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

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

Yes, I'd to welcome the member from Nunavut here. I think he is an important voice for the north, and I'd like to offer my question to him.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

Very good.

Don's time is yours, for five minutes.

[Hunter Tootoo, Independent, Nunavut, NU]

Thank you, Don. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister, for coming.

I want to start off by saying I fully appreciate the direction that this government and you are taking to move forward on the needs for indigenous people, including Inuit. Also, I'd offer a special thanks for helping save the Mamisarvik program here in Ottawa this year.

In your opening comments, you talked about a needs-based approach. I know in the north, not only in Nunavut but in the NWT and the Yukon as well, we're in the dire situation that we're in because of years of per capita funding. You mentioned in your comments, education and family violence protection, child and family services, housing, all those things. There's funding that's been announced for first nations, which is long overdue.

How do you plan on meeting that commitment for Inuit? We're not on reserve—the way I look at it, Nunavut is one big reserve—but everything flows through the Government of Nunavut. They provide those services to the population.

Maybe I can get an idea of how you plan on seeing that flow through to Inuit through the Government of Nunavut.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

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

Obviously it's going to be important.

As you know, in other territories and in Labrador, we've been able to fund Inuit housing directly. In your territory, it's done through the territorial government.

We obviously hope, with your help and support as we move to devolution, that the Inuit and the governments will be part of those funding agreements and deciding what the priorities are, how we end up allowing Nunavut to be the master of its own priorities, and how the budget roles out in those ways. We would love your advice on that.

I think that it is such a special place, where the Inuit are the people. We want to make sure.... As you know, in the devolution agreement, more and more Inuit are part of the government, part of the workforce, part of the public service. We want to build that capacity, such that the Inuit are actually in charge of those decisions.

[Hunter Tootoo, Independent, Nunavut, NU]

Thank you, Madam Minister.

Another big issue up north, and you touched on it with nutrition north.... We all know that program was like a scrambled egg before it even came out of the chicken.

You touched, too, on the old program meeting basic needs. You asked how come it's more expensive now. It's because basic needs, things that were covered and subsidized in the past, came off the list. They're no longer subsidized, so they've gone up substantially. They narrowed down the items that were subsidized so greatly that everything else just went up. That's the problem there.

I know the last government said that they boosted the funding to nutrition north. They boosted the budgeted amount. As far as I'm aware, that program probably cost the government about $140 million a year, which is well over the budgeted amount.

Would you be able to provide some historical data as to how much was actually spent on the program, not just budgeted?

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

We can certainly let you know what we're doing now that money gets out the door, but I think you're quite right. I remember being in Iqaluit in 2011 during the election, and everybody was saying this design wouldn't work. It's now time for northerners to design a program that will work for northerners and for us to fund the pilots to be able to find out what would work and what would be the fairest thing in the design and the focus of the program.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

Thank you, Minister.

We're going to the three-minute question now, which is from Romeo Saganash, please.

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

Very quickly, I want to pick up on the discussion on nutrition north because I think we seem to be missing one aspect here. It's not just a question of adding dollars to allow these communities that don't have access to the program. I'm one of the NDP MPs who wrote to the Auditor General and asked him to examine the problem with the program. One of the problems he outlined was that the program wasn't benefiting the people who were supposed to benefit. It wasn't reaching the consumers.

The other conclusion was that the department responsible for the program, which is your department, did not have mechanisms in place to verify where the money was going, in spite of the fact that we were spending over $60 million a year on the program. Do you have that in place now?

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

I think Paul wants to say how you do that now, but it needs a total renovation because it goes to the stores instead of to people. The original food mail went to people. This goes to the retailers, and that has been much more difficult to sort out.

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

Is the mechanism in place now? That's what was lacking. I wouldn't like to see more money being poured into the program if we don't have that mechanism in place.

[Paul Thoppil, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Financial Officer Sector, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development]

Thank you for the question. A compliance regime has been put in place in our agreements between the department and the retailers that deals with the data verification and compliance issues you are citing.

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

Just a final point on that, is it the intention of the government as we speak to undertake a major overhaul in reforming the program?

I know you've had several consultations in the north. I've asked for a consultation in that riding. You accepted my invitation over a year ago; I'm still waiting for you.

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

I'm going to get there, Romeo. I promise.

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

I think that's one of the issues that the people in my riding would like to address with you.

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

I believe there's going to be an overhaul. That's certainly what we've heard. The consultations went on throughout the summer, and we didn't hear too many people in love with the program the way it is right now. I would love your help on what will work to make the food affordable, but also I think, again, the programs around country foods are going to be hugely important as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

Thank you, Minister.

We've been through one complete round of questioning, and I'd like to ask committee members if they have an appetite for another round or where we are.

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

Absolutely.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

Absolutely? Another round. Okay, it sounds as if we'll do another round.

We'll go back to the Minister, and we'll go back to the seven-minute rounds. The first question is from Michael McLeod, please.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I want to, for the record, state that I'm glad the transparency act is gone. I've seen it as a tool to suppress aboriginal people. It was not doing us any good; it was tripping us up.

Most of the communities were not able to meet the obligations that were required under it. Any aboriginal governments that had companies were forced to disclose. It made them lose the competitive edge. Most of these aboriginal communities, band councils, are in small places where everybody knows everybody else. If one company discloses its financial state, it loses its competitive edge. That, at the same time as slashing the budgets in our band councils, almost brought everything to a standstill. Some band councils were cut almost 40%. It was down to who stays, the chief or the band manager? They couldn't operate like that. We couldn't continue like that. It brought us to a level of despair that we're trying to deal with now.

I think we need a lot more investment. I made that clear on a number of fronts, but even issues like housing pretty much came to a standstill in the last 10 years. We are facing a housing crisis in the north, and we've heard through our suicide study in the community visits that housing is probably a main contributor to.... If we solved the housing issue in our communities, we would probably solve up to 50% of the social issues.

I'm happy to see that, in the north, you're providing funding directly to some of the aboriginal governments. We have to move past discussions or negotiations and trying to resolve disputes, and get the aboriginal governments to move into a mode of governing.

While we now have money for the Inuvialuit in the Northwest Territories to start doing housing—they're opening a housing program—are we going to start looking at other aboriginal governments? I'm talking specifically in the Northwest Territories because that's who I represent. Are we going to start looking at allowing them to start delivering programs for their own people?

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

It's how I define my job. It's that I want to move from delivering programs, funding programs, and playing “red light, green light” to building indigenous-led institutions. That's where we have to go.

Nation to nation means the nation gets to decide on their priorities, and how they spend their money. We know that some have a better capacity than others. That's why we rolled out the housing money for south of 60° in three tranches, because the communities who were the best at filling out applications may not be the communities with the greatest need. We rolled it out in three tranches so we could help the communities with more need to be able to avail themselves of the budget 2016 dollars. We're learning how we build best.

One of the other things that drives me crazy is the communities that are in third-party management. From Chuck Strahl's time, we knew that third-party management doesn't work. It's too costly, it doesn't build capacity, and if people are in third-party management, they don't qualify for the CMHC housing. We have to change this way of doing it.

We're very excited that communities like Conne River are helping communities like Natuashish and that CESO executives are in helping the communities without as much capacity to be better at filling out reports and forms. How do we build capacity such that everybody can take advantage of the money that is available as we try to close these gaps?

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

I also think we need to look at the direction that was provided to CMHC to discontinue the social housing agreement funding. It's on a declining funding basis. By 2038, we're going to have no social housing operation dollars, so we're going to be in a real crisis.

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

Do you think there should be an indigenous CMHC led by the indigenous community?

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

I think there should be more investment in indigenous housing and there are different levels of need in all our communities. From home ownership to affordable housing to homeless shelters to social housing, all these have to be addressed. There is no one funding pot that has a broad enough mandate, so I think we have to be creative.

The other areas are self-government and land claim negotiations. I want to encourage you to take a good look at the mandate. We have lots of discussion going on in the Northwest Territories. However, our mandate with the government was drafted in the 1970s, so some things are not relevant anymore and the situations and conditions have changed. If we don't want to follow a cookie-cutter approach, we need to change the mandate. I'm wondering if you could just tell us if there is anything being done there.

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

I'm excited by all of these exploratory tables where we have, what...?

[Paul Thoppil]

It's 32 now.