Thank you very much, Chair.
Kwe, bonjour and good morning. Thank you for the invitation to present and to discuss An Act respecting First Nations, Inuit and Métis children, youth and families. My name is Katrina Peddle. I'm the director general for the act, as the chair has mentioned. I'm a member of the Qalipu First Nation. I'm happy to be with you this morning. I'd like to thank my colleagues for attending with me, and I appreciate your time to discuss this important piece of legislation.
In terms of my purview, I am really just the DG for the act. I'm happy to answer questions about it, but beyond that, I may have to take it back for further comments. I do appreciate any questions you may have. My Department of Justice colleagues are here to answer technical questions that you might have about the recent opinion of the Supreme Court regarding the act.
As you know, the act was really a response that was enacted with the support of all parties to respond to what was really a national crisis about the overrepresentation of indigenous children in child welfare systems across the country. This is not a new problem. This problem has existed over many generations, from residential schools and the sixties scoop to the overrepresentation now, which actually represents a huge number of children from communities from coast to coast to coast.
The real goal of the act is to address this legacy, to do things here and now to address that overrepresentation, and, importantly, to put jurisdiction back to where it has always belonged, which is in the hands of communities to direct these child and family services themselves.
I will answer in layperson's terms questions about the Supreme Court and I'll hand it over to my colleagues for technical views on things. Certainly, from where we sit at Indigenous Services, we were very happy to see that we were able to continue to do the work we've been doing over the past several years to implement the act, as it was found to be constitutionally valid in its entirety. That, as you can imagine, was welcome news from where we sit. We were also really happy to see the endorsement of the work of Parliament to affirm the indigenous communities' inherent right of self-government relating to child and family services, and that enshrining this in law is indeed constitutional.
I think for this committee, the decision really does point to the important role of Parliament in deciding to do things quickly and deciding to put a timeline for reconciliation that may move faster than traditional tools like the courts. Really, what we hope to do, and to continue to do, is address the harms of the child welfare system that are happening here today, and to work to improve the amount of reconciliation that we can do in the span of time that we have in front of us. This really is about making things move as quickly as we possibly can.
Practically speaking, from where we sit, what that means is that we continue to do the work in partnership with indigenous communities, which have already asserted jurisdiction. We're seeing some of the great success stories they're having in terms of the work they're doing on a community level. We've seen that with Peguis. We've also seen that with Splatsin and other communities across the country. It does mean that the urgent work under way doesn't have to slow down. We can work, through the model we have, to continue to get this work done as quickly as we can.
In terms of that, you'll see an attachment in your materials. I just want to talk about, in terms of pratico-pratiques, what it means for us when we say that communities are reasserting jurisdiction. For us, there are four key components. There is the vision, the signal, the coordination and the implementation. You can imagine that communities have been thinking about reasserting jurisdiction not just for the past several years when the act has been in force. This conversation has been happening around the country for decades. When this legislation was co-developed, many communities came ready to put their laws into place and ready to move quickly.
What we have done as part of implementing the act is provide capacity-building funding. You'll see that in the second piece of the graphic that I've shared with you. About 220 indigenous governing bodies—basically, groups that have been delegated by their communities to do this work on their behalf—have started to do that work: What will our law say? What do we want to do? What lessons have we learned, interacting with the status quo, that we want to change? What are the things that we know we want to do? At what pace do we want to do it? That work can take a year, or it can take three years. It really depends on the pace at which communities wish to proceed. It also has to happen in the context of many other things that communities are dealing with on any given day of the week.
Once that capacity-building work has been done, there will be a signal, which happens usually through section 20 of the act, and this signal is either “We're going” or “Can we please sit down together?” Typically, the signal is “Can we please sit down together?” About 75 indigenous governing bodies have given us that signal since the act was put into force several years ago. What that means is, “Okay, we are thinking about doing this. Let's get ready to go.”
Then, where we sit, this is where some of the most important work happens, as we have three parties—typically, the provinces, the federal government and the indigenous governing body—working together to try to map it all out. It's a hugely complex sphere. Children are in different places. Sometimes children are living in communities. Sometimes there's no connection to community. They're trying to work all that out.
What that period of time does.... It can be an extensive period of time. We aim for 12 months, but we recognize now, with a bit of experience, that it can take longer. We are really just trying to put the pieces together, with the leadership of communities, to make sure we can get the best coordinated services and enter into a long-term funding arrangement so that the jurisdiction is assumed with the support communities need.
Once that coordination piece is complete—and it is a significant piece of work; I won't underestimate that for you—we move into the implementation phase, where communities have reassumed jurisdiction over their child and family services, and then we continue to work with them as need be. However, typically, as you would see in any other type of self-government, the community is doing that work of jurisdiction, making sure children are where they belong, which is close to home, so that families get to see the difference in the short, medium and long term in terms of the outcomes for the children but also the outcomes for the families themselves.
I would also just say that a lot of this work reflects some of the commitments that ISC and others have made to the implementation of UNDRIP, and the Supreme Court was clear that this type of work is legislative reconciliation. It does create an important emphasis on the role of parliamentarians to do this work.
I will conclude by saying that we'll continue to collaborate across different levels of government to support the work of the act. We're certainly delighted to have the opportunity to discuss it with you here today. We all care greatly about it, and we're happy to answer your questions. Certainly, the technical ones we'll refer to our justice colleagues.
Wela'lioq.
