Evidence of meeting #14 for Indigenous and Northern Affairs in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was funding.
A video is available from Parliament.
Interim Parliamentary Budget Officer, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer
The simple motion would be that the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer prepare an estimate of the funding gap between first nations communities supported by federal and provincial programming versus non-first nations communities.
Conservative
Jamie Schmale Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes, ON
I have a quick question.
In that motion, Mr. Jacques, do we need a budget for pizza and pop as well?
Conservative
Jamie Schmale Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes, ON
Should we include that? I'm just thinking ahead here.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Terry Sheehan
Very good. We'll provide pizza and pop for sure.
I will deem that in order and so moved by Jaime.
As I look around the room, I see all thumbs up.
(Motion agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])
We're getting towards the end, but we have a few more people asking questions.
Monsieur Lemire, you have two and a half minutes, s'il vous plaît.
Bloc
Sébastien Lemire Bloc Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Jacques and Mr. Bernier, you mentioned in your report that the Parliamentary Budget Officer was unable to conduct a comprehensive comparative analysis of spending on indigenous versus non-indigenous policing services. You also said that the available data nevertheless show significant variations in per capita funding and expenditures for police services, depending on whether they are on or off reserve.
For example, police operating expenditures in Canada, according to Statistics Canada, were $335 per capita in 2022-23. The Sûreté du Québec has a budget of about $289 per capita. For indigenous services, it's $2,400 per capita.
First of all, how did you come up with that number?
With respect to policing, is that disparity indicative of underfunding, structural inefficiency or incomplete program design?
November 26th, 2025 / 6:20 p.m.
Director, Budgetary Analysis, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer
Regarding the first question about how we arrived at that number, we simply took the amount of funding that had been provided through the first nations and Inuit policing program. That amount includes both the federal and provincial portions. That's the total amount a given police service received divided by the number of people who lived in the territory or territories it served, since the services can serve several communities.
Yes, it's a much higher amount, but it's important to note, as others have no doubt done before this committee, that we can't make comparisons based simply on dollars spent per capita, because these are remote communities. Some are fly-in only and have specific needs.
Even if a community is very small, you can't simply assign a portion of a police officer. As a witness in the previous panel mentioned, you need someone there at night, someone there during the day and someone to replace them when they take vacation or sick leave. Even a small community needs a minimum level of resources. That's what makes the per capita cost relatively high.
The second part of your question escapes me.
Bloc
Sébastien Lemire Bloc Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC
It sounds like we're not necessarily talking about underfunding, even though there has been an average annual growth rate of about 12% since 2018‑19.
Is that correct?
Director, Budgetary Analysis, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer
That's right. The point is equitable funding, not equal funding.
If we just look at per capita spending, it might look like there isn't a problem with underfunding.
Liberal
Conservative
Jamie Schmale Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes, ON
Thank you very much, Chair.
Thank you to our witnesses again.
I want to pick up on something you finished off with when talking to Mr. Battiste a few moments ago. You were talking about the application process that some of these chiefs would have to go through to figure this all out. It's the yearly process that goes on and on and on.
How do we get to the point...? I would like one standardized reporting form for all departments—just in a perfect world, right? If I were king, that's what I would like to see. Having said that, is there a point that we can get to that allows the paperwork itself—the forms that need to be filled out—to be more efficient? Whether there is an easy way to get there, I guess, is the first part of the question, but also is there a will to get there on the part of the government side as well, the bureaucracy side?
Interim Parliamentary Budget Officer, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer
I think that's a question that's better put to the government.
Conservative
Jamie Schmale Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes, ON
What is your experience in dealing with them? You said that they gave you a whole slew of forms when you asked for them.
Interim Parliamentary Budget Officer, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer
That specific example aside, I would say that, looking at the projects that we've examined in the past, there is flexibility. There has been, in the past, flexibility on the part of the government, especially the public service, to change or lighten the reporting requirements and to potentially standardize the reporting requirements. Again, you have to recognize that in the 634 first nations, plus other indigenous communities across the country, there are differing levels of need and differing levels of capacity that you're dealing with, so having one single form for everybody potentially doesn't necessarily make sense.
Conservative
Jamie Schmale Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes, ON
It doesn't make sense. If you're increasing your capacity to deal with the different forms from different departments at different times—
Interim Parliamentary Budget Officer, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer
I actually think it's the inverse. Not singling out any particular indigenous community or first nation, if there's greater capacity—and I'm channelling my inner CPA and my outer CPA. The audit approach, when you're going through a company that has well-established control frameworks, a company that you know can keep track of the money fairly well and that has a good policy suite, you're doing less as part of the overall audit test. You have a lot more confidence in terms of what you're looking at. This is as opposed to a situation where you start to look at a company, and when you ask it for its policy around petty cash, it doesn't have it. When you ask it where the petty cash is, it doesn't know. At that point, it starts to give you pause, and you think that you actually need to look at this in greater detail.
Again, it's the challenge, and the government has indicated this itself in terms of its engagement with indigenous communities and first nations—that you can't.... For the first nations that have much greater capacity, it's potentially more efficient and more reasonable for everybody to actually treat them with a lighter touch, in a more professional way, recognizing that they know what they're doing.
Conservative
Jamie Schmale Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes, ON
Yes, absolutely. It's just that the smaller communities are the ones that are building capacity and are going to have a problem with that.
I want to go back to a few reports ago. I can't remember how long ago it was; I'm sorry. When you're looking at the ISC department.... I know, obviously, that this is public safety that we're dealing with, but I think, with the reporting standards, it does have some merit.
There is the fact that ISC is a bureaucracy which, in its own mandate, has said that it wants to put itself out of a job, but it has doubled in size since its creation. Previous reports of your office have said that funding has increased substantially in that department, yet the outcomes are not equal to, or even close to, the funding levels.
When we look at this program again, the problems that we continue to see, are we able to get to a place here in the indigenous policing program without a major overhaul of the program?
Interim Parliamentary Budget Officer, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer
I think that's a question that's better put to the Auditor General or to the two deputy ministers of CIRNAC and ISC.
Conservative
Jamie Schmale Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes, ON
That's true. It was the Auditor General, but your—
Interim Parliamentary Budget Officer, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer
From our side, going back and looking at the other funding gap reports that we prepared in the past, there are certainly opportunities on the governance side to improve things.
I recall that we prepared a 2013 report for the federal government with respect to capital funding for first nations schools in British Columbia. We administered a survey with first nations communities in British Columbia to collect the data. We thought it was primarily a data and an accounting story. It was very interesting because what came out immediately as part of the results was that we found that the schools that were being built were very, very large in first nations communities. There was a lot of additional capacity. When we started to poke and prod and ask questions around it, the response was that, well, you receive a phone call from Ottawa once every 30 to 40 years, and they say, “Congratulations. You're at the top of the list. We're going to build you a new school.” You know that you're not going to receive that phone call again for a very long time, so you build the school that you think you might need over the next 20 to 30 years. Certainly, on the governance side.... That was in 2013. I'm optimistic that things have improved since then. At the same time—certainly on this—potentially there will end up being governance improvements.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Terry Sheehan
Thank you very much.
We look forward to receiving more information.
That concludes today's meeting.
The meeting is adjourned.