanitarian and national human rights crisis. I acknowledge the work of former minister Jane Philpott, who called a national emergency meeting in January 2018 to find a means to address this national crisis in partnership with first nations and address the issue around first nations children, family and communities.
We see Bill C-92 as a significant and important first federal step in the legislative reform necessary to support first nations in exercising their jurisdiction over child welfare. While there are opportunities to strengthen Bill C-92, the bill has many positive features.
First nations in B.C. want to take this next step of work, and Bill C-92 provides the necessary support for us to do so and to give proper footing to this work for the implementation stages. It will finally enable Canada to work with first nations in a meaningful way, based on the recognition and respect of our rights, to transform child welfare and restore indigenous systems and approaches to supporting children and families.
There are at least six major aspects of this bill that will build upon our work and take it to that next level: one, priority for prevention approaches; two, provisions on substantive equality; three, best interests of the child provisions; four, priority for placement of children with family and community; five, principles for service delivery; and, six, process rights. Yet, there will be a critical need to make sure that these concepts work on the ground, and that implementation of the legislation is effective in shifting away from the overrepresentation of first nations children in child welfare systems and toward prevention and the reunification of families.
Having said that, I would like to now focus on a number of key recommendations that we believe would strengthen the bill.
We recommend that Bill C-92 include a role for an independent children's advocate or commissioner at the federal level to support the implementation of the concepts and the rights in Bill C-92, and to monitor implementation and assist children, youth and families in navigating the systems that will be impacted by this law.
Second, we understand that there is a review period of five years to evaluate the effectiveness of the bill. We believe this time frame may be too long for the first such review. As such, we believe that the bill should be reviewed after three years and should make sure the special first review covers issues raised by many before this committee and in public comment on the bill, including the addressing of funding; jurisdiction; better outcomes for children and youth; reunification of families; and respect for women and girls, and elimination of discrimination on the basis of gender.
We'd also like to add a reference to the United Nations declaration in the purpose. I urge you to add a specific reference to the United Nations declaration in the purpose section of Bill C-92, as was done in Bill C-91 regarding indigenous languages, so that the United Nations declaration can form and provide necessary context for this work at all levels. We are proposing an amendment to consider a provision (c) to state: to implement the United Nations declaration as a progressive framework for the resolution of human rights issues impacting children, youth and families.
Next we'd like to address the issue of funding. We believe that we need to have statutory funding issues addressed in the bill as well. We're not sure about the mandate of the committee to recommend changes in that regard, but I do emphasize that funding is critically important to reform child welfare and to support first nations child and family services.
Next, in relation to the “stronger ties” rule, we draw your attention to the fact that some of the provisions of the bill may cause confusion with regard to our first nations laws and practices.
The provisions on stronger ties in clause 24 provide that when a conflict between two nations' rules appears to present a conflict over which first nations system applies to the decision for a specific child or family, the test in the bill is that the governing law will be that of the “community” with “stronger ties”. This kind of rule may be valuable, but it needs to be qualified to permit the first nations laws to sort out how conflicts will be handled as well. Our inter-tribal systems have worked this out for generations and the either-or nature of this may undermine some of our laws and practices.
For this reason, I believe there should be a section added to clause 24 which provides that “the rules for resolving conflicts between laws may also be resolved through agreements between Indigenous governing bodies or according to Indigenous laws applicable to children and families”.
I thank you for the opportunity to appear and provide feedback on this important and momentous bill, and I urge you to work with resolve to complete this task as a priority and to see this bill through to completion. It is long overdue and most urgently needed.
Thank you.