Good afternoon, committee.
I'm Christopher Sheppard. I'm the president of the National Association of Friendship Centres. I want to recognize that I'm joining you today from Treaty No. 6 and the homeland of the Métis, where I have received an incredible welcome since moving. I'm joined by our executive director, Jocelyn Formsma.
We thank you for your invitation to appear here before you and the members of the committee today.
The NAFC represents over 100 local friendship centres and provincial and territorial associations in every province and territory in Canada, except for Prince Edward Island.
Friendship centres are urban indigenous community hubs that provide a wide range of programs and services for every demographic of indigenous people. Collectively, we are the largest and most comprehensive urban indigenous service delivery network in Canada.
In 2019, 93 friendship centres served approximately 1.4 million first nations, Inuit, Métis and non-indigenous people across over 1,200 programs, in 238 buildings, and employed over 2,700 staff. We are proud to be a network led largely by indigenous women.
With respect to why we're here today, justice programs in 2016-17 amounted to 72 friendship centres offering 93 programs, with 28 considered restorative justice.
Friendship centres often interact with local and regional police services and other law enforcement agencies. This committee has already heard testimony regarding specific examples of systemic racism in policing and about numerous reports compiling evidence and experience over long periods of time. We have also had many examples from our own experiences and what we have heard from the communities we serve.
In the interest of time, we want to focus on actions to take from here.
The NAFC conducted a literature review of reports and the recommendations they make regarding indigenous justice. From this review, we gathered themes from the recommendations that have been emphasized and repeated in multiple reports. We have reviewed federal government strategies, programs or other formal responses to these reports. From those reports, there were three common recommendations.
The first theme is training and educating non-indigenous people on indigenous history, heritage, culture, identity, rights, laws and current realities. However, in our review of publicly available federal responses, we found little in the way of mandatory or ongoing training on indigenous matters for any national or federal law enforcement entity.
The second theme is increased funding to indigenous communities as well as to public programs and organizations whose objective is to benefit indigenous people. We have already outlined some of the programs that friendship centres operate. The funds for these programs largely come from municipalities or provinces.
The third theme is increasing participation of elders within the justice system, providing education and training on the Canadian justice system to indigenous people and increasing and promoting proper use of Gladue reports and courts. Again, these activities are very sparsely implemented across the country.
Urban indigenous people are continually caught in jurisdictional matters between federal and provincial governments. Law enforcement is no different.
For the recommendations to be successfully interpreted and implemented, funding must be provided to indigenous people living in urban communities as well as in rural or remote communities on an equitable basis. The funding cannot just be a one-time payment or a short-term proposal response to what is a generational issue. Rather, it must be sustainable, so that the programs and organizations concerned can be maintained and serve the community in the long term.
It is important to note that these reports were commissioned and published by the federal Government of Canada, provincial governments, intergovernmental organizations and independent organizations. The reports span a time of roughly 50 years. This means 50 years of missed opportunity to make committed, core, long-lasting change.
This lapse in time has led us to two overarching recommendations: co-developing accountability mechanisms for implementing the recommendations in the reports named in my brief, and developing structures to have honest conversations about what can be done and what is being done.
The NAFC submits that an additional crucial step in ensuring accountability is to legislate the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in such a way that the rights of indigenous individuals are upheld and that the transportability of rights and urban indigenous peoples are not left out of a distinctions-based approach, which is what we see today.
The NAFC has offered and continues to offer its perspectives, expertise and knowledge of urban indigenous communities and community members to inform the federal government and guide effective remedies, both now and as we continue this journey.
We look forward to being a part of the ongoing conversation and to the continued investment in our work. I anticipate some really good questions for the rest of the meeting.
