Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on June 9th, 2016

[Chief Isadore Day, Ontario Regional Chief]

Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to first of all acknowledge the Creator, the creation, the prayers, and the protocols. I also want to acknowledge the traditional territory of the Algonquin people.

I want to acknowledge Cindy Blackstock, the previous presenter, and thank her for all the work she's been undertaking with the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal on child welfare.

As well, I want to note that I have Ken Young sitting beside me, as a reminder and recognition of the era of reconciliation. Ken is a Indian residential school survivor. He's a leader in our first nations communities and somebody who well knows these issues. I have him beside me to help keep me focused on the fact that much of what we're doing is about the modern era of reconciliation and the important work that needs to be done through these committee presentations.

I also want to acknowledge the first nations leadership that is here, and the committee members.

I am presenting as the Ontario regional chief, and as a member of the AFN executive who holds the portfolio for health, and the chair of the Chiefs Committee on Health at the AFN.

I am also presenting as a proud member of the Serpent River First Nation, and as such, these are not just policy discussions for me, but literally life and death discussions and decisions that must be made here in Ottawa and that will profoundly impact the families in communities like mine.

We must always be on guard for the issue of suicide. As we've seen in recent days, the community of Woodstock in southern Ontario has fallen victim to a trend of suicide that's putting the question of suicide in front of all Canadians.

Before I proceed with my remarks, let me point out that the current suicide crisis will only end if we have addressed all the social determinants of health.

Our communities need clean water, safe and adequate housing, a decent education system, and economically sustainable communities. Once we move from the third world conditions in our communities to those of mainstream Canada, and once our children are no longer living in desperate situations, then this national crisis will end. Simply put, the people sitting around this table can finally recommend that we end Canada's greatest shames: first nation poverty and despair, and its manifestation in suicide.

When it comes to the roots of the crisis, as you have heard throughout your study, suicide in first nations communities is the result of the coming together of many historical, social, political, economic, and environmental factors that collectively make up the social determinants of health. I want to underscore one thing. I don't want to get into it in-depth, but I must also underscore the serious nature of climate change and what that must be doing to the minds of individuals, and the collective identity and feelings that people must have in the remote north. I believe that some of the suicidal ideation can be and probably is connected to the issue of climate change.

The most profound of these factors is settler colonialism. Colonialism displaced first nations people from our lands and waters, and thus our sources of identity, spirituality, and economic security. First nations governance systems were undermined and replaced by foreign systems based on profoundly different world views grounded in hierarchy and patriarchy. Our languages were literally beaten out of the children at the residential schools. Children were stolen from their homes to face physical, sexual, and psychological abuse in these schools.

The staggering rates of first nation children in the child welfare system demonstrate that this painful legacy continues, as eloquently outlined in great detail by Cindy Blackstock in the previous presentation.

First nations youth face the daily stress of having to face a Canadian society that claims to be built on the principles of fairness, justice, and respect for diversity, while they survive in communities without basic necessities like schools and clean water. At the same time, the comments sections of new stories about them are filled with comments that they are living the high life on the taxpayers' dime.

With all of this in mind, the suicide crisis facing our youth should come as no surprise. In fact, it is an entirely expected outcome given what our youth and our communities face every single day.

I must point out that the demographic profile of those who attempt or commit suicide is vastly changing. Children and elders in their twilight years committing suicide is not the norm, but that is becoming increasingly evident in the statistics on suicide in first nations. The suicide of a 10-year-old boy in the Nishnawbe Aski Nation territory and an elder in the Treaty 3 region are just two examples that I would cite where the culminating issues had to do with the lack of primary health and mental health services—point blank, as a result of funding cuts to health services in first nations over the last decade.

The question then becomes: what can be done?

I will move forward to address suicide. It is imperative to address the social determinants of health in first nations and to support and advocate for community-based approaches to suicide prevention, which our youth refer to as “life promotion”, which simply means investing and paying it forward in developing programs for youth and their communities. Youth need the decision-makers to prioritize them and to generate hope among them through strategic investment.

We commend Minister Philpott for meeting with our youth just yesterday. I want to quote something that the minister said, as it pertains to the meeting:

I am grateful for this opportunity to speak directly with First Nations youth, and I want to thank the AFN National Youth Council members for bringing their concerns and ideas to the table. Their willingness to talk about their challenges, and how we can work together to address them, helps me better understand how the Government of Canada can support their well-being. Their support is a critical factor in generating positive, long-term change.

I must commend the youth, the AFN, and the minister for their efforts and the important work that will come from the round table.

At the same time I want to see three things resulting from Minister Philpott's words. The first is that we need action now—defined, budgeted, and collaborative efforts. The second thing is that we need the minister to ensure that medium- and long-term planning in health accord negotiations must formally include our youth as part of that process. Thirdly, we need the minister to work with the youth of the AFN to formalize life promotion as more than just ideology. We need to build strategic investments that work towards the diminishment of suicide through programs aimed at moving from the current national suicide crisis in our youth populations to a greater focus of strengthening a new generation of young people who are empowered to want life over death. Of course, their lives must be seen as worthy, worth living, and worth the effort of strategic investments by this government.

We need the full implementation of the first nations mental wellness continuum framework and the added element of youth in life-promotion strategies. The framework outlines opportunities to build on community strengths and control of resources in order to improve existing mental wellness programs for first nation communities. This includes community development, as indicated by the previous speaker; quality care systems and competent service delivery; collaboration with partners; enhanced flexible funding; and ensuring that culture is at the centre of the mental wellness continuum framework.

Full implementation means increasing the amount of flexibility of resources to increase capacity, and to ensure quality care systems and competent care delivery so that all first nations have access to the essential basket of services that make up the continuum of care.

On the social determinants of health, as mentioned previously, health outcomes cannot be addressed by health care system interventions alone. What is required is a real and substantial investment in the social determinants of health, including adequate and safe infrastructure, culturally relevant education, a reformed child welfare system, and economic opportunities, among other things.

In addition, research demonstrates that self-determination and cultural continuity act as an important hedge against youth suicide; therefore, community self-determination and support for cultural activities are also life-promotion activities that are needed.

With the commitment to nation-to-nation dealings, and the investments in budget 2016, the new government has made an important step in addressing the social determinants of health, but the reality is that first nation youth continue to sit in mouldy, over-crowded houses without clean water. Much work needs to be done. They have waited long enough.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

You have one minute, please, Mr. Day.

[Chief Isadore Day]

We need to support community-based approaches to suicide prevention and life-promotion. Given the role of self-determination as a hedge against suicide, it is vitally important to support community-based approaches to suicide-prevention activities and programming. These must be implemented. Community development programming, which reduces the risk of suicide, includes skills development and coping skills, job readiness, and recreational activities that decrease isolation and increase peer support for our youth.

I want to read a couple of quotes to end my submission, because these are things that people have said with respect to the issue of suicide, and these are the things that they want conveyed to this government.

This is a mother. She says:

As the mother of a trans-gender indigenous youth, who actively sought out immediate help for [my] son during a suicide crisis, I quickly found out that there is little to no culturally appropriate resources available to him or his family. Any resources were primarily largely city centred support systems, leaving us feeling left out of the suicide conversations and even more isolated and alone, which brought him to that place of crisis. We need immediate resources to help support our youth in crisis and help for the families that are at a loss to find that desperately needed outreach support that is lacking on remote and urban First Nation territories.

The second quote reads:

We are faced with major issues as First Nation people that are about dispossession from our lands, and being systematically torn from our families through the residential schools. Canada and the Province[s] must reconcile and deal with the impacts of the Indian Residential School System and the Indian Act System—until these issues are addressed directly, our people will continue to feel hopelessness—our people will continue to die of chronic health issues and suicide.

The last one is as follows:

Suicide trends in our First Nations are part of “collective post trauma” results. Community healing is needed now—we cannot wait any longer—our families need to be a focus in healing making our communities stronger.

Thank you for the time, Mr. Chair.

I'll take questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

Thanks very much, Regional Chief Day. If you'd be willing to leave your speaking notes behind, that would be most helpful indeed.

[Chief Isadore Day]

Absolutely.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

We'll move into the seven-minute questions, and the first question comes from Don Rusnak, please.

[Don Rusnak, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Regional Chief Day, it's good to see you again.

As you know, I hail from Treaty 3 territory in northwestern Ontario, where we've had suicide crises in the communities. I know of particularly acute problems in NAN communities. I of interact a lot with people from NAN communities and in the city of Thunder Bay.

I've been hearing over the last little while, indeed over my many varied careers including that with Grand Council Treaty 3, that there is one thing suicide is. It is a crisis that needs an immediate response and not just a band-aid response, but money is not the only answer to solving the problem in the communities. It is very important for government to listen to the people who know their communities and know the issues in their communities.

That being said, in your experience now with the Minister of Health and the Minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs and her department officials, have you seen discussions regarding community-based solutions coming out of the communities and being communicated to both of the departments that are so intimately involved?

[Chief Isadore Day]

I just want to focus on the caveat that you mentioned about funding not being the only issue. I want to leave that out in front here, because it is an important observation. I liken it to the idea of getting into a vehicle and going somewhere. We obviously know that we can't stay where we are. We are in a crisis situation. We hear about these public health emergencies. We hear about attempted suicide and the commission of suicide, so we know we can't stay there. The vehicles that we have—and I leave this with the committee today—we have done all the planning. We have talked quite a bit about the framework necessary to get the work done. That's what I can tell you.

That part of the discussion doesn't need to happen anymore. We have the tools. We have the framework. We know what needs to be done. We know where we want to go. We have the vehicle. We have the plan. We need the fiscal fuel in the tank to get this done. That's the issue. We now need strategic investment. We can no longer talk about this issue. We have the plan. We need the fiscal fuel in the tank.

Make the investment. Let's get moving.

[Don Rusnak, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

I couldn't agree more. I know that when I was with Grand Council Treaty 3, we had frameworks that weren't funded. I know it's very important for the work of this committee that we hear not only about the immediate problems, but also long-term solutions. We know that over the last many years, there have been funding problems for a lot of our first nations organizations that have been doing great work, but need increased funding. Certainly there's been a commitment by this government to increase that funding to historic levels.

I've heard over many years that first nations, ultimately, will drive these long-term solutions by creating an economy in which first nations make their own destiny. I've spoken to a lot of chiefs in my riding. Chief Leonard from Rainy River First Nations believes that getting involved in the economy and creating business opportunity and wealth for his community will eventually drive his community forward and that, hopefully, in the future you won't be seeing a lot of the problems we see now and won't have to be doing crisis management.

From what you've seen in Ontario, can you give us any long-term solutions so we don't end up in these crisis situations over and over again, where the government is essentially reacting to crisis over and over again?

[Chief Isadore Day]

When we look at long-term solutions through the insight and wisdom of our previous presenter, Cindy Blackstock, she did mention the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, which is 20 years old now. We're also seeing something more recent. A year ago we saw the executive summary of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's 94 calls for action. If you take those two combined efforts of a commissioned approach to look at the problems and the solutions we've seen, some of the solutions around the Indian Act come out of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, but then also the people part of it, what happened to our people through the residential schools....

Taking the 94 calls for action and the road map that's laid out in the truth and reconciliation report, in those two things combined, there's a plethora of options and alternatives and models for a long-term solution. It's a really big question, but we have the action plans in front of us now, the road map, and I think we just need to get it done. I underscore the importance of this government making short- and long-term investments. The Ontario government recently did that. They made an apology in the Ontario legislature. In the last two weeks they have put out half a billion dollars for first nations in the province of Ontario. We need Canada to move on this.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

Thank you. That takes us right to seven minutes.

The next question is from David Yurdiga, please.

[David Yurdiga, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

I'd like to thank regional chiefs Day and Young for participating in our very important study.

There are so many strategies out there to address suicide, whether it's youth, adult, or even the older generation. Has the Assembly of First Nations reviewed all these different strategies and looked at what's working and what's not? Obviously some communities are doing very well on programming. You see one community and another community that's just a two-hour drive away with a much different story. Do you have any input as far as the strategies go, and what's out there currently?

[Chief Isadore Day]

I think strategies and studies from an anthropological approach give us information to work with. I think we must underscore the fact that there are also emerging drivers to social issues and conditions.

Here I would have to refer to the culminating factor of inaction by governments to address real injustices. For example, Cindy Blackstock has been talking about the issue of child welfare, and we've been talking about the Indian and residential school issue, which has been brewing for a number of years. We seem to be dealing with multi-generational issues and impacts.

One thing I'm going to keep underscoring is the issue of and need for real strategic investment, but I take your point about looking at and possibly doing a meta-analysis of all the studies that are there. At the Chiefs Committee on Health, we certainly believe that, as we move into the endgame with respect to the health accord, we do want to take a health and social policy framework approach. We do want to be able to deliver some input to the youth's efforts on life promotion. If we're going to be able to do that responsibly, we do need to have a good take on what the combination of all these studies and all these reports is saying.

This work is in front of us right now, Mr. Chair, and I want to let you to know that it's something we will be discussing directly with our youth, but it's also part of the work that the Chiefs Committee on Health is working on as we put forward these types of proposals to the federal government.

[David Yurdiga, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

The Quebec suicide program is claimed to be one of the best in the world. Have you looked at that program? I understand it decreased the suicide rate by almost 50%. Have you looked at that model?

[Chief Isadore Day]

Which one, sir?

[David Yurdiga, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

It's the Quebec suicide prevention program.

[Chief Isadore Day]

No, I haven't. I apologize. I can't say I have.

[David Yurdiga, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

It's so important. I think we have to look at everything. I was told before that every community is unique, so one program may not work for another community because one community may have more resources for economic opportunities. There are so many factors. I don't know if one strategy will fit all communities.

Can you comment on that?

[Chief Isadore Day]

Yes, I can. I'm going to take a little bit of a risk here. I haven't seen the study, but based on the fact that you're making reference to the Quebec region, I would feel safe to say that in my assumption perhaps it has to do with the self-government agreements in the northern part of Quebec and the James Bay Cree-Naskapi Commission and their ability to have more control in first nations' jurisdictions of health and social programs, but more importantly to have a direct connection and shared control of lands and resources in the province of Quebec.

I would wager to guess, Mr. Chair, that is one of the main reasons why suicide rates have been reduced by 50%.

[David Yurdiga, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

Regarding these suicide strategies, how important is it to involve cultural elements within that strategy; for example, cultural healing practices? Should that be one of the biggest components in the strategy?

[Chief Isadore Day]

Yes. I think that's a closed-end question. If you allow me, I'll elaborate a little bit and give you my reasons why I think that is true.

Oftentimes there's this deception. Most people don't want to die, save and except the ones who want to have the right to choose to die. I want to make very clear that this is about preventable loss of life and that our people don't want to die. There's a deception about that. We definitely want to live; we want a better life.

What is the last part of your question?

[David Yurdiga, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

I know in some communities, even some of my family members talk about identifying with the culture, and they want more of it.

Obviously, a lot of first nations indigenous people don't live on first nations anymore. They live in other communities. It seems there's a lack of programs for them. They may not necessarily be going to a school within their first nation. They are going outside of their community to get educated.

There seems to be not enough programming to address their culture.

[Chief Isadore Day]

Let me elaborate on that. That's probably one of the biggest factors in the success of the types of programs that are needed. I might just say that for that individual who wants life more than anything, our first nation people will always defer and refer to the issue of their connection to the land, their home.

Often, our people are facing this question of suicide because of identity issues. We certainly see that a return back to the language, back to the culture, back to the land, and having that sense of self and connection to the land and community and home is critical. That's the biggest factor in success of suicide programs that we see across the board.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

Charlie Angus.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you Chief Day. It's good to see you again. Thank you, Mr. Young, for being here.

I want to look at it from two levels. One is that at our committee, we are dealing with government policy, so start there and then maybe go to ground and tell us, what does it look like on the ground?

You talked about not having any money in the fiscal tank to get what needs to be done. We visited Kashechewan and Attawapiskat last week with Minister Philpott where she saw the “Tylenol clinics”. That's what they call them, where they have no doctors, they don't have the proper medical services, they don't have the mental health workers. There are zero dollars in the federal budget to add new money to either health or mental health services for indigenous communities.

What does that shortfall mean? What are you looking at in order to fill that fiscal tank?