Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Feb. 16th, 2017

[Dr. Cindy Blackstock]

Yes, but that's within the restrictive envelope of whatever the federal government would provide in terms of their funding arrangement.

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

I'm a former health care worker and certainly was involved with a lot of rural and remote services throughout British Columbia. Mental health can be a huge challenge both on and off reserve. The actual mental health services prevention communities, I think, are in a very good position to move prevention services forward.

Are there any creative ways? I know it's a huge challenge to get appropriate mental health services into rural and remote areas, period. Do you have any thoughts on that?

[Dr. Cindy Blackstock]

Yes. I would say that Wapekeka provides us a good example of a community in a remote area that was doing great work in preventing suicides, but that funding program was cut by Health Canada, and then we saw the resurgence of those risks, and that was their call for funding. There are examples out there of remote first nations that have developed culturally based plans of care that Del was talking about, and implemented them.

The other piece is that I think we have failed as a country to take advantage of the technology available. Why don't we have adequate telemental health services for children and young people? Often when we do provide mental health services, they're short term and acute, and they don't account for the longer-term needs of children or for the specific developmental and cultural needs of first nations, Métis, and Inuit children. That needs to change.

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

You bring up a good point, because I thought it was certainly something we should be taking advantage of.

I believe we did have a witness who talked about the telehealth services for mental health. They were concerned in terms of how effective it would be in supporting communities and children in communities. They expressed concerns. Do you have any thinking there? Are there examples of children who are receiving good, appropriate mental health services through telehealth?

[Dr. Cindy Blackstock]

I don't know if children are receiving good and appropriate services through telemental health, because my experience in talking to youth in northern communities is that it's not available to them.

I don't see that as the exclusive approach, but I think it's one approach, and it's certainly better than what's going on in many communities right now, which is that there is no support for children and young people in mental health services. When there is mental health provision, it's often geared to adults and not addressed specifically to the unique development of children, and I would include brain development.

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

Is there a little time still?

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

We have a minute and a half.

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

Good grief.

Mr. Graff, is there analysis out there? Certainly we've had some very difficult and compelling testimony, and often it's been suicides of loving children in very loving families.

You talked about children who are in care in Alberta. Has there been any sort of analysis in terms of...?

I would presume that they would be at higher risk, but I don't know if that's accurate in terms of what you found, because they wouldn't have those protective factors or the place to go when loved. Can you make any comment? Is there analysis done?

[Del Graff]

I can make a couple of comments about that.

Certainly young people who come to the attention of child welfare authorities usually do so because they're at higher risk than the general population. Some of those risks have nothing to do with the circumstances of those children, other than that they don't have adequate care. The issues surround neglect, substance abuse-related neglect, exposure to parental violence, and those kinds of issues. There can be a host of reasons that they have an elevated level of trauma in their histories, and certainly that is something that comes to the fore.

When we look at child welfare, we're just looking at a population that has been identified. There's a whole wealth of young people who have those issues, who aren't identified through child welfare, and they're an important group as well.

The other thing I'd say is that in the isolated and remote communities that I've been to, one of the things we can overlook is the strengths that those communities have. If you go to Fox Lake, Alberta, a fly-in community primarily, you'll find that almost everybody in that community speaks their mother language fluently. That is something you don't see in other places, but it gives some sense of collective community when you can see three-, four-, and five-year-olds speaking their language and doing it in a way that is part of their everyday lives.

That's just one example of a strength that some of those communities have that we can overlook quite easily.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Thank you very much.

Moving on, the next round of questions is coming from MP Romeo Saganash.

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

Meegwetch, Madam Chair.

I thank both of our witnesses this morning. In my view, any child and youth advocate deserves the highest of respect. Thanks to both of you for your work.

I have a couple of questions, but I don't think I'll be able to ask them in the short period of time I have.

First of all, Cindy, I think you talked about patience. In my experience over 35 years in this business, a lot of people have always talked about the complexity of the issues that we face as indigenous peoples. That's one side of it, but however complex and difficult issues are, if there is no political will to work on them or to resolve them, then we're not moving ahead. Thank you for that.

Here's one of the questions that I would like to ask you. I commend you for the work that you've been doing over the years for children. I think Canada owes you a lot. On behalf of Canada, I want to say “thank you” to you this morning.

One of the things that always bothered me in this discussion is the fact that for a very long time, and in fact for the last 150 years since Confederation, indigenous rights have been viewed as constitutional rights, rarely as human rights. Everybody endorses the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Also, the present government said that they would implement all 94 of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's calls to action. I'd like you to speak to that aspect of these kids having human rights: the human right to clean water, the human right to a roof over our heads, and the human right to be who we are as indigenous peoples and indigenous kids.

I'd like you to address that, because it's never been talked about in that sense. Then I want to come back to the Human Rights Tribunal decision and orders, but first of all, it's about human rights.

[Dr. Cindy Blackstock]

Just two days ago, I was on Parliament Hill with 700 children. Children understand that these kids have human rights. They understand that they are little kids just like them. In fact, one of the poems that one of the non-aboriginal kids wrote out reads:

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Indigenous kids
are children too.

In the 90,000 documents that I read in the lead-up to the tribunal—these are federal government documents—I can see them referencing these children as “people” in maybe less than a dozen documents; they were a “program”, a “file”, or an abstraction, something that “we're making progress on”. Even when it got to the minutia of a four-year-old little girl who needed breathing equipment so she wouldn't suffocate, it was about the authorities the government had to respond to it. It wasn't about a four-year-old trying to breathe.

I think we have to unhinge ourselves from the abstraction. I think it's too comfortable to say that it's a program or a file. Chantel Fox and Jolynn Winter and their families don't have that ability, and I don't think we should allow ourselves to do anything less than to imagine that these are our own children, and to call ourselves up to doing everything possible, everything imaginable.

Even that which we think we can't do, we must do, because governments do a lot of complex things. They brought in 40,000 refugees, and I'm very supportive of that. They fight wars and they sign international trade agreements. They're able to do that. I have full confidence that they're able to operate on the solutions that are already on the table and, in fact, the legal rulings that are already on the table. They just need to do it.

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

Thank you.

Obviously, since the decision of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal and the two subsequent orders to comply have not been met to date, that's clear contempt of court on the part of the government. It's contempt of Parliament as well, because that motion we presented was unanimously accepted by Parliament. The motion expresses the will of Parliament. There's clear contempt of Parliament there too.

If we had the ability to do something tomorrow morning, what would you suggest we do?

[Dr. Cindy Blackstock]

You can do it today. The government could immediately comply with all the orders that are very specifically mapped out in that tribunal decision. There is no reason for further discussion.

When Canadians are found to be in breach of the law, we don't ask them to discuss how they're going to comply. You have to comply with these orders. If I failed to comply with three legal orders, I would be in prison at the moment, as a citizen. The Canadian government is setting a very dangerous precedent here of saying, “We'll accept the decision. We won't appeal it, but we're not going to comply with it.” What does that mean for every other respondent who's found responsible for discriminating against human beings of any diversity in this country—that you just have to accept the order, but not comply with it? That's a dangerous precedent, not only for first nations children but for all equity-seeking groups in the country.

I would hope Canada wants to set a better example. It must comply immediately. That's what it's been ordered to do.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

You have 20 seconds left.

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

I want to ask about the protective factors. I know language and culture are important. The Prime Minister had other suggestions in that respect, but that's his opinion. Can you provide any specific examples of how we can achieve those?

[Del Graff]

I can certainly identify what happens in some communities now in terms of cultural events that bring people back.

There's been a large migration in our province of indigenous people moving from rural and remote communities to urban communities, but because there are identified areas of celebration for particular first nations communities, those people will come back. They refer to it as coming home. They go home for that ceremony or that event. That helps them to be connected to their community, even though they may live in an urban centre. It's certainly one example that happens frequently.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

We're going to move on to questioning from MP Don Rusnak.

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

Thank you both for coming to the committee this morning.

I know this is a very difficult subject. One life lost is far too many. I know we on the government side want to do everything we can to make sure that the government is responding correctly and with the utmost urgency to the crises that are faced in indigenous communities.

I, as an indigenous person, faced a lot of challenges in this country growing up. I would say I still face challenges in this country. We can't be divided on this. We need to be united and give real solutions to government. Having said that, I know there have been tribunal decisions, and the government has committed money and announced money in response to these decisions.

I want to ask first, Ms. Blackstock, where does that money go if Health Canada or INAC releases that money immediately, and how does that happen?

[Dr. Cindy Blackstock]

The tribunal has already put out where the money needs to go. I'd also just draw your attention, member, to significant research that's already been done on child welfare and Jordan's principle dating back now, in my early involvement, to 1997. We could actually show you down to the last penny pretty much where we could spend these monies.

I'd also like to point out that budget 2016 was actually drafted in the fall of 2015, before the tribunal even ruled, and there's been no adjustment to budget 2016 since the tribunal ruled. We need to press the refresh button, look at what's needed, and provide the resources with dispatch so that these children are not going yet another day without the services.

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

You mentioned that 91% of the $5 million went to, I think, Saskatchewan and Manitoba communities.

[Dr. Cindy Blackstock]

Yes.

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

Of $5 million, if that were to be expanded in terms of Wapekeka and its ask from Health Canada—and I don't know what the ask was specifically—but if it received the the money and if other communities have been asking for funds for their prevention strategies, would that eat up the amounts that Health Canada and INAC have?

[Dr. Cindy Blackstock]

I think it would exceed them.

Health Canada and INAC have been using a very narrow definition of Jordan's principle. It was up on Health Canada and INAC's website even as recently as last week, and it said that the only children eligible to apply to that fund were children with short-term critical illnesses and disabilities, so if I'm the parent of a child with mental health issues, that is a “do not apply” sign right on the INAC website.

We have seen that Wapekeka, for example, wanted $376,000. That's how much it would have cost to save those children's lives. My recommendation to the government is that you fund at actual costs immediately across all government services to ensure that first nations children are not denied services available to every other child, and that can be done very quickly.

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

Where would that money go? You said the tribunal has ordered very specifically where the money should go. I know from my time at Grand Council Treaty No. 3 that a lot of first nations organizations ask for money to do certain things, a lot of very good things. I know a certain amount has been promised by the Ontario government and Health Canada in Ontario, and not all of that money has flowed. I have heard from my connections within first nations communities that there's a battle between some indigenous organizations over that money, and that has delayed some of that money.

Is there any truth to that?