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

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

It's 32 mandated and others in the wings. We are going out and asking communities about what they need to be able to get an agreement, even on just the fishery or just education. It doesn't have to be a full, final agreement on a treaty level, but I think we're doing interesting things that are going to get us moving to more and more self-governing nations and the ability to really talk about nation-to-nation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

Thank you.

The next question is from Cathy McLeod, please.

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

Thank you.

I'm going to go to the Indian residential school agreement and then I hope to get back to education, so I hope to get a few things in.

If you look at the supplementary estimates (B), regarding the funding support for the independent assessment process and compensation to former students who suffered sexual, serious physical, or serious psychological abuse, some of the money was to go towards supporting professional counselling and emotional support.

I was really concerned with a story—and I think it's just absolutely appalling—about one of the counsellors who was paid to support residential school survivors who overbilled the government by about $360,000 by charging 28.5 hours for a 24-hour period. It's so appalling. It's unspeakable.

I know, and I think all of us here, experience some pretty good scrutiny when we put our expenses in, in terms of financial services and what they pay and what they don't pay.

What steps are being taken to ensure this doesn't happen again and that the services are going to the people who are so desperately in need. Again, I think we can all agree, I can't see an invoice going through and actually being paid with that kind of extraordinarily obvious misappropriation.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

I couldn't agree with you more and I know that Minister Philpott is really engaged on this, as with the situation that was raised about Kashechewan. We need to be transparent about these issues and have many sets of eyes observing, so that we can find these things.

In my city of Toronto, they've now just realized that they are paying out for more prescription opioids than it is possible to take without being dead. You cannot take that many in a day and still be breathing. When you look at those kinds of things that unfortunately are still happening, the music has to stop and we have to look. It is when these things come out that we actually realize how people have been gaming these systems, and this unfortunate industry—

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

Yes....

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

—has been preying on indigenous people for a very long time.

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

I agree with you, in terms of creating structures and empowering, as I think you said, indigenous-led institutes, but I also have to say my two bits' worth. You can bet the community would have known how much time the mental health service counsellor was there. You can bet the community would have known if it was supposed to have a hot lunch program, and it would have said, “Oh, we're supposed to have a hot lunch program, and we don't have one.”

So if indigenous-led institutes are not empowered, community members should be empowered to know what's coming into the community and what it's for. As I said, I could go back to those business statements. There's one line and it's not giving away any competitive advantage.

But I have to go to education. I have to make my comments on that. Ultimately it's the people in the communities who should hold their leadership to account, and if they don't have access to basic information, they can't do it properly. I just find it very, very upsetting, and certainly, the phone calls that I get are very upsetting.

To go back to the language—

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

But, Cathy, I do want to say that most first nation citizens across this country have total access—

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

I agree.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

—to every single line in the audited statements. It's very rare—

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

Those 10% of people matter, though.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

I don't think it's even that high.

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

They matter.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

It's not that high.

Paul knows everything.

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

It is a lot of people, and I think for those people who are impacted, it does matter. I agree that for the vast majority, everything is good. But it's just like the situation with this mental health counsellor, we need to give the skills and tools to identify the issues.

I'll go back to my language example, earlier. You said communities are getting additional dollars for language—the money is flowing—but there hasn't been any sort of work around the indicators for language.

Let's say a community, for some reason, can't hire someone or there are currently no elders who can support the language training that's needed or the teachers who are available, and the money isn't used for language. Is that money available for other purposes within the school system or are the dollars targeted for language?

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

Maybe Paula will help us with this. Language and culture tend to be put together, and one thing we know really works is for kids to be on the land and to get back in touch with their culture and their skills. That's where a lot of them learn the language, so we are very keen for kids to be in programming in July and August, if they can be, so that they are learning language and culture in supervised programs, and maybe they can be off for hunting season in the spring and the fall.

We have to do an indigenous pedagogy that includes a different school year but that also embeds language and culture in every subject and every year.

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

Certainly in northern Ontario, that was the message in panel after panel, no question.

If a community gets an extra $50,000 for language and culture and we're not making sure that the community knows it has the money, because there's no transparency necessarily, then you're responsible for making sure that this support, this additional money, is spent on language and culture.

So, what's happening?

[Paula Isaak]

I'll just add that the communities can decide how to use that language and culture money, in a broad way, and it can touch on many different things. It isn't necessarily just to hire a teacher. It can be for a language and culture program that can be very broad. It's part of their funding, so they can use it in a very flexible manner to meet their specific needs.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

Part of what we're doing, Cathy, for communities that don't have the capacity is to have a smart board or to have an elder or a language teacher come in virtually into the virtual classrooms. This is also something we're very interested in and one reason we're really pushing on the connectivity piece so that if that capacity is not in the community, it can be available at a distance.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

Thank you.

The next seven-minute question is for Romeo Saganash.

Go ahead, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to continue on first nations education. The estimates request an allocation of $244 million in grants and contributions for additional investment in first nations elementary and secondary education. This is interesting, as in budget 2016, investments for K to 12 education were $800 million, less than what was promised during the campaign. If you look at the numbers from previous years, previous government numbers, the Liberals would be delivering less over the next three years than the Conservatives' plan to invest in Bill C-33, and you remember that debate we had in the House.

Why is this K to 12 education money only being voted on and allocated well after the school year has started? They'll have to spend the money from now until April. Is that correct?

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

Paul's better at the rollout stuff. We had a fair bit of advice at the beginning about being able to invest in special education, language, and culture, until we can get these school systems changed and build the capacity for teachers and all of those things.

I think Paul knows how we're doing it over the year.

[Paul Thoppil]

With all due respect, notwithstanding the timing of this inclusion in the supplementary estimates, the department has been cash managing, and we've been sending the money out, as with the beginning of the fiscal year, for that very same notion of ensuring that there was no impact on this new September school season. First nation communities have had the money to prepare for the fall and benefit from this item.

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

Okay. Thank you for that clarification.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

Romeo, I would just say that the $41.6 million you see, which looks like it had to be reprofiled, was the money that we'd hoped to put into building systems, which the communities weren't quite signing up for yet. We have to incent a few more to do that. That $41.6 million will be there for whatever groups of communities want to come together to develop a system.