Evidence of meeting #53 for Indigenous and Northern Affairs in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was data.
A video is available from Parliament.
5:05 p.m.
NDP
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Marc Garneau
Among our guests today, does somebody wish to offer an answer with respect to the question from Ms. Idlout?
5:05 p.m.
Angela Bate Director General, Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs
I could go first. I'm the director general for negotiations in British Columbia. That's my scope of responsibility. We negotiate treaty and reconciliation agreements with first nations across B.C., as well as some in the Yukon that are not part of treaty arrangements.
In B.C., one of the things we have been working on is a first nations jurisdiction agreement. Within that context, we're looking to transfer jurisdiction for education to a number of first nations. I can specify, if you're interested.
One aspect of that is around first nations language and culture, so in the funding agreements ongoing funding would include support for centralized services. One piece of that is around first nations language and culture.
A second more general point with respect to language and culture is just that it is a priority for many of the tables that we negotiate with on an ongoing basis. We bring in our colleagues from other departments with relevant expertise to determine how they would take responsibility for language and culture within their own communities.
Thank you.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
5:05 p.m.
Director General, Implementation Branch, Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs
I'll add to that.
I work with sectoral self-government agreements. We have two that I would speak to that have immersion elements to them.
One is the Mi'kmaq agreement, the MK agreement in Nova Scotia, where there are 12 first nations. The other is the Anishinabe first nation agreement, where there are 23 communities. Both of those sectoral self-government agreements allow for first nations to decide how they want to deliver programming. In both situations, there is immersive programming from at least K to grade 3 or 4.
5:10 p.m.
NDP
Lori Idlout NDP Nunavut, NU
[Member spoke in Inuktitut, interpreted as follows:]
Thank you. I will ask Rory O'Connor a question.
The federal government, for 46 years, from 1951 to 1997, paid to build and staff 13 residential schools within Nunavut, with the express purpose of eradicating Inuit culture and language, but you are the employees, and I'm sure you are given a lot of direction about reconciliation and the strategy. Reconciliation is very important. Since reconciliation is so important, will the federal government fund 13 Inuit language and culture schools for us in the future?
5:10 p.m.
Rory O'Connor Director General, Regional Infrastructure Delivery Branch, Department of Indigenous Services
I hate to answer it this way, in part: I'm responsible for infrastructure delivery on reserve in the south—in the provinces. I'm not sure whether anyone can take that on the CIRNA side.
I will say there is a fund of $100.1 million for former residential schools that still exist. I'd be happy to provide a bit more information on what can be done with the buildings that still exist, and for communities that want to do something with them—either commemoration or another thing. We have reached out to communities across the country on that fund.
As to your main question, I'm not sure whether someone from CIRNA can answer in regard to the north.
5:10 p.m.
NDP
Lori Idlout NDP Nunavut, NU
[Member spoke in Inuktitut, interpreted as follows:]
If you cannot reply immediately while you are here, I would like to have a written report and an update on that question.
Thank you.
5:10 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Marc Garneau
Thank you, Ms. Idlout.
Do our guests undertake to provide a written answer to the question asked by Ms. Idlout?
Thank you, Mr. O'Connor.
With that, we'll start a second round.
We have Mr. Melillo for five minutes.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
Eric Melillo Conservative Kenora, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair, thank you to our witnesses in the departments for being here as part of this important discussion.
I'll start with Indigenous Services Canada.
We've spoken quite a bit about the targets around graduation rates. I want to come back to that.
When the minister was here, she spoke about the coming plan for some of those graduation targets, which we'll see in the fall, I suppose. I'm curious about whether those targets will include a breakdown of students attending school on reserve and indigenous students who are part of the provincial systems, attending off reserve.
5:10 p.m.
Director, Department of Indigenous Services
The graduation rate will be for students funded by ISC. Those are first nations students who are ordinarily residents on reserve and who attend either first nations-administered schools or provincially operated schools—meaning they travel off reserve to those local private or federal schools. All those types of students within the student body will be reported on.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
Eric Melillo Conservative Kenora, ON
Thank you.
I'm curious about.... Let's go a bit broader than graduation rates themselves. Obviously, that's a very important metric we should be tracking—perhaps the most important. However, is there a plan—or already a process in the department, perhaps—to measure things such as attendance rates, for example, or other metrics that measure the success of your program, so far?
5:15 p.m.
Director, Department of Indigenous Services
Attendance and participation are key parts of what we're hearing at regional education agreement tables. As I said earlier, those are the venues where partners can look at the needs and outcomes defined by their vision for education within their communities—one community or multiple communities. The basic tenets that come up are these: Are students participating in class? Are they progressing and are they completing? Beyond that, we work to have our partners tell us what that means to them. We've heard examples such as a longer or shorter secondary...to accommodate family or working needs, potentially, or different times for a year-long secondary education grade.
All those things are possible through the development of a regional education agreement. The departmental indicators are anchored in that graduation rate, but the regional education agreements let us go a bit further. The engagement happening on the departmental educators is similar, but we try to make them as minimal as possible in recognition of first nations control and to eliminate the reporting burden in terms of information and data that aren't being used to generate that funding. Striking the right balance is exactly what we're discussing, not only through co-development with our partners in the AFN, but also with individual regional education agreement tables—anywhere it comes up.
We're learning from our self-governing partners, as well. There were examples with the MK agreement and some of the B.C. agreements. With jurisdictional control come all the reporting and data by and for the communities, to their membership. We learn from our self-governing partners, as well, in order to guide us on the right balance between departmental reporting reach and what is rightly under first nations control.
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
Eric Melillo Conservative Kenora, ON
I appreciate that.
I want to touch on something I believe the minister was speaking a bit about as well, some of those connected issues, not necessarily when it comes to education specifically but things that impact education, such as some more of the socio-economic issues—things like the infrastructure gaps that we're seeing and the boil water advisories. There are still many communities, of course, across the country, many in my own riding in northwestern Ontario, that are fighting and hoping to have clean water and improved infrastructure, despite some significant progress that has no doubt been made. Of course, we know there's still a large gap there.
Have there been metrics used by the department to measure or account for how those types of social issues also create barriers to education?
5:15 p.m.
Director, Department of Indigenous Services
The department looks to community well-being and different indices that link together some of the fundamental health, community safety and community infrastructure aspects, as well as education. That's the context in which we hear partners talk about tracking and reporting change year over year, because there's so much involved in it.
That creates some opportunity to look at what the influences are, where there are some successes and where there is more work that needs to be done across different streams of the department. We look at that very much.
Again, in regional education agreements, it's an opportunity to also take a broader look at self-government agreements, in which there may be other sectoral subjects that come together and can be tied together that way. It's definitely as holistic as we can make it, from what we've learned from our partners.
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
Jenica Atwin Liberal Fredericton, NB
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our witnesses.
I'm going to ask my question of Mr. O'Connor. It's similar to the questions Ms. Idlout was asking with regard to building schools and how important that piece is. Certainly the effort that was put into the residential school system should be outmatched by our efforts now to address the wrongs that were done.
I know there's a community in my riding in particular that has applied to have a school built on reserve. Access to land is an issue.
Can you give a bit of an example of why communities might not receive that funding or a proposal might not be funded to build a school, so we can have a better idea of how we can support communities in their dream, should it be their goal to have a community school?
5:15 p.m.
Director General, Regional Infrastructure Delivery Branch, Department of Indigenous Services
This touches me close to home. I've worked for over six years as associate regional director general in the Atlantic region. I've been in schools throughout the four Atlantic provinces. I've seen how well the communities who have a new school are using it. It goes right into the study into educational attainment, but it's also important to the community. Those are places for gatherings. In some places, they are emergency shelters for extreme weather. They are so important for communities.
I would say that one of the key things is that a lot of additional funds have gone into school builds over the last number of years. There have been a number of new schools built thanks to the dedicated funding, but there is still a huge demand. Part of that is related to inflation, COVID cost increases and supplies. There is a demand. There is a list of schools waiting to be built.
We have to prioritize what is built in co-operation with communities. Some of the things we look at are, obviously, health and safety and the condition of the current facility. We look at overcrowding. We look at accessibility of schools off reserve. That is one potential consideration. We look at the design and cost efficiency opportunities, because sometimes it might make more sense to build a new school than keep an old school running and try to do the repairs to it.
Those are some of the key prioritization principles we look at when we're trying to do the prioritization of what can be funded and what can't. Timing might also be a question that's looked at. When could the shovel be put into the ground?
5:20 p.m.
Liberal
Jenica Atwin Liberal Fredericton, NB
That's great. Thank you very much.
In that same vein, speaking to how important schools are in that they become the heart of the community, the centre of activity, in my experience on the east coast most band-operated or community schools are K to 8, and there aren't very many that go to secondary level. What we've seen statistically is that the highest dropout rates happen in grade 9, the first time you're entering the high school stage, because it doesn't have that same feeling. There isn't that representation. Perhaps it's located outside your community, and there's a transportation piece as well.
I'm just wondering a bit more about those tripartite tables for discussions with provinces and territories, which are then responsible for the delivery of education, and where they might be falling short on reaching these outcomes. How can we better support changes there as well that are slightly outside our jurisdiction?
Perhaps Crown-Indigenous Relations would be the better place to have the answer.
5:20 p.m.
Director, Department of Indigenous Services
I could perhaps start with the tripartite. Our education partnerships program and streams of funding through the education branch of ISC support tripartite work with first nations, provinces and the federal government to look at the types of supports students need to transition between the systems, data sharing among provincial school boards and communities on their students' results, and participation of communities in provincial boards. That's both because students who may ordinarily be residents on reserve attend provincial schools and because the indigenous students in the provincial system can be the focus of provincial activities to shape language, culture, connections to communities and things like that. That program exists and there are memorandums of understanding in different tables and activities across the country that support that tripartite approach as well. I hope that helps.
5:20 p.m.
Liberal
Jenica Atwin Liberal Fredericton, NB
Is there anything to add from the other witnesses? No. Okay.
Again, I think there's a lot we need to do as far as those tables of discussion and ensuring everyone's on board are concerned. I've certainly seen a lot of development in that area. Part of that, though, is with departmental officials who are coming to check in. For example, when I was working in indigenous schools and doing the nominal roll every year, we had the Indigenous Services Canada officials come in and check to see if our data was accurate, if we were crossing our t's and dotting our i's. Oftentimes, teachers who were employed through the community felt a bit as if they were misunderstood.
Has anything been done there with sensitivity training and cultural training to ensure that anyone who's entering into these schools or into communities has the background to make those involved feel comfortable and respected?
5:25 p.m.
Director, Department of Indigenous Services
Yes. As departmental employees there is cultural awareness training and there are different kinds of activities that we do to understand our colleagues and the best way to work together with first nations partners.
Also, we've established in the education branch an education data unit that includes a training stream. That is as much training for our own staff about the data-in, data-out points on education, given that its student data is some of the most sensitive. The nominal roll, which you referred to, is the registry of eligible students. Those activities take place at the front lines, with school administrators in communities.
We have a system that gives communities access to all their own data, with all the principles of ownership and control, so the communities can use that data to drive some of their own strategies and work and school lists in the same way as it is also used to drive funding.
Overall, that's where the relationship really happens on the front lines, and we've worked to try to anchor it in data that is owned by our partners. The use of it by the department and its purpose are very clear. Again, that links back to what we learned from the Auditor General's report as well.
Thank you.
5:25 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Marc Garneau
Thank you, Ms. Atwin.
Mrs. Gill, go ahead. You have two and a half minutes.
5:25 p.m.
Bloc
Marilène Gill Bloc Manicouagan, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to give my time to Ms. Idlout, if I may.