Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Jan. 28th, 2021

[The Clerk]

Not to my immediate knowledge, but I will get back to you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

What I propose, as we move into the second round of five-minute questioning, is that I'm going to allow Madame Normandin and Ms. Mathyssen to begin the questions with their two-and-a-half-minute rounds, followed by Mr. Melillo and then Mr. Anandasangaree.

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

Mr. Chair, Mr. Weiler will be taking my round.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Okay, that's fine.

With that said, Madame Normandin, please go ahead now for two and a half minutes.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll try to be as succinct as possible.

I'll also talk about the Constitution because, as Ms. Wilson said, it's an important issue for the people of Quebec.

The Bloc Québécois will likely move an amendment that doesn't refer to the Constitution, but that includes the terms used in the Constitution, such as the recognition of indigenous rights, whether they be aboriginal rights or treaty rights. If this amendment is agreed to, it will then be easy for us to vote in favour of the bill, and perhaps even to speed up its passage.

Would you prefer an amendment that will speed up the process and ensure that the bill is passed unanimously, or would you rather include the word “Constitution” and risk having the Bloc refuse to support the bill? I want to hear your thoughts on this.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Anyone, please.

I think we've heard the question answered before, but one of our panellists.... Ms. Wilson, do you have anything further on this?

[Natan Obed]

If I could say very briefly, in the last government, there was a bill passed in regard to indigenous children in care. Unfortunately, the Government of Quebec has brought this particular piece of legislation to court, challenging the legislation in the jurisdiction of Quebec. It certainly seems like the same thing is happening here, where there is a primacy for things other than indigenous people's rights at play, and it hurts my heart.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Is there anything further from the other panellists on this matter?

[Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux]

If you have a recommendation that you'd like to put forward, would you please put it forward so that people can take it into consideration and we can move forward more quickly? That's what I would say.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Okay. Thanks very much. That brings us to time on that.

Ms. Mathyssen, you have two and a half minutes. Go ahead.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you. I wasn't really able to wrap up after my last round, so I appreciate this.

In terms of the points you were making, that the communities are doing a great deal of work but they're looking for a bit of federal leadership, I agree with you entirely. Certainly, our support is with the quick passage of this bill. It's far and long overdue.

There is one thing I am concerned about, and I hear the frustration and disappointment. I recently listened to an interview on The Current with justice and senator Murray Sinclair about the length of time that it takes for change. He was very gracious, as he always is, in terms of giving the benefit of the doubt. He talked about how these things happened over a long period of time and how it will take a long time to change them.

However, I've heard from communities in my area—the Chippewas of the Thames First Nation, the Oneida Nation of the Thames, who are under a water advisory, and the Munsee-Delaware First Nation. They are concerned. One leader in particular said, “We are at a breaking point, and if we don't see action, if we don't see movement, I don't know what will happen.”

Could you comment a bit on that? Again, it's back to that process, but also movement from the federal government, leadership from the federal government on bills such as this, bigger things within the TRC recommendations other than the 19 words that need to change in this bill, specifically. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Thank you.

Cynthia, go ahead.

[Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux]

I want to express my frustration. It's not just this government; it's been virtually every government that I've had to work with for the last 40 years to try to move things forward and to try to get the jurisdictional authority for child welfare back into the hands of indigenous peoples, and to get the treaties recognized and the land claims resolved, and the housing and the food insecurity addressed. It's not just this government; it's really every government that has to be held accountable for this.

I don't know what the fear is, and why you think that if you actually make these things happen for indigenous peoples, something bad is going to happen. I think something very good is going to happen, and that's going to be indigenous people entering into the economy on their own terms and in a good way, and actually being able to care for their people in a proper way.

I just think that everybody has to be held to account for this, not just this government.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Thanks very much.

We go now to Mr. Vidal for five minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to say thank you to all the witnesses tonight. Your testimony is very valuable for us as we understand some of these very important issues that we are dealing with as a committee.

I've appreciated much of the testimony and many of the questions tonight. One thing I've consistently heard in my conversations with people is the idea of how slow this is, how long it's taken. We've heard that expressed by the witnesses tonight. The second thing we've talked lots about is the education component of all this and how important that is to the success of these measures.

I want to share a quick story. I had an opportunity late this fall to meet with Vice-Chief Derocher of one of my tribal councils. He stopped in to see me. We were talking, actually, in the context of Orange Shirt Day. It was shortly after Orange Shirt Day. We come from very small communities in northern Saskatchewan. He was in the big city of Saskatoon, which is still pretty small relative to a lot of your cities. He talked about being in Saskatoon on September 30, on Orange Shirt Day. He talked about all the evidence of the orange shirts he saw in that city on that day. As Vice-Chief Derocher shared the story, you could see the tears welling up in his eyes as he shared that experience and the importance of recognizing some of those things. He also talked a whole bunch about how education was the solution to many of these issues, not only the newcomers booklet but the education in our schools, the education of adults in our society.

My question is in the context of the TRC calls to action. There are two calls to action in the section called “Newcomers to Canada”, 93 and 94. The minister talked about both today. Some of you have alluded to those. It seems to me that the order of these, maybe, is a bit of a problem from a process perspective, where we have the call to action on the citizenship oath before we have the education component. My thought is that maybe these things should be combined and the education component should be further down the journey as we do this.

I'd be curious to hear all of the witnesses comment on that, starting with Ms. Wilson.

[Marie Wilson]

Thank you. You're absolutely right in seizing on education as the heart of the matter, as I tried to underscore in my opening remarks.

I would say, in the short answer, “Ideally, yes”, but if there is a reason why the newcomers booklet is not yet ready, I don't think one should hold up the other. There are people giving their oaths, and the sooner you draw people's attention to what it is they're committing to, the sooner that in itself becomes a contribution. I think that ideally the two should go together, but I don't think you wring your hands forever on “Have we got the one and have we got the other?” If one is not ready or not agreed to, then you should do what you can do now.

I honestly have to say that of all the calls to action, 94 would seem to me to be one of the very simplest ones that would be in the category of low-hanging fruit in terms of the complexity of doing it and implementing it. That's how I would see it. There are some really hard systemic ones in other parts of the calls to action, and that's what Senator Sinclair is talking about when he says that these things take time. But if we take this long on the easy things, how long will it take on the really hard things?

If the answer is that the newcomers booklet, as Natan was alluding to, is in fact ready to go and we're withholding it, then that I don't agree with at all, and I don't understand the justification for that. If there's a political rationale, then I don't think it should be dealt with as a political issue. It should be dealt with as an issue of reconciliation, with priority and urgency.

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

Thank you.

You literally took some of the words out of my mouth in the context of how on this one it took us five years to get here. If that's the “low-hanging fruit”, in your words, or one of the simplest ones, how long might it take us to get to the harder ones, one of which is maybe the education one?

President Obed, I think I only have about 30 seconds, so I'm going to ask you for a quick response as well, if you don't mind.

[Natan Obed]

We did the work in 2017 to provide, as faithfully as we possibly could, amendments to the guide. We didn't anticipate that it would not lead to amendment of the guide. It is quite disappointing.

We're engaged, we do the work, we abide by the timelines that are provided to us—often very rushed timelines—and we do our work as faithfully as we possibly can, and then, for whatever reason, there is just inertia. I just hope that the guide can be revised and released tomorrow. There's nothing holding it back. The other part is legislation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Thanks very much.

Patrick, I believe you're coming up next. Please go ahead for five minutes.

[Patrick Weiler, Liberal, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for joining the committee meeting today and for the very meaningful testimony already.

I'd like to begin by mentioning that I'm streaming from the traditional unceded territory of the Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh nations.

I want to get to a question about education. I apologize for belabouring this initial point that we've been talking about, but there is a big difference between recommendation 94 from the TRC and Bill C-8. That's really with reference to aboriginal rights and having that constitutionally protected.

I know there has been some umbrage taken with the change of wording, including “Constitution”. From someone who's part of my legal practice who has worked for first nations throughout British Columbia on various matters, including rights and title cases.... In B.C., of course, there are almost no treaties. Most nations have given up on the treaty process, but of course the province is covered many times over with claimed but not yet proven rights and title cases, and with very strong claims, of course. I believe the reference to “aboriginal rights”, and indicating that it's constitutionally protected, is a very crucial one to give it relevance in B.C. Saying that it's constitutionally protected elevates this protection to the highest law in the land, which in my opinion is quite meaningful.

With that in mind, I guess this is my question for Ms. Wilson. I was hoping that you could speak to why this wasn't in the original recommendation 94. What type of feedback from consultation with first nations in B.C. was related to that particular recommendation?

[Marie Wilson]

There wasn't specific consultation on this specific issue with any specific indigenous group. All of our calls to action came from the body of resource we had to draw upon, which was research that was available that we had brought together, research we had commissioned on various topics, and the themes that emerged from the almost 7,000 statements we received, mostly from residential school survivors, but some from other members of the public, as well, who chose to give statements to the TRC. We drew from all of that wealth of information.

This one...and I have to tell you, if you look at all of the calls to action, it's really the only one that is presented in such a prescriptive way. I remember at the time being a little bit uncomfortable with it. All of the others talked about areas that need work, but they didn't pretend to be exclusive—there could be other things added to them—and they also didn't intend to be prescriptive. This one, because it has specific wording in it, I think you could easily draw perhaps the wrong conclusion that we were trying to have it be just about treaties. It was rather trying to capture...and I think we may have done a clumsy job on this, if I may be honest about it. We were certainly not perfect in everything we did, for sure.

However, by the time we were done, and pushing for time and everything, we tried as best we could to capture the spirit of what we were trying to say. What we were trying to capture here was the spirit and intent of treaties. Those exist, and there are others that are in negotiation or not yet confirmed. It was not meant to be restrictive; I'll just put it that way.

To your specific question on whether we had specific direct deliberations with indigenous leadership in B.C. on this issue, no, we did not.

[Patrick Weiler, Liberal, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Please go ahead.

[Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux]

I just want to add something.

As I was listening to you speak.... We talk about time, and I was thinking, as you did your land acknowledgement, that it didn't take any time at all for people to start putting land acknowledgements in place, because it really didn't cost anything.

When you said that this is going to go to the highest court of the land, the highest law of the land, and then you talked about the treaties and giving up on the treaties and that some of those other pieces have to be proven, I immediately thought yes, quite often it's the indigenous people who have to prove that they have the right to claim those lands and who have to do that work. There's a long delay, in some instances as much as 20 or 30 years, before a land claim even gets talked about or addressed. I had children grow up during the time I started one and had it actually completed, so I know that for a fact.

That, I think, is part of the problem we're having here. The delay is often about what you think it's going to cost you, and I don't think that's any reason for us not to move ahead.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

That's our time for that. Thanks, Patrick.

We're past our time. Protocol calls for me to ask for unanimous consent to continue, but at this point, we've heard from all of the parties present.

Mr. Viersen, would you be content if we adjourned the meeting in a moment? Okay. I apologize for the delays. They seem to be ubiquitous with our committee meetings, with languages and so on, and I apologize for that.

To our witnesses, thank you for your wonderful presentations and for your honest and straightforward responses today.

Thank you to our committee. With that, I call this meeting adjourned.