Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Sept. 28th, 2016

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Yes, or can you tell me something that would bridge the two communities together? Often we have the two populations living in isolation from each other and not getting to learn about each other. I was really struck by your comment that we have to do this together. So could you answer in that context, please?

[Pamela Glode Desrochers]

One of the biggest roles I see a friendship centre playing is bridging that gap.

Part of my mandate as executive director is to ensure that I am out there educating people on what a friendship centre does and what our communities are doing, but that's intertwined in all our programs and services.

Friendship centres have an open-door policy. If anybody comes through my door, I provide programs and services to them. Some of our programs nobody ever wanted to touch. For example, our methadone program and our needle-exchange program were needed by the community, and not just by our indigenous community; there was a huge need in the non-indigenous community. We worked with the non-indigenous community to bring in those programs under the umbrella of the friendship centre.

It's part of our being really good neighbours and part of our having the ability to send our staff to schools and to governments. We get a lot of calls for an elder to do an opening. We know that, and I now have a programs coordinator, and that's part of her job. It's building those pieces into our friendship centre and into our programs.

Often we do it on our own dime, because it's that important to us. Most of our programs don't cover expenses around that. I do stuff on the weekends all the time. I don't get paid for that stuff, but it's important enough to me and my community, as we move forward, to ensure that we're good neighbours; and we are good neighbours. I want people coming in through my door. How many times do I hear people who walk by my door saying we are the building with the paintings on it? If you ever see a picture of our friendship centre, that's what you will see; I can guarantee you. But it's more than that. It's about building long-term relationships and partnerships that you want to be long term so there are long-term benefits for everybody.

We can't do everything, so it's about how we position ourselves to bring in programs we may not have the expertise for, but we bring them in under the umbrella of the friendship centre. We provide free rent to several organizations; that's how important I believe those organizations are for our community. It's about bringing people into our community while we're still going out.

We provide cultural training. Our elder Debbie did cultural training for, I'm going to say, 500 HR and police officers. We didn't charge for any of that. It's about building relationships.

Now a lot of the Halifax police will come by for tea or coffee. We never had that before. It starts to break down those barriers, and that is so important to do. It allows us to make a really quick call if.... I have a perfect example. I got a call last week. A young man I've known for a long time, who has been part of our centre for as long as I can remember, was picked up by the police. They asked what to do in this situation. They came to us first before they hauled him off to put him in a cell. We were able to bridge that, and they were comfortable enough to come to us. That is really key, because the issue was more of a cultural issue than a criminal issue. We were able to walk through that, and that's a big difference. I probably would never have seen that before.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

In the process of building those bridges between the aboriginal and non-aboriginal community, have you seen any results or gotten any feedback from the aboriginal youth you have helped? Do they see the trust that's being built between those communities as helping overall? Can that be used as one of many building blocks to getting to where we eventually want to be?

[Pamela Glode Desrochers]

Yes. We did a project—

Are we out of time?

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

I'm so sorry. Maybe we can slide it into the answer to another question.

[Pamela Glode Desrochers]

I can answer that on the side.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

The next question is from Michael McLeod.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

I wanted to say thank you for sharing your story. It's very tough for us to listen to something so tragic that happened to you directly, and I think all of us, especially as aboriginal people, can relate to having lost someone, family or friend.

We visited a number of communities and the issue is widespread, and just when I started thinking we had the pieces of the puzzle lined up, your story made it all crash to the sidelines, because there are so many different things that you could point to, and sometimes you can't point to any of them. I heard for most of my life that we have issues as a result of residential schools. We had a residential school in my community, and it destroyed a lot of people. As I've travelled around this last go-round, I'm hearing that one of the most important things is to be able to restore pride in our people so they can be proud of who they are, and especially the youth. That's going to be a very difficult challenge.

I watched my daughter struggle with the loss of her friend, and we encouraged her to speak about it and she spoke in classes, and other schools heard about it so they got her to travel. As a result, her phone was ringing day and night because of people in situations who had no place to turn, so they were turning to a young girl who was only about 16 years old. I finally had to ask her not to do it anymore, because she was awake day and night and she was getting depressed over the issue. But that points to the lack of resources. I'm really not one to want to reinvent the wheel, and I'm also one who really supports friendship centres. I founded the one in my community. I wrote the constitution and bylaws. I worked for years until we got the money. I helped other communities develop them only to watch them get cut, slashed to a point where they could barely function. Most things are done by whoever has the time, whoever wants to donate their time, and whatever handouts they can get for the food kitchen or whatever.

But there's an opportunity there to make it something that communities could use, and the program hasn't expanded in the last few years. We have the Aboriginal Head Start, which really caters to the younger population, the young mothers, the families that have young children and that are challenged. A lot of the families, we know, are impacted by FAE or alcohol or learning disabilities and things of that nature, and they work with them. They help them. They teach them, including through the sports circles. There are so many things that are out there, but some of them are almost invisible. Aboriginal Head Start is plopped so far down in Public Health, you don't even know it exists. I don't even think the deputy knows where it's at, because they never raise it; they never talk about it. I ask about it. There's no real plan for it.

So there are so many things that exist that we could use. In our last northern tour, I heard it put best that we have to have facilities that can act as crisis centres, family centres, cultural centres. I think friendship centres could maybe fill that void. Maybe we could talk about that, and maybe talk about the resources that are needed.

[Pamela Glode Desrochers]

I can tell you right now that there are 119 friendship centres, and I truly believe that every urban setting should have a friendship centre. I truly believe that. I would not be where I am today without my friendship centre. As far as resources that are needed go, I'll give you a perfect example. The small number of dollars I get, I do leverage. However, when I leverage those dollars, I'm spending a lot of time writing 38 or 40 other reports and constantly writing proposals, which is the story of my life. Having the resources so I wouldn't have to worry about the day-to-day core operations would be huge.

We have very little money. The funding needs to be long-term funding. There can't be a short-term funding solution. It needs to be a longer-term funding solution, whether that's for youth programming.... I actually believe youth funding should be part of our core funding. There should be no gaps in youth funding. There just shouldn't be any gaps. Youth funding should be core funded through and through and through again. They are our future.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

Thank you for that.

I honestly believe that every aboriginal community should have a friendship centre, and they should be resourced to deal with the many issues they need to tackle. We can't ignore that the issue of FAE is widespread in our communities. The jails are full of people who really need help and assistance. As for suicide, friendship centres can deliver education programs, cultural programs, sports programs, and so many other things.

I watched our friendship centre be the only facility open in the whole community during the Christmas holidays, on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. It stayed open all night trying to help people who needed rides, people who were homeless, people who were hungry. Every other government facility shut down. In fact, every other government facility is run by non-community members, so they all leave. They go home for the holidays.

I really believe what you said about having a solution by our own people. Our social ills have to be cured by our own people, but we need the resources to deal with them.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

That's time.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

I didn't ask a question.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

I know you didn't.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

That's okay. I got to make a statement.

[Pamela Glode Desrochers]

I have lots to say about that, too.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

I'm going to address the things that you didn't have time to say at the end.

We have time for one more five-minute question, and this one is from Arnold Viersen.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for being here. It's a profound story that you've given, and it definitely gives me some heartache.

I want to congratulate the friendship centres on the success they have. I think a big part of that success is that almost every one of them has somebody like you who champions them. We've heard over and over again that it's community engagement and communities that bring forward the ideas. Those are the successful programs. We've also heard that, considering the amount of work that's done through friendship centres, they punch way above their weight because of individuals who are personally invested in them.

If we were to try to facilitate having a friendship centre in every community or in every urban centre, how would we go about ensuring that there would be a group of people or an individual like you to be the backstop on that?

Just as with every other program, typically the intent is amazing, but if we don't have the right people to backstop it, it never happens, or the money gets spent and nothing happens.

If we're going to go down this avenue of having friendship centres as a solution, how will we find the right people to backstop them?

[Pamela Glode Desrochers]

First and foremost, it has to be for community by community. It has to be wanted and needed in that community. There is probably not one community I've been to that hasn't said, “I wish we had a friendship centre. I wish we had something like what you have.” The model is there. It's a great model. It works. There are ways to incorporate that. Of course, getting good people is always a challenge. Looking around, I would say that the people sitting on the other side of the table are the ones we often poach our staff members from. It is always a challenge, but it's very fulfilling to see that friendship centres have that ability to build the capacity in communities. You may have to start with satellite offices that are hosted by main friendship centres, but there are ways to do those things.

I think you have a really good model. It's working with the communities and making sure that it addresses their needs.

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

One great thing about friendship centres is their ability to attract everybody. I think it's right there in the name: friendship centre.

One thing I always watch when the government gets involved is that there's a whole list of criteria you have to meet in order to be employed by a company the government is funding. Could you give us a little bit of a profile of some of the people who work with you? Do they have university degrees and these kinds of things? I think you get what I'm trying to get at here.

[Pamela Glode Desrochers]

Yes, they do. I've been with our friendship centre for 24 years and prior to that I went through many of the programs and services. It's amazing to see the difference in the people who come through our door now for employment. Even summer students, which is a huge piece for us, are coming in with degrees now, and they want to work in their communities.

We have 85 employees at our friendship centre, so we're a pretty good size. Most of them are coming in with degrees now. However, I always look for somebody who we can build that capacity with. It's really key that we remember that we are there to move our communities forward and to take those members who may not have that degree but who we can build that capacity with. It's always about building capacity, and it's always about community. It has to always be about community, not individuals. Building capacity benefits us in the long term.

Summer students are sometimes one of my biggest challenges; I won't lie. Sometimes they are the biggest challenges, but it's most rewarding when you see them move through the system. Then they're hired by us, and then they move on to these great jobs.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

Thanks for the question and the answer.

That brings us to the end, and it's a good spot to end at.

Thank you both so much for your time and for travelling today. Your input into our study is very important.

I'll let you know that we expect the study to be concluded and a report finalized some time in the new year, maybe February or early March. That will become a public document at some point, once it's tabled and accepted.

In the first half of the meeting, you heard me mention the online portal. I'm going to make sure we get that address to you, and I would ask you to share that as broadly as you're able to in order to get folks to share whatever story they can.

[Pamela Glode Desrochers]

We'll certainly do that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

Thank you so much again for your time. We'll see you in Halifax.

The meeting is adjourned.