Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on May 13th, 2020

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you so much.

My next question is for Christopher or Jocelyn from the National Association of Friendship Centres.

Prior to 2018 the government provided $54 million for the entire country for urban organizations and communities, which I believe is completely inadequate. This has also been noted by your organization, which has called for more funding for services to meet the needs of urban indigenous people. Given the large number of indigenous people living in urban centres, how could the government better support culturally and socially relevant services and programs to respond to the distinct needs of certain indigenous groups? Can you identify some of the current systemic gaps that are make urban indigenous populations more vulnerable?

[Gary Vidal, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair. I'm being told that everyone on the phone-in line is not able to hear the latest questions and answers.

[The Clerk]

Yes. We were told there was a problem with the phone lines being scrambled. They are resetting the phone lines right now.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

I'll suspend.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

You have two and a half minutes.

[Christopher Sheppard-Buote]

There is a lot of talk about distinctions-based and what that means. Anecdotally, we look at how the government interacts with three large indigenous representative organizations. A policy paper on the challenges will soon come from NAFC, taken from a feminist, queer perspective that looks at the intersectionality of urban indigenous people and also looks at challenges to the government's stance on GBA+ analysis. If you look at the COVID-19 financial response and whether that was truly put through a GBA+ analysis—

[Gary Vidal, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

Mr. Chair, on a point of order, sorry, I'm not trying to be interrupting everybody, but the people on the phone lines still can't hear.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Gary, who's on the phone line?

[Gary Vidal, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

It's a bunch of staff from our side.

Some other people have people on the phone line as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

I'm not sure how much longer we can hold off, because we have all our witnesses and committee members here.

Madam Clerk, can you advise?

[The Clerk]

Perhaps we should suspend for a moment while I try to get this sorted out.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

All right.

[Jaime Battiste, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Mr. Chair, on a point of order, if we have all the members present and the witnesses are able to answer the questions, could we not just continue? All the people who are supposed to be here are on Zoom now. Can we not just give the others a written transcript of what was said? They have no speaking role in this anyway.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

The clerk has the floor now.

Go ahead, Clerk.

[The Clerk]

I'm told that the languages are working well on ParlVU right now, if staff wish to listen there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Can you pass along that information? Hopefully, someone has picked that up.

Given that they are able to access it through ParlVU, I think we should continue.

I will give Ms. Gazan two minutes to complete.

[Christopher Sheppard-Buote]

We've also done that GBA+ analysis of some of the announcements, because we feel that they are not responsive.

Specific gaps are in employment and training, considering the massive budget that Canada has for indigenous employment and training, the lack of that for urban people, the fact that there's no urban indigenous or indigenous youth-specific funding support or program, which did exist when friendship centres had a unique core program as my colleague Edith spoke about, and just generally appreciating and acknowledging our 70-year history in this country as the majority of us don't live in Inuit Nunangat, Métis homelands or first nations. The funding should just be reflective, and Canada needs to follow its own population data in creating policy and programs.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you very much.

I have one final question. This is for the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples.

Chief Bertrand, you indicated in your opening presentation that the $15-million government allocation in response to COVID was not adequate, given the fact that, as you had mentioned, prior to this we've known that indigenous people have higher rates of poverty and experience greater homelessness.

How has that impacted nationally the ability to respond to the diverse needs of indigenous peoples?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Could you do that in 30 seconds, please?

[National Chief Robert Bertrand]

The little amount of money we have received has created quite a bit of, how should I put this, uneasiness with our PTOs, so much so that the board of directors met. The $250,000 is an insult, and we will be sending the money back.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Thank you very much.

[National Chief Robert Bertrand]

Mr. Chair, I would just like to inform the committee of news from CAP this morning.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

We'll wait for that opportunity to come up later.

Right now, we're going to go to Mr. Viersen, for five minutes. This is a five-minute round.

Mr. Viersen, go ahead, please.

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

Mr. Bertrand, please finish your thought.

[National Chief Robert Bertrand]

The Congress of Aboriginal Peoples has been left with no choice but to initiate legal proceedings against the Government of Canada on behalf of the off-reserve and urban indigenous peoples over ongoing inequitable treatment in violation of their rights.

Government continues to underfund, deny their rights of self-determination, and violate rights under the Constitution and UNDRIP through their policies. We have highlighted these inequities before and will continue to do so, but since political leaders have not taken action, we have no choice but to seek a remedy through the courts as we did with the Daniels case.

That's what I want to bring to your attention this morning.