Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on May 14th, 2019

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Thank you.

[Daniel Watson]

The corresponding number for CIRNAC is 186 FTEs, the difference between today and November 30, 2017, the same time frame my colleague was speaking about. Again, that's not necessarily related to the transformation because as programs come and go, staff come and go with them each budget cycle.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

So a 186 increase from what baseline?

[Daniel Watson]

November 30....

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

That's an increase you said.

[Daniel Watson]

That's an increase, yes.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

What number are we at?

[Daniel Watson]

The total is 2,850.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Thank you.

I see that the Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations is responsible for the First Nations Fiscal Management Act. You moved First Nations Financial Transparency Act to Indigenous Services. I note that when they decided not to enforce that act there was a commitment to have a replacement. We have nothing. I know the new relations—10 years for the people who have had good records—but there has been no transparency.

How can you have one department responsible for an act that you refuse to enforce and another that's responsible for the new fiscal relations? How is that going to work?

What is the plan around having all communities sharing and having something on the table?

I still get calls all the time, especially from women living in communities, who are concerned about the lack of transparency from their leadership. Who is going to take responsibility? What is the plan?

Is that act going to be repealed and replaced so that every community has the right to information?

[Jean-François Tremblay]

On the fiscal relationship, the work that my department was doing will continue over the next few years. It's not a change from one department to another department in this case.

You're right that the transparency act would be on our side. The answer remains the same, which is that we'll continue to work with first nations on developing a new fiscal relationship and a new structure of accountability that is based not necessarily on us doing all the work on a daily basis, but also a creation of an institution potentially like the Auditor General, which you've heard before.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

We're three and a half years in. One of the first acts of this government was to end enforcing the transparency act. Three and a half years later, I have community members who were promised something in replacement. I think that it's important to note that those communities where it is an issue don't have anything. I think in spite of new departments and transformation, the basic accountability of leadership to their communities is not there. That's certainly is a concern.

I have a number of further questions. I'll say, in a sort of summary for this round, that philosophically we believe this is a positive step. Not having had the ability to look at the legislation with witnesses that can point out issues, I think the government has entered a very flawed process.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Questioning now moves to MP Rachel Blaney.

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

Thank you all for being here today to be with us.

I have a couple of questions. The first question I would like to pose to Mr. Watson and Mr. Tremblay.

In both of your presentations, you talked about colonial structures and trying to move out of those. Basically, from the very foundation of both of your systems, it's a colonial structure.

I'm just curious what the plan is. How are you being accountable to indigenous communities across Canada about your process of decolonization?

[Daniel Watson]

Excellent question. Thank you very much for it.

In the first instance, the main responsibility we have is to negotiate agreements and treaties that will actually undo the application of either of our two departments to those communities. I think, in the first instance, that is the biggest thing.

Another part, though, is that the legislation speaks to the importance of us developing our approaches to those things, not alone in our building at Les Terrasses de la Chaudière, but in conjunction with the communities that are going to be affected. I think that's actually a critically important piece of it. If we develop solutions on our own the same way as our ancestors did who were in the original Department of Indian Affairs, we're likely to come up to the same problems and challenges of the past. It's explicit that we need to work with indigenous communities in developing those solutions.

I think that the underlying principal in setting up the department itself is more than simply a symbolic statement. It is actually an expectation of the Parliament of Canada that public servants that are carrying out the work in Canada's name and in the government's name do so in a spirit that aims at reconciliation, understanding that we don't define reconciliation on our own. That needs to be developed with other people and other perspectives in a way that is very different than in the past.

[Jean-François Tremblay]

I have a few points on this.

I think the most important point for us is how we are moving to services that would be delivered by first nations, Inuit and Métis. If you look at, for example, the last few years and what we have been trying to do, we now have 85 first nations that are under 10-year grants. That means that 90% of the reporting that was more about what we would ask for from them, from the Treasury Board's requirement perspective, is now eliminated. That means they have the flexibility that they need to decide how they will invest this funding to achieve the outcomes they are looking for.

It is a big shift, and it is something we are trying to increase. Now we are looking at the issues like what the right escalator would be for those first nations to make sure that services are sustainable.

You have what we're trying to do on the health side. There's the First Nation Health Authority in B.C., which inspires us. We are having discussions across the country with first nations in places where they would like to take control of their health services.

We're doing the same on education and the creation of school boards. It's finding ways where we would be getting out of the business. We're not imposing an approach. We're not saying that this is the approach they should follow. However, we are saying that we're open for that kind of business, and there has been a response out there.

Child and family services legislation is a big element for us. We recognize jurisdictions and are asking first nations, Inuit and Métis who want it to claim their jurisdictions. I think that's probably the most important aspect for decolonization in our department.

Also, for us, on the way of moving from programs to services in the culture of the department, we're not there to impose programs from the centre. We're not there to just say that you've asked for something but it doesn't fit with the programs. We're trying to take the opposite approach, which is to say that it makes sense, and how can we make it work?

It is a new approach.

I am going to Toronto tomorrow. It's all gathering meetings with the chiefs in Ontario. We have gatherings like that in Ontario, too.

There are more and more staff meetings between our employees and first nations, Inuit and Métis where we try to integrate them in our decision-making process. We also, as you know, are working more on co-development, like we did for education and for CFS. It's a totally new approach for us. We're trying to change the way we are dealing with indigenous issues to make sure it's built on partnership, and not necessarily trying to develop programs from the centre.

Recruitment is important: getting more first nations, Inuit and Métis in the department. If you look at my stats, we're probably at 26% to 28% of our employees who self-identify as first nations, Inuit or Métis. In some regions, it's 50%. We're trying to make an effort to have more first nations, Inuit and Métis, especially at the executive level.

Those are the kinds of elements we're trying to pursue to ensure that there is decolonization.

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

Another question I have is on looking at how the three departments have been created. A lot of northern and remote indigenous communities have multiple challenges, and now they're having to deal with three departments on certain issues.

I'm wondering if you could speak to how you're dealing with that in an equitable way, I would hope. That's a lot to take on, especially if you are a smaller community and you don't have a lot of capacity.

What is the plan around making sure that the three departments work cohesively together to make sure those services are delivered?

[Jean-François Tremblay]

We're in the same building. That helps.

[Daniel Watson]

One of the commitments we have is to work seamlessly with each other.

Again, even on the concept of “northern”, that varies in many different places. Sometimes people talk about “the territories”, and sometimes it includes Labrador, northern Quebec and northern Ontario, as well as other provinces.

CIRNAC has regional offices in each of the three territories, so we work very closely with our colleagues at ISC where there are overlap issues. The same is true south of 60 and in all of the provinces where ISC has regional offices.

Our goal is that there is no wrong door. You can come in and talk to the same public servants you have talked to in the past. If there is any sort of communicating to be done, we'll do that behind the scenes. That's not something you would need to know about if you were outside. You shouldn't be able to see it.

I think that will be the test. It's not that different from where we've been in the past.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Thank you.

The questioning now moves to MP Will Amos.

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to our hard-working public servants.

I want to take advantage of the fact that we have a departmental historian here.

Mr. Morin, I think you'll agree that Canada wants to move towards reconciliation. However, it wants to make sure that the departments understand how much they've harmed communities in the past, even though their goal was to achieve good results.

I think Canadians are looking for the confidence that it isn't just mouthing the words and shuffling chairs on the deck, but rather that there's a concrete recognition of wrongs done in the past and harms caused, many of those being related to the public service institutions themselves. I think the royal commission went into that deeply.

Mr. Morin, if you would please provide us a bit of a summary of the worst hits, so to speak, I think that kind of material should be on the record, and I know that my Algonquin constituents would appreciate hearing that kind of recognition from a senior civil servant.

[Jean-Pierre Morin, Departmental Historian, Strategic Policy Directorate, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development]

The Department of Indian Affairs is actually one of the oldest continuous institutions in the history of Canada. It's been around since 1755 in various forms. It has changed and evolved many times, but almost always has had the same core function until relatively recently, which is the integration and assimilation of indigenous peoples into the broader Canadian society.

Over the years, the department, in its many forms, has always maintained this core role of “caring for” in an extremely paternalistic way, from the creation of schools to dictate how indigenous children should be educated to governance structures that are imposed through the Indian Act to limit how communities themselves can actually govern themselves to retain that power within the department itself.

This largely created an institution, a cultural institution, inside the department, where the department always thought it was right, so it acted in what it thought was the best interest, but often this best interest was not what was actually best for the community. It was what was best for the state or for the government at the time.

Over time, we've moved considerably away from these earlier concepts, especially since the 1950s and the 1960s, when we started to realize—“we” as the department—that the Indian Act was much more harmful than protective. We have been, over time, amending various pieces of legislation and creating new structures to address that, but as the royal commission pointed out, the structure still remains. We are still operating under the exact same structure as was established in 1966 through the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development Act.

This is an opportunity to actually break that structure to create new structures and to build on new relationships going forward that have a foundation of the original intent and the original relationships between settlers and indigenous peoples in Canada.

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

I appreciate that. I think the concept of the “wards of the state” was extremely damaging. I want to bring us into a present-day context and put a case study in front of you, but also in front of our deputies, because there is a present-day impact in my community of Rapid Lake.

The community of Rapid Lake has only recently emerged out of third party management, which was a legal institution imposed upon them. They desperately need a new school. I've been working really hard—including with our parliamentary secretary—with the Department of Indigenous Services to get there, but as we attempt to bring about this kind of infrastructure renewal, which can then lead to community renewal and other infrastructure investments, we run up against other institutions that have a colonial impact, such as Hydro-Québec, for example, or other governments that aren't necessarily changing their way of doing business in the same fashion.

What would you suggest are the challenges related to the intersection between the more renewed, updated or more reconciled federal institutions and the non-federal institutions that haven't gone that far?

[Daniel Watson]

That's an excellent question.

Built into the legislation for CIRNAC, for example, is the expectation that we work with provinces, territories and others. I think a good part of the responsibility of the Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs is going to be to help other governments to see where this is in their interest.

These are not things that we do simply because they're nice things to do. If we want to see communities advance in Canada, it's very hard to do that without schools. It's very hard to do that without drinking water. It's very hard to do that without housing.

In the federation that we have, working with provinces and territories is a critical part to any of these things succeeding. That will be a big part of our job. In fairness, across the country there will be some provinces that might wonder if they're out ahead of us, and they may sometimes feel as if they're pulling us ahead. In other instances, we will need to work hard with them to get them to engage in projects that we think are in our collective interest.

As the departmental historian has noted, over time the way of thinking about these things has changed. That's been true in the federal government, and I think it's been true in many provincial and territorial governments as well.

[Jean-François Tremblay]

I think you're also as good as your outcomes. I think the best thing for us is to show what works on the ground and what the real solutions are.

If you go into a first nations community that is under self-government, you see a difference. If you go to B.C. and you talk with the First Nations Health Authority, you see a system that works better than the system we have in place. If you meet with the Mi’kmaq in the Atlantic, who manage their education system and have been managing the education system for more than 20 years, they have better results. I think that, when you show these results, you show partners that it's the way to work together.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Thank you.

The questioning now moves to the five-minute round. We're moving to the Conservative side.

MP Arnold Viersen.