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

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

How do you explain the supplementaries showing an investment of $245 million in first nations education, when budget 2016, despite its shortcomings, promised $287 million?

[Paul Thoppil]

That's what you just talked about.

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

That's the one.

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

Is that the $42 million?

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

That's the magic number.

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

Okay, that's where it went.

With respect to family violence prevention and shelters, the supplementary estimates request an allocation of $4.7 million for this program. Budget 2016 proposed $33.6 million over five years, but it will only build five new shelters, with nothing offered in the far north for the Inuit. Do you believe that this is enough to meet the needs in this regard for the women at risk? We heard from NWAC at this committee not too long ago, who said this was far from enough.

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

We have to do more. This is what we're able to do. I'd love to know. We've had way more proposals for these five new ones. It's been astounding, the number of proposals we've had, based on what we thought was good, with five more shelters in the places that didn't have them.

How many proposals have you had, Paula?

[Paula Isaak]

We had 37.

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

We're able to do five. I don't think we've evaluated all of the proposals. When you are only able to fund five of 37 proposals, you know there's a lot more work to do.

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

I'd like to understand, how you propose to achieve and meet those needs for women at risk. The report on plans and priorities informed us not too long ago that your department does not even track the number of women and children who access INAC for shelters. How do you do that if you don't even know or track the needs that are in place as we speak?

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

Paula has some numbers, but I think we know, in working with provinces, territories, and municipalities, that everybody wants to work together on this. For some of them, whether it's safe houses or other ways of going about finding safety in remote and rural communities, we're going to have to be a bit more creative and innovative because, as you know, in small communities everybody knows where the shelter is, and that's not safe. We're listening to communities to figure out what we can do to quietly fund safe houses and other things while we're determining the real need for the shelters. The number of beds has not always been the best indicator, or the occupancy.

[Paula Isaak]

We track the numbers. In 2014-15, as an example, we had about 2,800 women and about 2,800 children who accessed shelters. The challenge with developing a target is that you don't want to develop a target, in that we're not trying to achieve a number of people seeking shelter, if you know what I mean. We're trying to be careful about creating an appropriate target for women and children seeking shelters, but we do track the number who access it.

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

Just to go back to your previous answer on first nations child and family services, we have the ruling, two compliance orders, and a motion in the House of Commons expressing the will of Parliament. The tribunal said that you need to fix this problem at the earliest possible opportunity, which came, in my mind, in the March budget, because the ruling came down in January. You responded with the words, we will do it “as urgently as we can”. What's holding it up right now?

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

The tribunal did not put a number—

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

We're out of time on that question. Maybe you can get it in when responding to another question.

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

Okay.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

Thank you. I appreciate it.

The next question is Mike Bossio's.

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

I'd be happy to give you the opportunity, if you want to answer that right now.

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

I think both the tribunal and Grand Chief Ed John, and everybody, knows that it's about reforming the system. The tribunal didn't put a number or a price tag on what—

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

The experts did.

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

There was one proposal that put a number on it. Others feel that we have to make sure we're not reinforcing perverse incentives and that we have to get at the real reforms to keep families together. If the money could go to keep families together, that's our ultimate goal.

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

Thank you, Minister.

I want to say something about the transparency act, because I think it also needs to be said that it was a further exercise in paternalism. I understand the level of accountability that our colleagues on the other side were trying to achieve through the act, but I think we forget sometimes that it took us 600-plus years to get to the level of governance that we have achieved as a society, yet we spent a couple of hundred years tearing down the governance that indigenous peoples had when we arrived and then spent 200 years destroying their leadership in order to try to bring that about.

If we truly want indigenous communities to become accountable, it is only going to happen once we have community-driven self-determination supported by long-term stable funding that eventually, hopefully, is derived by indigenous communities themselves. Only when we can break the state of paternalism, and not until we can achieve a local reality in which indigenous people are setting their priorities, will the residents of those communities hold their own leadership accountable.

I really think this is at the crux of what we're trying to achieve as a government, that we need to download that accountability. That way, you're not going to have indigenous communities, every time something happens, point to Ottawa and say, “Fix it.” They need to point to their own leadership, and I think that's what most want to do. They just need to have the opportunity.

I guess I would like the minister to come back to talk about what you're trying to achieve through the estimates, or how you're trying to bring this about. You touched on this earlier in your discussions and I'd like to give you the opportunity to expand upon that, because I know that's what your long-term direction is.

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

Thank you for that.

On the MOU that we signed with the AFN in July, the AFN has now struck the committee about what this relationship looks like. It's also examining the whole issue of accountability and transparency. Do they want a first nations auditor general? Do they want...? There are many different accountability frameworks that will be considered. It is also about the issue around own-source revenue, which actually isn't something that we have anything to do with. It is a matter of how they work together as a committee to come up with a plan that will work.

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

Thank you so much, Minister.

I'd like to pass the rest of my time over to Rémi Massé.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

There are three minutes remaining.