Special Committee on Indigenous Women Committee on May 2nd, 2013

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I want to thank you very much for coming today.

Just to follow up on that last comment, if 550 communities called you tomorrow, would you actually have the resources and the capacity to deal with them?

[Shawn Tupper]

No.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

No. That's what I thought.

I just want to clarify a couple of points.

Ms. Ducros, you indicated that the departments are looking at a more integrated approach. Is that formalized?

[Françoise Ducros]

Why don't you talk about that?

[Sheilagh Murphy]

Certainly in the area of income assistance reform, we are formalizing our relationship with Human Resources and Skills Development, as well as with Health Canada, in a regional and a national context to bring the three departments together to work with first nations communities as well as with provinces to get to better integrated programming from a client's or an individual's perspective rather than from the program's perspective.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

That's to do with the proposed changes to the income assistance program, but when it comes to violence against aboriginal women and children and men, there isn't a cross-department formal committee that meets?

[Sheilagh Murphy]

There is the family violence initiative that involves a number of departments. PHAC has the lead for that, and we're a member.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Sorry, who has the lead? “Un-acronym” it.

[Sheilagh Murphy]

I'm sorry. It's Public Health.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

I know it's Public Health, but anybody listening would not know it was Public Health.

[Sheilagh Murphy]

The Public Health Agency of Canada has the lead, but Status of Women Canada, Justice Canada, Public Safety, ourselves...it's a multiplicity of departments.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Are there formal reports that the committee could have access to, that come out of that integrated committee?

[Sheilagh Murphy]

Certainly, we're building an action plan right now for forward planning with a number of elements on it. We are doing a scan, and Public Health could probably speak to this better than I can in terms of taking stock of what programs are available to assist families and women and victims of violence, and looking at how we would, across departments, improve the way in which those services are delivered.

So we are challenging ourselves and putting together a strategy that would look at that, but it's in its early stages. It's reinvigorating the initiative. The initiative has been there for a number of years. It stalled in the last couple of years, and departments did their own thing and got back into their own program areas.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Just out of curiosity, Ms. Murphy, because I've only got five minutes, are the families or actual community members involved, consulted formally, included in any way? I heard Mr. Tupper say, quite rightly, that you cannot solve this problem unless it's community driven. You cannot. Yet with the best of intentions we develop programs and services at the government level that really don't have communities and families integrated into the planning.

Is that happening?

[Françoise Ducros]

If I may, when we talk about community, there are community planning initiatives in Aboriginal Affairs whereby we—

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about in this integrated committee that you've got —

[Françoise Ducros]

No, and I was going to say information is coming from various places, but the communities are not in the process.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

So with regard to the community process, Mr. Tupper, you indicated the importance of community a number of times throughout your presentation, and you've listed a number of programs that Public Safety currently puts on: the northern and aboriginal crime prevention fund, the youth gang prevention fund, and so on. Has there been community involvement in developing those programs?

[Shawn Tupper]

At the broadest level, in terms of framing the generics of the program, no, but indeed, particularly through crime prevention, all our work is done on the ground in communities.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

That's the actual delivery. That's not the development of the program itself.

[Shawn Tupper]

It's important I think to appreciate that we fund a myriad of different kinds of projects and programs out of NCPC, and each of those is individually designed to fit the needs of the community. So we are taking internationally proven best practices that have been proven within Canada and are now working with aboriginal leaders and organizations like the AFN, but equally with local leadership and community organizations, to find the best ways that we can adapt those models into the communities.

So the communities are able to make their own choices about the kinds of investments they want to make. They might include gang diversion projects or youth at risk projects. They might be snap projects that are run in the schools to help with family and child—

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Right. They get a menu and they get to choose how they're going to deliver it.

[Shawn Tupper]

Exactly.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

With regard to the—

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

I'm sorry. You have five seconds.