Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Oct. 27th, 2022

[The Clerk]

Mr. Zimmer is being replaced by Ms. Goodridge, sir.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

I heard Mr. Schmale speak. Whoever it is, please go ahead. You have six minutes.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I bet you wish that sometimes we'd just stop talking, as our friend from Nunavut stopped, all of a sudden. That was pretty amazing. Politicians should learn from her.

I'm going to start with Ms. Mbarki, if I could.

I want to talk to you about something I think you're very passionate about: economic reconciliation.

During this review of Bill C-29, we've heard from a few witnesses about the need for someone passionate to be at that table, someone who talks about economic reconciliation as a way to move forward. Do you agree?

[Melissa Mbarki]

I definitely agree.

If you look at my opening statement or Chief Willie Sellars' opening statement, he said his community has close to 0% unemployment. My community has 95% unemployment. This variation across the country and different reserves is definitely an issue we need to address. There is absolutely no way forward in my community unless we get jobs, end poverty and bring services into my community. It could even be health services, which could employ nurses and a technician. This is something my community needs. We have to look at the overall picture of what economic reconciliation looks like for each community, because it's going to look different for everyone.

I work in the oil and gas sector. I have been working in this industry for 15 years. It's been an industry that has kept me out of poverty. If I had stayed in my community, I would still be living in poverty. We have to look at ways of not hindering development and self-sovereignty and not hindering communities from accessing some very beneficial employment and entrepreneurial opportunities. That's what I'm continually seeing. This sector employs quite a number of indigenous people, and a lot of people are against it. I think indigenous people have a right to prosper however they want. This is something we should be looking at, going forward.

I don't think one committee can possibly take on all of our challenges. My suggestion for this would be to separate this committee. Have an economic side to it, an education and language side to it, and a social side to it that could implement healing or addiction centres. I don't think one committee can possibly handle all of this and give accountability numbers and so forth. You definitely have to bring other players into the picture. I don't think one committee can actually handle all of this.

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

I follow that up with a question regarding how we get there. Some indigenous leaders have said that the Indian Act is broken, paternalistic and outdated and causes a lot of the problems we see here. Would you agree that the act is a hindrance, in part, to indigenous economic reconciliation?

[Melissa Mbarki]

It's definitely hindering. It's a hindrance to communities because it puts us in a box and says that we need to do this or, if we want any kind of economic development in our community, we have to go by it first, so it's very paternalistic and doesn't allow communities to prosper. I think we have to move past that. I think we have to amend the Indian Act to allow us to be sovereign nations, to think for ourselves and to do for ourselves, because that's something that's missing from the equation.

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

Thank you very much. I have so many more questions for you, but I want to quickly go to Chief Sellars.

Todd Doherty says hello, by the way, Chief Sellars.

You mentioned in your opening statement a lot about education. You also wrote about it in a CBC article in which you talked about the healing process for indigenous and non-indigenous people and the move forward. You also talked a lot about economic reconciliation, as Ms. Mbarki just mentioned. How do you see this playing out?

In your opening remarks, you talked about how you've been able to help move your community forward. Maybe tell us a bit about that and how important it should be here at the table when we examine Bill C-29.

[Chief Willie Sellars]

The most challenging thing in Indian country is that all of our communities are on different parts of their journey to healing.

When I look at WLFN and this big, bright light shining that we are an Indian country and that we've been able to spread our positivity throughout the region and get more and more allies to come online with us, I know it has been through a lot of hard work by our team.

We're a bit of an anomaly in this region, given the capacity that we have in-house to make the vision of council happen. We are a bit of an anomaly in our location in how we've been able to find that consistency in our leadership to continue to realize that vision of healing.

Again, I look at economics through reconciliation and our aspirations to get to be a self-governing community. That has been through the treaty process, but we've also taken these incremental steps to self-government. We are under the first nations land management regime. We are governing over our reserve lands. We have a financial administration law, so these sectoral forms of self-government have allowed us to move at the speed of business and become this machine that works efficiently and is able to make decisions, because the capacity that we have on board helps us negotiate these deals and these agreements and start these other businesses that we've been able to see a lot of success and prosperity with.

Where we're really struggling is with that educational component to our healing, creating allies surrounding us and having people jump on board and stand beside us and hold us up.

We've just seen a massive turnover at the local municipal government in our neighbouring community of Williams Lake. The mayor and four council positions were turned over in the latest municipal election. A big part of that, I think, is because people want to see change. There's this new era of change that I think is rippling out across this country, and there is no way to say that all of our first nation communities are in the same box. We have over 200 first nation communities in British Columbia alone, all different, but where we're seeing the consistencies is in our aspirations to be successful, our aspirations to become healthy, not only on the mental health side but also on that cultural, ceremonial and language side.

Of course, our aspirations are to make sure that we are also contributing to the overall vision of this country, which is everybody working together, and, by working together and acknowledging who the first nations people are in this territory that you're working in and learning the history of, educating yourself on why our communities are the way they are and the history of residential schools, and really holding up what reconciliation means.

We could really go on and on as we go down this big path—

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you. I apologize for cutting you off. We have to keep to our schedule.

Mr. Battiste, you have the floor for six minutes.

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

Thank you for that.

I want to start off with Chief Sellars.

Chief Sellars, you said that despite the economic success of your communities, you're still experiencing trauma, suicides, addiction. As someone who is from a Mi'kmaq community of 5,000 and has also seen successful Mi'kmaq communities, I've witnessed the same challenges.

There are those who would frame reconciliation as an economics thing and say that if they had enough opportunity, if they had enough money, somehow the harms caused through intergenerational trauma or through the loss of culture, through the loss of language, would not be as important. Do you agree that reconciliation requires addressing the harm created as well as creating pathways to prosperity?

[Chief Willie Sellars]

I agree 100%.

I have been in this politics game for some time now. I got elected in my early twenties. I sat on council for 10 years before becoming the chief in 2018 and I was acclaimed just this past summer, so I'm relatively young in this game. I have been able to learn and have my boots on the ground throughout this process. I just continue to think that as hard as it is to have a discussion around residential schools and the history of this country in regard to first nations peoples, it's a discussion we need to continue to have no matter how hard it is.

I sat in this Cultivating Safe Spaces training the other day with a young lady from the Syilx nation, Elaine Alec. One of the comments she made really resonated with me. She said that we're getting conditioned to continue to hear those stories about residential schools—a lot of us, anyway—and to hear these horrific stories about the St. Joseph's Mission. We're going through this investigation now. Now I'm conditioned not to react to them. I'm conditioned, it seems, not to cry or show emotion, but I'll be watching a commercial on TV and something will remind me of a story that I heard, positive or negative, and I'll break down and I'll start crying. I think about the hockey rink, for example, and I break down, and it was triggered because the only stories that I ever heard about the St. Joseph's Mission from my dad were about the hockey rink.

In dealing with these different triggers, they vary for people across this country and across our first nations communities, and there's again no one-size-fits-all solution to all these things. What we need to do is to continue to educate the non-indigenous people of this country and keep the discussion at the forefront so that people will continue to be empowered to bring this up and share their stories so that they can heal themselves.

We want to break that generational gap that we're seeing in all of our communities. We want to break that cycle. I'd like to think the cycle is being broken with my three kids and my kid who is going to be born any day. We're due on Saturday. They are going to grow up in an era when their dad was there every single day of their lives, their mom was there every single day of their lives. That luxury is not the same and is not consistent across our communities.

How do we break that gap? How do we break that cycle? Education is going to be the biggest part of that, in my opinion, so that when I talk to the City of Williams Lake's mayor, he understands the history of first nations people and why it is so important for him to stand beside us and hold us up, not only in projects on the ground for economic reconciliation, but also in participating in the ceremonies and the events we're having in the community to show and prove that he's a leader and he's standing beside us and he's being that example.

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

Thank you for that answer, Chief.

Melissa, I want to go to you next.

You talked about the major gaps that exist between your community and the rest of Canada. The TRC calls to action talk about closing the gaps in education, health and access to justice. I wonder if you could speak to the importance of closing the gap between on-reserve and off reserve as a fundamental step towards the oversight that needs to take place by the independent committee.

[Melissa Mbarki]

My community is actually an hour and a half from the nearest city. It's two and a half hours if we go north. It's very hard for community members to access even something as simple as a blood test. They have to drive for this. It is not easy for them to get out of the community to access things.

One of the things that we really learned during COVID was that we had very limited access to health services. We didn't even have access to isolation units. We couldn't take those who had COVID out of the family home so that they could isolate while they were sick. They infected an entire family. If you look at family structure on the reserve, you see that two or three different families could be living in one home. That really impacted us.

I think that's one of the things that we do have to bridge sooner rather than later, because if there is another pandemic, we're going to go through the same thing with the military coming out to help. We have to start looking at solutions to different situations like health.

Another thing is mental health services. Once again, they're two hours away. This shouldn't be happening. I'm in a community with four others around it, so it would be really easy to bring in one service that could be accessed by four communities. It doesn't necessarily mean that one community is going to get a health centre. We can all access and share these types of services, even mental health services. I think that's where bridging the gap comes into play, even with economic reconciliation. If we bring in jobs and a certain company, it encompasses the surrounding communities. It's not just available for one like mine; it could be shared. I think these are things that we definitely have to start thinking about.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you very much, Mr. Battiste.

Mrs. Gill, you have six minutes.

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank all the witnesses, Ms. Eegeesiak, Ms. Mbarki and Chief Sellars. I'd also like to take this opportunity to congratulate Chief Sellars on the impending birth.

I'd like to go back to the bill.

What improvements do you think we should make? Since Ms. Mbarki and Chief Sellars are young Indigenous people—it was alluded to earlier—I'd like to know what youth-related elements they would like included in the bill.

My question is for all three witnesses, but I'd like Ms. Mbarki to answer first. Ms. Eegeesiak and Mr. Sellars can answer afterwards.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Ms. Mbarki, did you get the translation? You're being asked to comment first.

[Melissa Mbarki]

No, I didn't get the translation. Sorry.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Okay. We'll start over, then.

Do you have your interpretation button selected? It's the little globe at the bottom. If you hit that and choose “English”—if that's the language you want to hear it in—it will translate and give it to you in English.

Mrs. Gill, I'll reset the clock to zero.

Please repeat your question, Mrs. Gill.

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

In fact, I'd like to thank the witnesses, Ms. Mbarki, Ms. Eegeesiak and Chief Sellars. I'd also like to congratulate Chief Sellars on the impending birth.

I'd like each of them to tell us about the improvements they'd like made to the bill.

Of course, we want concrete measures. We know there's a lot of work to do, and we want it to be done quickly.

Ms. Mbarki and Chief Sellars, as young Indigenous people, what do you want to see in the bill?

Ms. Mbarki, I'll ask you to answer my question first. Ms. Eegeesiak and Chief Sellars can answer it next.

[Melissa Mbarki]

One of the improvements that definitely can be made is creating sub-units under this act. We cannot address all of the issues in our communities under one sort of board. We need to look at it in separate parts, and we definitely need to address these different parts differently. We need a different road on each one, whether it's language and culture, education, economics or social programs like drug and alcohol addiction and treatment centres. I think separating these out would give us a better perspective on what is happening in each area.

What I fear is that one area is going to take precedence over another. If it's culture and language, that could take precedence over economic reconciliation. We really need to think about it in terms of what we want to do and how we're going to go about doing it, because having this all lumped into one is going to be chaos. How do you measure all of this? That's what I would like to see looked at and possibly changed.

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

I'd like to ask Ms. Mbarki another question as a follow‑up.

Do you think that if subcommittees are created, which is possible under the bill, the resources as presented will be enough?

[Melissa Mbarki]

That's one of the things these sub-units will address. Is one area getting more money than the other or is one area being neglected over another? There's no possible way that we can measure all of this under one umbrella, but if we start parsing it out and having different sub-units, we can definitely see the money invested in each and what the outcome is. It would be easier to measure, and it would give some accountability to the people and to indigenous communities.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you.

Madame Eegeesiak, would you like to answer the question from Madame Gill, please?

[Josie Okalik Eegeesiak]

Sure. I will just repeat some of the stuff I said in my opening remarks.

The commission, as drafted, will “monitor, evaluate, conduct research and report”. What does that really mean? Is that enough to affect change—just to monitor, evaluate, conduct research and report? Will there be an ability to challenge the government or governments on reconciliation, and how they are trying to improve partnerships with indigenous peoples?

Sometimes I have a problem with initiatives that promote codevelopment, co-management—“co-", “co-”, “co-”—when we have the ability to lead as indigenous peoples because we know best what is happening in our communities and we know best how to overcome some of the barriers and challenges we have to make life in the community better. I think that sometimes we have to re-examine the colonial approach to codevelopment when we can lead.