Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on May 13th, 2020

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

You have one minute left.

[National Chief Robert Bertrand]

—for instance; I will be the first one to admit that. These are the people out there. These are the people on the ground. These are the people who the federal government, through CAP's help, should be reaching out to.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Mr. Chair, before my time is up, I would like to congratulate the friendship centres and all the other organizations working so hard to provide services for their members. This has not been easy. Based on the testimony we've been hearing today and in previous meetings, every organization is trying to make the best of the situation for their members, their families, the children, the communities, the homeless people and people with disabilities and pre-existing medical conditions.

Thank you for everything you're doing. Keep up the good work, and hopefully we will be able to get through this. I know that together we will go back to normal, whatever that normal looks like at the end of this.

Thank you, everyone.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Thank you very much.

Mr. van Koeverden, you have five minutes.

[Adam van Koeverden, Liberal, Milton, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you so much to the witnesses. Your feedback and perspective on these matters are essential, and strong indigenous voices indeed add to the work that we are doing on this committee in such relevant ways.

Chief Bertrand, thank you for your advocacy and for fighting for your community. I echo your sentiment with regard to the importance of UNDRIP, and I know many members of this committee share that sentiment.

Mr. Sheppard-Buote, thank you, as well, for sharing your very relevant story.

Mr. Frost, Madam Cloutier, Ms. Formsma and Ms. Kretschmer, thank you very much, as well, for your essential work across the country. I extend my condolences to your communities for the loss you've experienced.

I am also speaking to you from ancestral lands, the land of the Mississaugas of the New Credit Nation here in Halton, Ontario.

My question is a short one, and I'd like it if Mr. Sheppard and the others who provide services on the front lines could answer.

With respect to indigenous people who live in suburban areas—my riding is primarily suburban and not in close in proximity to some of the friendship centres as in Toronto—there are families in my riding who are indigenous and require services as well. Could you elaborate a little on the suburban aspect? I apologize if I cut you off, but we're going to try to stay on time.

Could we start with Madam Cloutier?

[Edith Cloutier]

Can you hear me?

[Adam van Koeverden, Liberal, Milton, ON]

Yes.

[Edith Cloutier]

Thank you for your question.

As I understand it, you are talking about indigenous families who live outside major urban centres and how we can foster relationships and provide services.

That is kind of it. Friendship centres like the Native Friendship Centre in Val-d'Or, a city with a small population compared to Toronto or Winnipeg, are a crossroads and meeting place for indigenous communities, which brings the presence of indigenous people to the fore.

It is often in small communities like Val-d'Or that the native friendship centre becomes an outreach hub. We are not in the business of political representation. We are organizations providing front-line community services. That helps us to establish community contacts and foster a community, cultural and identity connection between families. With a pandemic like COVID-19, those families turn to a native friendship centre because the centre has already established a relationship of trust and communication with them.

[Adam van Koeverden, Liberal, Milton, ON]

Thank you very much, Ms. Cloutier.

Ms. Kretschmer, could you provide any context on the suburban indigenous population that you undoubtedly serve?

[Lindsay Kretschmer]

I'll pick up in just a moment. I'd like to turn it over to Larry to respond further.

I would recommend that you familiarize yourself with what the friendship centre is in your respective neighbourhood. For Halton, I suspect that you're sort of sandwiched between Peel, Hamilton, Niagara and Fort Erie, where there are friendship centres.

As to how to respond to the needs in the context of suburban, I think it's organizing transportation, communicating virtually, thinking through how to approach this differently and allowing for those local self-determined needs to emerge through contacting those leaders directly.

I'll turn it over to Larry.

[Larry Frost]

To add to what I said earlier, we're willing to help everyone. We all work together. But if you want to contact TASSC and if funds are available, we're always going to help anybody who needs food or even housing.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

We have two more questioners. We have barely enough time to get them in.

Ms. Bérubé, you have two and half minutes.

[Sylvie Bérubé, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Cloutier, your centre was already organized, but what has the COVID-19 crisis changed in terms of the types of services you provide and how you provide them?

What steps has your organization taken to maintain essential services while meeting public health guidelines?

[Edith Cloutier]

Thank you for your question, Ms. Bérubé.

Indeed, it has been a great challenge to develop front-line services while maintaining essential healthcare services, as well as social and psychosocial services, and providing support to the homeless and vulnerable women. However, since the friendship centres are organizations that have developed organizational agility and play a leadership role in our communities, fortunately we have been able to reorganize the services, while also providing services remotely using technology.

We have, however, maintained some direct services to the community, including home visits and services from a day centre for the homeless, which we had to relocate because of the physical distancing order and the health guidelines required because of the pandemic. Fortunately, we were able to count on the municipality to support us with these measures. It is also a matter of working in partnership with public health and our other partners to ensure that we provide adequate responses.

Native friendship centres, particularly the one in Val-d'Or, have been on the front lines because we have a culturally relevant approach. We connect with people. So we have had to reorganize all these services to ensure effective front-line services. Thanks to the relationship of trust we have with people, they have been able to use technology. According to the statistics, we do over 100 support sessions per week in our communities, where we are in contact with just over 100 families when we deliver food. This helps us to keep the contacts.

However, the challenges do remain, that is for sure.

[Sylvie Bérubé, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Thank you, Ms. Cloutier.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Gazon, you'll be up.

Mr. Schmale has his hand up.

Do you have a point of order or something that the committee should know, Mr. Schmale?

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

I'll let the witnesses finish, but before you adjourn, I would like to talk about a few things. I don't want to make a point of order because I don't want to take up the time but I would like to talk about some things.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Ms. Gazon, you have two and half minutes.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you very much.

My last question is for Jocelyn with the National Association of Friendship Centres in regard to data collection.

Accurate data is essential to determine specific needs. This has been identified as an issue by many urban indigenous organizations that often lack the resources and the support to compile proper research. This includes gaps in census data, especially in relation to homeless populations.

How can the government better support research and data collection to provide a more accurate depiction of the funding needs of urban indigenous populations?

[Jocelyn Formsma]

We started working with Well Living House, with Dr. Janet Smylie, putting together a bit of our own national coalition of organizations that would be able to do the data collection. We have some follow-up calls in the coming days, also building on the work the Yellowhead Institute recently published on what they found by scrolling through obituaries and by talking to folks.

The data piece is huge. We've been talking to Indigenous Services about what else we can do on the data collection piece. They know it's a gap. I'm hopeful when we start this work with Well Living House that ISC will come to the table to support it.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

How could the government better address that gap?

[Jocelyn Formsma]

Again, it goes to that jurisdictional quagmire. National health policies for indigenous people are set at the federal level. A lot of the data collection is happening in hospitals or at the provincial level. What is collected doesn't truly reflect what, maybe, the national data needs are.

I think we really need to push the provinces to ensure they're collecting the disaggregated data. Then, with public health at the local and regional levels, we need to be instilling how important this disaggregated data is. If we don't know who the people are who are being affected by this, I don't know how we even have a hope of addressing this at the community level.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

I have one last yes-or-no question. Do you feel that the lack of support around data collection is impacting your ability to access proper support required to service the community, yes or no?

[Jocelyn Formsma]

Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Thank you.

I would like to thank all of our witnesses. This has been a very informative meeting. From the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples, National Chief Bertrand; from the National Association of Friendship Centres, Christopher Sheppard-Buote, president, and Jocelyn Formsma; from the Toronto Aboriginal Support Services Council, Larry Frost and Lindsay Swooping Hawk Kretschmer, executive director; and from the Val-d'Or Native Friendship Centre, Edith Cloutier, executive director, thank you all.

Before I adjourn the meeting, Mr. Schmale, you had an issue you wanted to bring up.