Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on May 17th, 2023

[Marc Miller, Liberal, Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Soeurs, QC]

This is mainly to avoid apologizing for indicators that we haven't been able to meet.

After reading the report, according to my analysis, the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer could have benefited from more active feedback from our two departments responsible for the indigenous affairs portfolio. There are some statements that should be corrected that tend to be misleading, particularly when we talk about current spending and planned spending, which is on page 12 of the research and analysis document. These expenditures don't take into account a fairly unique factor of our two departments. We operate mainly after additional requisitions that are reviewed each time new supplementary estimates are tabled. It's hard to draw conclusions without considering this very important factor.

In terms of the departmental performance indicators and the report itself, those are qualitative indicators, so it's important to look at the quality of these indicators, particularly the number of communities with certain laws in place to remove from the Indian Act. We have to wonder whether that percentage was achieved and how close those indicators were to the objectives to be achieved. That's another factor that isn't necessarily reflected here.

When I looked at the report, I thought that there was some accountability and that we had to look at the indicators in question to determine where there was a failure, even if it meant correcting the situation. Still, this is a report that your committee had requested. I have all the tools at my disposal to ask these questions.

When your committee received this report, it didn't have all the indicators so that it could then scrutinize the details to see if there was a failure or if the indicators, broadly speaking, were achieved, and ask us questions that are therefore more relevant.

It's not a question of criticizing anyone, but of ensuring that feedback is provided in advance so that the committee can have a clearer picture of our two departments.

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

What ad hoc solutions could you propose? You've already proposed some avenues, but it's a bit like saying that there's a tool, but that it can't really serve the population as a whole adequately. Again, this isn't a personal attack. Maybe there needs to be a methodology, I don't know. What would you suggest?

I imagine that if this [Technical difficulty—Editor] and perhaps it's complex given the various departments, namely Indigenous Services Canada and Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada. This can also happen elsewhere.

[Marc Miller, Liberal, Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Soeurs, QC]

I would say two things.

First, it's important to understand how the specific budget cycle of our two departments works.

Second, more attention needs to be paid to the quality of these departmental performance indicators. Perhaps two or three should be selected, or perhaps the ones that haven't been met, and more detailed consideration should be given to why those indicators weren't met.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jenica Atwin]

Mrs. Gill, could you raise your microphone to your mouth the next time you speak? Thank you.

We'll now move on to Ms. Idlout for six minutes.

[Lori Idlout, NDP, Nunavut, NU]

[Member spoke in Inuktitut, interpreted as follows:]

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you to both ministers for bringing your presentations to the committee.

On the departmental results indicators and the Parliamentary Budget Officer's report on the departmental results indicators, questions are important.

I have a question.

I was planning with my interpreter earlier regarding the indicators and writing down notes on the departmental results indicators, so we were planning earlier on some of the terminology. However, I understand now that these indicators or the forecasted targeted budgets are constantly being revised. These revisions of the indicators, perhaps....

Will there be a year when these indicators will be changed or revised? Do you have any expectations that these indicators will remain the same, or will we be given more solid results through the analysis of the indicators?

I do want to hear truthful indicators, but we've been informed through this report that this report is not complete. If this report was completely and fully written, I would want to ask solid questions.

Both ministers can answer me, please.

[Patty Hajdu, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

Thank you very much, MP Idlout.

Yes, I think each area will have indicators that will end up being accepted and supported by indigenous partners and that we agree on. There's been quite a bit work through an indicators framework that the department has been working on with partners to determine what those will be. They will be encapsulated in the departmental results framework.

Maybe I can turn to Associate Deputy Minister Gideon to talk a little bit about that.

[Valerie Gideon, Associate Deputy Minister, Department of Indigenous Services]

We got approval just last fall from Treasury Board for a very exciting transformative approach for us in terms of our departmental results framework. It's enabled us to significantly streamline the complexity of our program inventory.

We're going from four core responsibilities to one core responsibility. We're going from 11 service areas to eight. Our program inventory is going to be collapsed from 33 to 18 programs. That's going to enable us to have a much stronger focus on outcomes-based indicators. We are hoping that the majority of these will be populated by first nations-led, Inuit-led and Métis-led research and data collection.

That builds on the success we've had with the first nations regional health survey—which Eric and I were involved in since it was first started over 20-some years ago, so we're dating ourselves—the national Inuit health survey and the funding that has been committed. Our budget 2021 investment of $81.5 million was to actually support first nations, Inuit and Métis in building those data strategies. That's what we intend to draw from in terms of the indicators and the data sources.

[Marc Miller, Liberal, Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Soeurs, QC]

I don't have a ton more to add.

I do think, by their nature, that these indicators do evolve, particularly with the work we do to co-develop them. It does sometimes impede the ability to look backwards and see the consistency of them. It would be helpful sometimes, when we look at the indicators, to look specifically at their quality and to scrutinize deeper into them.

You mentioned a more complete report. Not that I would invite more scrutiny, but certainly a more complete picture would probably have you posing more difficult questions into some of the real challenges that we continue to face.

Obviously, we need indicators to properly reflect where we are as a country and we need to be quite honest about what they actually mean at their basis. You could look at a couple of these indicators and say that 80% of this is done, but the remaining 20% is probably the hardest stuff to do. There's some scratching under the surface of these indicators that is well warranted.

Obviously, it's not the scope of this report, but I think for a matter of transparency and honesty, we foremost go to indigenous peoples. It's something that we have to continue to be committed to.

[Lori Idlout, NDP, Nunavut, NU]

[Member spoke in Inuktitut, interpreted as follows:]

Yes, of course, these forecasted indicators change from time to time, but we all know that as first nations people, we're lobbying the federal government for the same reasons.

The federal government has been informed for many years that first nations are struggling within the cost of living area. There are not a lot of services or resources rendered to indigenous peoples, and these services and resources are not being rendered in a timely manner. We all know we have to lobby even more.

When are you going to produce a report—for instance, the departmental results indicators?

The Parliamentary Budget Officer should produce a report that is not divisive. The report should be completely full, because otherwise, we won't be able to ask proper questions.

That's not a real question, but rather a comment.

[Patty Hajdu, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

If I could take a crack at answering, I think the entire system is rooted in colonialism. It's not just these departments.

The decolonization of how we interact with indigenous people to select indicators and create a national outcomes-based framework together means changing the way indigenous lives are measured from one that the government is in control of—the government is also the one that reports on that—to returning the control and self-determination to communities. This way, they can measure for themselves how things are going and understand better if the things they're doing, in addition to the inputs from the government, are resulting in outcomes that they see as enhancing the community and benefiting community members.

It's not an easy project, because there is a long-standing tradition in this place—and rightly so—of attaching fiscal accountability to outcomes. However, in my mind, it hasn't been done in a way—including in many of these offices—that fully reflects the autonomy of indigenous peoples and the rights of indigenous peoples to measure for themselves and control for themselves their own data and to determine for themselves what they want to measure.

Anecdotally, when I was preparing for this meeting, I understood that the education outcomes are shifting from graduating on time or graduating outside of the standard time. That's not the way we've talked about it; we've talked about graduation rates, period.

If I think about that, from the conversations I've had as a minister, it makes sense to me, because it isn't only about whether you graduated or not. What communities are asking is if it took longer for an indigenous person to graduate. This reflects the compassion of a community to understand that sometimes it takes longer if you've come from a background of inequity and that those accomplishments should not be discounted.

I think there's some real promise in this, because it is about data reconciliation as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jenica Atwin]

Thank you, Ms. Idlout.

We'll go to a condensed second round, beginning with Mr. Schmale for five minutes.

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

I have five minutes. Okay, perfect. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, ministers, for being here for this important conversation.

Minister Hajdu, you just mentioned the graduation rates for indigenous children. Thank you for bringing that up and reminding me about that.

The last time you were here, in March, we were having a discussion about setting a graduation rate, which was something you had set in your departmental plan for the last two years. The target to come up with that rate was the end of March.

Has that rate been set yet?

[Patty Hajdu, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

I will turn to Deputy Gideon.

My confusion at the time was not fully comprehending how the indicators were being worked through with first nations and indigenous peoples. Now, as I just highlighted, developing those targets is under way.

I'll turn to Val Gideon to talk a bit about where we are.

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

Answer very quickly if you can, please.

[Valerie Gideon]

In terms of the target for first nations, we are still setting the year-over-year increase that we're anticipating, and we are doing that with partners.

The minister is absolutely correct that we have changed the methodology in 2022-23 from measuring on-time rates to extended-term rates in terms of the graduation piece. That was new in 2022-23.

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

I want to go back to the DRIs, the departmental result indicators. That seems to be a topic of conversation today. We're looking at results that seem to be, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, going down. One of his quotes was, “I think it's up to ministers to set the targets and try to make their officials stick to them.” I know both of you spoke a bit about how you're trying to keep departments on tasks.

Is there a guarantee that we have? We've been here doing this for quite some time. The targets seem to change every time a target isn't met. I don't think some of this would be tolerated in the private sector. What are we doing to make sure that we aren't just kicking the can down the road and that we're actually getting results?

[Patty Hajdu, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

I'll start.

Maybe I wasn't clear earlier, but I disagree that ministers are the ones to set targets. I disagree that this is my role. My role is to support the department to ensure that targets are set, and there is a clear distinction in this. In fact, it's a colonial practice that ministers would set targets that would determine what outcomes needed to be achieved for what dollars. The colonial practice is telling first nations what they must do with the money or the programs they receive. Instead, this approach is truly rooted in reconciliation and self-determination.

My role as a minister is to ensure that the department is doing the work of setting targets with first nations and indigenous peoples and that they have the resources they need to do that work in a timely way. This is with the understanding that sometimes it isn't the department that sets the timeline either, and that we work with first nations and indigenous peoples on their timelines and in a flexible way with communities, because they are often shuffling many priorities or have their own consultations that are complex to complete.

That's the constant balance as the Minister of Indigenous Services. It's wanting to see, just like you, that there are targets arrived at but also—

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

I'm sorry, Minister. I only have five minutes and I'm really tight for time.

[Patty Hajdu, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

—wanting to make sure we do that in a respectful way.

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

I appreciate that. We want to take away the top-down approach. I agree with that. I think we're on the same page.

Given that's the path we seem to be all heading towards—and rightly so—why did the department jump in employees from 4,500 to 9,200, according to the PBO report? If you're trying to put it bottom down instead of top down, why are we continuing to surge in the department's numbers?

[Patty Hajdu, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

I don't think that's a fair assessment of what's happening here at all. In fact, what we're seeing are severe shortages in certain areas of the department.

In the first nations and Inuit health branch, for example, we have significant incentives to recruit health care workers but huge gaps in the ability to recruit and retain them, just like other jurisdictions.

Certainly the department has a number of officials who work in a number of different areas, including frontline services. For example, I think communities expect that when they pick up a phone with a forest fire approaching, emergency management will have the capacity to deploy people.

Val, maybe I can turn to you for a few more comments.

[Valerie Gideon]

Absolutely. I think it's important to also recognize that the way the PBO assessed our HR levels was based on what's included in terms of our departmental plans, which happen at the beginning of the year. With supplementary estimates, we do at times get increased approvals for FTEs, and those also skew the overall picture of growth, because we can't staff people until we have approved FTEs, and that will come with additional investments that are approved over the course of the year.

We have seen a growth overall since we were established as a department in terms of human resources, but we've also seen an incredible amount of increases in funding—as the minister has noted—of over 90%, if you take the out-of-court settlements out. That has also driven demand and requests for services.

Jordan's principle is a perfect example. It is reliant on public servants approving requests within a 12- to 48-hour window. That requires additional staff; otherwise, it's not possible to be able to meet our legal obligations under that order.

Non-insured health benefits are another area where we also have seen growing demand, and it has been based on the fact that the government has approved expanded scope and increased access to services in that area.

My final point is that when you look at some of the targets around service delivery—for example, non-insured health benefits—or when you look at the percentage we have achieved in terms of meeting our service standards on secure certificates, you see that we have actually exceeded them. That is because we have been able to access the capacity to more effectively deliver those services.

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

If I could quickly, Madam Chair—

[The Chair, Liberal, Jenica Atwin]

You're very much out of time.

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

I just want to correct myself. I believe I said “the PBO report”. I meant to say “the departmental plan”.