Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on March 27th, 2023

[Rebecca Mearns]

Yes, absolutely.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jenica Atwin]

Thank you, Mr. Zimmer.

We'll proceed to Mr. Powlowski for six minutes.

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

Hello. Welcome to all the guests.

Ms. Osborne, let me start with you.

I'm embarrassed to say that I don't know of your high school, and you're centred right here in Thunder Bay. I looked it up online. Do you cover mostly Treaty No. 3 high schools? I know and I think the Dennis Franklin Cromarty High School looks after the NAN communities, and my understanding is that they do distance learning to those communities. I was looking at your communities, and your communities are further west of there. I'm just trying to figure out which communities you bring services to.

[Nikki Osborne]

We also cover Treaty No. 9 and Treaty No. 5. We serve 15 communities all over northern Ontario.

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

So, it's not centred in one geographical region.

[Nikki Osborne]

No, we cover a wide range of areas.

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

Okay, so I guess.... Matawa, I think, does things there, too, so there seem to be several jurisdictions. Perhaps you could tell me this: In those communities you service, is there also the option of physically going to schools, or are these all communities...? I would think so because I would think that in every community there is the option of physically going and that this is an alternative to those. Do you work with the existing schools in those communities?

[Nikki Osborne]

We definitely work in partnership with all of the education bodies to support each another, but generally speaking, no, physical high schools are very limited in our communities. Some of them do have a new high school. We have a new high school in Big Trout Lake. My home community of Deer Lake, where I lived for four years, goes up to grade 9. At Keewaytinook Internet High School, we offer programming all the way up to grade 12. We have 80 different courses, and it's an alternative. Most students choose to go out for high school, so they'll move to places like Thunder Bay or Sioux Lookout. They might be living with family. Most of them live with boarding parents. KIHS is an alternative to that.

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

Okay.

How many students do you graduate each year? You do graduate from grade 12.

[Nikki Osborne]

That's correct, yes.

Two years ago, in 2021, we had 38 graduates. Last year, we had 30. The numbers do range; they vary.

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

Do they go on to university, or for most of them is grade 12 the end of their education?

[Nikki Osborne]

We have seen that a handful will go on to post-secondary education. What we have seen is that students will take a gap year, a couple of years off, and then they'll try post-secondary again.

Frankly, there are a lot of them who are still wondering what to do after graduation.

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

How do your graduation rates compare with those of, for example, Dennis Franklin Cromarty High School, other indigenous high schools and, I guess, the regular education system—because I have kids in school here, too, and there's a fairly sizable indigenous population in Lakehead school board schools?

[Nikki Osborne]

I would suspect they're similar. I don't know the graduation rates of every other school. We're continuing to make progress, and we see the biggest growth within our adult education program. The average age of our graduates is about 26 years old.

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

I would like to switch to Rebecca Mearns. A bunch of us just came back from Nunavut, Northwest Territories. We went to Cambridge Bay. We did visit one Arctic college campus.

Something I heard about that was kind of a surprise to me was the written Inuit language. Apparently, the areas around Cambridge Bay don't use syllabics in their writing; they use the Roman alphabet, but there are also different dialects. From talking to a few people at least, my understanding was that there was an issue with the written language. The question was whether to compile a kind of uniform Inuit language that would make teaching easier, but different regions have not only different dialects but also different forms of writing. The person I talked to suggested that in order to facilitate teaching, it would be good to have a universal Inuit language.

What measures are being done to do that, and are you in favour of such a thing?

[Rebecca Mearns]

Part of our delivery, obviously, is in the Inuktut language, which varies across the communities we deliver in.

The syllabic writing system is used in most of the eastern communities in Nunavut and many of the central communities. In the western communities, we have Inuinnaqtun, which is spoken. It's a varying dialect from Inuktitut, but still very similar. I was able to speak with the elders in Cambridge Bay, when I was there this week, as well.

We're doing a lot of work at the college to look at how we deliver Inuktut programming, as we do have language and culture programs. We also train interpreters and translators at the college, so this is ongoing work. It's a much larger conversation beyond just the college, when it comes to language. There are many who are engaged in those discussions. There have been discussions for decades about what standardization could look like for youth, whether it's within the classroom or within the government. Certainly, it's something we're always keeping an eye on with interest.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jenica Atwin]

Thank you, Mr. Powlowski.

Mrs. Gill, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'd like to thank the witnesses who are with us today.

Ms. Rowles said earlier that we had to bring education to the communities rather than send students hundreds of kilometres from their homes. My riding, described as remote, is hundreds of kilometres away from large centres.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jenica Atwin]

Excuse me, Mrs. Gill, but there is a point of order.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

Madam Chair, I'm hearing two voices on my headset, so I can't hear what's being said through translation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jenica Atwin]

We'll suspend momentarily while we figure out the technical issue.

I think we're okay now.

Madame Gill, please continue.

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

I will restart from the beginning, Madam Chair.

So, with the same enthusiasm, I thank the witnesses for being here. We have some knowledge, but it is always essential to have conversations with people on the ground.

Ms. Rowles, for instance, said that we had to bring education to communities rather than send students hundreds of kilometres from their homes. I do not want to put words in her mouth, but I think that behind it, she was perhaps alluding to everything that helps keep young people in the school system and ensure ideal conditions for their success. This is, after all, the point of our study.

During the various testimonies we've heard over the last weeks, witnesses often told us about language, territories and communities being winning conditions to, first of all, bring students integrate into the school system, persevere and even succeed in it, then become part of the labour market, as my colleague Mr. Zimmer said. Indeed, the issue is linked to work and to the community itself.

I would like each of you, one after the other, to talk about these important conditions for First Nations, Inuit and Métis. Generally speaking, winning conditions can exist for a whole population. But since the current study focuses on what can be done for First Nations, Métis and Inuit, I would like to hear from you about some successes or points to improve to help students achieve a rate of success that matches their ambition.

Ms. Rowles, you can start. Then, I would like to hear from Ms. Mearns and Ms. Osborne.

[Dr. Shelagh Rowles]

I'd say that as far as the success rates are concerned, what we find is that especially for younger people, when they're coming into our programs, it's important for them, to be honest, to have a choice. There some students who are really ready to go on and have post-secondary experience—in our case, in Whitehorse, where they might pursue a degree or a diploma program. We also really need to be mindful about programs that need to be available in communities. Rebecca spoke of the teacher education program being available in so many of the Nunavut communities.

This year we went around from community to community really trying to understand and hear their priorities in post-secondary education. What they said to us, what the people who attended our sessions said, is that in some cases, such as business administration or if they want to pursue a social work degree, they seem to prefer to actually go in and take the courses out of Whitehorse. What we heard in some cases, such as in the schools, is that teacher education right now....

It was only through the pandemic that we started to make that available by distance.

What we heard is that in some communities the teacher shortage has become so acute that people who haven't finished their full teaching qualification are hired as teachers; some of our students are hired as teachers. If we pull those students out and insist that they come to Whitehorse, they have to pull their families with them and then they're pulling children from their school. You're actually not only challenging the individuals who make that journey to a larger centre, but you're also compromising, potentially, the success rate of their families and their children.

What we find has worked incredibly well is that when we know that we have programs—again, such as the teacher education program.... We also offer our first nations or indigenous governance program by distance so that a student, no matter where they are in the territory, can pursue that degree and stay and work in their home community. We've seen that is a successful model.

But I'd have to say there's no easy, one solution.

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

I do not want to interrupt you. I would continue to listen, but I must give the floor to Ms. Mearns and Ms. Osborne, because there's just about two minutes left, if they would like to speak to the same subject.

Thank you very much, Ms. Rowles.