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

[Dr. Christopher Lalonde]

I want to go back to your earlier question about looking at change over time. That, I think, is what Michael and I are very, very anxious to do, but again, it requires access to data that at the moment we don't have.

With regard to not targeting suicide prevention necessarily, I was at a meeting in Ottawa on Thursday on men's suicide, with a partial focus on indigenous men's suicide. One of the women who was at the table turned to me and said, “Wait a minute; are you Lalonde of Chandler and Lalonde?” When I said I was, she told me that she cites our work all the time, which I thought was great. We got to chatting, and I told her that it's more gratifying to us not when someone cites our research in an academic work but when someone in the community uses it to justify getting something done.

At that, she texted me a photo of a cultural centre they built in her community. They used our work to justify it, that if you build this centre for cultural purposes, it will improve the health and well-being of young people. She said that 15 years ago they had a big problem with suicide and suicidality in her community. They don't anymore. The centre now employs 21 people.

I think that's the more long-term vision, that to the extent that you support communities to help themselves, they will.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

Thank you. We're out of time on that question.

The next question is from Romeo Saganash, please.

[Romeo Saganash, NDP, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to both our witnesses for their contribution to this committee.

I have a question related to I guess the type of control one community may have on its future, on its destiny. I think that's an important component in all this discussion.

I had the privilege of travelling with the committee to Nunavik and Nunavut this past week. There was a lot of discussion around those issues. My riding, which we visited on this trip, is composed of Cree, Inuit, and Algonquin communities. The Cree and Inuit live under a land claims agreement called the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement, whereby both groups have a certain measure of control over their local self-government and certain control over certain institutions, particularly related education and health.

Nevertheless, even given the fact that they both live under a certain legal regime or political regime that's similar in both cases, there's a marked difference in suicide rates between the Cree and the Inuit in this case. Would geography also be a determinant in all this analysis?

[Dr. Christopher Lalonde]

We did look at some geographical analyses. The first thought was perhaps being an especially remote community is either a good thing or a bad thing in terms of youth development. When we looked at the data, we didn't see a clear relationship like that. The closest thing we saw was that it seemed that communities that were near urban centres, but not large urban centres, were at slightly higher risk or had slightly higher rates of suicide than either remote communities or urban communities.

So the simple geographical analysis didn't really tell us very much.

Michael, you may want to add to that.

[Prof. Michael Chandler]

Only that certainly the Inuit are often pointed to as a group of individuals who in some way have self-government. They have successfully preserved for the most part their indigenous languages, and yet their suicide rate is high.

I think your intuition that somehow how far north one might need to go before one needs to change their predictor variables in terms of who's going to commit suicide and who isn't is an untold story. There are people like the McGill Group looking especially in the Inuit communities, but I think that there may be a separate story to be told there.

People like Lisa Wexler I think are doing a really good job of trying to look at the differences that characterize Inuit communities and separate them from people somewhat further south.

[Romeo Saganash, NDP, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

That brings me to my second question. I know that in British Columbia a sectoral agreement has been in place since 2013 for health care services. This was called the First Nations Health Authority. Have we seen improvement since the first nations took over those services and programs for their own communities?

One of the things we heard a lot over our two-and-a-half day visit up north was that communities wanted to define their own programs and services and determine their own programs and services. That's one big ask that we've heard over and over again during our visit. Has there been any improvement since that 2013 sectoral agreement in British Columbia?

[Dr. Christopher Lalonde]

I think that question would be better asked of the First Nations Health Authority because they have the data. I don't think we have any way of answering that question except to say that what really has changed is the level of engagement of communities in health planning and processes. I think they've done a really good job of engaging the communities.

I think, as you say, the communities want a say in designing and implementing their own programs. I think the First Nations Health Authority at least provides the kind of structure that would allow that to happen.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

Thank you very much.

We'll go on to the next questioner. This is also a seven-minute period like the previous ones, and it's from Michael McLeod, please.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

Thank you, and thank you both for the presentations. They are very interesting observations and studies you've done.

We spent the better part of last week going to Nunavik and Nunavut and heard many people speak on this issue. A lot of what you're raising is also reflected in their words. We heard very clearly, especially from people in Nunavik, that there's a need for crisis centres in the community, cultural centres, and family centres. You have raised the issue in part of your study that having a cultural centre lowered the levels of suicide.

I've been talking quite a bit over the last while about facilities, such as friendship centres, because I'm a strong believer that every community needs an organization such as this that deals with sport, recreation, culture, and education, all these programs, including the service of crisis centres at times.

If you look at the north—I'm from the Northwest Territories—we've had in all the territories, including Yukon, Nunavut, Nunavik, and Labrador, well over 1,000 people commit suicide in the last 15 years. However, if you look at the different parts of the north, including the Northwest Territories on the southern part, where we have friendship centres, that level is low, including the community I live in.

We've had a friendship centre for over 25 years, and we've never had a youth suicide. If you start looking at the people who are committing suicide in my riding—and we have different nations of people in the Northwest Territories—it's the Inuit males who are committing suicide, who live in the further northern communities where there is very little in terms of facilities, certainly no friendship centre. Nunavut has no friendship centre, except for one in Rankin Inlet. I don't believe Nunavik has any either.

We don't have that type of facility, but I'm wondering if you had looked at the role that facilities such as friendship centres play, and existing programs that are out there that help alleviate this problem.

I think, Mr. Lalonde, you talked about a facility that proved that cultural centres work and help alleviate this problem, so I wanted to ask if you had looked at friendship centres.

[Dr. Christopher Lalonde]

We didn't look specifically at friendship centres. At least in British Columbia, friendship centres tend to be located in cities rather than within communities, but I have no doubt that having a friendship centre in a community is what we would call a protective factor.

Michael, I don't know if you talked about our work in Manitoba at all. I'm sorry. I hope I'm not repeating myself here, but we consulted with communities in each of the five cultural territories in Manitoba to look at how we could move our research program from British Columbia, where it started, to Manitoba, which has a very different historical and political landscape.

We consulted with communities about what things they thought would promote culture within their communities. One of the common themes that came out of that was the need to facilitate interaction between elders and youth. In every community, that was an important need that they identified, and they had very different ideas about how to do that within each of their communities. Given that you have an exploding population of youth and a rapidly shrinking population of elders, it becomes a very difficult thing to do.

It seemed like the first thing you needed was a venue, a place where elders and youth could interact, but the shape of that venue changed from community to community. For some, it was something like a friendship centre as you described. For others, it was finding ways to get youth and elders together on the land, to participate in traditional activities. That doesn't necessarily require a building, but it certainly requires resources to get people out onto the land to do the activities they want to do.

I think that having a facility that's designated for these kinds of cultural purposes is critical, because that's just a building. What goes on inside the building is designed and implemented by the people in the community, and I think that's where the most powerful effects come from.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

This issue may have been covered within some of the larger themes that were raised, but I wanted to ask about housing or the lack of housing. The issue came up at every one of our discussions in the communities. Almost every presenter described how that lack plays into the sense of despair in our communities and in our aboriginal populations, and how that is reflected in the youth.

During one of the presentations, it was noted that if the housing situation was dealt with, if the housing supply was adequate, we would probably lower the social problems in our communities by 50%. Have you looked at the issues of overcrowding and housing shortages in the different communities as a factor?

[Dr. Christopher Lalonde]

We did look at a measure of crowding and we found a slight increase in suicide rates as the number of persons per room in the house went up, but I think that's potentially misleading, because in some ways it's not the number of people in the house that matters; it's the quality of the housing and whether or not the people want to be there.

When you have extended families living together in adequate housing, that's a good thing even if there are 2.4 persons per bedroom in the house, whereas if you have one person per room in very substandard housing, or a whole bunch of people in a house who are living together out of necessity and not out of familial love, I think that's a bad thing. I think you need to separate the issue of crowding from that of quality.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

Thanks for that clarification.

We're out of time on that question, but we're going to move into five-minute questions now, beginning with David Yurdiga.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Professor Chandler and Professor Lalonde, for joining us here today. It's a very important study and I think everyone around this table wants to resolve this in some way.

As was mentioned earlier, some of our committee members travelled to Nunavut and northern Quebec, and we heard about the lack of opportunity, the isolation, the poverty, and the poor housing. These are major factors within the current mental health issues in that region. To what extent did your research measure community economic conditions in relation to mental health? I address that to anyone who wants to answer it.

[Dr. Christopher Lalonde]

We looked at a number of economic issues, at least here in British Columba. We looked at average income in the community, percentage of income that comes from government transfers, levels of education, and labour participation, and there was no clear relationship between those variables and rates of suicide. You could argue that maybe it's because there isn't enough variability in economic indicators across the communities to be able to show anything, but it seemed to suggest that the communities that were slightly better off than others weren't necessarily the ones with the lowest suicide rates. So it wasn't necessarily economic activity, although I absolutely understand where you're coming from in terms of sensed opportunities for youth within communities. I think that's the thing that needs to be addressed, more than the number of persons participating in the labour force does. Although that's important, I don't think it's the magic bullet for this particular issue.

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

As I was mentioning earlier, there's a sense that there's no direction right now for the indigenous youth.

There's more than one issue. There's a lack of housing and a lack of opportunity, but which area should we address first? Obviously it's very difficult to address everything at once. Which area would you like to address first, if we could? What is the highest priority?

[Dr. Christopher Lalonde]

I think the take-home message from our work is that when communities get control over their own lives, better things happen than when they don't. I think communities should be answering that question rather than us answering it. For some, the really imperatively important thing was to get their culture into the curriculum in their schools, so that if their young people could grow up knowing who they are, being taught in their schools, and supported in their communities, that would sustain them across whatever other adversities they might face.

For other communities the issue was clearly more resource-based; for example, why was the diamond company getting all of the riches from the resources of their land and they were not?

I think without having to point to one thing, I would say it's up to communities to decide what their highest priorities are, and it's our job as the rest of Canada to support them in gaining and regaining control over their civic, political, and cultural lives.

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

During our visit to the north, it was mentioned that the community is always in a mode of crisis. How is this going to affect them in the long term, when it becomes normalized for individuals to commit suicide and the shock factor isn't there anymore? What can be done to address that in the short term and long term?

[Dr. Christopher Lalonde]

I think the short-term answer regarding crisis is to provide immediate on-the-ground support. What form that takes depends on what the crisis is and what the community needs. The longer-term problem is that we imagine that, if we just bring in some support workers for a week to talk to the youth, and then they go away, we haven't really done anything at all. We've calmed the waters momentarily, but the underlying issues are still going to be there. For the longer term, I think it's the need to find ways to support the communities over the long term.

For example, when I was talking about elder and youth interaction, the community can decide what form that takes, but the resources to do that can't be another one-off program; that people come in, they kick up the dust, and then they're gone. There needs to be more long-term funding support for the things that communities want to do to be able to help their youth.

I think the problem with particular programs is that they tend to be focused on particular things, like suicide prevention, for a particular period of time, three months or maybe a year. Even the research programs that Michael and I tried to put together, which are aimed not just at extracting data from the communities, but helping them find ways to support themselves and their youth, at most are two or three years long. Then once again we're gone. I think there needs to be a way to get around that somehow. I don't know what it is, but I think there needs to be a way to provide those long-term resources.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

Thank you for the response.

We're going to move on to a five-minute question from Don Rusnak, please.

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

Thank you for appearing before the committee today. It's a pleasure to hear from you, and to hear your perspective from the west coast.

We have our member from Nunavut here today, a friend of mine, Hunter Tootoo. I'd like to acknowledge his presence here today.

You just echoed my frustration—in terms of previous governments' responses to suicide crises and epidemics across this country in indigenous and northern communities—with doing one-off programs, where people make a big stink about a crisis that's happening. In the moment the government reacts, it sends in health care workers for a finite amount of time. There are good or mixed results, and then everything washes up and it's ignored, and then it cycles back into the norm.

Another thing I wanted to touch on is what I see as the solution, or one of the solutions, perhaps the ultimate solution.... You mentioned a side benefit of the positive things that self-government brings, but self-government that is truly realized. I believe you mentioned self-determination hitting a glass ceiling. I'd like you to explain what you meant by that, and then perhaps comment on any of the numerous comments I made.

[Prof. Michael Chandler]

Maybe I should at least start to answer this question. I think that governments better understand how to deal with individual problems than they understand how to deal with cultural problems. It's common in British Columbia and across Canada for communities to declare themselves in some kind of suicide-crisis circumstance. As a result, we parachute in a bunch of people who are trained counsellors, but it's a puzzle. If you were parachuted in, having spent all the time you have looking at this problem, what could you or would you do?

I think we have this individual focus where we're going to go in and solve the problems of a series of individuals who are inclined to commit suicide while ignoring the real cultural devastation that underlies this sense of loss and impotence, and lack of control of one's own destiny.

Here's a thought about how you might more coherently intervene. If it's the case that you can identify—certainly as we can identify here in B.C.—bands or communities that have never had a youth suicide, I think we have to presume that they know something about how to raise children who believe that life is worth living.

There is indigenous knowledge sedimented in those communities that have few or no suicides. Intervention programs that try to pair up communities with high and low suicide rates respectively would be a novel solution, a solution different than just bringing in some kind of platoon of counsellors who, themselves, don't know what results in suicide.

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

I was just going to make another comment. We all know what got us here in terms of indigenous suicide. It was colonialism, residential schools, the Indian Act, and everything we've done to the indigenous communities across this country.

I have one quick question if the Chair will allow me to ask it. Is there one answer for all communities? Have you seen something that's worked right across the country? I don't think there is.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

It's the biggest question with the least amount of time.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!