Thank you so much for the invitation. We appreciate the opportunity to provide comments this morning.
Wachay misiway. Jocelyn Formsma nitoscheen.
I'm from the Moose Cree First Nation. I'm currently the executive director at the National Association of Friendship Centres.
For the last 15 years or so I've also been an indigenous children's rights advocate and an advocate for indigenous youth engagement and leadership development. I've also been engaged with various aspects of child welfare reform.
I've been a board member of the National Indian Child Welfare Association for the last 12 years. I assisted with their international advocacy work, which resulted in helping to bring about the first set of Indian child welfare act regulations in the 36 years of the act's enactment.
Today I'm going to provide you with an overview of how friendship centres have been engaged in child and family services, our perspectives on the bill, and how we think it might affect indigenous people living in urban settings. I'd also be happy to speak to questions related to experiences with the Indian Child Welfare Act if I'm asked following this presentation.
The work of friendship centres in child and family services is largely unknown and unrecognized. As you know, friendship centres provide a wide range of services, many of which can be considered prevention services such as prenatal supports, parental supports, child supports, programs that help families keep and care for their children and programs that assist parents to get children back if they are apprehended.
We have developed a cultural competency curriculum for foster parents, providing essential cultural programming for children living in care. Foster and adoptive parents often use friendship centre programming to ensure their foster or adopted child or children have access to culture and community.
Friendship centres are the sites of supervised visits, have sometimes been the sites of apprehensions and have also been called upon to provide intervention services on behalf of child and family service agencies or court supports to indigenous children, youth and families. Friendship centres also provide aftercare support services for youth who are leaving care.
In regard to the bill, we do not see the explicit consideration for urban and rural-based indigenous children, youth, families and communities.
The NAFC, as the secretariat for the Urban Aboriginal Knowledge Network—soon to be disbanded due to lack of funding—facilitated community-driven research initiatives that looked at the situation of indigenous children in care and indigenous families involved with the child welfare system, exploring the need for culturally appropriate training for non-indigenous caregivers of indigenous children in care—all from an urban lens.
Many definitions within the act currently are broad enough that arguments could be made for our inclusion, but we fear without explicit inclusion, it also allows for passive exclusion.
We have drafted a brief paper that outlines some of our perspectives and we would like to provide that to the committee for your consideration. It outlines some of the perspectives that we feel are necessary to consider before finalizing the act.
In reviewing Bill C-92, the NAFC has some concerns around the on-the-ground realities of implementing jurisdiction regarding indigenous children who live in urban settings. While the NAFC fully supports and promotes first nations, Inuit and Métis jurisdictions, we know that in reality the resources are often not available or sufficient for indigenous governments to be able to provide the full range of services required in the towns and cities in which their members reside. Friendship centres and other urban indigenous organizations that provide similar services are often unintentionally left to work with indigenous children, youth and families who are not currently receiving services and supports from their respective indigenous governments.
The NAFC would like to be put on record as being interested in, and having unique perspectives to inform, the development of any and all regulations that may come if Bill C-92 is passed. The regulations section of the proposed act makes mention of the inclusion of indigenous governing bodies in the consultation process of developing said regulations. We believe our insights and the insights of friendship centres can help ensure that regulations and policies will be reflective of the needs of indigenous peoples who reside in urban settings.
We have a number of recommendations on Bill C-92.
One regards urban indigenous inclusion. Rural and urban-based indigenous children, youth, families, communities and organizations ought to be mentioned in the drafting and implementation of this act. At present, we feel the broad language of the act does create space for the inclusion of urban indigenous peoples, but we also fear that the broadness may result in exclusion.
In terms of jurisdiction, there needs to be more clarity on the expression and extent of jurisdiction amongst and between different first nations, Métis and Inuit governments; provincial, territorial and federal governments; and the roles of civil society and non-political, yet indigenous-owned and operated, entities such as friendship centres. What we find in the urban spaces is that often these jurisdictions will overlap, and unless there's collaboration and coordination on how those jurisdictions will overlap within the urban spaces, we worry that children are going to be either left out or be subject to the cases that led to the unfortunate situation with Jordan's principle.
Stable funding commitments and mechanisms are needed to ensure that the implementation of this act will be possible for communities. Furthermore, those funding provisions should take into consideration the work that will be required following the passing of this act, which will include education, stakeholder engagement and advocacy, which also could include data collection.
Capacity dollars should be considered as communities will need to work towards building capacity if they are to assume jurisdiction over services and resources to support partnership development and engagement with stakeholders.
Bill C-92 contains no mandate for data collection. As the representative organization of friendship centres, the NAFC knows the value of data and how it can inform and guide effective programming and services, which results in better outcomes for the people that friendship centres serve. Data collection is a tool necessary for the improvement of services and for identifying gaps that need to be addressed. Without a specific mandate to collect data, Bill C-92 may inadvertently promote the current data status quo, which is lack of in-depth national data regarding indigenous child and family welfare. This was an experience that we found in the Indian Child Welfare Act. Although there were provisions for data collection, they weren't adequately funded and supported, which has led to a lack of data despite almost 40 years of the existence of the act.
We thank you again for the opportunity to provide comments and perspectives on this bill; we trust our submissions will inform your work. We look forward to any questions.