Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on March 6th, 2023

[Lori Idlout, NDP, Nunavut, NU]

[Member spoke in Inuktitut, interpreted as follows:]

Thank you, Marilène.

I have many questions. I'm trying to determine which is the most pertinent question, and if they will have the answer. Has any work been done on it regarding schools and education?

Education is delivered in the white man's way of teaching. We indigenous people have a low graduation rate because it's not in our culture, nor our language. It's a foreign way of thinking. We know that way too many do not graduate and way too many drop out.

If those who are not completing their education are hunters or sewers or artists, can we look at those applications and educate them in a way to make their own living? As they grow older, they don't plan to go back to school. They don't plan to graduate. The education system is behind them.

Many do not practise traditional skills like hunting or sewing, because they're not given the opportunity to learn that. They are not even taught that. Education is very important. Learning in a white person's language is not the only way to obtain a good education. We indigenous people have our own culture, our own language. Our lives and our beings have to be present in the school system in our homeland.

You have to ask yourself—because you're not indigenous and you do not look indigenous; you look like others—where in your workplace you encourage your superiors and your co-workers to include more of the indigenous language and culture in the school system. How would you encourage that? How can you encourage that to happen more?

I ask those questions to Jonathan and Rory.

[Jonathan Allen]

The Inuit-Crown partnership table is a really important venue where we learn about the priorities, visions, context and culture of Inuit partners. That is what directly informed a lot of the post-secondary work.

We know that elementary and secondary education are a priority there. Through that venue, we have a concrete way to learn and talk about what we can bring into the department in our work from partners, and where there may be certain paths to solutions.

Within the department, we have information-sharing sessions as well, where we bring partners in from various places—our northern affairs colleagues and our self-governing partners as well. That's a way we integrate it.

For the concrete programs, it's mainly through that bilateral mechanism.

Thank you.

[Rory O'Connor]

I will add a couple of concrete things to that. It's about the importance of having indigenous people—Inuit, first nations, Métis—in the workplace. The department has done a relatively good job of that. The numbers are increasing.

That's not sufficient on its own, as Jonathan has said. There are learning activities. I know in the Atlantic we made a point of having all-staff meetings where people could learn. There were opportunities to learn languages in the region—Mi'kmaw, for example—even if it's just a few words or a greeting, to have that awareness. There's that kind of thing.

There's the more formal thing, like trying to ensure that we have 50% indigenous employees within the department.

I don't know if there's anything CIRNAC wants to add to that.

[Angela Bate]

Thanks, Rory.

I can add that we have similar objectives in terms of hiring indigenous staff. We probably lag a bit behind Indigenous Services in terms of our results at this point in time, but one of the things we're working on is simply to create a healthy, safe workspace where all of our employees, including our indigenous employees, are free to express their thoughts, contradict us if needed and share their experiences.

We also put a significant emphasis on indigenous learning. There's a mandatory 15 hours-per-year requirement for all our employees.

I want to comment on one of the things you said earlier around the importance of indigenous people being in charge of their own learning and their ways. The work I came here to talk about is still pretty early in terms of its implementation. We signed the first agreements in 2021 and implemented them with the first four nations in 2022.

We hear back from some of those communities about the importance of this work. One of the comments is that there's a momentum of hopefulness and community pride as they move towards control of their education model, based on their own principles, such as “nt'ákmen”, or how their ancestors did things. That's an example of what we're hearing back from the communities.

We don't have results or reports at this stage in terms of graduation rates, but the feeling of ownership and responsibility as they take on jurisdiction, I think, is remarkable.

Thanks.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you, Ms. Idlout.

That brings our second panel to completion.

Thank you very much, Ms. Bate and Ms. Savill, for joining us online, and thank you, Mr. O'Connor and Mr. Allen, for being with us in person today to answer our questions.

With that, committee members, this meeting is adjourned.