Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Sept. 28th, 2017

[Grand Chief Constant Awashish]

Okay.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

We'll now go to MP Anandasangaree.

[Gary Anandasangaree, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge Park, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to the panellists for being here. Please feel free to respond in French, as well.

I would like to give you the opportunity to finish the answer to the question Romeo just asked you, if you don't mind.

[Grand Chief Constant Awashish]

Thank you. I'll try it in English. When I have the opportunity to speak English, I enjoy it. My partner speaks English only; she does not speak French at all. I have to honour her.

As I was saying earlier to Romeo, in June 2018, it will be 40 years for us. That's what my people are telling me. Forty years is too long. I don't think we're going anywhere. We have a $35-million debt from negotiating. Our elders ask, “Why do we have to pay to negotiate when they're supposed to be the ones to come to us to negotiate about our land?”

We never sold. We never surrendered. We never exchanged our land. We are in a state of law, and by the rule of law here in Canada, this is still our land. How do we address this?

“They are supposed to come negotiate with us. Why do we have to pay for that?” That is what our elders say.

We have many stories. We record all our elders. They tell us what happened when the first settlers came from overseas, 500 years ago. They tell us all the stories about how we retreated slowly inland. We have all that. We have all our legends, all our stories. We can tell you the real story of Canada, if people want to listen.

June 2018 is the date when we want something very concrete to give to our people, for our youth. Let me tell you something about Atikamekw Nation. We are 7,800 right now, and 70% are under 35 years old. Of that 70%, 50% are 12 years old and under.

What are we going to do? Those are the ones I'm targeting. We have to help them. We have to give them the tools. We need to give them recognition.

I know what happened to us is very bad, but I think we have moved past that. We want to be recognized as citizens, first-class citizens. I want to give our people, our youth, pride in being who they are, pride in practising their culture, pride in speaking their language, and the chance to participate in the economic development of this country.

[Gary Anandasangaree, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge Park, ON]

I have a number of very pointed questions.

[Grand Chief Constant Awashish]

Okay, go ahead. Sometimes I go crazy so....

[Gary Anandasangaree, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge Park, ON]

No. I was very intrigued by one of your comments. I would like for you to give us maybe three points on this. You said at the beginning that you were looking for the tools to develop as a nation. What does that entail? What are those tools?

[Grand Chief Constant Awashish]

We've always been sitting on the back bench, sitting and watching this country develop as everybody gets rich. For many years, our people couldn't really profit from that. Just go back in history. My grandfather got the right to vote in 1969. Before that, he couldn't vote. That's the reason we want to take our place. That's the reason we're behind.

How are we going to catch up? How are we going to close the gap? We've heard a lot about this lately. At the Atikamekw Nation, we have the number. If the federal government needs the number that we need at Atikamekw Nation to catch up on socio-economic development, we can provide it.

[Gary Anandasangaree, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge Park, ON]

Ms. Bernard, thank you for sharing those very impressive numbers. Education is obviously a very important aspect.

Could you give us a bit more, or elaborate with respect to the type of agreement you have between the 12 communities? Is it a sectoral agreement? Who is part of it? Is the province part of it? In general terms, how does the funding work? Does it come directly from the federal government, or is it shared between the province and the feds? What control do you have over curriculum and particularly language?

[Eleanor Bernard]

We have a sectoral self-government agreement. It is with the federal government. I believe it was in 1998 when the Mi'kmaq Education Act became legislation that the provincial government also recognized our jurisdiction over education.

There is some funding coming from the provincial government but very little. We have a really good working relationship with the provincial government. We have an education services agreement with Nova Scotia, and they have a number of our students. In total maybe 700 of our students attend provincial schools. They have agreed to provide professional development services to our communities, and we also provide professional development services to them as well.

We are on their—

[Gary Anandasangaree, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge Park, ON]

Can we deal very specifically with language? I know we are kind of out of time, but....

[Eleanor Bernard]

Sure. With regard to language, in our communities, the communities decide, because they have jurisdiction over curriculum. Most of the communities use the Nova Scotia curriculum because they want their students to go on to post-secondary education, so we use the Nova Scotia curriculum although we enhance it. We have two schools that have immersion. One community, Eskasoni, has an immersion school that goes from K to five.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Thank you.

The questioning now goes to MP Kevin Waugh.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'll continue with education, if you don't mind.

I'll give you some numbers from my province. I was a trustee for 10 years, and the numbers aren't good. Graduation rates for indigenous students in Regina public schools have climbed 11%. They were at 42%, so it was a mandate from the province that all 28 school boards would start working together here, so we are now at 53% in Regina. Provincially we are at 43% graduation rates for indigenous students, so when you came out last week with 87.6% and I saw that—ouch!— there is a big difference here.

We know there are issues. From grade 10 to grade 12 you get credit for the graduation rates. For me, it doesn't matter if a kid takes five years to get that, but the provincial governments are always down to three years. They count only the graduation rates from grades 10, 11, and 12, those three years, but we know there are students whose home life.... I don't care as long as they graduate. In our province, we really have had trouble saying that if it takes a student five years to go from grade 10 to grade 12, we're there with him. We want to push him across that finish line.

I'm just going to peel back those numbers, because data is the biggest thing in all of this. You have data collection, and I want to get it because we don't share data. We're all used to hiding it because we're embarrassed by our numbers.

Share some of that data on that 87.6% graduation rate.

[Eleanor Bernard]

Okay, what do you want to know about it?

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

Let's start here. Is that for grade 10 to 12, three years?

[Eleanor Bernard]

Yes. We're looking at not only the graduation rate. We figure our graduation rates by the number of students who come in September and tell us that it is their graduation year, that they are going to be graduating. Of the students who indicate that this is their year, 87% are graduating.

I just want to point out one community, Eskasoni. I went to high school in the provincial system, and when I graduated from high school a few years ago, in 1981, I was one of five. When I started in grade 10, there were 160 of us attending that provincial high school. In three years, five of us graduated from high school.

Today, just last June in my community of Eskasoni, 60 students were graduating from high school in their community, and that number has been consistent over the last number of years in that community. I believe it's because the students are attending high school in the community. Their language is being recognized. They do have language courses. They also have the provincial curriculum that they have to follow, and they're doing really well. I believe it is because they have a sense of belonging. It's their school and there is pride in their language and culture.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

Okay.

I think I'm out of time.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

You are. We all are.

This has been a fascinating discussion. As we collect the information, we would encourage you, especially given the short notice, to please submit a brief. You can provide us more information and your thoughts on subjects—land claims, negotiators, time frames, costs—by October 15, mid-October, and it will still be part of the report.

Cathy.

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

Madam Chair, just before we rise, there was one area that I didn't get a chance to question on and that I think would be very worthwhile.

You indicated that you qualified for only three out of 10 indicators for the enhanced funding. If we could understand, through your submitted brief, what the other seven were, that would be helpful.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Basically, we're suggesting that you keep adding information, because the information that you provide to us is what the analysts will use to prepare their report. It can be verbal and written, so please feel free to submit.

Mike.

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

There was one other point I wanted to raise, Chair, and that I hoped they could provide some feedback on.

Under specific land claims, we have have a specific land claims tribunal. Under comprehensive land claims, is there a mechanism that gives you that tribunal case, or are you dead in the water? If you could comment on that in your submission, that would be greatly appreciated.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

This is going completely out of control.

Gary.

[Gary Anandasangaree, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge Park, ON]

Madam Chair, on a point of order, my understanding was that we had a bit more time with this panel. Is that not...? Given that the next panel won't start for a while, I do wonder if we could have another round of questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

It is up to the committee.