Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on April 19th, 2016

[Michael Ferguson]

The reality is probably that different jurisdictions will be different. Essentially, what happened in British Columbia, as I understand it, was that, from a legislative point of view, it was more a matter of pointing to pieces of legislation that already existed and saying, “Okay, we are going to abide by that.” It wasn't that there was a new legislative base put in place. The B.C. health authority itself was sort of the organization for delivery, the delivery mechanism. Again, that was an obstacle that we identified didn't exist often, and there was a 10-year funding agreement put in place.

Again, fundamentally, we were looking at that from the point of view that they were able to overcome those obstacles. I'm going to put a lot of emphasis on those four obstacles that we identified in 2011, because I think those are the things that the government, when it's dealing with first nations issues, needs to make sure that it's getting past.

Where is the funding coming from? How certain is it going to be? Who's going to do the service delivery? What's the standard that we are going to deliver those services at? What is the legislative base for which people can expect to get those services? Those are the things that need to be concentrated on. Then, in addition to that, there needs to be the commitment on the part of all of the political people involved to try to move it forward.

In the B.C. situation, the other success factor we identified was the fact that British Columbia first nations put together sort of one point of contact for the governments, so that they knew who they were negotiating with and who was going to be able to speak for that side of the table.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

Thank you both.

You're out of time, Cathy.

The next question goes to Georgina Jolibois.

[Georgina Jolibois, NDP, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

Thank you very much.

It's sad to hear. The report is very dismal. We live in Canada, and the standards of living in all reserves across Canada should be really up to par, but they aren't.

You've identified that education, health, drinking water, and other sectors do not have a board or structures in place to make improvements on reserves.

Do you think that we need a legislative basis for these areas on all reserves across Canada?

[Michael Ferguson]

Again, one of the obstacles that we identified was that there was a lack of legislative base, that oftentimes these types of services are just based on policy, and that wasn't always consistent, so some way of bringing certainty to the legal foundation for providing services to first nations is very important.

Whether that's a matter of passing new laws or regulations or whether that's a matter of just making sure that it's clear which legislation applies, again, I'm not going to try to proscribe that, but we need to make sure that there is certainty about what legislation does apply. If that certainty does not exist, then there would be a requirement to look to new legislation or regulations. Fundamentally, people have to be able to look at some type of legislative base that underlies the provision of those services.

[Georgina Jolibois, NDP, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal has found the government racially discriminates against indigenous people. To what extent is the federal government accountable for poor outcomes for indigenous peoples across Canada?

[Michael Ferguson]

Our role in the whole accountability mechanism is that we go in and audit government programs that are being delivered to first nations. We've audited a lot of them, as I said in my opening statement. Whether it be policing services, or health services, or the nutrition north program, or drinking water, or housing, we've done many audits over the course of the years.

What our audits are doing is identifying areas where the departments are not delivering on the services they are supposed to be delivering. We are certainly trying to make sure the information is available to people so that organizations like this, and committees like this, can hold the government accountable for the performance. I can think of the audit we did on health services in remote first nations, where the Department of Health itself identified that the registered nurses they had in place, because they were operating in remote areas, needed to have additional training in certain areas. The department had identified all of that training that those nurses needed. When we did the audit, we identified that out of 45 nurses, only one of them had completed all of that extra training the department itself had said those nurses needed.

Accountability is important, and what we are trying to do with our audits is bring forward areas where the departments are not living up to the delivery of the services they have established for themselves, and the departments and the government need to respond to that.

[Georgina Jolibois, NDP, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

As you know, recently Attawapiskat and a few other communities have declared states of emergency, yet your report has indicated a number of failures throughout Canada. How can we make progress and make improvements for our first nations across Canada?

[Michael Ferguson]

Unfortunately, that was the question we were asking ourselves in 2011. We had done a number of audits going back more than 10 years on first nations issues. We had identified places where the programs were not delivering the services at the level they should have been delivering them. We were making recommendations about those. We did follow-up audits to see whether the government and the departments were implementing changes to their processes because of the recommendations we had made. We found that they were doing that. They were making changes. They were trying to respond to our recommendations, but the results weren't any better. The results among first nations were getting worse.

In 2011 we posed that exact question: what is causing this? That's when we came up with those four obstacles. If it's not clear what level of service the government should be delivering to first nations. Nobody knows who's supposed to be getting what if there isn't a clear legislative base to say, “This is what has to be provided”. It's the same type of issue: if the funding isn't there, you can't do long-term planning. If it's annual funding, you can't do long-term planning. If there aren't the organizations on the ground who are responsible for delivering those services, then the quality of those services is going to suffer. We identified those four obstacles. Based on the audits that we've done since then on policing, disaster assistance, and health services to remote first nations, we've found that those same obstacles continue to exist. I think fundamentally there needs to be a focus on those four things that we identified then, if government is to figure out how to remove those obstacles.

[Georgina Jolibois, NDP, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

I'm thinking of ways to make improvements, and you've identified.... but at some point there's a gap between your report and the solutions. What are the steps?

[Michael Ferguson]

I think the first step would be to identify and to commit to a level of service. Whether it's in health services, policing services, or whatever services, what's the level of service that's going to be delivered to those first nations? I think that's the first thing.

The second thing is to make sure there is a predictable and long-term approach to funding, so everybody knows how much funding is going to be put into those services and how long that's going to be there for. These are things that happened in British Columbia in establishing the British Columbia First Nations Health Authority, so it can be done.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

We're out of time. Thank you both for that.

The final seven-minute question goes to Matt DeCourcey, please.

[Matt DeCourcey, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Thank you very much Mr. Chair.

Mr. Ferguson, thank you very much for your presentation.

First, I'd like to say that it's an honour for me to have the opportunity to represent the riding of Fredericton and to follow in the footsteps of Andy Scott, who was the minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development Canada when the Government of Canada signed the Kelowna Accord with the country's Aboriginal leaders.

It's important for me to think back to where we were 10 years ago, and be ready to embark on a partnership with indigenous Canadians and to make sure that we address some of the gaps that we still see 10 years later. I can tell you that, in my conversations with indigenous leadership in my community—and I have two first nation communities with strong leadership—they see some of the issues that you talk about, and they've seen it get worse over the last number of years. They've seen more unpredictability with their funding. They characterize it as smaller and smaller pots of project funding, as opposed to stable, long-term program funding.

You talk about the impediments of unstable contribution agreements and unstable funding agreements. You also talk about the impediment of a lack of a legislative base. I wonder if, through your audits and the work of your office, you've seen particular instances in which services were ill-defined, maybe due to the rolling back or shrinking of project allotments or programs over the last number of years.

[Michael Ferguson]

I'm not sure if I can untangle all the causes and effects, but, again, we found a number of different areas where the services were unpredictable, where it was unclear what the services were supposed to be. I couldn't even try right now to explain to you all the different types of contribution agreements that exist for funding different first nations' policing services. It's not as if there is just one type of contribution agreement that applies to all first nations. There are many different types, and it takes a bit of work to get your head around all the different contribution agreements.

Again, I think you just have to look at any of the audits. I'll go back to the audit on health services, related either to the extra training for the nurses or the fact that of some of the facilities that medical practitioners were supposed to use didn't work. In fact, one of them, a septic system, didn't work. The visiting health care physicians couldn't go there because they didn't have a place to stay while they were there. We've seen very significant impacts on services because all of the infrastructure and support necessary for those services doesn't exist for those first nations.

Again, I can't get into trying to tie it back to what sort of change might have caused some of that, but certainly, we've seen confusing amounts of contribution agreements. As Mr. Martire mentioned, some of them are for just for one year. How do you do long-term planning if that's the case? I think there's no question that has had an effect on some services.

[Matt DeCourcey, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

I think what I did hear was maybe a broad recommendation that it has to move more toward long-term stability in programming for first nations, as opposed to the one-off project funding initiatives that may be in place now.

[Michael Ferguson]

There's always some room for specific project funding, but I think certainty of funding in core areas, an understanding of what services are supposed to be provided, and how they're going to be funded, and then some certainty around that funding.... Again, that's what we identified happened in the B.C. First Nations Health Authority situation. A 10-year funding agreement was put in place, with a predictable escalator, so that everybody knows what funding's going to go there. That allows for long-term planning. There'll always be room for some one-off project funding, so it's not all or nothing, but the primary thing is making sure that there's some certainty around the core services.

[Matt DeCourcey, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Mr. Chair, I'll split the rest of my time with Mr. McLeod.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

Great. Okay, so there are two minutes left.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

Your statement, which addresses the levels of service and long-term and predictable funding, is certainly music to my ears. It is something that the aboriginal people have been saying for a long, long time. The only consistency we have seen in the last 10 years from the Conservative government has been cuts, cuts, and more cuts.

I come from the Northwest Territories. As you know, a lot of times the money that is allocated is rolled in with the Government of the Northwest Territories, and it becomes very blurry as to what is actually earmarked for aboriginal people. As we watch housing deteriorate to a point where the government is bringing in 10 trailers a year, I think, from Alberta, and that is our housing program, it becomes very concerning. We are reaching a housing crisis. We have our non-insured health benefit funding overdrawn. We recognize that the previous government has been off-loading to the provincial and territorial governments.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

You have one minute, Mike.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

We can't afford it.

I'll just end there with a question that has been troubling me for some time now. Would you be able to look at how fair the funding for aboriginal people in the northern territories is, compared to the rest of Canada? We don't have dollars that are specifically earmarked. We don't have programs that come from Indigenous Affairs. We have high social issues across the territories.

[Michael Ferguson]

I am not going to commit to doing any particular audit right here, but certainly you have raised an issue. We are always interested in trying to understand all of the issues that exist, and you have raised another issue around how funding is allocated. Certainly, we can do some work to take a look at that to see if there would be something that we could audit. Again, I am not going to commit right now that we will end up doing an audit, but having that type of input to help us understand what the issues are is always helpful.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

We are out of time, thank you.

We are moving into the five-minute round of questions. The first question goes to Arnold Viersen, please.

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

Thank you to our witnesses today. I really appreciate the work you do.

As I look through the list of all the reports that you've put out, it looks like you are busy people, so thank you for making time to come and address us today.

One of the things that we were proud of in our term as government was the First Nations Financial Transparency Act. I was just wondering if you could comment on how that rollout went, and if you did a study on how it was approached by the communities. What kind of take-up did we have with that piece of legislation?

[Michael Ferguson]

We didn't do an audit of that piece of legislation or how it was implemented, so I can't really comment on that.

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

We talked a lot already today about the various contribution agreements and you talked specifically about the health area in B.C. Are there other layers of government, municipal or provincial, that have similar contribution agreements? Are there other layers of government where the same thing happens, where there isn't a contribution agreement and lack of funding?