Evidence of meeting #87 for Indigenous and Northern Affairs in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was working.
A video is available from Parliament.
11:55 a.m.
Conservative
11:55 a.m.
Liberal
Carolyn Bennett Liberal Toronto—St. Paul's, ON
There will be, in a transition, the need for people to oversee the transition, but I promise you that the bulk of the money goes to communities in grants and contributions.
Paul, you have pretty impressive numbers there, I think.
11:55 a.m.
Paul Thoppil Chief Finances, Results and Delivery Officer, Indigenous Services and Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
To answer your question, regardless of any organizational change there is a cost associated with it, whether in the private sector or in the public sector. Therefore, there will be presumably an incremental cost before we achieve the objective of eliminating the expenditures associated with one complete department.
11:55 a.m.
Chief Finances, Results and Delivery Officer, Indigenous Services and Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
It depends on how fast a number of elements unfold. As Minister Bennett said, the degree of acceleration under our various rights and reconciliation tables and the amount of sectoral transformation, as Minister Philpott said, through sectoral agreements under education and health, will all contribute to it. The timing will be a combination of how fast we can move along with the pace of the communities themselves.
I can't give you a clear answer, but the intent is clear.
11:55 a.m.
Conservative
Kevin Waugh Conservative Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK
Thank you very much.
Moving on to transparency, Minister Bennett, is that your department?
Oh, that's you, Minister Philpott. Okay. We've heard reports of people calling INAC and being told that their issue falls under the other person. If I phone you, I might hear, “No, that's actually under Minister Bennett.” We've heard some of that with this new approach. People are falling through the cracks.
How are we tracking this? We've heard that people are phoning and they're being told to go elsewhere.
11:55 a.m.
Liberal
Jane Philpott Liberal Markham—Stouffville, ON
I assume you're referring to people phoning our ministers' offices...?
11:55 a.m.
Conservative
11:55 a.m.
Liberal
Jane Philpott Liberal Markham—Stouffville, ON
If you hear of a specific case where someone has fallen through the cracks, please bring it to my attention.
11:55 a.m.
Conservative
11:55 a.m.
Liberal
Jane Philpott Liberal Markham—Stouffville, ON
It's understandable. As you probably know from your own constituency office, people call sometimes about a provincial issue and they need to be referred elsewhere. It's not unreasonable that one might call a department and realize that they've called the wrong department. Obviously, we would expect our officials and our ministers' offices to reallocate those calls appropriately.
11:55 a.m.
Conservative
Kevin Waugh Conservative Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK
Okay.
Minister Bennett, you've gutted the First Nations Financial Transparency Act. We have two lawsuits in my province of Saskatchewan right now—Onion Lake, and Thunderchild just within the last week.
How's it going? We've had the transparency.... I know you were talking to your staff there.
11:55 a.m.
Liberal
11:55 a.m.
Liberal
Jane Philpott Liberal Markham—Stouffville, ON
—because the fiscal relationship falls under our department.
I want to start out with a couple of principles. I believe that all Canadians and all responsible governments recognize that matters like transparency and accountability are absolutely essential. We want to acknowledge that up front.
I also want to say that in terms of the fiscal relationship we have had with indigenous peoples, I think it would be fair to characterize our relationship in the past as patronizing, punitive, and regressive. Our new relationship with indigenous peoples is based on a recognition of rights, including the right to self-government. It's based on the kinds of things we talked about before.
11:55 a.m.
Liberal
November 30th, 2017 / 11:55 a.m.
Liberal
Salma Zahid Liberal Scarborough Centre, ON
Thank you, Chair.
Ministers, I'd like to thank you both for your leadership on this difficult file.
My first question is for you, Minister Philpott. It is in regard to mental wellness. It feels like hardly a day goes by that we don't hear about another instance of a suicide in an indigenous community, or a suicide pact between young people. As you know, we recently completed a study on the suicide crisis. We heard from witnesses that there is no single solution. We know that this will require a concentrated effort across all levels of government and even beyond government.
Can you please tell us what is being done to ensure that we foster hope in these communities and provide access to services for the improved health and well-being of indigenous communities?
Noon
Liberal
Jane Philpott Liberal Markham—Stouffville, ON
Thank you for the question. Once again, I want to thank the committee for your work on this. I'm sure it was a heart-wrenching experience for you to hear the testimonies that were part of that. Thank you for your report and recommendations. I hope you've had the opportunity to review the government response to the committee's report, because I think that frames how we really do see our responsibility as it relates to the mental health crises that are faced by indigenous peoples.
The way we framed that was really in three main broad categories. The first is that you have to get those urgent immediate responses to communities, particularly when there are times of crisis. To that end, there have been tremendous investments and a lot of work has gone into making sure, for example, that we've quadrupled the number of mental wellness teams that are available for first nations across the country, to be able to get to communities quickly. We've made major investments through Jordan's principle. We are using a first nations-led approach called “Choose Life”, a program that many first nations communities in northern Ontario are using.
This is allowing that crisis response and enables access to mental health workers, but you need to go down to that next layer, which is the social determinants of health, because we will not address the suicide crisis until we make sure that kids can get a decent education, live in a decent house, and have clean water and all of the things that give kids hope for the future and make them believe that life is worth living. That's a huge part or essentially all of what my department is doing: enabling what it means to be healthy, both mentally and physically.
Even deeper than that is the work of Minister Bennett's department. That's the third foundational layer. People lose hope when they have no control over their lives. First nations, Inuit, and Métis people in this country have not had those rights recognized and implemented fully. When people are enabled to determine the course of their lives, to have control over their lives, that's actually what is the grounding of addressing these terrible mental health crises.
Again, I could elaborate but hopefully that answers your question.
Noon
Liberal
Salma Zahid Liberal Scarborough Centre, ON
My next question is on education, Minister. Just yesterday, census data was released that showed high school completion rates are increasing for first nations, Inuit, and Métis students. We also learned that there were gains in the attainment of post-secondary education. This is a very positive step in the right direction. Can you tell us what is being done to ensure that we continue on this track?
Also, what can we be doing for the development of social skills for indigenous youth?
Noon
Liberal
Jane Philpott Liberal Markham—Stouffville, ON
Thank you. I'll choose a couple of things to tell you about in the education world, because there's so much happening everywhere.
There are many encouraging things. Minister Bennett referred to the agreement of the Anishinabek—it's before the House right now—in terms of their claiming jurisdiction over education, which is fantastic news, and even without fully claiming jurisdiction, we're seeing some really important work that's being done, again, to enable self-control over education. I was out in Manitoba and was able to celebrate the opening of the Manitoba First Nations School System, which is really transformative and was an extremely positive experience.
The other thing I want to touch on briefly is to let you know that there's some really fascinating work being done across the country at a table of regional representatives around education. We are actually co-developing an approach to the transformation of education for first nations across the country. This is work that is essentially the first of its kind, and I have to again salute first nations leaders and our officials who are working at that co-development table. They will be preparing a presentation to the government to recommend how they would like to see education transformation take place.
Noon
Liberal
Carolyn Bennett Liberal Toronto—St. Paul's, ON
Madam Chair, can I just...? I just want to tell one little story.
