Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Social Affairs,
Science and Technology
Subcommittee on Post-Secondary education
Issue 11 - Evidence - March 20 Sitting
OTTAWA, Thursday, March 20, 1997
The Subcommittee on Post-Secondary education of the Standing Senate committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology, met this day at 9:05 a.m. to continue its inquiry into the state of Post-Secondary education in Canada.
Senator M. Lorne Bonnell (Chairman) in the Chair.
[English]
The Chairman: We have with us today Lenore Burton, the executive director of the Canadian Labour Force Development Board.
Welcome, Ms Burton, and please proceed with your presentation.
Ms Lenore Burton, Executive Director, Canadian Labour Force Development Board: Thank you. My remarks will be based on a document I prepared for you. I will also be referring to the background document which I previously sent to the committee.
Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to appear before this committee. When I first began to discuss with your clerk attending here and possible topics of discussion, knowing your interest in Post-Secondary education, I wished to return to a question asked the last time I appeared before a Senate standing committee. At that time, Bill C-12, introducing the new employment insurance legislation, was being reviewed. One of the questions I was asked was what effect we thought that bill would have on the Post-Secondary education system. Our conclusion was that it would have dramatic effect.
Shortly after that Senate presentation, we undertook a survey of community colleges, community-based trainers, and private trainers in Canada to try to gauge the impact of the changes which would be brought about by the new EI legislation. We surveyed 48 institutions. We had our first results in October of 1996: 40 per cent of those institutions reported to us that they were already experiencing the effects of the decreased funding that would be available to them because of the changes in that legislation, and 90 per cent of them indicated that they could see a decrease in access for trainees they would normally expect to see at their institutions. We considered that survey an initial attempt to gauge the impact on our post-secondary system. We will continue doing the survey annually, and I would be pleased in the future to continue to share the results of that survey with this committee.
I should like to present to you this morning something somewhat different than you have been receiving from other presenters and witnesses. You have heard many presentations from people much more expert than I on what is happening inside our Post-Secondary education system. You have heard presentations from the national EDUCATION organization committee, which is connected to our board. You have heard presentations from the community colleges and from the university sector. I should like to introduce this morning a concept, a tool, a new idea the board is promoting. We consider it to be a consumer tool to drive fundamental change in our Post-Secondary education. It is called prior learning assessment and recognition, and I will focus my remarks on this subject.
I hope you know something of the board I represent today. The Canadian Labour Force Development Board is made up of primarily business and labour. Business and labour representatives co-chair the board. Jean-Claude Parrot is my labour co-chair, and he is one of the executive vice-presidents of the Canadian Labour Congress; and Gary Johncox, the vice-president of human resources for MacMillan Bloedel, is the business co-chair. Also sitting on our board are the EDUCATION and training community and the equity seeking groups.
When we examined the Post-Secondary education system, we came to the conclusion that, for the most part, we represent consumers of the Post-Secondary education system. From that perspective, we asked ourselves: What tool can we use to drive the kind of changes we want to see? The tool that we embraced is this notion of prior learning assessment and recognition.
We know that Post-Secondary education in Canada has primary responsibility for helping Canadians and Canadians in the workforce acquire skills and knowledge, but that system is fractured and confusing. It is made up of many different systems, levels, and types of providers, all of whom are competitors for student dollars and jealously guard their turf.
There is something wrong when a community college diploma is described as terminal EDUCATION because you cannot use that diploma to articulate into a university and get advanced recognition for a degree in engineering. There is something wrong when credits or credentials earned in one province are not recognized in another. There is something wrong when individual learners are expected to pay for knowledge or skills they already have because you buy a course package and must take your compulsory courses as well as any electives. There is something wrong when employers are expected by many post-secondary institutions to buy packages of training for their workers when some of that knowledge and skills have already been acquired by those workers. In other words, we do not think the system as it exists today is flexible at meeting the needs of consumers, adult learners, or employers.
PLAR -- if you live in Ottawa, you are nothing unless you are an acronym -- is a deceptively simple idea. It refers to the fact that there is process for identifying, assessing and recognizing what a person knows and can do. In other words, it embraces knowledge and skills.
One of the fundamental principles for you to keep in mind when I give my short presentation is that we believe that recognizing what a person knows and can do through this process is of equal value to the kind of credentials that you receive when you go through a traditional, formal, post-secondary institution. In other words, we are not talking about creating a two-tiered system here.
Potentially, everyone can be affected by this concept or idea. For learners, it is a powerful tool for accepting individual responsibility for their learning. For the EDUCATION and training organizations which will be the primary deliverers of this process or service, it is an important tool for change that can potentially open up to them a whole new pool of potential learners that they have not had to date. For employers, it is a way of focusing your training resources so that you do not waste money. The unions which represent the workers want to see workers get credit for the knowledge and skills they have and, therefore, be compensated for it. Many unions are big training providers. and they will use or incorporate the PLAR process in their training. For the equity seeking groups, this is an extremely important concept. Many of their members, specially those in the visible minority community, come to Canada with credentials that they have earned in foreign places. That learning and knowledge and those skills are not recognized in Canada. It is a tremendous waste of human resources.
We believe that PLAR is extremely important because it represents an efficient use of resources -- both an individual's resources when accessing the system or an employer's resources when they go to a community college to purchase training for workers.
The thing that excites me the most about this concept is that it is a powerful tool to promote lifelong learning. In today's world of multiple jobs and frequent job changes, we hear about the need for people to be flexible and to continuously re-skill. This can be a daunting task, and it requires a tremendous amount of responsibility and investment on the part of individuals. PLAR makes it easier for the adult learner and for the employer and the economy as a whole because it rpostes barriers and the waste that comes with duplication.
There is a notion of social justice in this, too, because PLAR can act as an equalizer. There is something wrong in Canada today when it is true that the best predictor of an individual's success in our post-secondary system is the income of his or her parents. This is a concept that can be an effective tool for managing change because it helps the transition from school to work and work back to school again.
The Canadian CLFDB became involved because we saw it as a group representing consumers to effect change in the post-secondary system. We would like to think we are making a contribution in promoting this. We did a great deal of research into this concept because it is being used by many OECD countries which are competitors. We gathered together a research task group made up of business and labour, EDUCATION and training, and the equity groups and did research into what was happening in other OECD countries.
Our biggest contribution is that we added the "R" -- that is, the recognition. This is important. In some countries, for example in Australia, it is called recognition of prior learning, or RPL. In Canada, when the notion was being discussed prior to the board being involved, it was always refer to as PLA, prior learning assessment. There is no purpose in assessing what someone knows if you do not give them credit for it. That is where recognition comes in. You will not only assess the learning but also give them some kind of credit or recognition for it.
We are trying to promote lifelong learning among that huge pool of workers who have never been through a Post-Secondary education system and whose experience with formal schooling tends to have been negative. Assessment smacks of testing and judgment. The board saw that "recognition" was a much more positive word. We recognize that you have learned something in the 15 years that you have been a bookkeeper. We want to encourage you to go back to school to get your CGA certification or designation. With this process, instead of spending three years at a community college, as a bookkeeper you will have advanced standing, and perhaps it will only take you 18 months or 12 months of schooling in a post-secondary institution to get that general certified accountant designation.
The board was also very concerned that, institution to institution and province to province, many different methods of doing prior learning assessment would spring up. At the end of the day, we would have a hodgepodge of different methods of testing and assessment, and standards were important. We poured a lot of energy into coming up with 14 standards. They are consensus standards. They are at the back of this document. We do not call them standards. "Standard" seems to have a pejorative sense to many people, a sense of regulation and authority.
The board certainly has no authority to impose these on any institution. We indicated in our document that this is how we think a good PLAR process should look. We are currently developing an audit tool which people, individual learners trying to access a prior learning assessment process, can use to ask, "Is this a good process that I am being put through?" An institution which is developing a process can ask, "Do we match up to what a group like the Canadian Labour Force Development Board considers is a good process?"
The board is currently on a promotion campaign. We have distributed the document you have in front of you across the country. I am speaking tomorrow in Fredericton. We have a dual purpose. We must promote this inside our post-secondary institutions, and I will tell you a bit about the resistance we have encountered and what it means for them to embrace this notion. We also want to promote it in the workplace. That leap into the workplace has not yet been made in Canada. We are at the beginning stages.
I have included in your brochure two case studies. One is of Cotton Ginny, with which I am sure you are all familiar; it is a clothing chain in shopping malls across the country. The other is of Nortel, which is a very different kind of business. Nortel and their union, the Canadian Auto Workers, have embraced the PLAR training concept for Nortel workers. We want to see many more employers in the country embrace and promote this concept. That is the contribution our board can make to this.
You are focusing your working on Canada's EDUCATION and training community, and it means a pretty dramatic shift for them. With PLAR, we say that learning occurs in other settings than just a classroom or a school, and we recognize that learning. You cannot do that without going beyond the traditional time-based evaluation that we currently have in place.
It also means they must move to a consumer orientation. I do not use the word "student" in this context; I use the words "adult learners." When you talk about life-long learning for workers, you are talking about adult learners. They will come as individuals, not as a group of faceless, high-school graduates entering the system. They must accommodate very different learning goals in their students, and therefore the system must become flexible. This does not come easily to them, and it implies a great deal of change.
For students or adult learners, there are tremendous benefits from PLAR. They can get academic credit for non-academic learning. I gave you the example of the bookkeeper. It means the efficient use of learning and increased access to EDUCATION and training. If workers had access to this kind of process, they would be encouraged to go back to school, with their own responsibility. It is a way to improve your own career planning and take individual responsibility for all the multi-skilling you will need. It is an opportunity for promoting individual responsibility. If we do it well in this country, if we use standards, then it will improve the mobility and employability of our workforce.
We believe there are real benefits for EDUCATIONal institutions as well. They will better use their existing time, human, and financial resources. They can offer much better flexibility for their client groups. Interestingly enough, if they are creative, they can use PLAR as a recruitment and marketing tool, because they will make their institution more appealing to a wider pool of potential learners, particularly those workers who are intimidated by approaching institutions the way they are currently set up. A good example of an institution using PLAR in this creative way is the University College of Cape Breton. Dr. Jacquelyn Thayer Scott made a presentation to you. She is an extremely innovative postator. When you are located in Cape Breton and you have few resources, you use all the ideas and concepts that you can possibly grasp to attract learners to your institution. UCCB has been successful in doing that. We also think that, in an EDUCATIONal sense, PLAR provides a whole range of much broader assessment and evaluation practices.
However, as I said, PLAR is contentious. It is contentious among the post-secondary institutions, particularly in the university context, because it places equal value on non-formal learning. In a sense, that threatens them to their very core. Right now, they have nearly the exclusive right to grant credentials and, more importantly, to be the only provider of information necessary to qualify for those credentials. When you accept that not all valuable learning occurs within a formal institution, you are forced to rethink their very reason for being.
PLAR also requires that the intended outcomes of the learning are clearly stated at the beginning and, moreover, that they are stated as skill and knowledge competencies. This is a monumental challenge. There is a great deal of work to be done. Instead of saying that we assume after four years at university and taking 10 biology courses, you know something or you have acquired these skills, you set out before you embark on that learning exactly what the expected outcome will be -- what you will be expected to know and what you will be expected to do. That requires quite a shift in our thinking.
Probably all of us in this room have had the occasion to read a curriculum vitae when trying to make a determination whether a person is a candidate for a position we are trying to fill. We automatically assume that if you spend five years doing something, you must have the knowledge and skills inherent in that kind of a job. We make that leap of faith. This is a paradigm shift. We must look at things differently now. We are looking at being able to state not where we have spent time and what jobs we spent time doing or the fact we put in four years in a post-secondary institution, but restating what we know and what we can do in specific outcomes language.
As well, universities and community colleges have reason to be wary. They feel that this is a credit give-away, that adult learners want those institutions to give them a Mickey Mouse degree or credit for learning about which the institutions are sceptical. They have reason to be concerned. There is a need to have quality control in place. We are not disputing that.
It also requires that these institutions pay more attention to the needs of the individual learner. Adult learners will not approach an institution and want to see a schedule that is based on a September to May time-frame, or four courses that must be taken two in the first term and two in the second term.
If there is recognition that they know some of this already, then they want to move to a modular, flexible approach of being able to take courses and acquire credits for them. Given that it challenges the traditional way our schools are organized, attention and resources will be needed if we are to make this notion a success or have it used widely. At the end of the day, that means money. These institutions are saying, "Where will we get the financial resources to do this?"
I am presenting to you a possibility for change in our institutions. The pressure for this change is coming from outside the institutions, not inside.
When I go to Fredericton tomorrow, a group of universities and community colleges will come together. Some us dedicated die-hards will attempt to sell this concept to them. The conference is being held at the University of New Brunswick. The pressure is coming from adult learners, employers, unions, and governments. There is a natural tendency to resist change. Change is difficult, and it will also cost money. However, there are pockets of very positive activity across the country, and New Brunswick is in the lead. Both in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, a dedicated group of people within government and in some of the institutions are talking about this change. There is activity in the Quebec CEGEP system. The B.C. government has also embraced PLAR and has tried to use it as a tool for change in their post-secondary system. We are concerned about the need for consistency and coordination of these activities across the country so that adult learners can easily move from B.C to Ontario to Quebec to New Brunswick.
I have referred to the standards already. They are written out in full on the last page of the brochure. There are 14, and I wish to point out a few to you.
Equal recognition is important. This is not a two-tiered system. In other words, on your transcript, you do not want the credits you receive through a PLAR process somehow marked differently than the credits you receive from sitting in a classroom and going through the traditional time-based system.
We think it important that appeal be put in place. If the adult learner is not satisfied with the outcome of the assessment, there should be a way of going through an appeal process and having the whole thing considered again.
We wish to emphasize that we are talking about learning here, not experience. We are not talking about the fact that you spent 15 years as a bookkeeper; we are talking about what you learned and what you can do.
It is important that these credits or credentials are transferable from one institution to another because that speaks to an efficient use of resources.
We released this report on prior learning assessment and recognition a few weeks ago in conjunction with the Council of Ministers of EDUCATION of Canada. We had the press conference at the CMEC offices, and their executive director and I conducted the press conference together. The ministers of EDUCATION have embraced PLAR. We have done two presentations for them on our work. It is one of their strategic goals. As ministers, they recognize they have a huge, uphill battle with their institutions. We are promoting the concept, and we hope to increase the pressure from consumers who approach Post-Secondary education insisting that the PLAR processes be in place.
This year, we are working on an audit tool. We are beginning to develop a skills record and trying to come up with an alternative to our traditional curriculum vitae which is the traditional way of presenting the skills and knowledge we have.
In conjunction with representatives of the federal government and all the provinces, we are hosting a second national forum on prior learning assessment and recognition. It will occur this year in Montreal on October 6 to 8. You have the card in your brochure. The theme of the conference is bringing prior learning assessment and recognition into the workplace and using it as a tool to connect employers to our post-secondary system.
We have some good examples of innovative work that has been done with employers and community colleges, but it is just at a neophyte stage. This is just beginning in the country. There will be an international flavour to the conference as well because some of our competitor OECD countries are much further ahead at pushing this than are we.
I thank you for your kind attention, senators, and I would be pleased to answer any questions you might have.
The Chairman: Sometimes we learn to do things and we learn to do them wrong. Does prior learning assessment determine if we do these things right or wrong?
Ms Burton: The first stage is to establish what outcomes are expected. I will use my bookkeeper example. What knowledge should a bookkeeper be expected to have? It must be stated in outcomes-based language. What skills would he or she be expected to have? Once you state it that way, if, through demonstration or some sort of assessment tool, it becomes apparent that you have learned it wrong, then you will not be able to come up to the outcome competency expected of you. You may also have learned it wrong sitting in a classroom and passing an exam with 51 per cent.
[Translation]
Senator Losier-Cool: I have not yet consulted this document. Perhaps it will contain the answers to my questions. My question has to do with the assessment and recognition of skills already acquired. At the beginning of your presentation, you referred to a committee connected with the Canadian Labour Force Development Board. Is this an issue that the Board is actively examining?
[English]
Ms Burton: The first time I heard of this concept, or embraced it, was with our transitions task force. We put together a group of employers and unions to study how people make the transition from unemployment to employment and from school to work. They examined what was happening in other countries. They saw a potential in this concept of prior learning assessment to ease that transition into the workplace or into school. They recommended that the board do more research on the notion and that, if the board felt it was worthwhile, we undertake this work and begin to promote it.
Senator Losier-Cool: Have you created another structure? It seems to me that the transition to which you refer is being dealt with through EDUCATION. I am of the traditional school which believes that one learns at school. You acquire skills for your work on the job, but it is at school that you learn first. I believe that if we put more money into the public EDUCATION system from the elementary level to the post-secondary level, we may be able to rposte the number of groups we have to ease that transition. I recognize, however, that what you learn in the workplace is very valuable.
[Translation]
Prior assessment recognition is not a new concept. I recall people discussing it at the University of Moncton in 1988-89. Voluminous files were prepared and the person's learned skills were carefully listed. Did this serve any purpose other than enhance people's curriculum vitaes? How are skills recognized? Could you give us some concrete examples?
[English]
Ms Burton: I will give you an example from southern Ontario. When Algoma was laying off many workers, their labour adjustment package included training paid for by the employer in order that the workers could acquire new skills to work elsewhere, because they would no longer be steel workers.
Senator Losier-Cool: Could that lead to an increase in salary?
Ms Burton: Of course. As an example, two individuals who worked in a steel mill had an interest in computers. They had become quite knowledgeable through self-teaching at home. They wanted to attend community college and study computer technology courses. Through learning assessments, it was determined that these men had enough knowledge to enable them to complete the course in one year rather than the usual two. The men saved time and money, and the employer saved money. The men were encouraged to follow this course.
Senator Losier-Cool: I know that there is always a demand for people trained in technology, but has your research shown that are there are other fields in which we should be training? Not everyone is interested in technology, and the fields of hair dressing and law are saturated. Where are the jobs for the year 2000?
Ms Burton: I cannot answer that question satisfactorily. From our research, some obvious things leap out. One is the absolute importance of post-secondary EDUCATION and the fact that all the variables in the labour market are positively correlated with more years of EDUCATION. You earn more, you have less unemployment, and you make the transition from job to job more easily with more years of Post-Secondary education, whether at community college or university.
It is essential to impress that concept on young people. However, our young people are becoming an increasingly smaller portion of the labour force. There is a huge group currently in the labour force, who will remain in it for the next 10 to 15 years, who will need retraining. They will need to go back to school, back to work, and back to school. That is what life-long learning is all about, and this is a concept which will promote that.
Senator DeWare: I am very pleased with this presentation this morning. You are on all fours with some of the things we have heard and have been discussing. We all agree that there should be national standards set and that people should be able to carry their work skills from province to province.
In 1980, we were looking for a plumbing inspector in the province of New Brunswick. We advertized the position stipulating that the successful candidate must have a grade 12 EDUCATION and 15 years of experience. We received very few applications for the job. Our people did an assessment to determine why there was not more interest in the job. They found that people who had 15 years of experience in 1980 did not have a high school EDUCATION. When we lowered the requirement to grade 10, we received many applications. I give that example to say that experience must count.
I should like to ask you about a passport for learning. Have you thought about the concept of carrying a passport which would list your qualifications and experience, including each course taken, whether a day long or three weeks?
Ms Burton: We refer to that on the last page of the brief. We call it a skills record. Whenever we take on a project or a task, we bring together representatives of the business community, labour, EDUCATION and training, equity groups, and experts. We have started to study the concept of a learning record or a passport. We started to develop standards for what we should include in this passport. The group preferred to call it a skills and knowledge profile rather than a learning record. We will now begin to experiment with electronic versions of this and different variations of it. We will develop some prototypes this year. Rather than the curriculum vitae which we all have, we want to have a different way of talking about what we know and what we can do based on competencies.
Traditionally in Canada we assume that if someone has a high school EDUCATION and 15 years experience as a plumber, they must know what we need a plumbing inspector to know. We make that leap of faith. Under this model, we could stipulate what a plumbing inspector must know and be able to do. It will not matter whether they have a high school EDUCATION if they have learned on the job what they need to know.
Senator DeWare: The passport concept still intrigues me. However you describe it, I think it is important for people to have that and to be able to carry it from employer to employer, from school to university, and from university to community college. I am very pleased to hear about that.
In 1985, I spoke to a graduating class from a community college in St. John. The focus of my speech was that learning is forever. Here we are in 1997, still talking about learning being forever.
Ms Burton: I was quite excited when a young designer came up with the slogan "Learning has no Boundaries" and used a mountain climber motif. It is the slogan that we will use.
Senator Forest: Thank you for your presentation. It was most interesting.
My background has been with universities. They are not quite as backward as you might suggest. Twenty years ago, at the University of Alberta, we were developing co-op programs in business, engineering, et cetera. The students would do a semester at university and go out to the workplace. It was like an apprenticeship. It is working well, and it is being done in most universities now.
You mentioned B.C. When we were in B.C., there was talk about people going from university to college rather than college to university in order to get their skills. You are right on in assessing the skills and knowledge. However, there is some knowledge which is difficult to assess in the arts, humanities, and so on.
How long have you been working, and how long has this been in Canada?
Ms Burton: Do you mean how long has the board been involved in this?
Senator Forest: Yes.
Ms Burton: We gathered the task force together last year. They did their work. We went through extensive consultation. We contacted and had meetings with approximately 600 institutions and organizations. Finally, we distilled it down to a document which passed the board as a consensus document in July of 1996. It has not been a year yet.
The document is more like a research paper. It is a brick. The board said, "Lenore, no one will ever read this or understand it. Go out and get some communications and marketing advice. Develop a readable instrument that will grab people's attention." That is what this represents. It is a distilled popular version of the original research document. We released it three weeks ago in Toronto.
Senator Forest: In Alberta, I have been involved with the Learning Link. Have you heard of it?
Ms Burton: Yes.
Senator Forest: They just established an award in my name. They are quite interested in what is happening between employers and institutions of whatever kind. Two of the universities started this with their mature students, again 20 some years ago when they started to come back. It is a good idea. I hope that institutions will be open to it. You will probably find it hard to sell at universities, but they are doing it. In Alberta, the colleges and universities belong to an organization. They are more open to it now than they were 25 years ago.
Ms Burton: One of the things I want to do at this conference in October is to provide a forum for EDUCATIONal institutions to openly discuss the barriers for them -- and financial barriers are very important -- in implementing this. How they will overcome these barriers will be the next step. This is not easy for them, for many reasons.
Senator Forest: Would labour be interested in kicking in any money? Universities have problems with their budgets too. Surely the labour unions must have an interest in developing something like this.
Ms Burton: They do. There are some problems for labour unions. They, too, must be cautious. Traditionally, for many of them, the system of promotion and compensation under a collective agreement is by seniority, not by skills and knowledge.
Senator Forest: I should not have said just labour unions; I should have said employers and labour unions.
Ms Burton: In the case studies we have considered where employers or their union embraced a prior learning assessment process for training employees, they have paid for it. The process is only one step. The university or the college must then turn around and respond by changing scheduling and teachers' time and the way teachers are allotted. All that flexibility and change will be costly.
Senator Forest: The extension faculties would be more open to that.
Ms Burton: Yes. In the last few years, we have seen continuing EDUCATION faculties expand and grow and become more active.
Senator Lavoie-Roux: I should like to know what reception you received from the various labour groups or unions. I am thinking of the CNTU or the FTQ.
There is a great deal of evaluation going on in colleges before students are accepted into programs, particularly if the student might have been working for a while. This process is already going on in many institutions. While I think it has great value for the recycling of employees when people are laid off and are contemplating doing something else, I do not see it being applied very much.
What is the reaction of institutions to this? After all, it is not a new concept.
Ms Burton: No, it is not a new concept, and I am not pretending that we discovered or invented; we did not. It has existed in a few institutions in some activity here and there across the country. However, it has not been embraced by all the institutions. It certainly is new to the workplace in terms of employers being interested and involved.
Senator Lavoie-Roux: I can see that it could be useful in the workplace. Some institutions are not willing to jump in because they have their own tools.
Ms Burton: In the past, they have been good at looking at credits or formal learning that people have had from other institutions. If you move from Manitoba to Quebec, the credits you may have from the University or Manitoba or Red River College will be assessed in Quebec and you will be given some sort of advance standing. This goes beyond that. This talks about where there are no credits. It considers learning that you have acquired in your everyday life in the kind of work that you do and giving formal recognition for that.
Senator Lavoie-Roux: Are they ready to accept it?
Ms Burton: No.
Senator Forest: We had special programs for our aboriginal students. In those cases, we assessed what they have done and gave credit for their experience in whatever they had been doing before. In some of those other areas, and for mature students, universities are starting to give credit.
We had the same experience Senator DeWare mentioned of trying to get people to teach in high schools. They had their workshops and they had their skills, but they did not have their teaching certificates in some of those areas.
Senator Lavoie-Roux is correct in that it will be a hard nut to crack, but they have begun in some areas. Colleges are much better at it than universities.
Ms Burton: That is right, Senator Forest.
Senator Lavoie-Roux: If they do not have their own assessment, they would be afraid of lowering their standards.
Ms Burton: Exactly. Quality control is important. We are not denying that.
Senator Lavoie-Roux: How do the large union groups react to this? That is where it would be most useful -- on the job, in the workplace.
Ms Burton: This is a new concept for the unions. The Canadian Labour Congress will have a first-ever, huge training conference in June. The union is looking at PLAR as one the discussion items.
The Canadian Labour Congress participated with us in putting this document out. This is a consensus document, so they have agreed to what is in here. On one hand they like it, because it means that workers are getting recognition for what they know and can do and hopefully they will be compensated for that. On the other hand, they have concerns about seniority. Traditionally, in a collective agreement, you earn more money for years in a job, not for what you know and can do. As well, they are concerned that employers may use a process like this to rposte the training budget as opposed to keeping the training budget fixed and training more workers. It is not without problems in that community either.
The unions representing post-secondary teachers and community college teachers are also concerned. What does this mean in collective agreements when you are requiring flexible, modular teaching instead of the traditional blocks of time that are all tied to their collective agreements? It will mean a different way of collective bargaining for those teachers.
Senator DeWare: We seem to be moving away from that in community colleges. With the large amount of contract training, they hire trainers or teachers for specific blocks of time. That would help ease in that area.
Ms Burton: Those contract workers are not unionized.
Senator DeWare: You must have your unions on side as well as your employers and employees in order to make this work.
Some of us would be interested in attending your forum.
Ms Burton: One of my purposes here is to gain your support in promoting this concept, and the other is to invite you to attend the conference in Montreal.
The Chairman: Thank you very much for an excellent paper.
Ms Burton: Thank you for the opportunity.
The Chairman: Honourable senators, I see we have with us Mr. Mercredi, the National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations. With him is Rose MacDonald, Director of EDUCATION for the Assembly of First Nations. We would be pleased to listen to your presentation and then perhaps ask you some questions afterwards.
Mr. Ovide Mercredi, National Chief, Assembly of First Nations: Good morning, Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of the subcommittee. We understand that it is your mandate to report on the state of post-secondary institutions in Canada and, within that realm, to review the social, cultural, economic and political importance of Post-Secondary education to Canada. To that end, I am pleased to have this opportunity to present to you today some issues and concerns of importance to our First Nation communities regarding Post-Secondary education in this country. I will start with a brief historical review of First Nations EDUCATION and then talk specifically about Post-Secondary education issues as they relate to self-government.
First Nations EDUCATION is a holistic approach which incorporates a deep respect for the natural world with the physical, moral, spiritual, and intellectual development of the individual. We know that language and cultural values are taught and enhanced through EDUCATION, thus our determination to be taught not just in the languages of the colonizers, French or English.
Ideally, the EDUCATIONal process should actively involve the family and the community in a life-long learning endeavour. EDUCATION for First Nations people is not just a matter of an inherent aboriginal or treaty right. We have embarked on processes to reaffirm our rights and to have them recognized by the governments in order to ensure collective renewal and personal success on our own terms.
The federal government, representing the Crown, has a legal obligation through various treaties and in section 91.24 of the Constitution Act of 1867 to provide adequate resources and services for EDUCATION ranging from pre-school to elementary, secondary, post-secondary, adult, and vocational EDUCATION. The federal government is obliged to provide resources for quality EDUCATIONal programs, facilities, transportation, equipment, and materials to meet the needs as determined by First Nations. By treaty, the Crown accepted the legal obligation to resource EDUCATION, along with other obligations to support the well-being of First Nations as defined and determined by these treaties. Of course, you are already well aware of your society's sorry record of neglect and denial of the treaty right to EDUCATION.
We view the EDUCATION of our young people as a fundamental tool in developing and strengthening our right to be self-determining and self-governing as a people. In modern times, equality of access to EDUCATION and life-long learning is a fundamental right of all people -- except white people still get the lion's share of the nation's wealth to support their EDUCATIONal needs and development. The degree of EDUCATIONal equity has never been satisfactory to our people. We continue to argue against the second-class treatment of our people by the federal government. This inequity must change. We must bring closure to these injustices so that we may move forward with a new understanding of equality of EDUCATION for our people.
Given the above principles, the goal of First Nations is to change the following present conditions: 50 per cent of First Nations school-age children fail to reach grade 12; 283 of the 633 First Nations communities do not have schools of any kind; First Nations illiteracy rates range as high as 65 to 75 per cent in some regions; indigenous language use in 69 per cent of the First Nations communities is declining, endangered or critical; and 66 per cent of the First Nations adult population have no Post-Secondary education, compared to half of Canada's population who have some Post-Secondary education.
We can all agree that colonization and European settlement have changed the socio-economic environment of our communities, displacing and altering the traditional economies, along with the survival requirements of all our people. The principles of human rights and international relations require that that society which introduces unilateral and self-serving changes also has a duty to ensure that other people whose societies and economies are disrupted are provided with proper, adequate, and equal support to gain the specialized and advanced knowledge and skills required to fully participate in the new environment and to survive as a nation. When you injure someone, you are liable to atone for the harm. Canada has severely injured our people. Its liabilities to us are miles long and more than a century in the making.
In today's situation, the required remedies will translate into ensuring that the entire population is provided with the skills and knowledge needed by First Nations, as individuals and as nations, to recover from the physical and cultural genocide.
Tradition and EDUCATION: Towards a Vision of Our Future, published by the Assembly of First Nations in 1988, defined the First Nations philosophy and position with respect to EDUCATION. Issues of jurisdiction, which include management, adequate resourcing, and quality EDUCATION, are integral in defining that relationship between First Nations and the Crown. The recommendations of this report also called for a more secure funding for programs and students.
This assertion is rooted in the spirit and intent of the treaty-making relationship, which is still upheld by our people and governments. These understandings must be taken into account to ensure that EDUCATIONal programming reflects, and is balanced with, traditional knowledge. The exercise of, and agreement with, these principles is key to the successful exercise of our rights to self-government and self-determination. It is also key to Canada's image and honour to provide full restitution for the injuries suffered by our people and nations.
As we have noted, EDUCATION is one of the keys to the development of healthy, self-governing, First Nations communities. The demands for professionals and technically capable persons to meet specific socio-economic needs of First Nations communities is high, so access and financial support for First Nations students in Post-Secondary education programs is particularly imperative. Even though we view Post-Secondary education as an inherent aboriginal and treaty right, the federal government simply interprets its obligations as a matter of social policy. As a result, in recent years, the Department of Indian Affairs has decreased its commitment to, and support of, Post-Secondary education programs for First Nations people, even though the demand for such support has grown dramatically. Although it is a well-proven fact that an postated people equates to a major contribution to the functioning and economic well-being of any country, Canada still needs to be convinced that investing in the EDUCATION of our people is a guarantee for a better future and relationship.
In the late 1980s, the Department of Indian Affairs took measures to restrict access to, and support of, Post-Secondary education funding by tightening eligibility criteria and capping the amount of financial support that was made available. A series of political actions by First Nations students -- including a fast -- by leaders and EDUCATION workers, led to some easing of government restrictions but did not gain substantive change in government policy.
Because the government considers Post-Secondary education as a non-essential and discretionary program, it could be a target for budget cuts in the future. The Post-Secondary education budget, including administrative requirements, the Indian Studies Support Program, and the student support funds, is capped at an annual 3-per-cent increase. It is possible through the federal government's devolution agenda that the program could be cut or that First Nations would end up being responsible for administering a program without a secure budget. In addition, without assurances of long-term, continued budget levels, First Nations will not be able to adequately plan for the future in terms of the community involvement and self-government.
Another aspect of First Nations Post-Secondary education is the establishment of First Nations post-secondary institutions. Due to the failure of the government to recognize the inherent aboriginal and treaty rights to self-government and jurisdiction over EDUCATION, the First Nations Post-Secondary education budget is not adequate for the purpose of establishing full programs and new institutions. The Indian Studies Support Program provides some moneys for program and institutional development; however, there has been no change in the level of allocation of ISSP in the last several years, nor are the funds distributed to achieve regional parity.
Not all First Nations students attend provincially chartered institutions, but the provinces refuse to allocate a portion of their EPF funds to First Nations institutions. The Established Program Funding were arrangements between federal and provincial governments which provide the province with post-secondary EDUCATION and institutional funding based on population figures. These population figures included the First Nations communities. Of course, this has been replaced by a new plan introduced by Paul Martin about a year-and-a-half ago, but those funds are still made available for the entire population, and that includes our people as well.
The provision of Post-Secondary education to First Nations students is an absolute necessity for the development of self-government among First Nations. Post-Secondary education includes both college and university levels. First Nations students must have the opportunity to achieve their academic potential in a vast array of disciplines. This will provide First Nations communities with well-defined and trained personnel to support effective self-government.
Post-Secondary education must be fully resourced through the federal obligation to resource First Nations EDUCATION. DIAND must consider post-secondary EDUCATION as a non-discretionary component of the EDUCATION program. Present deficiencies in legislation and departmental regulations must be rectified to incorporate Post-Secondary education in the regular EDUCATION program.
Currently, student eligibility for resourcing is covered under rigid DIAND criteria for student eligibility and limits the amount that First Nations councils and EDUCATION authorities can resource to students. This criteria does not account for actual financial need of individual students and cost of living in the area of the Post-Secondary educational institution.
First Nations find DIAND's resourcing criteria to be unacceptable and totally inconsistent with the principles of First Nations' jurisdiction over EDUCATION. DIAND, through its policies, obstructs rather than facilitates post-secondary EDUCATION for First Nations students. All decisions about which First Nations students should be resourced and the monitoring of the students' progress must rest with the First Nations.
It must be noted that First Nations have little influence in provincial Post-Secondary educational institutions. Greater efforts must be made to explore ways for First Nations to exert more influence over these institutions.
Colleges and universities must be encouraged to offer courses that deal with First Nations cultural issues and aboriginal languages. A mechanism is needed for First Nations to establish a dialogue with the board of governors of provincial colleges and universities to develop a partnership that will address First Nations issues and concerns.
While provinces are responsible for EDUCATION, the federal government has played an important supportive role, particularly in helping provinces fund Post-Secondary education. The federal government acknowledges that there is a need to expand access to learning, not only for young adults but also for people throughout their careers. For many working Canadians, opportunities for learning are essential to career advancement and, in some cases, job security.
Currently, the federal government fails to identify the unique needs and assess the limitations of aboriginal people in getting access to post-secondary EDUCATION. The funding arrangement related to Post-Secondary education is a direct contribution agreement between the federal government and First Nations. New arrangements related to Post-Secondary education would only be viable if they involve increasing current levels of funding.
Based on fiduciary obligations on the part of the federal government for First Nations EDUCATION, our citizens will continue to have access to post-secondary EDUCATION on the basis of direct federal Post-Secondary education funding flowed through Indian and Northern Affairs. This cannot be construed to mean that First Nations are content with the current level of post-secondary EDUCATION funding levels for financing the individual student expenses or for the development and operation of First Nations Post-Secondary educational institutions.
EDUCATION data shows that First Nations populations are significantly less postated and have less employable skills per capita than other sectors of the Canadian population. Seventeen per cent of adult First Nation citizens have no formal schooling or less than grade 9 as their highest level of EDUCATION, compared to 6 per cent of the Canadian population. Fifty per cent of the First Nations school-age population fails to reach grade 12.
Based on these conditions and our efforts towards self-government, the federal government must make a strong commitment to support the establishment of First Nations post-secondary institutions. Adequate resourcing and core funding must be established. Institutions such as the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College and the First Nations Technical Institute provide excellent EDUCATIONal programs for First Nations students. They must be assured of resourcing from the federal government in order to continue to provide culturally relevant academic, management, and technical EDUCATION at the post-secondary level.
We look forward today to a future of changes in a world of computers and technological advances that will ultimately benefit First Nations EDUCATIONal systems and the First Nations learner. The nature of work is changing to require a more highly trained work force using more advanced technology. In society today, we are using computers to communicate via the Internet. First Nations are becoming increasingly visible in cyberspace through marketing, research, and economic development. With this presence, there is an increasing requirement for a workforce trained in technology.
Society and the work force must recognize and work constructively with a diversity of people and cultures. As society changes, the work force must recognize and acknowledge the rich languages and cultures of its peoples. This includes First Nations peoples who have a unique relationship with this land. The population is changing. The proportion of female and ethnic minority workers in the work force is changing. By the year 2000, the minority will be the majority. Currently, population trends indicate that visible minorities will outnumber Caucasians by the year 2000 by 60 per cent.
There will be intensified competition for quality trained employees in the workforce as technology continues to advance. As we go out into the work force, the skills required of us will be more sophisticated and competition for jobs will be more intense.
EDUCATION contributes to the development of First Nations. In light of this, we recommend:
First, that Post-Secondary education program funding levels be enhanced to reflect inflationary costs and the increase of enrolment of aboriginal students in institutions of higher learning. New dollars must be at allocated to meet the demand of students entering Post-Secondary education programs.
Second, adult Post-Secondary education and professional training must be funded as non-discretionary programs of the federal government to guarantee the training of First Nations professionals and leaders who will contribute to First Nations social, political, cultural, and economic development.
Third, First Nations, not the federal government, must develop post-secondary and adult EDUCATION policies and guidelines.
Fourth, there must be partnerships with post-secondary institutions and First Nation communities to institute on-reserve program delivery and share information. Additional First Nations post-secondary institutions are also required in order to bring EDUCATIONal services more directly to the First Nations peoples.
Fifth, adequate funding for tutoring, transportation, daycare, books, and supplies for adult and post-secondary students is required. This also includes resources for facilities, equipment, libraries, and laboratories.
Sixth, support must be available for culturally relevant curriculum development, aboriginal language development, library development, in-service training needs, and additional research projects to improve programs offered to First Nations students. New federal funds must be located to recruit instructors, counsellors, administrators, para-professionals, and resource specialists, giving preference for hiring to First Nations educators.
Seventh, establish an international aboriginal peoples university, as recommended by the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, by exploring the potential for concurrently establishing a First Nations language institution. Both initiatives would meet the needs of Canada's First Nations people with a language institute specializing in linguistics.
Eighth, establish a First Nations virtual library to serve the needs of First Nations people across Canada. This would serve both the information and self-government needs of our people. The capacity of this virtual library would hinge greatly on the resources allocated to support its mission.
In closing, First Nations require that their EDUCATIONal systems incorporate the following rights in respect of EDUCATION: A cultural environment in all learning institutions that respects and reinforces the history and traditions of aboriginal people; access to EDUCATIONal technologies, information systems, and training on their effective use; access to a life-long EDUCATIONal system to enable all students to reach their full potential and to pass that on to others; a safe and nurturing school environment that challenges each individual to contribute to their community; and the right to inherit a world free from hostilities that is environmentally sound.
I am pleased to have had the opportunity to speak to you this morning and will be happy to answer any questions you may have. In that regard, I will invite my colleague to assist me.
The Chairman: Thank you very much, Chief Mercredi.
Senator Andreychuk: Like Dr. Eber Hampton and the people at IFC, I am convinced that there is a positive element to aboriginal EDUCATION. We have also heard from some speakers from Alberta who gave us some notes of optimism.
Do you generally support the direction that the Royal Commission took toward EDUCATION and the issues involved there? I am a firm believer of aboriginal people needing support systems before they get to university. When you consider all the dilemmas they have faced, both socially and culturally, it is unfair for them to come into an institution not of their own making. Therefore, that bridge is absolutely necessary.
It has been hard to sell that to the average Canadian who feels they have an impediment. Many of them are refugees and immigrants who came and said, "I do not speak the language, I did not know the culture, and yet I do not get that help." I know your answer to that is that you are in that position as a direct result of actions taken by federal governments over the years; whereas others may have come with inhibitors from other countries and other lands for other reasons.
How do we sell that to the public at the moment, with such scarce resources? When I was involved with SFIC, that was the greatest impediment to selling these programs. Perhaps that is one the reasons that, when the federal government came to cuts, they cut it. Since they were cutting support services elsewhere, they cut them there. I am pleased to see that they have brought some of them back.
Before you get to Post-Secondary education, you must overcome all the impediments of elementary and high school. That is where the greatest dropout rate is. How do you envision changing some of the aboriginal attitudes to put EDUCATION higher? I know we talk about the need for legal resources and funding to get aboriginal treaty rights in place. You need housing and social services. How do we sell EDUCATION as a key motivator, even within the aboriginal community? Is there anything we can say in our report that might be of assistance?
I know how difficult it is to catch anyone's imagination and time with regard to the need to start EDUCATION. I recall in my court once a chief said, "My resources have to be used to get the people out of the situation they are in." I said, "But I have this young man standing in front of me. While we work on the long term, please let us have some attention and resources for the short term." How do you come to that balance between your long-term needs, which are very important, and the short-term needs of the young people so that they can get the EDUCATION they need? In other words, how will you address it if you receive the funding you needed?
Mr. Mercredi: Get all the Liberals to resign and start all over again.
When it comes to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, the Liberal government has not been very honest with us on this issue. In fact, their lack of response has been quite troubling. They have shown a complete disrespect for the people I represent.
The attitude of the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development toward us needs to change or else he needs to be replaced. It would be preferable if he were replaced.
With regard to RCAP, the federal government is saying, "We do not have the money to implement its recommendations." That is not what they say in their Red Book. The Red Book is full of promises to aboriginal people. In fact, it contains 22 promises. They have fulfilled only one of them.
It would be good for the Senate to say that the promises contained in the Red Book should be implemented. If that were the case, then one of the things that the Liberal government, or the next government, will have to do is provide the fiscal resources our people need for their EDUCATION and economic development. The promise is there in the Red Book to provide us with adequate EDUCATIONal resources, even at the Post-Secondary education level. In that way, no one goes without the opportunity of going through higher EDUCATION.
Too many governments in the past have broken too many promises to us. If white people would stop breaking promises, that would be a good start in terms of dealing with these issues.
One of these issues is treaties. We have Treaties 1 to 11 which cover the Prairie provinces and parts of the Northwest Territories. They involve a commitment on the part of the federal Crown to provide for the EDUCATIONal needs of our society. When our people negotiated with the commissioners, it was clear what they intended -- the white man's knowledge and EDUCATION. They wanted to prepare our people for the society that was obviously coming in to replace and displace us. In fact, historically, that is what happened.
However, the treaty promise to provide EDUCATION has never been fully implemented. We are still living in a state of denial in which we have the federal government -- and I refer not just to Liberal governments, but to Conservative governments of the past -- consistently refusing to acknowledge that the right to EDUCATION includes money for schools and all those things I mentioned in my submission.
As far as the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, we have said that, in principle, we accept the recommendations. We do not want to give the federal government any excuse for saying, "The chiefs do not like the report."
The Human Rights Commission will be tabling its annual report today. In it, they will be saying to the Government of Canada, "Implement the Royal Commission report." They have not listened to the Governor General who said the same thing in January. They have not listened to the chiefs who have been saying that ever since the release of the report in November. They have not listened to the university presidents and the forums organized by the different universities where the recommendation has been to implement the Royal Commission. Perhaps they will listen to the Human Rights Commission; we do not know that. We are not sure the Liberals listen to anyone.
As to the recommendations, we say there is a basis for discussion there with the government, and we have pushed for a bilateral process between us and the federal government. We have said to them, "We will organize internally to ensure that there is full representation of all sectors of our society to deal with your government and your society, and you organize yourselves accordingly. In other words, if you need a subcommittee of cabinet, so be it, but organize internally so that we can work on a bilateral basis on implementing the Royal Commission report."
The issue of support services is critical. They are essential. They should be permanent parts of the institutions of EDUCATION available to all people, not just the First Nations people. It is to our advantage as a society to have an postated class of people. If some people do not have the required EDUCATIONal upgrading to go into the Post-Secondary educational programs, then it should be provided to them as a matter of course, and it should not be based on a needs test. It should be as a matter of right. Otherwise, the right to post-secondary EDUCATION means nothing if you cannot take advantage of it.
As you have indicated from your questions, there are many compelling reasons for needing those support services, and one of them is the high high-school dropout rate. Many people going to Post-Secondary education are going as adults. They are not going there directly from high school. The ones who go directly from high school do not have the problems that require this extra help. It is people like myself who need that help. I am a high-school dropout, and I went to university as an adult student, a mature student. My knowledge of the English language was elementary, and I spent many hours with a dictionary just to understand what a sociological text was trying to tell me, words with which I was not familiar.
At that time, these support services were not available to us as aboriginal students. Later on, people realized we needed these student support services. We organized for them. We politically organized our students in the University of Manitoba to get the university to set up a native studies program, which was done, and a native student lounge, which was done, and peer group counselling for native students, which was done. I became one the peer group counsellors at the university for native students. We put into place the elements of a support service for those coming after us.
Part of those services is upgrading your knowledge of the language. All instruction is in English in Manitoba and in French at McGill, and you must upgrade your language skills in order to be able to function at the Post-Secondary education level. Therefore, these things are essential, particularly for the group that has dropped out of high school.
You are correct when you say that we must address the issue of what is happening in the elementary schools. We have made a change. In the 1970s, the department changed its policy. They took away EDUCATION from the residential schools, from the churches, the United Church and Catholic Church, and so on, and introduced this new policy of local control of EDUCATION. Through that policy, Indian people started running their own EDUCATION programs and demanding their own schools in our communities. However, as you notice from the figures I cited, we still do not have schools in every community. Where we do run the EDUCATIONal programs, we have made a difference in terms of the dropout rate. We have increased the number of people who graduate from high school. Even that has not been enough, and more needs to be done. WE must do as our educators have been saying to us for some time now, and that is to make the school relevant to the student.
However, there is more to it when it comes to an aboriginal person. That student must understand that, by staying in school, he will have a future in Canada. The problem now is that there is no future in Canada for our young people. If you are a high school student in Attawapiskat in Northern Ontario, you know that the unemployment rate in your community is at 80 per cent or perhaps higher, and you know the socioe-conomic conditions, and you see poverty on a daily basis. Perhaps you are one of the young people who goes to school without food because your people are on welfare and cannot always afford a meal at the high costs in the stores in these communities. Where is the incentive to stay in school? What is the news these people hear about the success of our people in general Canadian society? It is all negative. There are no jobs for us. If we move into the cities, there are still no jobs for us.
The Reform Party tells me on a regular basis when I appear at standing committees, "Why not just be equal with the rest of us?" Those people who make that steady stream to the cities do want to be equal with the rest of you, but being equal does not result in equal treatment. There are no jobs for our people in cities. The relevance must be not just in what happens in the school system but also in what staying in school means and what happens with Canadian society and how we are treated in general Canadian society and whether we have a future or not. That is a powerful statement you can make as senators.
For example, why is it that, in a country which is recognized as the best in the world, with the highest standard of life, where everyone apparently wants to immigrate, we live in conditions of poverty? Why is it that the national chief is compelled to take a trip to Europe from April 2 to April 14, with two delegations, to tell the Europeans our story about the treatment of our people in this country? One delegation from Quebec will go to France, Austria, and Switzerland. My delegation will go to Germany, Scotland, England, and Austria. Why? Because we do not see the changes taking place that should be happening in terms of the global context in this country.
There are no opportunities for our people in this country -- none. Why should the young people in high school feel there is a future for them? The fact is they do not feel there is a future for them because there is not one. It is as simple as that.
All we get from the government is promise after promise, Red Book after Red Book, but those promises are ignored as soon as these people form a government. What is the alternative? The Reform Party is not an alternative for us, because they want to get rid of Indian people and assimilate us into your society without dealing with the injustice. They want us to forget the past. We cannot do that.
The Conservative Party recently released their platform in Toronto. What do they say? They will cut back Indian spending by 20 per cent. Where has Mr. Charest been? Has he been hiding somewhere so that he does not know the situation of our people? What does it take? A two-by-four over someone's head? What do we have to do as aboriginal leaders to get the message across that cutting back on EDUCATION and training by 20 per cent is not the answer?
The Chairman: Chief Mercredi, we are listening to every word you say. We will make a report to the government. Tell us what you are doing, and we will try to make some recommendations to help with the EDUCATION of the aboriginal people of Canada.
Mr. Mercredi: I have been national chief for six years, and I have been appearing before Senate committees for all of that time. I have made representations on EDUCATION, poverty, constitutional issues, and gun control legislation -- any topic of interest to my people. None of my representations have been listened to by the Senate. I have appeared many times before the House of Commons committees on justice and aboriginal affairs. I have submitted piles of submissions on every topic of concern to our people, and none of our recommendations have been listened to or implemented. Coming to the Senate and the House of Commons is a waste of time for us. It produces no results.
The Chairman: Chief, you have often made submissions after the government has made its decision on legislation. This time you are giving us your point of view before the government even knows what we will recommend. We hope that we will be able to endorse some of your recommendations. We saw firsthand the benefits in Regina.
Senator Forest: Chief, you appeared before us on Term 17, and the Senate agreed with your recommendations; however, those recommendations were not followed. I have worked in human rights and EDUCATION for a long time, and I know precisely what you are saying.
We were very impressed with the Federated College in Regina. I know that we must get the children through elementary and secondary school first, but do you believe the best climate for Post-Secondary education to be federated colleges which are on the campus of universities but maintain an aboriginal ambience? Is that the best option for Post-Secondary education?
Mr. Mercredi: I am on the advisory board of the Federated College which is responsible for raising funds for the institution. Clearly I am in support of the institution. However, we want to have more institutional development across the country rather than limiting it to one region.
Whether associated with a university or a stand-alone institution, the full range of options should be available us to. I will not say that it is the ideal situation. As the president of the college says, the ideal situation would be to have status as a university. The First Nations chiefs and the educators who have been involved in assessing these developments in the past 10 years have all been trying to get more resources from the government for institutional development so that we can have our own colleges.
For example, in the city of Winnipeg, we have Red River Community College. I was invited to a conference there about four years ago. I recommended a task force to review how First Nations peoples can be involved in the governance of that college and in shaping the curriculum to make it more appropriate to our people in the cities and to make them feel as though they belong to that institution and are not just passing through it. As a result of that, they have developed some unique programming at Red River Community College.
Having said that, we still want our own community college. The demographics of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta show that by the year 2000 one of every four potential employees will be aboriginal. That does not mean that one of every four aboriginal people will have a job. It is more likely that they will be unemployed. My argument with the community colleges was that these are statistics they cannot ignore. If they do not do something immediately to postate our people in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, there will be an increased number of people in the cities without jobs.
Whoever has control can shape the future of the institution. For us, that is important. When we say "jurisdiction," we mean "control." The decisions of how resources should be allocated should be made by our people. In that way, we would have more say on the speed of institutional developments.
Senator Forest: You will get no argument on that from the people here. We understand the situation.
Mr. Mercredi: I am glad you had a chance to see the Federated College. Our educators are very impressive.
Senator Forest: We thank Senator Andreychuk for insisting that we go there.
Mr. Mercredi: It is not only aboriginal people who benefit from the Federated College. There is a thirst for knowledge about our people. Many non-aboriginal students are waiting for the opportunity to learn about us and to be part of us. That is why I am not yet totally pessimistic. In spite of the record of the government, I still see the Canadian population as being different from its governments. I started out with that belief as the national chief, and I maintain it. I have seen the potential for change in terms of relations and improvements of our socio-economic conditions because I have seen young, non-aboriginal people show an interest in our people.
Senator Forest: I have a personal interest. My husband of 50 years is Cree and French Canadian.
Senator Lavoie-Roux: Many of my questions were answered in the previous exchange.
On page 3 of your brief, you say that 283 First Nations communities in Canada do not have schools of any kind. Is there a greater lack in certain provinces, or is it consistent across Canada? That is quite a few people who do not have even an elementary school in their own community.
Mr. Mercredi: The greatest problem is in British Columbia and the Maritimes. That has much to do with the proximity of these reservations to white communities. It is due in large measure to the federal policy at the time that residential schools were being dismantled and the government came up with a local control policy. They also started negotiating master tuition agreements with certain provinces. Through this system of master tuition agreements, without consulting our people, they made decisions for us in terms of using our moneys for provincial school systems. Many of the white schools which our young people attended were built with Indian moneys. Many of those schools benefited by getting a library or a gymnasium. There were contributions of capital expenditures to these schools. Many of these situations did not work because our people did not have any say in the school system.
For example, two years ago, I went to Eriksdale and spoke to students at the high school there. I went there at the request of reservations nearby because they do not have representation on the school board. However, decisions are being made which affect the curriculum of the school. All they had was a home and school coordinator. There is something wrong with a system like that.
More recently, in Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, the chief and council in the community pulled all their children out of the white school because of racism in the school. They boycotted the school entirely and refused to return to it. That forced the Department of Indian Affairs to come up with some interim measures. Had they had their own school in the community, they would not have had to address the issue of racism in the school system. This was part of the federal policy of the day.
There was a big fanfare three weeks or a month ago about Ron Irwin signing an agreement in Nova Scotia. That agreement says to Nova Scotia, "You can do what Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and the other provinces have done in terms of having schools in their communities." It is not something new. They were changing a policy decision that had been made to use white schools in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. They were saying, "We will not do that any more. We will try to provide EDUCATION in the communities now." That is the difference.
Senator Lavoie-Roux: You were talking about the Maritimes. What about Restigouche? Do they have their own school?
Mr. Mercredi: I do not know about Restigouche.
Senator Lavoie-Roux: I find this difficult to accept.
Mr. Mercredi: We can provide you with the details.
Senator Lavoie-Roux: Where are the schools, and where is the most serious lack? We can talk about Post-Secondary education until we are blue in the face, but you first must get the people to that level. If they do not even have an elementary school, it is a tragedy, and I cannot understand it. Perhaps the provinces should be called to order if it is a lack of concern on the part of the provinces.
Senator Andreychuk: I move that the committee approve the budget.
The Chairman: Is it agreed, honourable senators?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
Senator Lavoie-Roux: You raise the problem of poverty, but there is poverty all over. There is poverty in the white communities, too. Thank you and good luck.
The Chairman: Thank you, chief. Behind me are some young students wearing pins. They are from the Forum of Young Canadians. They have come to hear your comments as the Chief of the Assembly of First Nations. They have never seen you in person. They watch you on TV like some of the great movie stars, but they have never seen you in person.
Senator Cools: I should like to thank Chief Mercredi for coming to be with us this morning.
On page 3 of your submission, you tell us that 50 per cent of First Nations school-age children fail to reach grade 12. You tell us that illiteracy rates are as high as 65 per cent or 75 per cent in some regions. Do you mean real illiteracy or functional illiteracy?
Ms Rose-Alma J. McDonald, Director of EDUCATION, Assembly of First Nations: Mr. Chairman, I would say real illiteracy.
Senator Cools: They cannot read and write at all.
You also tell us that language use in 69 per cent of First Nation communities is declining. Do you mean 69 per cent of First Nations languages?
Mr. Mercredi: Yes.
Senator Cools: You also say that 66 per cent of First Nations adult population have no Post-Secondary education.
I know a bit about those kinds of social problems. Needless to say, I think all of us here begin on the premise that we are sympathetic and compassionate toward these kinds of social problems.
I have read your recommendations carefully. I have listened to you present them. However, I observe that, in your recommendations, there is no particular recommendation which speaks to these problems you have articulated. Perhaps not today, but at some future point when you see fit, you could address these particular issues, ones which I would describe as the social, personal, and psychological forces at work in people's childhoods that impair motivation or abilities to move toward EDUCATION.
It is a complex subject matter. It is extremely difficult because, when one is finished speaking about the larger and the grander issues of self-government, self-determination, human rights, and so on, the real issues are those social forces at work in that child's or young adult's life which impair capacity or desire to EDUCATION. Much work has been done on this sort of thing in the United States, especially in the inner city ghettos.
Could you say anything about this? Not one of your recommendations spoke to this problem. I submit to you that that is where the problem lies, not the grander areas of needing an international university.
Mr. Mercredi: I think you are wrong. It is important for my people to know that they have their own institution, their own university, just as in the United States where the blacks have their own colleges and universities. It is important to the psychological well-being of the blacks in the United States to know that they have their own institutions.
First Nations in Canada feel the same way about our relationship with white people in Canada. We do not think we should always be forced to fit into their institutions and their culture. We should be allowed as free people to develop our own institutions of EDUCATION, including Post-Secondary education facilities such as a First Nations university or college. It is important to the psychological well-being of young people to know that they have their own professionals, their own academics, their own philosophers, and so on, and that they do not all have to become someone by becoming someone in white society.
This is a strong social force in the psychology of every Indian child, male and female, growing up. Who am I? Why are my people the way they are? Why are they being treated the way they are? What will I do when I grow up to fix that situation? Why is it that nothing is being done about it now?
Your race consciousness as an indigenous person develops early in life. You also become aware of the disparity between your race and the other society in terms of its wealth, progress, and institutions. You develop a psychology of resentment toward that one-sided development, particularly if you are taught by your ancestors, your parents, that this is your land, these are your resources, and your people have been displaced from their land and resources. It is a powerful force which permeates all our communities and is strong in the minds of most of our young people. It stays with them for the rest of their lives.
The big picture of self-governance is important to them. Why should only white people have self-government and Indians not? Why should only white people have Parliament and Indians not? Why should only white law apply and Indian law not? These issues are important us to; otherwise, we would not be pushing for them.
When it comes to the practical issues of why we still have problems in the EDUCATIONal system, let me say to you that we reviewed that issue in something called Tradition and EDUCATION: Towards a Vision of our Future, is a research project done by the Assembly of First Nations in 1988. The report is quite detailed and addresses the needs of young children in elementary school. It also addresses the needs of young children in relation to something as basic as having enough food to go to school and what should be done about that. We have done that study. However, in this particular presentation, we were not asked to focus on that issue. We were asked and invited to make comments relating to Post-Secondary education. We tried to accommodate the Senate in that regard. I would recommend this report for your own edification. I am sure the Senate has have a copy in its library. Apparently, the committee already has it. You will see from that report that we have already addressed all those issues.
To me, the big issue is always money. Why is it that money can be found for white schools and not for Indian schools? Why is it that money can be found for white institutions at the post-secondary level and not for us? Why is that? It is that issue with which the Senate and the government must grapple. This is still our land. The wealth of the country is still based on our land. That is the inequity I am addressing in the submission. We have lived with that inequity for over a century, and we do not want to maintain that state of inequity for the next century. That is the issue.
Senator Cools: Thank you.
The Chairman: Thank you, chief.
The committee adjourned.