Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Oct. 17th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you, Grand Chief Coulombe.

We'll now move on to questions.

Mr. Schmale, you have six minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses. We have some great talent here that we're hearing from, and we do appreciate it.

I'll try to be quick with my questions because I only have six minutes here.

Let's start with Ms. McBride.

I'm guessing you weren't consulted on Bill C-29 as it was being drafted, and, based on your comments, five years is way too long to wait to have a member from your organization on the original board of directors, which then sets the framework for future boards going forward.

[Allison MacIntosh, Legal Technical Advisor, Native Women's Association of Canada]

Yes, that's correct. NWAC has not been consulted on this bill, and we have been waiting quite a long time for this piece of legislation to come forward. I think that it's not what this incredibly high-priority bill says; it's what it doesn't say, and the very concerning precedent that it's setting for the ongoing exclusion of indigenous women, girls, two-spirit, gender-diverse and transgender people against the backdrop of an ongoing genocide.

To answer your question, five years is too long for us to be waiting to be included in this bill. I think it's concerning, again, as President McBride said, that there are three major NIOs listed on this board, and NWAC has been left out, which is quite confusing to NWAC, given the fact that we do, in fact, have an accord with the Government of Canada. Section 1.1 of the accord explicitly honours a commitment to include indigenous women in ongoing conversations, yet we find ourselves left out again. This is a devastating precedent, to say the absolute least, and it feels like another empty and broken promise by the Government of Canada.

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

Just so the witnesses know, we—Mr. Vidal and others on the committee—brought this matter up at the beginning in consultation with the minister a couple of weeks ago. We mentioned that the establishment of this original board of directors was unacceptable to the official opposition, just so you're aware that we're on your side on this one.

Mr. Coulombe, the same question goes to you. Were you consulted? Do you want a seat now, not in five years or whenever the government decides to get around to it?

[Grand Chief Gérard Coulombe]

Is that for me?

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

Yes, sir.

[Grand Chief Gérard Coulombe]

No, the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples wasn't consulted in the drafting of this bill, and we find that very unfortunate.

It's important to remember that the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples fought for 17 or 18 years before the Supreme Court of Canada to have the peoples that make up its membership recognized. The Supreme Court of Canada granted that recognition, but the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples had to defend the cause for 17 years. I'm thinking of Harry Daniels, who devoted part of his life to this case. I even saw a stamp honouring him in a post office this week. Mr. Daniels's work helped us win this case.

In addition, a political agreement was signed between the federal government and the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples. The Daniels decision was rendered in 2016 and, two years later, in 2018, this political agreement was signed. In it, the government commits to working closely with the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples to advance the indigenous cause in Canada.

Despite all this, we weren't even consulted or invited to the table, and that's a huge affront to the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples.

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

Especially, as you just mentioned in your comments, you have large swathes of urban, off-reserve people who are falling behind, as you said, yet you don't have a position on the original board of directors. I do appreciate that.

Mr. Calla, let's go quickly to you. I have about two and a half minutes left, it looks like.

We talked about economic reconciliation, but there's no mention of that in this legislation at all.

[Harold Calla]

No, there isn't, but we haven't had a platform whereby we can contribute to a report that goes to Parliament to deal with these issues before. That will come from this legislation. I think that's important. That was part of the reason I accepted the invitation to come here.

To me, reconciliation talks about section 35. There are a lot of impacts that we have experienced as a result of colonization, and we have to deal with those issues. They're very severe, and I don't want to diminish them at all, but we have to look forward. What does the world look like when we have recognition of section 35 and we have reconciliation? What do we have on the ground today, and what do we have to change?

That was the purpose of my coming here today. It is to say to parliamentarians that you're going to get a report. The responsibilities will then flow to you on what those reports say, and it's going to be up to you to make the changes that are going to be required to implement reconciliation and recognition in section 35. This is going to happen in part through indigenous communities, but the result is that you are going to have to make decisions to systemically change the relationship to create capacity and institutional infrastructure in first nation communities that they can manage. If we're not talking about that, it is another broken promise.

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

What you're saying is that you should have a seat. There should be someone talking about this economic future.

[Harold Calla]

Absolutely.

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

Call to action number 56 was talking about the Prime Minister addressing Parliament and being accountable to Parliament. Right now the legislation reads that the minister should be the one reporting to Parliament to address this.

I want to hear from all of you. You have about 20 seconds. What are your thoughts on whether it should be the Prime Minister or the minister addressing Parliament to address the progress?

[Allison MacIntosh]

I know it's a very interesting question and I think it's an issue that I will need to canvass our board of directors on before we can provide any sort of conclusive response on that.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Grand Chief Coulombe, a brief answer please.

[Grand Chief Gérard Coulombe]

Can I have the question repeated, please? I didn't quite understand the interpretation.

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

Call 56 and the other calls to action talk about the Prime Minister being accountable and reporting on the progress in the implementation of the calls to action. This piece of legislation, Bill C-29, reads that the minister is to be the one to address it and to be the point person.

Should it be the Prime Minister, as the calls to action have laid out, or the minister, as the government has drafted in Bill C-29?

[Grand Chief Gérard Coulombe]

It's a very difficult question to answer. We're always talking about one person or the other, when I think the government should be responsible for such an issue, not any one person. All parliamentarians should be affected by what is happening in Canada with regard to indigenous history. It's the people involved in the issue who should be responsible. So I have no preference between the minister and the Prime Minister, for instance.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Very good. Thank you very much.

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

I don't think Mr. Calla had a chance.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

We're quite past the time now. We'll go to Mr. Powlowski for six minutes.

[Marcus Powlowski, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

To make up for that, I'm just going to follow on with the questioning by Mr. Schmale. I think he already got the response from Mr. Calla that I wanted.

Mr. Calla, you look totally different, because I'm used to your being that little Zoom character. I didn't even recognize you. I've always been impressed with your testimony.

You talked about the need for transformational change, which I would suggest means, more than anything else, seeing an actual improvement in the standard of living of indigenous people across Canada. I think that's what you and your organization have done, and I really like the fact that whenever we talk to you, I think that's what you're talking about. It's that your organization is trying to do that.

You've already kind of answered this question in saying why you came here. When I look at this and I read this bill and I look at the function of this body, it is to develop an action plan to monitor research, to conduct research and to monitor policies. This is a lot of looking at and reporting, but maybe not a lot of actually doing and making transformational change. You may have already answered it in saying that you support this bill because it is really going to bring substantive results rather than just being another political forum for speaking.

[Harold Calla]

There's no single solution here. We need legislation. We need institutions. We need a structure. We need to build the capacity of first nation communities. We need to create an economic development opportunity for indigenous communities because, in my view, it's the poverty that is the root cause of many of the challenges we face.

We do need to be able to find ourselves in a position of seeing marked progress in this. We passed the Constitution in 1982 and we've been fighting in the Supreme Court of Canada for 40 years. This is the first opportunity I've seen of a report by an indigenous-controlled organization going directly to Parliament. It should be the Prime Minister. Part of the problem is that Indians have always had to go through one department or another. This is a government-wide issue that needs to be dealt with through government, through the minister, but the Prime Minister has to lead it. It was the Prime Minister who told us what the importance of this relationship was, and I respect that. It is important.

[Marcus Powlowski, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Mr. Coulombe, perhaps you have an answer to this question.

[Grand Chief Gérard Coulombe]

The Prime Minister certainly has a very important job to do on an issue like this. I think he should indeed be the person who answers many questions and reports back to Canadians on the progress being made in this regard.

[Marcus Powlowski, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

I'll go back to Mr. Calla.

Under “Functions”, clause 7(a) says, “develop and implement a multi-year national action plan to advance its efforts for reconciliation”. I would think that part of that action plan could be to include measures of economic status and economic progress.

Do you think that should be part of the long-term action plans of this sort of committee? Would you make a case for that being part of what reconciliation's all about?