Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on April 6th, 2017

[Charmaine Stick, As an Individual]

Hello. I thank you all for inviting me here today. My spirit name is Eagle Fire; Charmaine Stick is my English name. That was the name given to me when I was born. I am thankful to the Creator for allowing us to come and sit together. It's nice that you finally listen to us, not only for all people but for the first nations and the leaders. I'm not speaking on behalf of myself. I'm not only speaking for my reserve but for all people.

At Turtle Island, as it is called, money is being misspent many times. How many days are we given money? You can give us all the money and you can allow the chiefs and leaders to use it in any way, but sometimes it doesn't work that way because there is no financial transparency and accountability. When they brought in the financial act, under the leader, Stephen Harper, it was nice. He was trying to do the best for us.

We would not be sitting here talking, discussing, dialoguing about the money. This emerged and arose from the financial transparency act, and being able to talk about it. We would not be sitting around here asking questions. We would have known already where these dollars had gone and how they were misused, and it's not only us and the leaders, because you are all leaders as well, even Indian Affairs. That's where money is also misspent. It's not just us.

Sometimes chiefs come and tell you about various issues but some do not tell the truth. As I sit here today to tell you about this event, as you're looking for financial transparency and accountability, I also look for these.

I starved myself for 13 days, while sitting down in my village, in the main area, all the time. The chief always drove by to get to the band office. He never thought anything of my sitting there starving, and didn't even check on me. Finally, he came to check on me, and I talked to him.

“Why are you sitting here?” he asked. I told him it was because there was so much mismanagement on reserve. Dollars were being misspent, and he was hurting his people. With the situation as it was on the reserve, he did not think anything of me. They are playing with us. They are mistreating us and it's because he wants the leadership. He wants to be rich, not for my children, my grandchildren, just for him himself. He wants to be rich.

As I sat there, he finally came to talk to me. He asked me why I was sitting here. What did I want?

I told him to teach us how the money is being spent. We know it's being misspent.

He didn't like it. He was angry, and then he told me again to never mind, to starve myself, but it's for nothing. I wouldn't see anything.

[English]

Then he said to go ahead and starve myself to death.

[Witness speaks in Cree with interpretation, as follows:]

Then he said this to me. I know he doesn't think anything of the people.

[English]

He puts himself above everybody else.

[Witness speaks in Cree with interpretation, as follows:]

He puts himself before the Creator and Mother Earth. He thinks highly of himself and the laws don't apply.

[English]

He doesn't follow any laws.

[Witness speaks in Cree with interpretation, as follows:]

That is, he is making his own laws. That's how a person is affected in a community when you're given money and no rules are applied, not even to be observed. Indian Affairs should be watching to tell him how they are misspending the money.

When I started asking questions, I phoned Indian Affairs. I told them how bad the situation is on our reserve. Money is being misspent. What were they going to do? Didn't they know? They said they knew but they couldn't do anything.

I asked why. I was told because of our chief, Wally Fox. A big government department is scared of one man. Why? You should be watching over us. You have a role and responsibility when you send money to the reserves.

If we were to follow the financial transparency act, we would know already where the money went. We would not be sitting here.

[English]

You would have made your own laws, your own rules, regulations...how to fix your mistakes, or how to fix where you guys went wrong, or what was lacking and where.

[Witness speaks in Cree with interpretation, as follows:]

But you haven't been doing that for two years already. When they stopped.... The government, Minister Bennett...what are they doing now? Are they working at anything? They have 5,000 employees at Indian Affairs. After two years, still nothing. Why?

I am truly happy to be invited here. I thank you all, even though there is still much to talk about but I am unable to. I cannot speak on this, the time is limited to 10 minutes.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Tansi.

We're going to have time for about three rounds of questions before we'll have to break.

We're going to open questioning with Mike Bossio.

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

That was very moving testimony. Thank you for sharing your story with us.

As Don said earlier, this can be such a frustrating exercise. Since the beginning, since I've become part of this committee, more and more I've seen that the treaties we negotiated under the crown were never negotiated with the intent of actually fulfilling them in the first place. This is another case that is evidence of that fact. The more and more we hear from the different organizations....

We find ourselves revisiting the same question every generation. For a generation we've done nothing to assist first nations people. Since the 1980s everything has been virtually frozen, and meanwhile your populations continue to grow. The funding never, ever met the growth of that population and the needs of that population, even though at that time you were already behind the eight ball in trying to deliver services, in trying to deliver a decent living for your communities. Third party management is just another extension of that punitive, abusive practice of a paternalistic governing class.

At the same time, I see so many communities that are rising from these extremely difficult circumstances and showing the rest of the country and other indigenous communities that there are pathways available. Those pathways are community-driven pathways, with community-driven priorities. They seize control of their own destiny, and that's what gets them there. Just under third party management, there's the First Nations Financial Management Board, the First Nations Tax Commission, the First Nations Finance Authority, AFOA, the Matawa, and even the Swampy Cree Tribal Council, where they're starting to build indigenous solutions.

I don't fault the previous government for wanting to try to find transparency and accountability, but once again, it's a paternalistic way of moving forward with it. I think we have enough evidence now to show that first nations communities can do it if they have the will to do it.

I guess I want to put that to you. Should we blow up third party management, as with so many other things, and focus on finding first nations solutions, not necessarily reserve by reserve but nation by nation? I think we have a generational opportunity to find those solutions.

I'd like to put it to you, Charmaine, Dawn, and Terry. Do you agree that this is really where the solutions need to come from?

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Do you want to share that question?

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

Please.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

We have about three and a half minutes.

[Dawn Madahbee Leach]

I'll respond to that.

For sure, I really do believe we have the solutions already. I know you're charged with looking at this policy, but I think if you had the involvement of people like Terry, Harold, Manny, and the whole group there, they could give you some really good ways on how to change that whole process and policy. I think they know it more directly. They're in the field. They work with all of the people. We could easily do the kind of work that needs to be done. It could help address some of the issues of some of the community members.

I've seen in the transcripts already a number of solutions, and they're really great. I think you have a lot to go on already. I think you're starting to get at the root of the issue and understand it. We have already the capacity to develop those solutions, and you have people who can help with this whole process.

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

Charmaine, I'd really like to get your view on it. I agree with you that in one sense there needs to be financial accountability and transparency, but it needs to be community driven. You're one of those key community members who are shining a light on it and will bring it about. Our government in one sense is saying that we agree with you, but it needs to be the community who drives it forward. Would you agree?

[Charmaine Stick]

Yes, I would.

In terms of third party management, I've become aware of a few communities who are under third party management. The only way I can put it in perspective for you so that you're able to understand it is to ask you if you would send a pharmacist to go out and do the job of an oil hauler and expect the pharmacist to know what it is and how to deal with that job. You already know what to expect and what will happen. Nothing will work.

In other words, you need to start looking at communities and finding out who the smart ones are, the ones who can replace all these other people who come in and tell us how to take care of our own business, when we know how to take care of our own business. We know where we're going wrong, but we need somebody from the inside to help us get out of the rut we've been in.

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

It's better for that to be a first nations organization rather than INAC.

[Charmaine Stick]

Yes, because as I said, we know where we're going wrong.

I'm not going to go over there and say that I can do your job better than you can.

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

You probably could.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Charmaine Stick]

I'm not like you. I don't know what your job is about. You know...?

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

Once again, given....

I'm sorry, Terry. I would like to invite you to finish that thought.

[Terry Goodtrack]

I believe in communities addressing the issues they have. I liken it to my past position. I used to work for the Aboriginal Healing Foundation. One of the successes we had there was that we worked with communities, and the communities did the program design in accordance with what the survivors and the intergenerational people wanted.

We developed a program design, and in the instances where it didn't work, we were able to quickly change and modify it at the healing foundation, and to create a new work plan and new program design with them to ensure that.... I would say that was one of the key reasons the Aboriginal Healing Foundation was very successful in its 15 years. It was an aboriginal institution working with aboriginal communities and the community members.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Thank you.

The questioning goes to MP Stubbs.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair. It's a pleasure for me to be here to sit in on this committee.

Just so my colleagues understand, I want to thank all three of the witnesses for being here, and I am going to spend my time allowing Charmaine to speak. I represent the area of the Onion Lake community, where she is from, which overlaps into the Alberta side. With respect, and with thanks to you, I will be focusing on letting Charmaine speak more to her perspectives and her stories.

Charmaine, here's what I want to start with. First of all, I think it's important that we all acknowledge that after the financial transparency act was brought into law, the vast majority of first nations communities complied with the common-sense requirements of publishing their financial statements, their leaders' compensation, and their expenses. Those are the parameters under which all of the MPs here operate, as do many other elected representatives at their levels of government. Right across the board, more work can and should be done on financial transparency.

You alluded to having to go to the department multiple times to find the information about the spending in your community. Five months ago, I sat on this committee when the minister responded to several questions about specific instances and spending disparities and concerns around where funding is going in first nations communities. She stated a number of times that the solution was to call her office, or to call the department, or to call the police, or to call a lawyer. What do you think about those comments?

[Charmaine Stick]

Is this Minister Bennett you're talking about?

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Yes.

[Charmaine Stick]

First of all, you were put there, employed to work for me to watch over our people. You know what I'm doing. You know what I'm going through. You have all the utilities. You have everything. You can fly over to Onion Lake and come see me, but how come I have to contact you? You work for me. You work for our people. You should be coming to see me. Why do I have to go to you? Why should I call you? You work for me, so you come find me. You want to know what's going on? Come look for me. I'm not going to chase you around, you know. You get paid to take care of us. I'm somebody with a big issue that's been ongoing for so many months. Come see me.

As for the RCMP, I've tried. I even tried to take my band to court to try to charge them for fraudulent cheques that were made under my name, that I found out about on my own, and they couldn't do anything. The RCMP tried—they made it look like they tried, but they didn't.

Three times I ended up getting arrested because I asked for documentation or because I went too far with my questions. I got arrested in front of my kids in front of the band office. In front of my kids—my kids had to see me get arrested. I wasn't drunk. I wasn't violent. Those are things that people like me have to deal with in order to try to get.... We are asking the same questions you are asking, but for us it is at such an oppressive and hurtful level that we.... You know, it has happened for so long because people don't want to get that kind of oppression.

In some instances, in some communities out there, elders get their power cut off. Their water gets cut off. You know, that's just so that the person will not talk. They do whatever they can to keep them quiet. If not, then they get handed a big cheque. They say, “Be quiet. Don't talk about this. Here's your $10,000 or $50,000.” That's their solution, their band-aid, to hide their mistakes.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

When she was asked in question period about your fight and your leadership for fiscal transparency, I know the minister said that you saw the information you requested “in a public meeting”, but of course, the act does require the information to be published on a website for all community members to be able to access. I don't know if you want to share your comments about how or in what way you saw that information and whether or not the information is published.

Do you think that most first nations people have the ability, means, or knowledge to know who they can go to for assistance—to call the department, to call our office, or to have the means to call and hire a lawyer to get this information to which they're entitled?

[Charmaine Stick]

In most cases, they say that they're available, but they are available to a certain extent. They'll only give you what they want you to see. They don't give you the whole.... If you want to read a novel and you ask them for a novel, they'll take out the pages that they don't want you to read, and then they'll give you the book. By the time you get it, you only have 10 pages to the whole novel, and you're like, “Where's the....?” You can't get the story. You can't get to the bottom of it. You don't know what happened, you don't know the in-between, and you don't know the end.

For her to say that it's so easy, it isn't. It's not. Just because our leadership or our people say it is.... You know, to say one thing is different from the actions that we receive. It's not just, “Come to the band office, and we'll give it to you.” No, it's not like that.

The documentation—the financial reports—that I was given wasn't from the band office. It wasn't from them. They were anonymously given to me by band membership people who worked in different departments but did not want to be named. You know, I don't even tell anybody where I get what paperwork.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

You have five seconds.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

I'll take it, since other people also went beyond time.

If we get an opportunity, maybe you can address this after. I understand you did tell the CBC that the people of Onion Lake were misled on two areas. First, oil and gas revenues for the band were twice as much as band members were told. Second, the leadership stopped the development of 60 housing units, claiming there was no money, but just over a year ago, members were told there was money available. Maybe you could address that if you have a chance.