Status of Women Committee on Feb. 15th, 2011

[Luc Desnoyers, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

You noted the fact that you had an independent assessment of the Touchstones of Hope project. Is that document available?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

We're over time here.

[Luc Desnoyers, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

If it's available, we would like to have it.

[Dr. Cindy Blackstock]

It's under way, and once it's available, we will post it on our website, as we do with all our documents. We want to be entirely publicly accountable to all Canadians.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

Now I go to Mr. Boughen for the Conservatives.

[Ray Boughen, Conservative, Palliser, SK]

Thank you, Madam Chair, and my thanks to the witnesses. We appreciate your testimony.

Could you expand a little bit on Jordan's principle? What has happened with that whole concept since it was introduced, and where does it sit today?

Secondly, where do we go from here? You've outlined what has happened previously, so here we are today. How do we move forward?

[Dr. Cindy Blackstock]

Thank you for those two very important questions.

As you know, Jordan's principle applies to all government services. The Prime Minister or the government and all of parliamentarians today could say that we re-embrace the original intent of Jordan's principle that we voted for in the House of Commons; that we as a federal government will take leadership and insist that it be fully implemented; that we will pick up the tab on services, whether we think they're the provinces' or not, and we're going to keep records, because we want to be accountable to taxpayers; but that those conversations are going to be secondary to the concerns of children.

I can tell you that I know of 33 children right now who are at risk of going into foster care simply because there's a dispute between Manitoba and Canada about who should fund their in-home supports. You could stop those 33 kids from going unnecessarily into child welfare care by fully embracing and implementing Jordan's principle.

It's not an irresponsible use of taxpayers' dollars to step up to the plate on equality. In fact, when I share Jordan's story, I haven't run into one Canadian yet who thinks you should have sorted out an agreement with the province before they implemented it for Jordan. All Canadians agree: children must come first.

That is one thing that I think needs to happen. What's happening in practice is that there's a narrowing of the definition to children with multiple service providers and multiple disabilities, and it's only being implemented by the Government of Canada in what they call willing provinces. They're effectively putting agreements with the province ahead of meeting the needs of children, which is not Jordan's principle; Jordan's principle is asking for leadership from parliamentarians to meet the needs of the child and then figure out the jurisdictional stuff as a secondary concern.

The other thing is about where we go from here. It's an important question.

I'm not all about problems. It's not helpful to just say that this is where we are and that we're stuck here. We know enough about the enhanced funding formula to be able to correct those problems that were well identified by the Auditor General of Canada, and you and your committee could call the department's attention back to the 2008 report and call on the department to remedy those problems that you've heard about here, which are in the Auditor General's report and were just spoken about at the aboriginal affairs committee. That would be a fundamental positive step.

The other thing that could be done is to look at the missing elements in the enhanced formula. What we've found gives a lot of trouble is that there are not adjustments for children with special needs or with high populations. Members, I need not tell you that some of the children in child welfare have extraordinary needs. It can cost up to $60,000 a month to house some of these very special needs children. If you are an aid agency and you have one of those and there's no adjustment for that situation, that's important.

The third thing about where you go from here is—you've probably heard of the McIvor decision and those deliberations—that there has been no thought whatsoever given to the department, at least publicly, about how they're going to adjust the funding for child and family services up, so that we're not losing investments in children as we're making more use of an already very desperately limited pool.

With those things in mind, we could make a substantial gain for children and could think about whether we would like to do processes such as the Touchstones of Hope, which we have going on in northern B.C., and whether it is something we would want to make more publicly available. It's a very low-cost model. In fact, the British Columbia government, prior to our implementing this model, spent $43 million trying to renovate its approach on aboriginal child welfare, and it failed.

This approach has spent 0.0007% of that, and it is completely now run not by the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society, but by community members. That's because we have designed it to be sustainable at a grassroots level and to cost hardly anything to run these sessions, because we don't want the money going into the pockets of consultants; we want the investments to go to children themselves. That's another opportunity.

[Ray Boughen, Conservative, Palliser, SK]

Am I out of time, Madam Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have two and a half minutes.

[Ray Boughen, Conservative, Palliser, SK]

Thank you.

Have you had a chance to present to the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development and have you put together an implementation plan that incorporates many of the things you've spoken about this morning on how you get started in dealing with youngsters and their needs and what agencies you would want to pull into the operation? Is there an overall design that is like a business plan, only it's a personal plan about people? Does such a thing exist, or is it in the formation stage?

[Dr. Cindy Blackstock]

Thank you for the question.

We do have that, in two ways. One is the Wen:de reports, which were completed in 2005. They were done by over 25 leading researchers, including five economists.

I personally believe in using the few tax dollars we have for maximum benefit. Our economists costed out every dime that we would use to enhance and provide equality for first nations children. Then we backed each of those pennies with the best evidence we could that was joined together by independent academics, researchers, and first nation communities, as well as departmental staff. That document is on the books as a guide about where to move forward.

The second thing is that I would welcome an opportunity to meet with the minister. As you can imagine, I've had many letters back saying that it has been brought to the attention of the minister, but I have not had the opportunity to meet with him personally and I would welcome that opportunity.

Again, to me this is not a partisan issue. This is an opportunity for the country and the conscience of the nation to do the right thing for first nations kids.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

We'll hear Ms. Mathyssen, for the NDP.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Blackstock. I heard you speak last week at an event sponsored by FAFIA. You are a most skilled, forceful, and passionate spokesperson. I very much appreciate the information you bring to this committee.

You talked about Jordan's principle that day and you also talked about Shannen Koostachin and what happened to the children at Attawapiskat. As a former teacher, I know that in the province of Ontario there is a funding formula, and about $6,500—probably more now—is devoted to each child.

Do you know how much money is devoted to each child in a first nations school on a reserve? Could you describe the impact on the quality of that education, based on that lesser funding formula?

[Dr. Cindy Blackstock]

Thank you for the question.

I think a lot of Canadians don't understand that there are multiplier effects from these inequalities that come from government services and the lack of voluntary sector services. The children served by the underfunded child welfare system are the same children caught up in Jordan's principle and the same children trying to go to school and learn.

The Auditor General, as early as a decade ago, was raising concerns about the inequality in funding for elementary and secondary education on reserves and also calling attention to the condition of the schools themselves and the many communities where there are no schools.

You mentioned Shannen Koostachin. In many ways, she is a symbol of so many first nations children across the country. She is at once a Canadian hero--someone who we all, as Canadians, should be looking up to--and also a reminder about what the consequences are if we fail to act fully and properly.

Shannen Koostachin was from Attawapiskat First Nation. She was the daughter of Andrew Koostachin and Jenny Nakogee, a very loving family.

The only school in that community was contaminated by 30,000 gallons of diesel fuel. In 2000, when Shannen was in kindergarten, the Government of Canada brought up portable trailers and put them on the playground of the contaminated school. Members, I kid you not: I can throw a pebble from here to the translation booth, and that is the distance between the kindergarten portable and the contaminated waste site.

The children were told that this portable trailer system was temporary, that the Government of Canada would do everything it needed to do to make sure they had a proper school not sitting on contaminated ground. Three ministers of Indian Affairs promised them a school and did not deliver. Shannen would later say that was one of the hardest things.

Maybe as Canadians we get used to politicians making statements and not keeping their promises, but I for one think that the minimum standard is that you keep your promises to kids. These kids could not understand it. They wanted to learn. They knew they needed an education, so Shannen Koostachin organized the younger children in the school to write letters to the government. Maybe, she thought, if you heard in their own words what it's like to try to learn in a portable trailer that is now so rundown that the heat goes off and it's 20 degrees below zero in the classroom, you would want to act, and you would find the motivation to cut across whatever you needed to do to make sure they had a chance to learn.

But those letters did not move those in authority to change that position, so she reached out to non-aboriginal children in her grade eight year, and thousands of them wrote letters. However, not even that was enough to move the Government of Canada.

She was the chairperson of her grade eight graduation committee. She received a letter from the Minister of Indian Affairs saying, “We cannot afford a new school for you, and we don't know when it will come.” She cancelled her grade eight graduation trip, and she came down here to meet with the minister herself to ask for a new school. The minister said, “We can't afford it.” She said, “I don't believe you.” She said, “School is a time for dreams.” She said, “Every kid deserves that.”

She wanted to be a lawyer so she could grow up and make a contribution to Canadians and fight for the education rights of other Canadian children. She promised the Canadian government and the children in the schools all over the country that she would never give up until every first nations child had a safe and comfy school and equitable education. She knew that when the children in Manitoba turned on the taps in their school, out came little garter snakes. She knew of other children going to school in tents, not in Africa but in Canada. She knew something could be done so that they could grow up to be lawyers and grass dancers and cooks and your pharmacist and your physician.

She had to move 500 kilometres away from her community to go to high school because the high school in her own community was so underfunded she would have no option of going to law school.

While she was there, she was with Member of Parliament Charlie Angus, whom some of you know. She went to one of the most rundown high schools. It was one of the first times Shannen Koostachin had ever stood in a hallway. He realized after a while that he was walking alone and that Shannen was lost somewhere in the school. He went back and found her in a classroom. She was touching all of the books and looking at all the wonderful things that other children have to learn. She said to Charlie, “I wish I had my life to live over again so I could go to a school as nice as this.”

Shannen Koostachin died in a car accident in the spring of 2010. She never knew what it is to be treated equitably by the Government of Canada.

We have, with her family's support, pledged to carry her dream forward with the thousands of children who support her. I would just ask—and I know that you see many important problems in your work and that there are lots of competing interests—for the conscience and the good of the country, can't we just give these kids a proper school?

What is stopping us from doing that? What possible reason would we have for Shannen today on why that type of inequality is continuing? What would we say to Jordan? What would we say to the children who are going into foster care simply because they don't get a shot at life?

Whatever your recommendations are from this committee, I ask that you keep their images in your mind. Those are the audiences. If you can convince those children that what you're doing is the right thing, then you're providing the right example for Canadians and for Canada's future.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much, Ms. Blackstock.

We have 10 minutes. We have time for a two-minute round, if anybody wants.

Go ahead, Ms. Simson, for two minutes.

[Michelle Simson, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Thank you, Ms. Blackstock.

I don't even know where to begin. We've been hearing stories like this as we go across the country. I am curious, though; successive governments--and again, it's not partisan--were all looking at inputs and outcomes. Clearly there isn't enough input, although there is some, but the outcomes are dismal.

To my way of thinking, we're not making any kind of headway, or if we are, it's not even close to being good enough.

I'm curious about the third funding formula that you described. Could you just elaborate on it? You said it's 45 years old. Do you have any sense of why we are clinging to it like it's some kind of life preserver?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have one minute to answer, if you wish.

[Dr. Cindy Blackstock]

It's what's called the Indian Welfare Agreement and it applies in Ontario. Over a decade ago, in 2000, there was a call for a joint review of that particular formula. Of course there were calls at the community level much before that. In a formal way, the department agreed to that over a decade ago, but there has been no movement on it. Again in 2008 the Auditor General called for it. There is still no movement on it.

However, there is an opportunity for all of you to insist, in a respectful way, that the department do that on the basis of expert opinion. It's important to have economists, etc. It's not enough to entrust taxpayers' money to a bunch of people who are public servants in finance. I mean no disrespect, but the development of funding formulas is a specialized field of economics called econometrics. It involves that, and it should be surrounded by first nations community members and driven from the ground up on the basis of the needs of the kids.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

We will go to Madame Boucher, for the Conservatives.

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary for Status of Women]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Good morning, Ms. Blackstock.

We've met a lot of people who have made the same criticisms. What I'm trying to understand is that often, regardless of the government in power, we get the impression that we don't have enough education. I'm white, so we have little knowledge of the situation of aboriginal women and children. There's a lot of talk about violence, and a lot of talk about education. We often have levels of government that work together with the communities. I would like to know how the best discussion can be conducted. Have you had a discussion with the federal and provincial governments? Are you working in cooperation with other groups than your own? Are you able to have frank and healthy communication with everyone all together, or are there...?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Madame Boucher, we only have 30 seconds for Ms. Blackstock to answer.

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

All right.

Can you answer that, please?

[Dr. Cindy Blackstock]

What I'd say on child welfare is that we already have on the books two expert solutions developed within the last decade that involve first nations, academics, the federal government, and often the provinces. It's not a lack of solutions. It's a failure to implement properly and to monitor those implementations so that we can make proper adjustments. No matter how well researched the solution is, there are going to be unexpected consequences, and as responsible Canadians, we need to adjust to those consequences. That's what I would say in response to your question.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

We'll go to Madame Demers, for the Bloc.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Ms. Blackstock, thank you very much for being here. You probably have the strongest, most assertive and most objective voice that I've heard today. Thank you for using it so well.

Do you believe that the program that was introduced in British Columbia could be put in place in the other provinces with the amounts necessary for that program? Do you believe that we could convince the government to invest in that kind of program rather than invest in lawyers who appear before the Human Rights Commission, which is very costly? I imagine that Canadian men and women are paying for that out of their taxes. How much has that cost to date?