Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on May 9th, 2019

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I would first like to take this opportunity to thank Jeffry Nilles for that amazing testimony.

Thank you for bringing that here. It really gives us a foundation of the work that we're about to do, so thank you for that. I really respect that hard work.

My question always come back to money. I've lived on reserve. I've been a foster parent on reserve so that we could keep our children at home. I know how hard that can be, and I know the limitations and the lack of funding. I've lived it all.

One of the things I am proposing is that in the actual legislation, we have principles of funding. We know that tying in a dollar amount does not make sense in this legislation, but what does make sense are principles. And, of course, my support for Cindy Blackstock and the Human Rights Tribunal decision and the principles within that, which I believe should be directly in this legislation.

I would like to start with Grand Chief Ed John and ask your thoughts on that, and hopefully get to a few members before we have to move on.

[Grand Chief Edward John]

Thank you very much, Rachel. I really appreciate it, and I, too, want to acknowledge my brother, Jeffry, here and the tremendously difficult story that he had to talk to us about. I'm a residential school survivor as well, so I really feel that connection to the issue that you raised.

On the question of funding and the level of funding, it is one significant issue that I dealt with in my report to the province. I see in the preamble the wording in there, but I think it has to be equitable funding, as well. The foster parents over here are being paid this amount, and grandma over here is being paid substantially less. In the report I presented, I recommended that there needs to be equity.

In fact, this April 1, the Province of British Columbia has now levelled the playing field so that, if a child was removed from this foster parent over here to grandma, say for example, there's equity in funding, and that's an operating principle. The Yukon has operated in that regard, I think, since close to or maybe just over a year. I think it's worth looking at that example in answer to the question that you raised.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Bobby, would you like to add anything?

[Bobby Narcisse]

With respect to Nishnawbe Aski Nation, we've been diligently working with ISC as well developing what's called a remoteness quotient through the work of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal that looks at the actual costs of remoteness.

As you know, in the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, we represent 49 communities. Thirty-four of them are fly-in, so there are extreme challenges for our children, youth and families to access services. Those are some of the areas that we've advocated for and worked on with ISC with respect to the Human Rights Tribunal to look at access to services, the time it takes our children to access many of those services that are enjoyed by other Canadians. We want it to be equitable as well. We're still working with Indigenous Services Canada through the tribunal process to really look at that and give empirical evidence of needs-based funding for our child and family service programs. I think that's a step in the right direction to really look at some of the funding options.

In terms of implementation, resources need to be attached to an implementation plan to look at those things asserting our jurisdiction, looking at our unique position of remoteness and taking that into consideration. There needs to be a level of implementation and resources attached as well when we're moving ahead to determining the best pathway to asserting our inherent jurisdiction over child and family services.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Thank you so much. We've run out of time in this panel. We wish we could stay longer. Your words were very meaningful. They will be in the public record for all Canadians to review and gain wisdom from.

On behalf of all committee members, meegwetch. We wish you safe travels home.

We'll suspend for a couple of minutes, and we have four panellists in our next hour.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

I'm going to invite our panellists to the front, please, so that we can get started.

I know that we want to have time with the previous panellists. We also want to hear from the ones who have come a long distance to speak to our committee and those on video conference.

Welcome.

We are here at the Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs. Our panellists are David Chartrand, President of the Manitoba Métis Federation; Tischa Mason, Saskatchewan First Nations Family and Community Institute; Marlene Bugler, Kanaweyimik Child and Family Services; and Katherine Whitecloud as an individual.

We recognize that we're on unceded territory. Because we have a special guest from my hometown, I want to recognize that I come from the homeland of the Métis people and Treaty No. 1 territory, so there's a special welcome for you.

It's nice to see you, Katherine, once again. We appreciate it.

We'll start with the Manitoba Métis Federation.

[David Chartrand, President, Manitoba Metis Federation]

Thank you very much. I've given you a document to keep on file. I want to apologize to Quebec and all French-speaking people that I didn't have it translated in time. I do sincerely apologize for that. I should have had it done, but somebody in my office didn't follow up as indicated.

Honourable Chair MaryAnn Mihychuk and members of the standing committee, good morning. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to present my perspective on Bill C-92, an act respecting first nations, Inuit and Métis children, youth and families.

Today I speak to you as a leader of the Métis nation, but I also want to speak to you as a parent and a grandparent. I want to speak to you as someone who has fought for decades for the children of my nation as they were ripped from their mothers, fathers, aunties, uncles, their communities and their nation. For too long and despite our best efforts, the status quo for our children has been removal, foster care placements and adoption. Our nation has been depeopled one child at a time, through the sixties scoop, the residential school, the day school and our child welfare system.

Last year, in January 2018, I spoke at an emergency meeting on indigenous child and family services and addressed what was referred to at the time by Minister Philpott as a humanitarian crisis and a human rights crisis. This year I watched as the Manitoba government cut from the already underfunded budget for Métis child welfare. Right now in Manitoba, the children in the Métis nation are worth, in the funding arrangement, $1.39 a day. That's the only additional money we're getting. This is less than a Tim Hortons coffee.

Despite the current reality, at least in the province, there have been some positive changes. That has been through our own work and our own development. After the sixties scoop, when thousands of our children were taken, the Métis federation in 1982 developed its own plan through all kinds of fundraising events. We raised our own money to find our children and bring them home. We were fortunate to find close to 100 of them, I think, but many we will probably never find. We are still finding them today. We're still connecting with them and trying to reconnect them with their family. The stories you hear....

I'll just set this aside for a moment and speak to you as a leader. For those of you who may never have been to any of these meetings, I would encourage you to try to go to some of them. As a committee member, you especially have the power to make a difference in this country through legislation, through actions and through voting. I've been in politics close to 40 years now. I've won seven elections as president, and I've been president for 22 years. There are 400,000 Métis people in western Canada. I've chaired many a meeting in my time, not only in Canada but internationally. Throughout this time, I've had the toughest time in my life as a chair to oversee the discussions involving sixties scoop survivors. I don't know how many times I've cried on that podium, with them, hearing their stories of sexual and physical abuse—just abuse; animals were treated better than they were. In fact, Minister Philpott and I sat at a meeting and listened to the young people speak. They were child welfare survivors, and we heard their stories. Philpott and I cried along with the rest of them and promised them that we would fight and continue to fight for change, that change one day would come, that it would never happen again, and that this can't happen again.

I'm sad to say, however, that it's still happening because of the way the system is designed right now in Manitoba, even though we have a mandated child welfare system. We're the only Métis nation government in the prairies that has it. We got it through several inquiries, for which people had to die, and then the recommendations came from there. Now we're at a stage where we see a bill that will give us an opportunity to ensure that the key provisions that we speak of and fight for will be protected. These are culture and identity, ensuring that the family is the number one priority, and ensuring that the child stays within the community. We will have the federal protection that we don't have as the Métis nation. We will have something that ensures us that we will not, in fact, have to worry that our children will ripped away or taken out of their homes and placed in foster homes with those who aren't our people and don't protect our culture.

In fact, we lost one—no disrespect to the Filipino family—to a Filipino foster parent. The court ruled that the child was there too long. I think it was 18 months.

The child was young enough not to fully understand who his parents were. To take them from the Filipino family would have had a devastating effect on his mind. They kept him there and we lost him. We went to court and we lost based on a court decision. We can never let that happen again. I'm proud of the Jewish people, for example, who would never let that happen.. We have a Jewish Child and Family Service in Manitoba, and I applaud them for having the strength and prosperity to ensure that this does not happen to their children. But why does it happen to ours, and why do we let it happen? It can't happen anymore—this is the new millennium. This is not the 1800s, or the late 1900s. It's the time of change, and change is here.

This bill is not the perfect bill. We all know that. I heard you speak here. I heard you state again that money should be set aside. If there's anybody who should be worried about money, it should be the Métis. We don't have a system in Canada right now. The first nations offer services at different jurisdictions they're working in. In fact, two grand chiefs in Manitoba, SCO and MKO, work together with me. We're the only three that have mandated child welfare agencies in Manitoba under the auspices of the governance. Clearly, under leadership counsel we've been fighting with government trying to protect our children.

We just had meetings, the grand chiefs and I, and we're desperately moving forward on our plan to change the direction the Province of Manitoba is going in. We're left at the mercy of the province and at the whim of changes in elections. You all know what happens in elections, you guys. All of you are politicians and somehow have been involved in politics. New leaders and new ideologies come in. In my province right now, the number one issue is cutting and slaying the deficit. Everything else is secondary. With that comes cuts, and cuts came to the child welfare system. Like I said, $1.39 day is all our children will get for the next three years.

How can we change that? We're taking a system in Manitoba that used to be based on grabbing and taking possession of the child. That was the system and that's how you got funded. Now everybody is talking about prevention, including the federal government. How do you shift an entire system that was there for grab-and-take and move it to prevention, where it should have been several decades ago? Now we want to change to prevention and that's the right approach, the direct approach. Keep the child in the family, in the community. The opportunity is going to be there in this bill. I heard Cathy talk about certain things, and I know there are jurisdictional issues that come into play, but common sense should prevail. We've always had our challenges as governments, but I'm sure that if we sit together with open minds we'll come to a solution. The provinces will either opt into that solution or opt out of it.

Right now, I know the provinces don't want to pay the bill. They want the federal government to pay the bill. That's an issue we'll have to figure a balance on. When it comes to resources, I understand that there are issues around where the Métis will fit into all of this, but we trust that if we have this bill the funding will come later. We'll negotiate it. We don't know exactly what our goal or our plan will be, or how far we're going to go with it regarding prevention and expenditures. I understand there was a question posed to my president when he was here. He doesn't deliver child welfare, because he's the national president. I deliver it. There's a question of how you get notice to the community, the Métis. You have reserves, and you have a band council. We too have our political structures, and they've been around since 1967. I have one of the strongest governments in the homeland. Our system is designed to be the most democratic in the country—it ensures that we're participating. We have local leadership right across all of our villages in our urban centres, and we have offices right across the province.

There's no issue of how to get hold of the Métis and advise the people. We have one of the most robust ways of getting our people interacted and involved. That shouldn't even be a question around this table, because the system has been here for a while and it's working well.

Madam Chair, I can say to you that the Métis government in Manitoba, as well as the Métis nation, supports Bill C-92 strongly. We will stand with it and hopefully convince you...I heard you say that all of you support it. You said that. But there are some exceptions, some areas of caution. It is not the perfect bill. It's not pan-aboriginal. I'm hearing people say it's independent, and every nation has the right to choose. Everybody has the right to opt in or opt out. The options are there. From our perspective, we will support it because we know it's going to make changes that are going to save our families, save our children.

Hopefully, in the next decade or so, we'll all be proud to see that we were all involved in a massive change that took place in this country for the Métis nation, and we'll see that change actually come to where we will be able to say, “Look at the money we're saving today and at the costs that have gone down. The families are stronger because we made a decision to support Bill C-92.” You'll get that support from the Métis nation.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Thank you so much.

We're going now to Saskatchewan on the video conference. We have two presenters.

Is it your intention to do 10 minutes each?

[Tischa Mason, Executive Director, Saskatchewan First Nations Family and Community Institute]

It's 10 minutes in total.

We would like to thank you for the opportunity to present today on our support for Bill C-92 as it relates to first nations children, youth and families.

My name is Tischa Mason, and I am the Executive Director for the Saskatchewan First Nations Family and Community Institute. With me is Marlene Bugler, the Executive Director of Kanaweyimik Child and Family Services. She's also one of our board members at the institute. We're presenting from Treaty No. 6 territory and the homeland of the Métis here in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

Here's a little background. The institute was established in 2007 as a non-profit organization. We were established at the request of the First Nations Child and Family Services executive director, who identified the need for an organization to provide support and training that meet first nations needs and are culturally appropriate. We're non-political.

The mission of the institute is to help build capacity for organizations that provide services to children, youth and families based on first nations values. We do this through research, the development of policies and standards of practice, the development of curriculum and the delivery of training. We also provide on-site support to first nations child and family service workers on their risk assessment tools and child protection and prevention.

We did a first nations community engagement research report to understand the priorities for child welfare reform in Saskatchewan. We provided a handout that cross-referenced Bill C-92 with the institute's “Voices for Reform” research report. Bill C-92 has addressed and aligned to many of the areas that Saskatchewan first nations have identified as needing reform, but we would also like to recognize that some areas need to be further addressed and strengthened in Bill C-92.

Proposed paragraph 16(1)(e) should be expanded to read “with any other adult that is committed to maintaining child' connection to the child culture and community”.

Also, the fourth “whereas” clause on page 1 excludes males and boys.

As well, proposed paragraph 9(3)(e) can be strengthened with a reference to Jordan's principle to address gaps in services due to jurisdictional disputes.

The legislation does not commit the government to fund services. It's referenced in the last “whereas” clause on page 2, but is not included in the previous “whereas” clause that states the government “is committed...to cooperation and partnership...achieving reconciliation” and “engaging...Indigenous peoples”. We hope that government can commit to funding agencies based on need.

Our final point is that more emphasis is needed on collaborative and strategic partnership support to develop interrelated infrastructure and systems that impact or are currently impacting child welfare. An example of that would be family courts. Success is based on our ability to create and maintain relationships and on working together.

I'd like to hand it off to Marlene to further explain this from a technical perspective and present to you.

[Marlene Bugler, Executive Director, Kanaweyimik Child and Family Services]

Thank you.

Good morning.

Thank you for the opportunity to address the standing committee as they consider Bill C-92. I'm going to speak from a technician's perspective as the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations will speak from the political perspective.

I have a master's in business administration with 35 years of experience in human services and 25 years in child welfare. I've worked in first nations child welfare agencies, as well as social services child welfare in Saskatchewan. I've seen children come into care as a result of neglect caused by addictions. Parents are susceptible to addictions as they mask the pain from intergenerational trauma. We have learned that parents need culturally appropriate trauma recovery programs to break the cycles of addictions in dysfunctional families. Kanaweyimik Child and Family Services has stabilized the number of children ending up in care due to culturally appropriate, early intervention services and intensive supports provided to children and families.

We service five first nations communities and we average 50 to 60 children in care at any given time; 85% of these children are either long-term wards or person of sufficient interest orders, meaning they're in care until they're 18 years of age. The remaining 15% are new apprehensions, but we've seen that they come in and out of care in a very short time frame. Too many indigenous children are in care. Many extenuating factors cause these numbers to rise. Many of our indigenous families are suffering from decades of unresolved traumas they've experienced, and this is affecting their ability to be effective parents. Removal from parental homes is very traumatic for children. We can see this will impact the children's lives as they grow up to be parents themselves. These children always end up returning to their families when they age out of care, regardless of the history of neglect.

It's important that we consider ways to keep families together and to work towards reunification in a timely manner with culturally appropriate supports. I am in support of Bill C-92 as it will enable first nations child and family service agencies to expand culturally appropriate services to children and families living off reserve, but we must be careful in the transition of responsibilities to ensure that no child falls between jurisdictions [Technical difficulty—Editor] lead to the readiness of Saskatchewan first nations child and family service agencies.

We have 16 agencies in Saskatchewan, [Technical difficulty—Editor] 20 to 25 years of experience in delivering child protection services. Sixteen agencies have 10 years of experience in developing and delivering a range of culturally appropriate early intervention and intensive supports to children and families. Two agencies from northern Saskatchewan have entered into agreements with Saskatchewan Social Services to assume delivery of child welfare services off reserve to any resident in those areas. Three agencies have entered into agreements with Saskatchewan Social Services to deliver culturally appropriate early intervention and intensive supports to children and families involved with social services. For example, Kanaweyimik has entered into agreements to manage visitation services for children in the care of social services. In North Battleford, Saskatchewan, social services refers all the families requiring family visits to Kanaweyimik. The agency coordinates, schedules, monitors and transports children to and from visits. Kanaweyimik also provides two emergency foster homes to serve children apprehended by social services so they're in a first nations home. We provide culturally appropriate early intervention and intensive supports to children and families involved with social services, resulting in a lot of returns of children in a timely manner.

As another example, we have agreements with the Saskatchewan Ministry of Justice to deliver family violence treatment for any individuals, regardless of race, who are involved with the domestic violence court in The Battlefords. All our agencies have agreements with Saskatchewan to locate and screen families and caregivers for indigenous children in care of social services. We all have agreements with Saskatchewan, again, to case manage children in care files once children have been placed in homes that have been screened and approved on reserve. All our agencies have been trained by social services to deliver the P.R.I.D.E. foster parent program to potential caregivers, so I believe Saskatchewan is in a position to transition our prevention services to off reserve.

Some critical considerations for Bill C-92 are that it needs to ensure that first nations child and family service agencies' capacities will be sustained, and we need legislation that commits governments to ongoing funding for agencies based on actual needs, not only for on reserve, but also for off reserve. This is a whole new area for us.

We need legislation that addresses liability, such as the Saskatchewan Child and Family Services Act, section 79, which provides for immunity as long as an official is acting in good faith. We need legislation that requires establishment of a process for interjurisdictional transfers, similar to the interprovincial transfer protocol, so that no children fall in between jurisdictions.

Legislation must commit to Jordan's principle on an ongoing basis in order to prevent gaps in services to vulnerable children.

We need legislation that enables agencies to radically change the way child protection is done, such as removing parents versus removing children from the home. Current provincial legislation doesn't allow us to do that, nor does Bill C-92. This is an area that Kanaweyimik Child and Family Services is moving to. We've tried it in voluntary situations and it has been very effective.

Our elders have advised us to concentrate on the children and young people, as they are our future. We need to balance our modern-day techniques and traditional values and practices to strengthen our families.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

I urge you to wrap up.

[Marlene Bugler]

All right.

In closing, I want to stress the importance of ensuring that Bill C-92 provides indigenous child welfare agencies with the capacity to deliver culturally appropriate services.

Thank you for your time.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Thank you very much.

We're going to go to our third presentation, from Katherine Whitecloud, who is presenting as a grandmother.

Katherine, you bring wise words on many other issues, so we look forward to your comments.

Welcome.

[Katherine Whitecloud, Grandmother, As an Individual]

Good morning, Madam Chair, and thank you very much.

[Witness spoke in Lakota]

[English]

My relatives, it's with a glad heart that I shake your hands for the opportunity to be here in front of you. I used my language to announce to my ancestors that I am here speaking on behalf of our children, from our people and our community.

Although I would love to speak about all of the technical aspects of this bill, my learned colleagues who presented before me have done so, as have my relatives from Saskatchewan spoken to the technical aspects. I'm going to talk about and share with you the realities and what needs to be done, and what works for our people with regard to our families and our children.

Terminology is so very important, and in our culture and in our ways, we do not have a term for “child welfare”. We only have a term for our children, which is wakanyeja, our “sacred ones”. Our life is to wrap around our sacred ones as the gifts they are.

The history of child welfare is extensive. Successive governments have studied and reviewed and made recommendations for addressing the state of child welfare and therefore the state of our people and our nations. We can talk about the litany of reviews and recommendations. However, my purpose in being here today is to share with you how and what we, as [Witness spoke in Lakota], have committed to do to bring about family wholeness and family well-being, and in so doing, community well-being and a thriving nation.

We all are aware of the residential school effects. Our people have felt it. My family has felt it. My parents lived it. Our people have lived the sixties scoop, where whole families were decimated because of child welfare and the loss of family. I attended a funeral just before I left to come here of a girl who grew up through the sixties scoop. Her younger sister knew nothing about who her relatives are. It brought tears to her eyes when I addressed her as my relative and about how important she was to our family and how important all of us are for each other.

Many of our relatives, through the sixties scoop and the residential schools, and through the child welfare system, especially our women and young girls, have been taken advantage of and been decimated through missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. The report that is going to be presented to you shortly, also, will be coming down.

There is a direct correlation between all of those past government policy impacts—residential schools, sixties scoop, child welfare—and other government policies that removed our children from our communities and our families. It is especially the women and the girls who have been directly impacted. They have suffered, and are missing and have been murdered because of their experiences and their parental experiences through all of those policies that I mentioned.

Our people are unique. We are distinct. We have a language and a culture that is like no other. Our traditions are strong. Our spiritual life is powerful and guides us in every moment of our lives. This is the reason that I used my language to begin my presentation and to share the resurgence of our ancestral knowledge of our knowing—the knowing that runs in our blood and our veins, the knowing and understanding that our grandparents and our ancestors watch over us and guide us and that their teachings and all of their knowledge run in our veins. It's powerful, and it's alive.

We are fully cognizant that for our people to flourish, we must be whole and healthy in body and spirit. We must take care of ourselves and we must take care of each other. We must protect and care for our sacred ones, our sacred wakanyeja, our children.

We who have accepted the gift and responsibility of parenthood, just as all or most of you have, who have lived and thrived with the sacred knowledge of our ancestors through our language, must do this. No one can do this for us. This is to bring wholeness and well-being to our families. This is to mend the broken hoop of our families. This is to reconnect to the land, to our place, to our homes. This is to make our families and homes whole again, with our wakanyeja at the centre of all that we do. This is to fulfill our roles and responsibilities as [Witness spoke in Lakota], and to fulfill our purpose in life.

Others of our people have articulated succinctly and with great passion the history of devastation inflicted on our people, on our lands and our ways of life. The most heinous have been the atrocities inflicted on our most vulnerable, our innocent and sacred children.

Our children are the ones who have suffered beyond suffering. When you have stripped a mother and a father, or a grandmother or a grandfather of their purpose in life—their purpose for being—you've inflicted the greatest harm known to man.

It is within this context that Bill C-92 is viewed. Can we trust you? Can we trust your word? Can we trust the honour of your word, the honour of your purpose and the honour of your people that you represent and speak on behalf of? That is the state of the relationship between you and our people, our families and our children.

There are gaps within Bill C-92 that have been identified and brought forward. Colleagues who presented this morning have spoken to the needed changes. Those who have written the words and those who continue to argue for paramountcy inscribing this legal document must remember that our children are witnesses to the outcome. Our mothers and fathers, our grandparents, our aunts, our uncles and our siblings are silent witnesses to the outcome. They've not had the opportunity to express to you how they see their families being whole again. Those who are affected the most have no say and no input to the life decisions you are going to make.

That document you are working on is fragile. It can be destroyed, just as families have been destroyed through the loss of their children. Our children are our flesh and blood. They are our future. They are our lifeblood. They are our destiny. They are our ancestors. Only we, [Witness spoke in Lakota], have the responsibility for our children.

History shows that all of the efforts to help our children have failed. Our children are a gift and a responsibility provided to us by our maker. Each child is brought to us as unique human being, to teach us, to connect us to our ancestors and to our future, to provide that path for greater things to come, to carry our history and to make history. We honour our child; we uplift our child. We love and cherish, and we are all equal in purpose and design.

Sadly, our children are caught in a political firestorm. They are right in the middle of it. The reality of a child's spirit and well-being is left out of the jockeying of positions for who is going to win a legal or political battle. Our children are trapped. Not one can speak for themselves, except for our colleague and our brother who presented this morning as an adult.

A system that doesn't understand our culture, doesn't speak our language and doesn't understand our traditions and protocols cannot understand the needs of our child. That's the process we are trapped in. We know what the solution is. Our plan and intent is to transition to supports for family well-being built on our original child caring, child rearing, nurturance of the individual spirit and family-centred way of life. They will be built on understanding our kinship relationships and will re-establish the undefeatable foundation of families rooted in our language and culture and, in doing so, reconnect to our knowing the ancestral knowledge that has sustained us since time began: the power of respect, kindness, truth, honesty, integrity, sharing, helping, giving and love.

What are commonly referred to as preventative services—what we know as expressing kindness, as caring and love and providing supports to our kinship systems—means providing mentoring, guidance and support for the healing of families. It means taking responsibility for our families through our children, through our heads of families, through our family leadership, through our grandmothers and our aunties. It means committing to family and to coming together as a family. It means giving life to our laws and rules that are inherent within our language. Within our languages, our kinship system, our rules of conduct and our role in life, we are blessed with this gift of our language. It is our lifeline.

I have the utmost faith that we can and will accomplish what our children and our people have given us direction to do, that our children will come home, that our families will be whole and our people will survive. Our young people are committed and our relatives are committed and our leadership—the leaders of our families—are committed. We have no other option.

I have five pages, MaryAnn.

We will accomplish this with honour and integrity. We have given our word. We love our children and our relatives. No one can do this other than ourselves. No one understands our language but us. No one represents our children but us, our tiyóspaye.

In my childhood it was looked upon as bringing dishonour to our family and extended family, our tiyóspaye, if children were apprehended. If that blue government car came in your yard, people would hide, ashamed. Grandmothers wouldn't allow that to happen. That blue car is in our yard every day now, but it's driven by our own people. That practice has to stop, and we'll not allow it to continue. This is work we have to do in our homes and our communities for our people.

The legislative process we are engaged in right now has no understanding of this, the heart of our people and the legacy of our ancestors that we carry. This is where the answers lie.

Our youth are connecting to this. Our young girls are seeking out isnati, our coming of age. [Inaudible—Editor] are also seeking their coming of age. Our young men will understand their role as protectors, gatherers and providers and about their responsibilities in life. Our children will be honoured and uplifted, and our families and homes will be whole. They have to be.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Thank you.

[Katherine Whitecloud]

Thank you.

[Witness spoke in Lakota]

[English]

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

We move on to questioning.

Our questioning starts with MP Yves Robillard.

[Yves Robillard, Liberal, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Madam Chair, I will be sharing my time with my colleague Mr. Vandal.

My first question is for Mr. Chartrand.

In her testimony last week, Melanie Omeniho, President of the Women of the Métis Nation, told us that jurisdictional issues meant that Métis children fell through the cracks, particularly because some have been identified as indigenous people of unknown origin.

Have you often seen cases like that in the Métis communities you represent? Can you tell us about the magnitude of this phenomenon? Do you think the bill is sufficiently clear about jurisdiction to improve the care of Métis children?

[David Chartrand]

It's a very good question. It is probably the fundamental challenge we have faced as a people, to be falling through the cracks and not to be recognized as indigenous people. Now that we've won most of our cases in the Supreme Court of Canada and that we are without doubt section 35 rights-bearing people, we believe that this will carry a greater sense of recognition and assurance by governments, whether provincial or federal, that they have to define and work with the Métis nation.

Our children were taken without identification of where they were. In many of our families, it was because they were poor. All of our children, I'm sorry, were taken because we're poor. It wasn't because we weren't good parents. We're always good parents, but because we were the working poor, child welfare robbed us of our children.

In a lot of that, we couldn't identify and find out where they were. There was no proper record-keeping of those children. Unfortunately for us, because we're off reserve, no one kept a good record base of our people and their children. That's why it was such a difficult challenge to find them in the United States, to track them down. In fact, we just found one recently who can't come home because they can't get a Canadian passport. They're no longer Canadian, and they want to come home. We're working with Canada to try to fix that issue.

You're absolutely right, the biggest challenge the Métis have faced is because nobody would define us or want to define us for fear that they might become financially responsible for us. I've always taken this position if I can, Mr. Robillard. I've taken the position that, as Canadians, we have paid billions of dollars in taxes in this country. Even as a Canadian, I'm not treated as a Canadian because I'm treated as aboriginal or indigenous, but then when I get to that side of the table, then nobody wants to recognize that I have that right. We've been definitely, probably, the biggest losers when it comes to true identification. That has caused great harm and damage to many of our families and children.

[Yves Robillard, Liberal, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Thank you.

My next question is for Ms. Whitecloud. This bill proposes a new approach in many respects, its wording being one of the most significant.

Could you tell us what you think about the co-development process for this bill? Have you been consulted?

[Katherine Whitecloud]

I have been involved at the national advisory committee level, sitting on the national review of child welfare. Have I been consulted, or have my people been consulted? No.

[Yves Robillard, Liberal, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

I will let my colleague ask the next question.

[Dan Vandal, Liberal, Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB]

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much, all three of you, for your presentations.

President David Chartrand, in the early 2000s the Government of Manitoba devolved child welfare. I believe you were still president—I was a city councillor, and MaryAnn was a cabinet minister, I believe. However, with the devolution of child welfare in Manitoba, the removal of children increased. Could you comment on that from your perspectives from the Métis federation?

[David Chartrand]

Without a doubt, I've been involved right from the beginning. I've been president for 22 years. Just as a background so people know who I am, I come from the Department of Justice. I worked for Department of Justice for 10 years before I became president. I was a probation officer and then I was a director in the courts division in one of the departments. I've been intervolved in the justice and child welfare system for a long time.

I took over as president in 1996. When we finally had devolution in 2003, we were transferred the mandate of the child welfare system, but larger policies did not change. As I said earlier in my comments, the system was designed to apprehend children. It wasn't designed to keep the children with their family or with the community. It was designed to take them out. Your funding formula was based on that system: to help the family, you had to take the child. People must realize this. You're taking the child, and the family has no way—if you heard Katherine speak on certain issues—of having money to defend themselves, no way of having the right to even speak or understand this complicated system. Now it was with the court lawyers and all these things were involved.

Yes, Danny, the issue has been completely the opposite. We've kept a record of all the people we prevented from being apprehended. It had no value to the province, which we thought was absolutely ridiculous, because that shows prevention. I'm talking in the thousands. When you look at it from that side, it was designed for apprehension.

Now there's a major shift. I know in Manitoba, customary care legislation, etc., has come in to work towards prevention. But the problem now lies because we're completely underfunded—data, stats and all the evidence show that—yet they're telling us we can start working on prevention with the surplus funds. How can you have surplus funds when you're already underfunded? There's no way we're going to change to the prevention side of things.

This is our hope in Bill C-92. The focus on Bill C-92 is to go to prevention, to work with the family, to keep the family at home. To ensure that the grandparents, the aunts and uncles are all involved. Let us take care of our own children. I don't know how many times we told you and outside society. Let us take care of our own.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Your time is up.

Questioning now moves to MP Kevin Waugh.