Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Sept. 26th, 2016

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

We'll come to order. This is the meeting of the Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs of the House of Commons. Welcome, everyone. I'll just note today that we have Joël Lightbound sitting in for Rémi Massé. Welcome, Joël. I'll also acknowledge that we're meeting on traditional Algonquin territory, for which we're very grateful, as always.

We have an hour of witnesses. Two witnesses are joining us for the first hour. We'd like to welcome them at this point. Please welcome Michael Chandler, appearing as an individual. Members, Michael is on the left screen. He is professor emeritus, University of British Columbia, department of psychology. Thank you very much for joining us. On the right side, again appearing as an individual, is Christopher Lalonde, professor, University of Victoria, department of psychology. Thank you very much, Professor and Professor, for joining us. We're very grateful for your time today.

You may be familiar with the way this will work. I'm happy to offer each of you 10 minutes to address the committee. When there's about a minute left, I'm going to start waving a yellow card around, and then when the time is up, I'll wave a red card around, and ask you to come to the close at that point. Then from there, we'll go into rounds of questions from committee members. We're all together for one hour. We'll hear from each of you and then we'll go into questions. We'll do the two presentations consecutively, and then have the questions combined to both of the witnesses.

With no further ado, I would like to welcome Professor Chandler to the floor for 10 minutes.

[Professor Michael Chandler, Professor Emeritus, University of British Columbia, Department of Psychology, As an Individual]

Good afternoon to you and the rest of the committee.

As you've done, I would like to acknowledge that I'm speaking from the traditional territories of the Coast and Straits Salish peoples. As you remarked, I'm an emeritus professor, which essentially means that you do everything you used to do, but don't get paid for it.

I want to begin by saying that Dr. Christopher Lalonde, who will speak after me, has been my close colleague for more than 30 years. Together, we have considered a range of matters having to do with the health and the well-being of indigenous people, both in Canada and various other places around the world.

The large bulk of this work concerns the problem of youth suicide in all of the Commonwealth's many outposts. Today, I want to talk about this complicated matter, by speaking only about two issues. The first of these concerns the effective impossibility of successfully picking out which particular youths from a given indigenous community will or will not successfully take their own lives.

The second set of remarks concerns various studies that Christopher Lalonde and I have done concerning the general proposition that cultural wounds require cultural medicine. I'll try to unpack that in a moment.

Let me begin with what I think is a more straightforward matter, which has to do with suicide rates and the effective impossibility of deciding who among Canada's indigenous youth will or will not commit suicide.

As you're perhaps aware, suicide rates are customarily reported as deaths per 100,000. For Canada's general youth population, this ratio is approximately four or five individuals per 100,000. The risk effectively doubles among the whole of Canada's indigenous youth. One need not be a statistical whiz to recognize that the odds of any given youth actually taking their life is especially small, and the prospect of fashioning some assessment tool capable of picking out such individuals is effectively vanishing.

Our usual intuitions about such matters fail us. When asked, people might offer the notion that depression is a predictor of youth suicide, but good studies have suggested that something like 70% of Canadian youth report being seriously depressed at some times in their lives, and that they also similarly think about the possibility of suicide.

The question then becomes this: how might we try to intervene in this problem, and address the fact that somewhere out there troubled youth are on their way to actually committing suicide? There is an enterprise called gatekeeper projects. Across the Commonwealth, many hundreds of millions of dollars are currently being spent annually on so-called gatekeeper project interventions.

In short, the common core of all such projects is to identify and train community level paraprofessionals to identify youth at special risk for suicide. Although having the virtue of employing various sorts of community members, all of these projects share the common but fatal flaw of wrongly assuming that it is possible to pick out which particular youth are especially vulnerable. No one knows how to do this. An insurance actuary let loose on this problem would simply conclude that no one would ever commit suicide, and they would be wrong four or eight times out of 100,000 and right 99,995 times in a row.

The issue here has prompted Chris Lalonde and me to refocus our attention at a higher level of aggregation by looking at whole communities rather than single individuals. There is some attempt to capture all of this with the pat phrase “cultural wounds require cultural medicine.” If one then undertakes to get beyond the difficulty or really the impossibility of singling out individual youth, the question becomes how one might proceed to look at higher aggregations of indigenous people. The way we've done this—and there are other ways—is to look at the tribal or band level. Much of our work has been done here in British Columbia where there are something like 203 distinct bands. As it turns out, roughly half of these communities have never suffered a single youth suicide in the 20-plus years that such information has been collected. By implication, the remaining half of these bands have often heartbreakingly high levels of youth suicide.

The open question, the thing that enquiring minds want to know, is what it is that distinguishes those communities with low to absent youth suicide rates from those where suicide is epidemic.

One could look in many places for answers to such questions. Our own work has focused on the questions about individual and cultural continuity. That notion of continuity concerns the fact that in order to be a coherent person, it's constitutive that one must have a sense of ownership of one's individual past—otherwise one might be an amnesiac, for example—and to have a sense of commitment to one's own as yet unrealized future.

Elevated to the level of whole cultural groups, it turns out that—

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

Professor Chandler, I just wanted you to notice the one-minute card.

[Prof. Michael Chandler]

Okay, thank you.

—what distinguishes between communities or collections or aggregations of people simply being mobs and those with a real coherent culture is similarly some sense of ownership of past and present at the level of whole communities. Therefore, much of the work we've done—and hopefully Chris is prepared to describe some of that—is to try to find markers or defining features of whole indigenous communities that are associated with high and low suicide rates.

I'm sure I've raised more questions than I've answered, and hopefully in our question-and-answer period, I'll be able to speak to some of those.

That's enough from me and we can turn to Professor Lalonde.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

Thank you so much for that, Professor Chandler.

Professor Lalonde, let's move right along into your remarks for 10 minutes please.

We may have lost Professor Lalonde. Let's just sit tight for a moment here and see if we can get him back.

While we're doing so, Professor Chandler, if there is anything you'd like to add that you weren't able to fit in, we may as well make use of the moment.

[Prof. Michael Chandler]

Our efforts over three decades have been to identify the features of communities that have very low or absent youth suicide rates and set them apart from communities that have very high rates. All of that turns on what we've chosen to call “cultural continuity”.

If Chris is back, I'll mute my speaker and let him go on. Is he there?

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

No, he's not with us yet, so I might suggest to committee members that we go into the first round of questions if the members are ready. Then we'll hear Chris when he gets back.

Let's proceed if you don't mind, Professor, with some questions.

The first member of the committee who would like to ask a question is Mike Bossio.

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

Thank you, Professor Chandler, for joining us this afternoon. I'm quite excited about the type of work you're doing because I look at self-governance and cultural integrity as being key here in solving the skyrocketing suicide rates in our indigenous communities right now.

Maybe you could speak on where self-governance and self-determination have led to that cultural integrity and continuity. Where was it successful that you've seen so far? What size was the community? Where wasn't it successful, and why do you feel that it wasn't successful in those communities?

[Prof. Michael Chandler]

First let me say that, over the years, Chris Lalonde and I have identified nine descriptors of indigenous communities, roughly half of which concern their efforts to hold onto and to rehabilitate their cultural past. The other half concern issues that have to do with ownership of their own future. Now as it turns out, matters of self-governance become a kind of keystone determinant that cuts across all of these measures. Communities that have achieved some measure of self-determination and self-governance have lower or absent rates of suicide relative to counterpart communities that do not have such self-governance instruments.

Other kinds of variables that we've looked at have to do with the efforts of communities to preserve their traditional language, to re-establish the role of women in governance, and to create facilities that are intended for the preservation of culture by allowing for ceremonial events and youth programs that focus on cultural rehabilitation.

The other markers that we looked at, which are more future oriented, concern things like some important voice in the policing of their communities and some efforts on the part of these communities to run their own child protection services, to shape their own educational practices in terms of including indigenous matters in their curriculum, and—

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

I'm sorry, Professor, if you don't mind there's something I'd really like to get to here. Is there a kind of optimal size of community where self-governance is more successful versus those that are of a smaller nature or are more isolated?

[Prof. Michael Chandler]

I'm not sure I have hard evidence to answer that question. I'm sure you're aware of this, but I think initially the initiative of communities to try to win back some kind of governance control.... First it was a small number of groups, often, I think, some of the larger groups with more resources. But later on, in effect, every community was invited to address the question of whether they either wished to have self-governance or wanted to be in a queue for which self-governance would eventually eventuate.

I think the only hard evidence that I can speak to—and I understand, I think, the importance of your question—is that there are tribal groups that have essentially indentured themselves trying to achieve some measure of self-governance. There is in place a scheme for rating how far given communities have proceeded. It's a kind of five-point scale. Five means you have self-governance of some sort and zero means you've not even gotten in the game. It turns out that the suicide rate is highest among those communities that have tried to initiate self-governance but have bumped into some kind of glass ceiling, so that despite having kind of borrowed into their own future to pay for such legal help, they haven't achieved—

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

Sorry, Professor, I hate to cut in again. I apologize, but my time is running out and I want to get a little more information from you because I respect what you have to say.

From a cultural rehabilitation standpoint, it has taken 10 generations to destroy many of our indigenous cultures. Do you have any indication as to how many generations it takes to rehabilitate it?

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

Just briefly, we're under a minute here. Thank you.

[Prof. Michael Chandler]

I don't know the answer to that question. My sense is that however it's rehabilitated, it won't look like it used to look. No matter how much you undertake to ensure a sense of cultural continuity, you can't persuade teenage kids from an indigenous community to give up their Nikes in favour of moccasins, for example. Time is also passing. I don't know how many generations, which is your real question, are required to set things right. At this stage of the game, I don't even know that we know what right looks like.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

Professor Chandler, Professor Lalonde has come back online. We're at the end of Mike Bossio's allotted time for that question, so I'm going to suggest that we now hear from Professor Lalonde, then we'll pick up the questioning where we left off, if that suits everyone.

Thank you so much, Professor Chandler.

[Dr. Christopher Lalonde, Professor, University of Victoria, Department of Psychology, As an Individual]

Thank you.

Thank you for having me. I too want to acknowledge that I'm speaking to you from the territories of the Coast and Straits Salish peoples. Thanks for the opportunity to speak. I'm at a disadvantage here because I didn't get to hear what Michael said or the questions that were asked of him.

The one thing I hope will come out of this work is that Michael outlined all of the problems inherent in trying to identify who might try to take their own lives, how difficult that is, and how many red herrings there are in that field. A precondition to understanding the size and scope of this problem is to get good and accurate data on suicide and suicide attempts, and other bad things that befall youth in indigenous and other communities.

At present, we don't do a good job of making that data available for use by researchers, policy-makers, or communities themselves. One of the problems that Michael and I face is trying to get access to data at the level of communities. You can talk about suicide rates for the province of British Columbia or the country of Canada, but that's not especially helpful if you're in a particular community and if you're a particular group of people. What we need is good, accurate, ongoing data on things that are happening at the level of communities. There are two reasons to say that. One is that when we don't do, then you read media accounts of an epidemic of suicide in the indigenous population, which is fearmongering that's insulting to people without giving anyone any means of acting. On the other hand, if as a particular first nation you know that your suicide rate, or your diabetes rate, or your heart disease rate is above the provincial average, or the average of other communities in your area, then you have some information you can act on. When you know the size and scope of a particular problem, then you can decide what you want to do about it. At present, we don't provide that information to communities. I think there ought to be a way of providing a kind of report card to communities of where they stand on a list of important health outcomes, so they know what they can or should be trying to do to resolve that.

Not having known what Michael might have said, I think I was cut off shortly after he said that cultural wounds require cultural medicine. I think that's an important take-home message, the idea that if you want to do something about youth suicide rates, you don't necessarily need to target the issue of youth suicide. To the extent that you promote healthy youth development, you prevent suicide. It doesn't need to be earmarked for some sort of parachuted-in suicide prevention program. To the extent that we can help communities promote their own cultural ways of doing things, we will, as a side benefit, lower rates of suicide and other kinds of negative developmental outcomes.

I'll stop there and leave it for your questions.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

Thank you, Professor. You do have about seven minutes remaining in your allotment. If there was an area that you wanted to go deeper on, you're welcome to do that, or as you say, we could go to questions.

[Dr. Christopher Lalonde]

I think I'll just go to questions. I think that's more important than me probably repeating some things that Michael said.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

Okay. Thanks very much. Your first question will come from Cathy Mcleod, please.

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

Thank you.

I'd like to thank both of the presenters. I'm also from British Columbia, so it's good to have your expertise here at the table. At first I want to dive down into the issue of data. My first question is whether it is not available for use, or is it just not collected?

For example, Health Canada would know every medical number that they pay for, and then you have things like suicide being attached to the medical billing process. Is that not available for privacy reasons, or what are the challenges there? I do believe data is an important issue.

[Dr. Christopher Lalonde]

It is there; it's kept. It's complicated for indigenous people because the federal government keeps status Indian records and the provincial government makes actual payments. So it's very difficult to actually access the data even if people are willing to share it.

It's been made a little more complicated in British Columbia because we have the tripartite agreement, and the First Nations Health Council now controls what's called the client file. They are reluctant to share the data with researchers because they don't feel they have the authority to share data at the community level. They can share data for the province, the suicide rate, but they don't feel they have the authority to share community-level data. In British Columbia, where there are more than 200 communities, securing something like a band council resolution with 203 communities is just logistically impossible.

The point I've been trying to make is, if at the moment you feel you're not authorized to share data with researchers of community-level stuff, then share it back to the communities. Let the communities know where they stand. I'm hopeful that as things move forward we'll get data-sharing agreements in place that will allow Michael and me and others to do the kind of work that we've been doing.

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

Michael talked about the number of bands and approximately a half, he said, had not had a youth suicide in 20 years. Have you any sense of change over time for the communities that have been impacted? Do you have any sense that communities are moving forward on some of the areas that you've identified as being important in your research, and is it making a difference? Is that available in terms of data and information?

That's for Michael.

[Prof. Michael Chandler]

My sense is the kind of work that Chris and I have been doing is of great interest to indigenous communities and it is often used as a point of argument to achieve some changes with their own provincial or federal government.

I think the fact that some changes are being made is evidenced by the uptake of this kind of research data. On your strong question of whether it is possible to identify communities that are in transition, that have taken on some of these expectations about how to build a better way of rearing one's youth in a culturally sensitive way, my sense is that we just have to remain mute. I don't think we have the evidence to suggest, at least in the 15 to 20 years that we've been collecting data, that there have been a whole lot of changes from then until now.

Chris, you may have a different view on that.

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

As a committee we have put a lot of work into this very horrific tragedy that's happening. If you were going to say there is one short-, medium-, or long-term recommendation that should be part of your report, if you can put it into one of those, what would it be? We have time for both of you to answer.

[Prof. Michael Chandler]

For me, it would be that cultures, communities, that rehabilitate themselves against enormous odds create healthy environments for raising kids.

Chris' point was all these things need not be flagged as suicide prevention efforts, although sometimes that's how you get money to do these things. To me, somehow regaining access to and owning one's cultural past and having a stake in one's own community's future, working on those two backward- and forward-looking aspects of change, is the ticket out of this predicament that we all struggle to understand.