Mr. Speaker, improving educational attainment for first nations students is one of the most pressing social justice issues in Canada. It is absolutely fundamental in ensuring the equality of opportunity for first nations in Canada.
Shockingly, still only one third of those living on reserve achieve a high school leaving certificate, compared to 78% for other Canadians. All Canadians should see this gap as totally unacceptable. It is quite clear that the status quo is just not good enough. As the House has heard already, the Auditor General of Canada, in 2011, and the government's own 2012 evaluation of on-reserve education both made it clear that education opportunities and results that are comparable to the Canadian population are not being achieved.
Although first nations have made meaningful strides to improve education themselves, a lack of proper resources and systemic structural problems in the first nations education system have severely limited their progress. Fixing those structural problems must be grounded in a process that is first nations-led, and one that recognizes first nations' inherent and treaty rights.
Unfortunately, the approach of the Conservative government has been rooted in unilateralism and paternalism.
It is currently estimated that it will take nearly 30 years to fix this.
All Canadian children have a right to basic education and for first nations it is the responsibility of the federal government to ensure that access. The unacceptable gaps in educational attainment between first nations people on reserve and the rest of the Canadian population is not only a profound social injustice but represents a huge loss to the Canadian economy. In the economy of the 21st century, access to jobs and even skills training requires a high school and often, post-secondary education. We know youth who graduate high school are twice as likely to find a job as those who do not. Research shows that aboriginal high school graduates have almost the same post-secondary participation rate as non-aboriginal high school graduates.
The Canadian Chamber of Commerce has identified Canada's labour skills shortage as one of the 10 biggest barriers to Canadian competitiveness and the aboriginal population “a huge potential workforce” that we must support more.
Furthermore, the Canadian Council of Chief Executives has clearly stated that the government needs to improve education and skill levels in the aboriginal population and create more opportunities for aboriginal peoples, to enable them to participate fully in the economy.
The Canadian business community now gets it. It believes engaging the aboriginal population in Canada, the youngest and fastest growing population in the country, is fundamental to dealing with an aging population and the current disconnect between worker skills and labour market needs.
The question is, how do we ensure first nations students have the equality of opportunity they deserve and that first nations communities and the Canadian economy benefit from the huge potential of the current generation of aboriginal young people?
It was 10 years ago that first nations, Inuit, and Métis leadership met across the street with provincial, territorial, and federal ministers to begin the process that ended in October 2005 with the Kelowna Accord. Indigenous leadership chose five areas to focus upon: health, education, housing and infrastructure, economic development, and accountability. They divided into working groups and then developed real strategies: what, by when, and how. The necessary budget was determined and the then-Liberal government booked the money in the fiscal framework. For education, a hard target was determined that within 10 years, first nations students would complete high school at the same rate as the Canadian average. The $1.7 billion was booked over five years with the promise that additional resources would be available to meet that target if needed.
Unfortunately, the Kelowna accord was not honoured by this government. Aboriginal youth paid the price, and Canada is worse off as a result.
Liberals know that simply bringing back the Kelowna Accord a decade later is not possible, but we do believe that the true partnership that led to that breakthrough holds the key to improving current education outcomes for aboriginal peoples. We feel that this was a lost decade in that still only one third of first nations students living on reserve are finishing high school.
How do we fix it? Beyond the need to recognize first nations jurisdiction over their own education, we must develop a comprehensive approach to protect language and culture, a mutual accountability framework and adequate, sustainable, and predictable funding. First nations must also be intimately involved in developing every aspect of education reform, not just in terms of legislation and regulation, but any government policy that impacts on the administration of first nations education.
The national panel on the first nations elementary and secondary education for students on reserve set out the key components of what would be needed to effectively improve on-reserve education, as I was reminded on Monday when I met with the chiefs from Quebec. Among its 2012 recommendations was for the federal government and first nations to “Co-create a Child-Centred First Nation Education Act”.
Instead of working in collaboration with first nations to co-develop this legislation, as the panel recommended, the government released a unilateral one-size-fits-all proposal last fall.
This proposed legislation for first nations education was quickly rejected by first nations and educators from coast to coast to coast.
Building on the work of the national panel and the first nations communities, chiefs from across Canada passed a resolution last December setting out five conditions that must be met for any first nations education reform to be acceptable.
That resolution called for: one, the recognition of first nations jurisdiction respect for treaty and rights; two, a statutory guarantee of funding; three, funding for language and culture; four, reciprocal accountability; and five, ongoing meaningful dialogue.
We now have before us Bill C-33, which is the latest attempt by the Conservative government to restructure the on-reserve education system. The December AFN resolution provides an excellent lens to assess whether the bill will actually deliver what first nations have been working toward for the last 30 years, meaningful control over their own education system.
While some people have suggested that Bill C-33 is a good start, first nations have also expressed many concerns about this bill.
In the model proposed by Bill C-33, the Aboriginal Affairs Department becomes a ministry of education, as well as a national school board, and in some cases, actually operates first nations schools.
While the bill has been renamed the first nations control of first nations education act, the bill itself does little in terms of jurisdiction beyond entrenching the delegation of day-to-day management that has already been government policy for the last 30 years.
Many first nations have told me that they are worried about the fact that the body of the bill does not reflect the title or the conciliatory language of the preamble.
Put simply, the bill fails to expressly recognize first nations jurisdiction over first nations education.
Further, first nations are very concerned that the minister retains extensive powers, arguably more power than he currently has under the Indian Act, to intervene in the administration of first nations schools. These excessive powers of the minister include the ability to effectively oppose third party management on first nations education authorities and even disband responsible education authorities based on broad and ill-defined criteria.
The bill should actually enable the transfer of law-making authority to first nations related to education like sectoral self-government arrangements. We have seen this before regarding land management under the First Nations Land Management Act, or for taxation, financial administration, and public financing under the First Nations Fiscal Management Act. It does not.
Furthermore, the minister's discretionary powers are very broad and, for the most part, unnecessary. Those powers should be limited and, in many cases, eliminated.
There is no question that stable and predictable funding, which was announced, confirmed, in budget 2014, is a step in the right direction. This increased funding is particularly welcome given that as recently as January this year, the then minister was denying that there was a funding gap for students attending school on reserve. However, it is completely unacceptable that the government is delaying money to help close the annual per student funding gap until 2016-17. As a result, first nations students on reserve will have to wait at least another two years before the significant funding gap, compared to their provincial counterparts, will even begin to close. This is patently wrong. First nations students should not have to wait one more day for the equitable funding they deserve. The money should have flowed immediately.
I am hearing across the country that people are very concerned that the language and culture funding cannot be stolen from other areas in terms of core curricular activity. Language and culture is essential to the secure personal cultural identity of first nations students, and it is essential to their actually doing well in educational outcomes, health outcomes, and economic outcomes.
There is also some serious concern across the country about the need for funding for special needs students, which unfortunately are in great numbers in the first nations schools. They want to see that the funding is secure, and again, is not coming out of other core funding needs.
Mutual accountability is also an issue. While the accountability will be an important component of effective education reform, that accountability must not amount to responsibilities being downloaded to first nations without the corresponding authority or resources to fulfill them. It should also not include unnecessarily paternalistic oversight powers, exercised by the minister, in Ottawa. First nations expect a truly reciprocal partnership in terms of the evaluation and oversight of a restructured first nations education system.
Bill C-33 does establish a joint council of educational professionals, and the government points to this body as ensuring mutual accountability and oversight of the new system. However, the joint council, ultimately appointed by the Governor in Council, only advises the minister and is answerable to the minister. It is not mutually accountable. It is not accountable to first nations. It is not even a shared governance entity, as are, for example, the First Nations Financial Management Board and the First Nations Tax Commission, and it has no meaningful statutory power. With the exception of its responsibility for carrying out a review of the act and its associated regulations every five years, there are no other specific functions or powers identified in the bill.
First nations have also expressed serious concerns about the makeup of the joint council.
The bill provides the Governor in Council with the discretion to appoint a minimum of five and a maximum of nine members, on the advice of the minister, and only requires one to be nominated by an entity representing first nations' interests. I do not believe that this is first nations control over first nations education. The phrase “entity representing the interests of First Nations” is not properly defined, and the minister also retains the authority to remove members of the body during their five-year term. The potential imbalance in the composition of this body and the vagueness regarding its powers and responsibility undermines its credibility and falls far short of the mutual accountability that first nations rightly expect.
While I understand that there have been some discussions between the government and the AFN about entering into a political protocol to bring clarity on the function of this body, something so fundamental to the legislation should be in the bill itself. There is a need for more creative machinery of government here. What is needed is a responsible and accountable first nations institution to support responsible and accountable local governance and the delivery of quality education services that are adequately funded. The bill should define the powers and functions of this body and address concerns about the broad discretion of the government to appoint its members, and particularly, we are hearing, the chair.
We believe that the bill should ensure that a majority of the members of the joint council are first nations and should mandate that the chair of the joint council be a first nations nominee. The bill should also include a mechanism to ensure appropriate regional representation on the joint council.
Bill C-33 provides the minister with the regulatory authority to determine the extent of the use of a first nations language as a language of instruction. First nations have questioned why the minister finds it necessary to retain that authority.
Questions have also been raised about its potential impact on immersion programs.
Although the minister has stated that Bill C-33 legally supports “the incorporation of First Nation language and culture programming in the education curriculum, including [the ability to administer] immersion in a First Nation language”, there are serious questions about whether regulations, which are yet to be developed, would actually do this.
In terms of the ongoing dialogue that will be essential for improving first nations educational outcomes, the Conservative government's cynical and unilateral approach to aboriginal issues thus far has badly undermined the trust of first nations. This is extremely problematic for the needed good-faith discussions going forward.
There are numerous sections of the bill that are excessively prescriptive, and given that there is no requirement in the legislation for meaningful consultation on regulations and tight timelines, there are very real concerns about whether first nations will be sufficiently engaged in developing those regulations.
We have listened to many concerns of first nations across the country, and in their opinion, the bill only partially meets the five conditions. Moreover, it would actually create a system that is administratively top heavy, which would put excessive power into the hands of the minister. The bill would essentially make the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development the new ministry of first nations education.
Bill C-33 still needs a lot of fundamental work. The bill needs to live up to its title: first nations control of first nations education.
We will continue to work with the government on this, but we believe that, unfortunately, the trust of first nations has been irreparably damaged by the government.
We look forward to a real solution. We will continue to work with first nations and the government on this. This is too important to get wrong.