Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to address an issue that I brought forward to the minister on February 7 about the First Nations Technical Institute. I welcome the opportunity to expand on the question that I had for the minister at that time.
One of the things that I want to raise is that the First Nations Technical Institute is an important avenue for providing first nations an appropriate control over education.
“No higher priority” is a report that was presented by the aboriginal affairs committee. It identified the importance of appropriate funding for indigenous controlled educational institutions.
As well, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in article 14 talks about the fact that indigenous people have the right to establish and control their educational systems and institutions, and providing education in their own languages in a manner appropriate to their cultural methods of teaching and learning, and it goes on.
The fact that the federal government has reneged, essentially, on its responsibility in terms of funding indigenous post-secondary institutions is a very good question for the House to consider.
There are some words that are far more powerful than my own that talk about the importance of the situation. In a letter to the Belleville Intelligencer the writer, Dave Wilson, says:
FNTI was founded in 1985 with the active support and encouragement of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC)...They recognized the need in the Ontario Region for innovative, culturally relevant post-secondary training for First Nations students.
He goes on in his letter to say:
Over the past 20 years, FNTI has demonstrated how to provide culturally relevant and academically sound programs in an efficient manner.
He said that the federal government needs to be a partner with FNTI, not an impediment, and he goes on to talk about the fact that on one hand the federal government talks about how it has invested, but he actually puts some numbers to this.
He refers to a member of this House when he says that by his reckoning, cutting the federal funding to First Nations Technical Institute by $2 million and then offering $500,000 to help it shut down is a reprieve to FNTI. It boggles the imagination that cutting funding by $500,000 is actually a reprieve to any institution.
This institution was literally lurching from week to week, wondering if it should lay-off staff and give notice to students that their programs would be finished.
In a second letter from Richard Johnston, he says:
I was absolutely blown away by [the] assertion that the federal government had helped save the First Nations Technical Institute. It is the best case of double speak I have heard recently. Reality is just the opposite; it was the lack of vision and commitment by the federal government that has systematically withdrawn funding from FNTI and placed it in danger of closing... For years governments have hidden behind the skirts of jurisdictional responsibility--
He goes on to talk about a few more things. Then he says:
--realizing that a successful aboriginal post-secondary model like FNTI is a rare treasure that needs to be fostered, not killed by continual bureaucratic cuts.
What we have is a case where the federal government acknowledges that education is important, but fails to fund it. I wonder if it is not time that there be a recognition that leadership should be demonstrated by the federal government and that it actually invests in aboriginal controlled post-secondary education institutions.