Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on June 2nd, 2016

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

We're out of time. Thank you for that.

The next question is from Mike Bossio, please.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Thank you, both, so much for being here again.

Christopher, it's great to see you. You certainly enlighten us. We hear so much about the reserve side of life for indigenous peoples in this country, yet most of the population is urban, off reserve. I'm trying to get my head around a few things. Friendship centres are primarily urban. Is that correct? I have a rural riding and I don't have any friendship centres in my riding. I do have a few larger towns, but they don't have a friendship centre, although I would surmise they probably could use one.

How many friendship centres are there across the country?

[Christopher Sheppard]

There are 118.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Most of them are in major urban centres like St. John's, Ottawa, Toronto, etc., right? What is the total funding?

[Christopher Sheppard]

It's $43 million.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

I thought I heard you say that earlier, but I wanted to verify. It's $43 million. If I heard you correctly earlier, every dollar of funding you translate into seven dollars' worth of services.

[Yancy Craig]

That was our calculation from the 2014-15 fiscal year. I believe it's been as high as $12. Part of the sources of funding are provincial governments for some services for some friendship centres. Of course some of that funding varies based on priorities that change for different provincial governments as well.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

When you're calculating that model, you have a very large volunteer contingent, I assume, that is wrapped into that. What other sources of funding do you get other than the province?

[Christopher Sheppard]

For one friendship centre, for example, the core is $160,000. The total annual budget of that centre is about $2 million, and $450,000 is own-source revenue, social economy, social enterprise. Another portion would be private. A lot of friendship centres have support from private industry businesses. Others are municipal money, foundations. Literally, if you walk into a friendship centre, they're probably writing a grant for something.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

So you have an army of grant writers as well. Of course, if you could use those resources in a more effective way, it would certainly help you deliver more services. It's part of what I'm getting at. Once again we hear about suicide and the crisis that exists in the north, and I deeply empathize with that. Is it as big a crisis in the friendship centres on the off-reserve side? I heard you say one in five contemplate it.

[Christopher Sheppard]

For us I try to use real-world examples. If you're an indigenous person in a city—and I'll speak from an actual example I experienced—and you take someone to, say, the emergency department of a mental health hospital, which I've done, the first question you get from a psychiatrist is, does your government pay for anything for you? I have a young aboriginal person who has made a suicide attempt that day and the question is does the government pay for anything, instead of what do we need to do right now; what do we need to do today; how do we get you into a service or program?

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

This is exactly where I'm going. You found out ways to deliver services in a much more cost-effective way than our provinces, the federal government, and all of them. A lot of it is born out of necessity and desperation in some instances. You talked earlier about training people to deal with suicide crises situations. How long does it take you to train somebody to deal with that?

[Christopher Sheppard]

For me to become a trainer took a week straight. You live where you're doing it for the week. There are different levels. For us, because it is a prevalent issue, we also have a homeless shelter in our friendship centre as part of our services. We try to make sure every employee is trained. It takes around two and a half days to do the full-blown, this is how you.... The big thing is we try to tell people that this is about trying to keep someone alive until you can get them to an appropriate program or service, or to the hospital, or to someone.

A lot of the time, people don't know how to react when someone comes to your door, or calls you, and says that this is happening, that this is what it is.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Have you ever worked with on-reserve organizations in order to transfer those types of skills, so they are once again.... To me, a big part of the issue is that we're not delivering the services where they need to be, and that is in the community itself. It's not being delivered by indigenous individuals within those communities a lot of times. It's outside individuals who don't understand the cultural, historical, or residential school perspective they're dealing with.

Do you find you're able to do that, or is it on reserve or off reserve?

[Christopher Sheppard]

It's on reserve and off reserve. The reason I became trained—I don't do it anymore because it's hard to do that every day, but we have other staff who are now taking over that piece. The reason we had our own staff trained, who are aboriginal, was so that when you work with aboriginal clients there's a better understanding of all the other things that happened. We could do it for all of our staff, so that all of our clients at least have access to someone who understands what that looks like. It was important to us not to have to bring people in all the time from the outside to train our staff. Why couldn't we do it ourselves? It does make a significant difference. It's no different from employment programs or anything else.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

You've outlined a lot of challenges that exist that you're trying to deal with. A lot of them are funding challenges. If you had an ideal world from a funding standpoint, but also more importantly from a tools standpoint, what would you say the top three issues are that you would like to deal with immediately?

[Christopher Sheppard]

First would be a standardized process, or the ability to develop a standardized piece, for organizations. On reserve and off reserve are very different, but the process to get there is the same. You want to work with the people in the community and get them there. We need a tool, or the ability to create a tool, that people can use and understand how to use.

Second would be a clear idea of where you go to get this support. You tell people. They get handed a piece of paper and whatever.

Third, I would say would be more awareness that this is an issue.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

Excellent. Thank you for that.

We're going to the five-minute questions now, and the first question comes from Arnold Viersen.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you for being here again today.

I need one point of clarification. Are friendship centres charities?

[Yancy Craig]

Many of them are registered charities, yes.

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

Okay, so it's not a national organization. They're all individual.

[Yancy Craig]

Right. The national association, our office at the NAFC, is incorporated federally, so we fall under the Canada Not-for-profit Corporations Act, but individual centres are generally incorporated in their province or territory, and most of them are registered charities.

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

Yes, because I have three friendship centres in my riding, and they seem to be registered with Alberta. They're Alberta friendship centres, so that clarifies that for me.

[Yancy Craig]

To clarify, part of that is we have a federated structure. There are seven provincial and territorial associations, so that would explain that in Alberta.

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

Okay.

In my own research on suicide, especially in indigenous communities but just broadly, a lot of times that suicide becomes just one identifier, and it doesn't necessarily break it down into non-indigenous versus indigenous. I don't like to deal with it as non-indigenous versus indigenous. I deal with it generally, as in what the underlying causes are for suicide attempts and things like that. They're linked. A major driver seems to be child abuse, or sexual assault, or some sort of combination of those.

Would that characterize your experience with suicide attempts? It seems to be that for 25% to 30% of attempted cases or successful cases of suicide, there seems to have been some underlying sexual assault or child abuse issues. Would that characterize your experiences?