Public Accounts Committee on Oct. 17th, 2018

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

In four years, $42 million has been spent with only an 8% success rate. Why is that?

[Jean-François Tremblay]

The program is basically paying the tuition; that's what it's doing. We don't run a program in this case that says, “We're going to do everything to make sure that you're going to go to university.” This program is developed by a university for kids to actually get through a process so that they can go to university. What we do is pay for the tuition and some of the books and costs like that.

It was not designed as a program that we did ourselves to actually improve the result. It was to make sure that they can have access to those services that were offered by the institution. Is it enough? No. When I look at the result, I totally agree with the Auditor General. It just tells us that more needs to be done. As you know, we are reviewing our post-secondary education programs in collaboration with first nations. That's one of the aspects we need to look at: What is that gap, and why do first nations have difficulties to actually get into university, into post-secondary education? If we want to close the gap, all the statistics are showing us that the more they get a high school diploma, the narrower the gap is.

That's where we need to go.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Tremblay.

We'll now move to Madam McLeod, please, for seven minutes.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to our presenters today.

I'm going to start with the Auditor General and focus on the education component. I think successive governments have realized that we have some real problems, and I know that we tried to have a pan-Canadian first nations education act which would build in some of these missing measurements that you talked about. Obviously, there were challenges in moving that piece of legislation forward. We now have independent.... There's the Anishinabek Nation Education Agreement. We have in British Columbia the first nations group.

In the microanalysis of the work that you were doing, were you seeing any success with these groups that have taken over control of their education? Was that any component of the work that you did?

[Michael Ferguson]

We didn't analyze the data on the basis of comparing one first nation or one model to another. That wasn't the basis of how we did our analysis.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Would it also be accurate, as the government moves from a model of independence and transfers the money directly to...whether it's the Anishinabek education.... Does that have a different reporting system, and will we lose our opportunity to really understand what's going on? As I understand it, that creates a transfer arrangement that now is not under the Auditor General's purview. Is that accurate?

[Michael Ferguson]

Again, I haven't looked at that to know for sure, but I think what's important is that, whatever model is used, there is good public reporting on what the outputs and the outcomes of that are. That doesn't necessarily have to be a contribution agreement type of arrangement and reporting, but there should be ways of knowing whether these different models are achieving better graduation rates and more first nations students going on to post-secondary education, those actual measures. That's the type of information that needs to be known.

I can't tell you what the best model is to use, and in fact, there may not be one model that can be used for all the first nations. Some are very rural; some are urban. Some are larger; some are smaller. There may need to be different models, but at the end of the day, what's important is knowing whether the results are coming to a point where they are closer to what the rest of the Canadian population is achieving.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Under your office, do you have the opportunity to review what's happening under the Canada Not-for-profit Corporations Act and ensure that different information is coming into that branch appropriately?

[Michael Ferguson]

We have different ways of looking at different organizations. Sometimes in agreements, departments will build into the agreement that there's a right for an audit to be done, perhaps an audit by the department or an audit by the Office of the Auditor General. In terms of the British Columbia health authority, for example, we have the ability to look at that. Our ability to look at some of these things can be built either into legislation or into agreements.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Mr. Tremblay, within all the self-governing agreements around education, is there ability to still analyze what's happening and share information, or is that ability gone?

[Jean-François Tremblay]

Each self-government is in a specific negotiation. It would be hard for me to know, to be honest. We can check, but I would be....

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

So there's quite a bit of potential that we are doing these agreements, and we're not going to have any ability or opportunity to analyze whether we are doing a better job with these agreements.

[Jean-François Tremblay]

Yes, but my department doesn't negotiate per se self-government agreements, so the—

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

No, I recognize that, but we do fund through a different model.

[Jean-François Tremblay]

Yes.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

What I'm asking is whether we are losing our ability to understand the impacts.

[Jean-François Tremblay]

I get your point on this, and it's a very good question.

Data tend to show us that the Atlantic and B.C. are doing a bit better, and they are, as you know, managed regionally by first nations on education. For example, the Mi'kmaq has a self-government agreement on education. There's more involvement and engagement. We have a tripartite agreement, as you mentioned, with B.C. At a certain point, as you know, we had a regional office in B.C. on health, and it has been transferred to First Nations Health Authority. I don't have any indication on whether they are doing better than we were doing.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

There is potential, though, for us to say, “Okay, things are better as a result of what's happening.” We'll be losing our opportunity to even understand if things are better with different and new models.

[Jean-François Tremblay]

For us, what is important is that I continue to have a lot of relationships and engagement with the First Nations Health Authority. It doesn't stop because they have created the First Nations Health Authority. We are meeting on a regular basis. They're meeting also with other departments, not just mine. They're very active in terms of advancing their files and exchanging with us. We find that what happened with those organizations is that they became more predominant partners with provinces—

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Okay, great. Thank you.

[Jean-François Tremblay]

—which is actually very positive, because provinces are the experts in those domains more than anybody else.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

You were criticized for data over-collection. Certainly, that's a criticism that we hear often, especially in terms of collecting data that's not needed.

This report came out a while ago. What have you taken off the list of things that people need to report on to you on every year? From when this report came out till now, have you removed requirements in communities, such that if I went to a community they would say, “Oh, my goodness, it's more manageable, and it's made a difference.” What have you removed?

[Jean-François Tremblay]

This report doesn't ask us necessarily to remove—

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Well, it says you're requiring way too much data—

[Jean-François Tremblay]

Yes.