Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on May 31st, 2016

[Dr. Tom Wong]

It would have to increase to two or three times the amount that is currently in the budget. We have $300 million a year.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

I want to go back to the story of the young woman from Lake of the Woods because the other element was child welfare. Canada has been found guilty of systemic discrimination in the Jordan's principle case.

Paragraph 458 of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal cited that the 1965 agreement in Ontario is discriminatory and ordered in paragraph 474 that INAC “cease the discriminatory practice”, yet I haven't heard that there's been any change to the 1965 agreement to bring the government in compliance with the Human Rights Tribunal. Will that be happening this year?

[Paula Isaak]

Yes, absolutely, the 1965 agreement does need to be changed. It needs to be changed in partnership. We can't change it unilaterally. The first step was an increased investment in Ontario for child welfare, recognizing that the 1965 agreement is the framework in which child welfare is delivered. We've just started those discussions and will definitely continue those discussions over this year to come to a—

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Will that include mental health?

[Paula Isaak]

It will depend on the needs that come out of those discussions. Then we'll bring in our partners as necessary, whether that's Health Canada or others, to look at that.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

Thank you.

The next question is from Michael McLeod, please.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the presenters. This is a very serious, very important issue that's been around for a long time. I've sat in many meetings, many conferences where we've heard study after study, conferences after conferences, symposiums, all looking at this issue. We've heard today that 34 departments are involved in dealing with the conditions that aboriginal people are facing in the social and economic area.

Yet in my riding in the last 15 years, we've seen an increase in suicides. We're up to 123. You add Nunavut to that, there's another 500, well over 600 suicides in the last 15 years while we've been studying this.

Since this committee started this undertaking, I've had two suicides in my riding. This is a short period. It's a serious issue. I don't see who is taking ownership of it. I heard you talk and this department talks and another department is talking, but where is the strategy? Where is the combined effort to work together? Who is leading the strategy and where's the action plan?

Why aren't we involving aboriginal organizations in this? I work closely with aboriginal governments. I talk to them every day. I don't see aboriginal governments being included, except to be consulted when there's a study. There is no strategy for the friendship centres to be used. The aboriginal head start is sitting in hell. Why are they in hell? They're an aboriginal program. There is no strategy for aboriginal head start to do anything anymore, yet some of the solutions involve languages, education. That's not being inclusive.

Explain to me how we're moving forward in a unified position to deal with this issue.

[Dr. Tom Wong]

I'll start with a response, and then my colleagues at INAC perhaps can chime in as well.

Indeed, actually, we do have a number of frameworks and strategies. Those are limited in scope at the moment. For example, we have the national aboriginal youth suicide prevention strategy. That strategy is limited in scope because it only deals with prevention: primary prevention, secondary prevention, and tertiary prevention.

As you said, there are many upstream items that are not covered, such as, education, culture, etc. All of those need to be built onto this pre-existing national aboriginal youth suicide prevention strategy in order to make it a comprehensive strategy, because one cannot go with a health-only approach. One needs to deal with all of the other socio-cultural factors, housing, etc. For that, we are absolutely very interested in working with any sectors who are interested.

On the issue of working with indigenous organizations, we've been working very closely with the AFN, as well as with ITK. We worked with the AFN on co-developing the framework for the first nations suicide prevention and continuum framework. For the Inuit, we work with ITK to assist them in developing their suicide prevention strategy, as well as the mental wellness continuum framework.

We have regular meetings with those organizations, those national organizations, learning from them and offering any assistance we can to them so that together we can actually help address this very complex problem. We have been hearing from our AFN and ITK partners that they are very interested—

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

I'm going to interrupt you because you're not answering my question. My question is, who is the lead on developing a suicide strategy with all the different departments involved? Maybe you could answer that.

[Dr. Tom Wong]

For the strategy part, for the health part, Health Canada would be the lead, and we would invite other partners to join us.

Of course, this is from a government perspective. Everything has to be led by the communities, by the indigenous communities, and we are there to facilitate their work. Of course, because of issues of social determinants of health, we need the support of all federal departments, such as INAC.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

I'll just cut you off again.

Mr. Chairman, I'm not hearing the answer, but we know that the highest suicide rates are amongst aboriginal people. Usually they're male. Usually they're in isolated communities. Usually they're in communities that are economically depressed.

If there were three things that you could do immediately to try to alleviate the situation, what would they be?

[Dr. Tom Wong]

The first thing would be the reconciliation regarding the Indian residential schools and all the intergenerational trauma. That's extremely important. Two, it's to bring hope, meaning, purpose, and belonging to the youth, the children, and the parents. For that, we need to have the social determinants of health. We need to bring the culture back to the youth. We need to reinvigorate the importance of self-esteem and the culture, and lastly—

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

Okay. I have one last question. Where is that plan? I'm hearing you say a lot of nice things, and I've heard all of you say good things. Where is that plan and when can we expect it?

[Dr. Tom Wong]

The plan is already in existence, with the AFN having worked with us to co-develop the first nations mental wellness continuum framework. All of those elements are there. We are going through the next step, to actually implement elements of that plan, together with the communities and together with INAC and other departments.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

The AFN doesn't represent most of the communities in my riding, so....

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

Thank you, Dr. Wong.

We now move to a round of five-minute questions.

The first question will come from Arnold Viersen, please.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank our guests for being here today. I really appreciate your time.

Suicide and suicide attempts come from a number of devastating situations. A recent study by the Canadian Medical Association found a strong association between child abuse and suicidal ideation or suicide attempts. I'm wondering if, from your research, any of your departments have shown similar associations between indigenous youth and child abuse, and then suicide attempts.

We'll hear from the Ministry of Health first.

[Dr. Tom Wong]

There's a strong association between abuse, violence, and suicide.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

I see that one of the programs you have listed is the family violence prevention program. I was wondering if you could elaborate on what that program entails?

[Paula Isaak]

Yes, that's one of the programs the department offers.

It has a couple of components. Its primarily focused on supporting a network of 41 shelters on reserves across the country, as well there are some programming dollars that communities are offered with respect to creating prevention programs around preventing family violence. It has two components. One is supporting shelters, and one is supporting some programming on a proposal basis.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

When it comes to suicide prevention strategies that are delivered through the national aboriginal youth suicide prevention strategy, do these suicide prevention programs include preventing child abuse?

You're saying these are programs that are driven by the communities that are applying for that family violence prevention program. Are there any suicide prevention parts that come into that national family violence prevention program?

[Paula Isaak]

I would say typically they're not designed toward suicide, but I expect the benefits of a number of those prevention programs might be ones that would also benefit prevention of a variety of types of violence, or potential violence toward oneself, or suicide prevention potentially.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Mr. Chair, I spent a little time recently pulling together a bunch of statistics. What was interesting was that I initially thought—as my colleague across the way, Mr. McLeod—there were generally economic reasons why there were such high rates of suicide.

I pulled a bunch of numbers. Going on purely the province or territory they're on, Nunavut has the highest rate of suicide but it also has the highest weekly average income, which seems counterintuitive to me. If the weekly average income is high, you would expect lower rates of suicide. It also has the most police officers, but it still continues to have the highest rate of suicide. It also has the highest rate of sexual violence. It was interesting to see those correlations.

Correlation never predicts causation. Is it because we have too many police officers that we're causing suicide? Is it the sexual assault rate that's causing suicide? Or is it that these people are making more money that's causing suicide? It didn't seem to make any sense to me.

I was wondering, have those correlations been carried out at all—and this would be for Alain—and is there some causation with specifically income, sexual assault, and the suicide rate?

[Dr. Alain Beaudet]

Yes, they have. They're complex, but they all are part of the determinants of mental wellness.