Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on April 6th, 2017

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Mrs. Stubbs, you have exceeded the length of time available, and you've gone on longer than anyone else. I'm sorry, we might have to continue the conversation after the official part of this questioning, because we will not have enough time for Mr. Saganash's series of questions.

This will be the end of our questioning because we're running out of time, so please go ahead.

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

How much time do we have?

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

We have seven minutes, according to our rules, and then we need a couple of minutes to do a little bit of committee business.

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

Charmaine, I will also tell you that I understand. As I hear you, I understand you. Thank you. Your story affects my heart, and I understand you. It's highly thought of and you are doing well.

I thank you for speaking the Cree language in this setting. Thank you very much for doing so.

[English]

Madam Chair, those were just words of thanks for allowing Charmaine to speak in Cree. It's nice to hear my language here. Although I didn't understand 100%, I got a good 75% of what she said. I think it's an important recognition on the part of the chair and this committee to allow Charmaine to speak in her language, so thank you for that.

I want to go on. Dawn, you spoke about the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and I want to take the opportunity to mention that I do have legislation before the House stating that, as a legislative framework in any future legislation and policy development, we should act in accordance with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which is coming up for debate some time in September, on the 10th anniversary of the adoption of the UN declaration.

I invite your organization to endorse Bill C-262, as many other organizations have, and even many non-indigenous municipalities have, and as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has called for.

You spoke about jurisdiction. UNDRIP also contains a statement on access to our own resources for our own development, which I guess is part of your mandate to promote economic development for the communities. That framework is important. When a government endorses an instrument like the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, every policy development or legislation should use that as a framework, and I invite the government to do that.

“Reconciliation” is a word that was used by the Supreme Court way before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada was established. Back in 1984, in the Haida Nation case, the Supreme Court talked about reconciliation, and this is what the Supreme Court had to say:

Treaties serve to reconcile pre-existing Aboriginal sovereignty with assumed Crown sovereignty, and to define Aboriginal rights guaranteed by s. 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982.

Those are the words of the Supreme Court of Canada, not mine. Do you agree that should be the basis of our discussion in this country?

[Dawn Madahbee Leach]

Absolutely. When you look at our website, you can see our statement on the United Nations declaration and see how everything needs to flow from there. I think we need to look at that wider picture.

When you look at a policy like this, you need to look at how it applies to that declaration. That's why I referenced it in my speaking points.

Going forward, it's so important. Of course, the Royal Proclamation of 1763 looked at that, too. There is a lot of information there where it reaffirms our rights. It reaffirms what the relationship should be. We now know that we're starting to work on this nation-to-nation relationship and on having something prescribed like this default management policy.

I want to say that we have some solutions that are offered. We have the capacity. We have people who know what to do to help address these issues. We have the aboriginal institutions to do all of this, and they know about UNDRIP. They know how we need to work on this. We know how to mediate some of the issues that Charmaine has addressed. We can help through that process, instead of going to a lawyer or the politicians.

We could build a process ourselves that will help better mediate the transparency and accountability and put processes in place for each of the communities to have a group that would help with that. I think UNDRIP is all about recognizing our jurisdiction. What we need to do is exercise that.

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

I have a quick question, then, to Terry.

I don't know if you are aware, but in 1984 legislation was negotiated between the Government of Canada and the Cree in northern Quebec. We negotiated the Cree-Naskapi (of Quebec) Act, in which you find provisions of transparency and accountability, where chief and council have to present yearly audited financial statements to the community, not to the ministry and not to the government, but to the community members. Are you aware of that legislation? Have you looked at that experience?

[Terry Goodtrack]

I haven't looked at that one specifically, but when you talk about local accountability I believe it's around what I call four dimensions.

One is certainly what I call public services transparency, disclosure, and redress: transparency in the operation of the organization, which is known through policy frameworks; disclosure of the information; and redress of some of the appeal mechanisms.

When you look at performance, there's an ability there to see how the organization is performing according to key indicators and goals that have been set by the community through a comprehensive community-based planning process that goes on more than the term of a particular election. Financial is really important, and the blending of those two is really key.

But I think the final dimension in this, which is what I call professional, is insurmountable in all our institutions in Canada, not just first nations. The idea there is not only about conflict of interest but about building the professionalism of a group in terms of ethics, conflict of interest, and so forth.

I'll just complete with this. Earlier there was a discussion about fraud and that kind of stuff. The fraud examiners speak to the notion that in any organization 20% of its people do not-so-good things, 20% to 30% are highly ethical, and the middle part just depends on the tone at the top, and so forth. The future of our institutions, all of ours in Canada—first nations or public—should be based upon ensuring that we turn the 20% who do undesirable things into the ones who do desirable.... I think that's the future.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Meegwetch.

Yes.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

As Mike mentioned earlier, I also invite these guests to submit briefing notes. I know that things discussed today and you'd probably like to add some things to your comments, so you're welcome to provide us with written notes, as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Thank you so much for coming out. We appreciate your comments and take them to heart. There is an opportunity to present online, and that too will be published.

For the committee, do I have your blessing to discuss these issues openly, or are we going to move into camera?

All right. There are three issues.

The first one is that I understand there is an agreement that we will not be sitting next Thursday. Are there any objections?

Secondly, we have a request to add Pam Palmater to the agenda for next Tuesday. That's functionally possible in the second session of that day we sit. Is there any objection?

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

What organization is she from?

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Romeo, this was your recommendation.

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

I guess she would appear as an individual, as usual. She's a regular to this committee. Also, she would be relevant because in her former employment for the AFN she was the government intervention policy analyst.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Are there any objections?

Okay. She'll be invited to appear in the second part.

Finally, we must have our vision of travel for the full year next year in by the next meeting because it must be submitted by May 4 for the whole year. If this committee wishes to do any travel next year, we must submit the budget.

In addition, it will be very tight for us to get two reports out this spring, so when we meet in May we're going to start looking at the suicide study, which you have in your inboxes. Please have a look at that, and we'll try to make that as efficient as possible.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

I just have one comment on the travel budget for next year. We still haven't decided what we're studying next, so it's going to be very difficult to do so.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

That's why we're paid the big bucks.

We'll put in an estimate, but if you have a desire to go to a particular community, we'll have to allocate something.

The meeting is adjourned.