Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Nov. 2nd, 2016

[Scott Clark]

We do not take government programs, and we do not deliver government programs through our organization. We organize events where we generate revenue to pay our salaries. It's very different from program service delivery.

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

You talked about how in the past the urban services have tried to replicate. Could you talk a bit more about what's been done in trying to replicate? You talked a bit about where you've gone with that sort of coordination and organization. Describe how you've seen replication in the past.

[Scott Clark]

Oh, very simple.

There are a number of challenges, of course—very different from the on-reserve versus off-reserve—and the federal government, regardless of what political party has been in power, has never been the friend of the off-reserve indigenous population. I think we have to start there.

There is the Supreme Court of Canada Daniels decision, which says that the federal government has a fiduciary responsibility to non-status and Métis, including the status population.

That historical evolution of that relationship has for all purposes, up until 2015—and I would suggest even to this day—left the off-reserve population in a vacuum. The devolution process of the federal government in 1996 to the province, and the province to the city, has created this vacuum where nobody wants to step forward and step up and say who's really responsible for this 80% of the population living off-reserve. That hasn't happened. Now the landscape has changed, and hopefully we'll see some progress with this new government.

What we have witnessed over the last 70 years here in Vancouver, and it's well documented, is.... You can look at the demographic patterns of where indigenous people live in Vancouver as an example. We make up 2% of Vancouver's population. The majority of us live in east Vancouver. The majority of us in east Vancouver live in what we call the Grandview—Woodlands area, and then the second community—it's like an L—is the Downtown Eastside, Canada's most impoverished urban area code.

The programs and services that have been developed over those 70 years have created, in just Downtown Eastside alone, 260 non-profits, and in the Grandview—Woodlands area, 40 other non-profits. If you go to the other communities in the nearby areas, there are very few.

What we have effectively done without questioning—because for whatever reason we don't question this stuff—is we have created a ghetto. We've ghettoized urban aboriginal people. We segregate them in the educational institutions, and we segregate them in programs and services. We say that if you want day care you have to go over to this community in the Downtown Eastside to get your service. We pull them out of their natural community, away from their natural friends, their parents, their work, and their public school.

We have a whole bunch of alienation that has been taking place unquestioned. The key concept we have to be looking at when we're dealing with indigenous populations, on- or off-reserve, is what is the framework? What is our goal? Do we really intend to close the gaps, if that's our goal? Then how do we get there?

The key concept, as we see with our brothers and sisters on reservations, is that they have a comprehensive community planning process that's funded. When it comes to the off-reserve, you have federal governments, provincial governments, municipal governments that don't want to deal with these issues. They all say it's someone else's responsibility. At the end of the day, what we see is a concentrated population in cities cross this country, which has ghettoized us, with no means, to this day, to find comprehensive indigenized solutions that go beyond an item—that go beyond suicide, beyond poverty, or homelessness, or day care, or whatever.

Thank you. I hope I answered your question. I don't know if I did.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

You have 30 seconds.

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

I have a quick question.

There is a variation for the urban population. It sounds like some bands provide really good support to their membership regardless of where they live, versus others that choose only to provide support to their membership who live on-reserve.

[Scott Clark]

Without getting caught between on-reserve and off-reserve and who is and who isn't providing, let's be real, all right? If this study you're working on is going to be real, if you want to make it meaningful, then you have to realize you can't just pick and choose an item and address that item. It has to be comprehensive.

That's why I said collective impact, place-based strategies, working on the social determinants of health, which look at the social, the economic, and the environmental variables that impact the health of the individual in a community, in a neighbourhood.

You have to start looking at the economic opportunities, the education opportunities, the health opportunities, the cultural opportunities, the opportunities for reconciliation. How do we build that into a village? It sounds challenging, but guess what? Our children deserve that passion and commitment to change what's going on right now.

You can't pull these things away. You have to look at them. You have to create a strategy, with a village.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

Thanks for that.

The next questions are from Jenny Kwan, please.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

My apologies for arriving late. There was a car accident, and I couldn't get through traffic.

Thank you to the witnesses for your presentation.

Ms. Benson, thank you particularly for your personal story. It takes a lot of courage to share that information and, of course, it brings back memories that are very difficult. We really appreciate your taking the time to do that today.

Mr. Clark, you've been a long-time advocate in the community, and you've done a lot of work on the issue around the place-based strategy that has been talked about and the wisdom behind it. I think some of that was shared with the committee today.

If the committee were to make a recommendation to the government about moving forward, what would it look like to implement place-based strategies, particularly in the urban context? Steps one to five, what are the things that government needs to do to move in that direction, and what are the resources that are required for this to happen in a way that will help ensure success?

[Scott Clark]

Thank you.

I just quit smoking and drinking coffee yesterday, so those are tough questions.

It's very simple: research, research. We can look at the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples done in 1996. We can look at the reports that came out, but most importantly, we can look at the 94 TRC recommendations that just came out. The first five deal with child welfare. The first five of 94 deal with child welfare. Who's doing what where?

The City of Vancouver adopted it. The parks board here in Vancouver adopted it. The school board adopted it. They're all implementing strategies. They're working co-operatively. The research of who is doing what where is important.

Second, look at promising neighbourhoods in the United States. Why are they doing this in 61 communities, and what are the results of it? Ultimately, you'll see that it's going to save resources and save lives.

Third, work with our national political organizations. I make a very clear distinction between political organizations and service organizations. They have different mandates. The federal government has played those organizations off each other. Honestly, I think in 2016 we need to move beyond that.

Fourth, implement it, and five, evaluate it, because really the wave of the future for indigenous populations, the TRC recommendations, and Canadians as a whole is taking the best practices around the world—promising neighbourhoods, the collective impact, place-based—and start doing it here in Canada. We are way behind, and it gets a number of birds with one stone because we start working with children and families at a very young age and with girls so they don't end up as another statistic in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

Do the math. We start building and bringing them together through a reconciliation lens. It's being done here in Vancouver, and we can do it across the country.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

You referenced the United States, and I've been to conferences where presentations have been made about what they have done and how it has been successful, especially on educational outcomes and successes for students. I wonder whether or not you have any of that information, maybe not at this moment, but after the meeting you could share it with the clerk so we can actually have on the public record what some of those successes look like and how they resourced them to make them happen. That would be something we can begin with.

[Scott Clark]

We would be pleased to gather that information. In fact, we're in the process right now of making a request through the civic, provincial, and federal governments to jointly fund this as a model here in Vancouver. We'd be happy to provide all that information for this committee to address those issues.

I think one of the key things I want to say is that a collective impact place-based approach is also nation building. It's not segregating urban aboriginal people from a different entity whose territory we're in. It's actually about building us and bringing us all together and respecting the territory.

You can do the TRC recommendations, educational outcomes, get in front of the missing and murdered women, and support these young children so they actually have real choices when they move through the transition stages of education.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

One of the issues that you mention, and you're right, is that there are many components to the situation we're in, and housing and homelessness, for example, is a key piece within that.

I have in my previous experience indigenous families, single parents, who are separated from their children. Their children are taken into care simply because they can't find safe, secure, affordable housing. To that end, what are your thoughts with respect to addressing issues like that? There needs to be a foundational piece for people to build their lives on.

[Scott Clark]

It's extremely important. We've been meeting with the City of Vancouver. Housing is tremendously important. Safe, suitable, affordable housing for the diverse needs of vulnerable children and families is critical. You have to engage the cities. The federal government, through this report, can start advocating that the provincial governments start working with the city governments on a tripartite relationship to ensure those housing needs are built around schools and community centres.

What does a healthy community look like? It looks mixed. It looks inclusive, vibrant, engaging, and reflective—no more just streamlining us into one pocket. Vancouver, from what I've noticed, is beginning to do that approach.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

We haven't had a national affordable housing program since 1993. It was cancelled. As a result of that, across the country we lost over half a million units of affordable housing that would otherwise have been built, had that program continued.

What are your thoughts on a national affordable housing program?

[Scott Clark]

We participated recently with CMHC and the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples, about a month ago in Gatineau on this issue. You are right; it's a critical issue. Ultimately, the federal government.... We are the only G8 nation without a federal housing strategy. In the devolution process that I shared with you, the feds have always said that we are not their responsibility—the 80% of us who live off reservations are not their responsibility—so we've been living in this vacuum.

Housing is critical, and we believe that the feds need to show some real leadership and get back into supporting housing across this country.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

Don Rusnak, go ahead, please.

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

Thank you for coming. It's a pleasure to be here. The stories we have been hearing across the country—and from people from across the country in Ottawa—have been very helpful, first, in my own learning about the different issues across the country, and also in learning about us as indigenous people. I say “us”, because I am from Lac des Mille Lacs First Nation, Anishinaabe from Ontario. I am Ontario's only first nations member of Parliament, and I'm also the chair of the indigenous Liberal caucus.

My lens is changing a bit, or perhaps my view on where we go with this issue. Of course, there are the immediate things we need to do, reacting to the crisis immediately with some kind of response—and I've said this over...through so many different witnesses. In the past, it's been crisis teams that have been developed by FNIHB or Health Canada. We've heard that some of those teams would come in and then leave. That's not effective. It's not the right way to deal with this crisis.

What we heard last night.... We were at a youth centre on the lower east side, UNYA, with indigenous youth from the lower east side area. They said that programs like that and centres like that go a long way, but there were a lot of youth, their friends, who weren't there and who had been dealing with thoughts of suicide and needed something more, or a follow-up—needed a safe space, but also someone to talk to.

I think it's happening in pockets, mainly not because of anything governments are doing but because of what the people on the ground are doing. It's very important to listen to people on the ground, because that's where we are seeing it, at the front line. We are seeing positive results of programs like UNYA, and we are seeing not-so-good results from Health Canada teams going into communities like my area of the country in northwestern Ontario, Pikangikum, and leaving, and then we have another crisis pop up there, or in northern Saskatchewan.

I believe I know your answer, and maybe I've said parts of it, but what should the federal government do immediately? I believe we need to work in partnership, not only with municipalities but with the provincial government and the providers of service. What can we do to make it easier to do the job that you guys do, and what else should we be doing for the immediate...?

[Scott Clark]

Immediately? I guess your lens is very important. As an urban indigenous advocate, I think we've been researched and programmed to death. We've been “clientized”, you could even say, and I think that we have to move beyond that.

It took us how many decades to get here? How many decades is it going to take us to get out of here, together, in a good way?

I'm very apprehensive about saying that “this is the key thing” or “that's the key thing” or “this program is key” because a program to me is just how they keep all the service providers fighting for the same bits and pieces. Meanwhile, we lose a strategy. We have to change from being program-immediate based to being strategy-evidence based. That's what we need to indigenize that process, and it has to be open and inclusive for non-indigenous people in that area.

You're Ojibwa. In my community, regardless of our ethnicity, we all come together through our philosophy. The same lens needs to apply in the urban context. Meaningful partnerships between the feds, the provinces, and the cities need to happen, and they need to happen soon. The problem with the feds and the provinces, and even the cities, is that they are imposing stuff on us. It needs to come from the ground up. If you talk to the people in those communities in a comprehensive approach, you can identify where those opportunities are.

There's a lot of goodwill out there, but there's no ability to tap into that goodwill and turn it into a strategy.

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

How I had it layered was, first, immediate response and, second, youth intervention. Some of that you filled in: the partnerships with municipalities, youth centres...the grassroots service providers telling us what they need and then we deliver it.

[Scott Clark]

That's very important. I'm going to say it again because it's worth saying: I am very concerned about a program provider approach, a service provider approach. This is the problem. Governments dump money on a program. However, we're talking strategy. We have those 30 kids who had a suicide pact. We created, and we're still creating, a strategic approach where we can identify the vacuums and fill them with the residents in the communities, not the service providers.

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

Ms. Benson, I come from a first nations community that, like yours, was flooded out. I looked at Google Maps to see where you are, and I noticed that you're on the south side of the lake. When you said ferry, I wondered where you were, but now I see that you have to actually take a ferry. Your community is purposely isolated from the highway, and you have to take a ferry over to get any services from any other communities in the area.

That's one of the big problems: the Indian Act and all the things it has done to our people since colonization. Those people filter into the urban fabric. We heard yesterday that there's so much mobility; this isn't just an issue for first nations on reserves. I personally don't like that characterization because I've never lived on a reserve. I grew up in the city—

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

We're out of time.

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

I'll continue if I get—

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

I'm sorry. I'm being strict because if I'm strict now, we can have three more questions, not two. We're going to go on to five-minute questions, and maybe the answer can come forward.

The first question is from David Yurdiga.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank the witnesses for being here today. This is a very important study.

It was very interesting yesterday when we met with the UNYA group. I was very impressed by how articulate and intelligent these young people are. These youth can be so much more if they're given the opportunity. However, it seems like these suicide pacts are becoming more prevalent, and that's very concerning.

What types of strategies are being developed, or have been developed, to address suicide pacts in reserve communities and in urban settings? Is there a difference in the strategies? I'll open up the floor to both witnesses for comments.